My Outdoors Conundrum

I love being outdoors. I love to walk along a lake trail in the fall. Beautiful. I find my religion when I am deep in a forest on a summer day.  Beautiful wildflowers along a meadow trail in the spring can make me excited about life.  Even walking a snowy trail on the side of a mountain fills me with joy.  So what is my conundrum? I am not a big animal fan and they are outdoors too. In fact, it is their home!

Don’t get me wrong. I want no harm to come to any animal. Well, maybe the turkey that will be on my Thanksgiving table! Animals are beautiful. I like seeing some animals, from a distance.  Some of them scare me, especially hiking alone.  Bears are now out of hibernation. Snakes are slithering again.  Bats are filling the twilight sky. All of those scare me. They are all unpredictable.

I think I can trace my fear of animals to a German Shepherd bite I received at the age of twelve.  I’ve written about that incident before. But there have been other animal encounters that support my fear. When I was in high school, my mom died, and my dad and I moved in with my brother Jim. We shared a small attic bedroom that attracted birds from somewhere. There is nothing more terrifying than being stuck in a small room with a crazy bird! Ask Alfred Hitchcock.  Then there was the time I was running at sunup and ran into a flock (?) of bats under a wooden bridge! I was about to enter a trail at French Creek State Park and was confronted by a ranger. Don’t go in there, he said, there is a rabid raccoon in there somewhere.  See what I mean!

To be fair, I have had good encounters too. Anytime I come across a deer, I stop and watch.  Last fall I saw a beautiful bald eagle on a dead tree at Lehigh Gap.  Watching the snow geese in the fields and skies of North Whitehall Township…wonderful!

So, I will continue to hike and enjoy the outdoors. I will continue to be vigilant, no… hyper vigilant, expecting the unexpected.  I shake my keys once in a while to warn the bears I am coming their way.  I watch my steps carefully so I do not step on a snake basking in the sun.  And the bats….I will try not to hike at night or dusk or dawn.

Speaking of animals, I recommend Tiger King on Netflix. On there it is not the animals that are unpredictable, it’s the people! Enjoy!