[The Lord] makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate—bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart (Psalm 104:10-15).

I was beginning my woodland walk.  He was ending his.  We exchanged cordial one-word greetings: “Hey.” I judged him to be in his mid-twenties.  I was entering the wild with my camera gear and hiking stick saw.  He was leaving it with a book and notebook in hand.  My eye caught the key word on his book: “Solitude.”  Some forty years separated us, but I suspected that we were kindred spirits.  I wanted to turn around and start asking him about his book and what he had learned from his solitude, but he looked at that moment to have a Robert Frostian mindset: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, /But I have promises to keep, /And miles to go before I sleep.”

He went on to his car and back into the shallower world of modernity.  And I entered the normally quiet nature preserve, which, however, was absorbing more people than usual—drawn by a warm spring evening and a forest floor spread with season’s first wildflower bloom.  My gear soon proved to be more than I needed—and more than I wanted.  So I laid the camera, pack, tripod, stick pack amid the spring beauties that were already being folded shut by the lowering sun and sat down on one of last year’s fallen trees.  In my walk I had discovered that this windfall was providing an ideal location among its downed upper branches and wilted leaves for a fox to build this year’s den.  Spots of excavated sand all along the marsh-facing slope showed that this same fox or its offspring had made several dens there over the past few years.  Each little pile indicating its age by its collection of leaves and the state of its collapsed lair.

I began my time of solitude about a hundred yards off the trail.  Earlier as I ambled in search of that quiet spot, I had interrupted the woodland stillness a few times practicing my barred owl imitation: “Who cooks for you; who cooks for you-hoo.”  Now in silence I allowed my senses to absorb what they could: a view of brilliant green skunk cabbage and fern fiddleheads newly arisen from coal-black marsh muck below, the sound of a nearby conversation going on in a chickadee community, a few caws from a crow patrolling for owls, and the smell of fleeting fragrance from blossoming crabapples, patches of violets, and pure earthiness from the humus below my feet.

Then came creation’s response to my badly botched owl hooting: In almost worshipful antiphony two barred owls demonstrated the real thing by calling back and forth to each other from somewhere east and then west of me.  They did this for only about five minutes, but it was enough to show me that both my cadence and pitch had clearly been off.  “Here’s how you hoot it, Mr. Human!”

I took my lesson humbly—and joyfully.  The joy came from the fact that in spite of all the stresses we people create for nature, it is still out there doing what God created it to do.  And my soul resonated with King David’s as he gave voice to his own soul’s joy some three thousand years ago: “How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures” (Psalm 104:24).

As darkness came on, I stood rather reluctantly, picked up my gear, and began to trek back toward the parking lot—waiting momentarily so as not to startle a strolling young couple so engrossed in conversation they were unaware that the forest they walked through had eyes.  Solitude had done its work in me, and I left the wild with gratefulness that “out there” God is still doing His work—work that has for all of earth’s time made it possible for us to be “in here” doing whatever He has called us to do.  Human life in health and wholeness would be impossible without the sustaining hand of our Creator and the provisional gifts of His good creation.  If you can’t get out there today, perhaps you can take a few minutes to read Psalm 104 to be reminded again of both the wonder and priceless worth of the non-human creation, upon which the Creator has compassion (Psalm 145:9,17)

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow; praise Him all creatures here below.”

[Owl photo source]