Tomorrow: 'Chrysalis' Series #17: ANIMALS
Hey Hartlist,
I'm writing the newsletter a few days late this week - tune in tomorrow, Sunday 7/18, on Facebook-Live-which-you-can-watch-even-if-you-don't-have-Facebook. 4PM.
I'm writing to you a few days later than usual. This past Wednesday, instead of sitting at my desk writing an opera libretto about friends on a hike in the woods, I ... went on a hike! With friends! In the woods!
Here's where I'd insert a picture but I didn't take ANY pictures OR look at my phone! It was bliss.
Also, my friends made me a PBJ. Get some friends who will make you a PBJ.
We climbed up a mountain and then down a mountain. We picked and ate wild raspberries. We saw almost no humans, but we did see many deer (up close and personal - and two fauns!), chipmunks and, at the highest point, two enormous hawks, circling. They were below us and pretty close; I've never really seen the face or feathers of a bird of prey that clearly. Scary and beautiful. I loved it. And at least one little part of me was like sigh, these beautiful creatures don't know or care that there's a global pandemic, they're just going about their business.
Then the other night I was sitting at home doing some very important phone-staring and in the space of a half-hour I learned the following: that a pigeon in Colorado has the bubonic plague (yes), that a dear friend of mine had had to flee her campsite in the Catskills with her family because a large bear didn't really give a s*t about their bear whistle or yelling, and that someone I know IN BROOKLYN encountered a 4.5 -foot rattlesnake in his yard. (He posted a picture). Oh, and another friend in the Catskills sent a picture of large paw-prints in the mud outside his door, and, to quote a headline I wish I hadn't read, "Hungry Rats Terrorize Outdoor Diners in New York". (There, now you wish you hadn't read it.)
The moral of the story is ... get off your phone. But also, I thought, maybe the creatures DO know, and they're like, 'move over, humans; this is our moment."
Anyway, the sort-of-theme this week on the livestream will be ANIMALS, because I don't want to make them mad. See you there!
Rebecca Hart