The Peace of Living Things

Something strange is happening in my world this spring, and at the risk of sounding a bit loony, I am wondering if it's happening in your world, too, or if this experience is a rare gift I've been given. I understand that it might actually be the mild weather we've been having, or the ample rain, but for some reason I am enjoying an unusual season of wild animals at my house and around town, and I think it might perhaps be an experience of grace. I'll explain.

A few weeks ago I was racing to Kalamazoo for some reason, and I saw a medium-sized turtle crossing 31st street. I was able to steer the car to avoid him, but because I was in a hurry I didn't stop and play the role of gentleman or boy scout. I told my twelve-year-old son about that turtle and he spent the next ten minutes lecturing me about not helping it cross the road. "How would I feel if that turtle was killed by a car?", he demanded. I was certainly relieved when we drove that stretch of 31st street later that day and saw no squished turtle. Whew!

But still I promised my son I would do better if given another chance, and man, have I ever. In the past three weeks I have escorted perhaps a dozen turtles cross the road, including a prodigious beast of a snapper across Mill Lake Road. I didn't pick that one up, but rather kept at its heels like a sheep dog. It wasn't really worried about me or the occasional car that passed us both, nor was it in a hurry to get where it was going, so I had enough time with the turtle that it turned from grotesquely ugly to grotesquely kind of handsome. When it finally lumbered into the safety of tall grass, I wished it well, and went along my way, too, pleased with both of our efforts.

Call it karma, but two days ago I walked out to get the paper and I saw another beast of a snapper in my own yard, digging into the sand and soft dirt where we keep the swing set. I guessed what was going on because I had seen that sort of thing on the Discovery Channel, but this was the real thing: a momma turtle laying eggs right in my front yard. Over the next hour or so my family watched the turtle from a distance in wonder and appreciation for the miracle of life, the blessing of nature around us, for what poet Wendell Berry called "the peace of wild things", which is his cure for any despair in the world.

In his famous fantasy poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge shares the lesson of the sailor who takes life for granted and acts irresponsibly by killing an albatross, a great sea bird. He is punished many times over for his arrogance and his offense to Heaven about such disregard for life, and it isn't until the sailor recognizes God's beauty in all living things that his punishment ends and he is then graced with the appearance of angels instead of the visions of death that had haunted him for so long.

Many of us, much of the time, speed busily past the turtles crossing the road. We don't take the time to see, or refuse to see, the rich natural beauty in this place that we call home, and so do so many other creatures. I confess I haven't been able yet to see the beauty in the ticks I've pulled off my skin this spring or the mosquitoes that crowd around me every chance they get, but I did see my first Massasauga rattlesnake making his way peacefully across a field and was glad for it. A beautiful, ghostly crane took up brief residence in the creek behind our house. I am still looking for a cougar (safely, from a distance), but turkeys and deer have become regular visitors around the house. We're like one big happy family: squirrels, spiders, bats, rabbits, kids, and all.

I admit that I find myself both humbled and excited by the experiences of the nature I've been enjoying for the past several weeks. And a couple of months from now, if all goes well, I'll be able to help a dozen or more newly hatched snapping turtles find the creek behind the house that reaches into the lake across the street. Safely across the street, that is. Hopefully they'll recognize me as a friend.

Note: This blog post is from a series originally published as personal essays written for the Van Buren County Advertiser from 2008-2014 by Corey Harbaugh under the title It's All Good. The It's All Good columns were written to feature and celebrate life in and around Gobles, Michigan.