He relaxes outside on his bench, and because we are surrounded by open fields, woods and a pasture that has been left wild, there are natural sounds in all directions.
After lunch, every day I go for a walk. Yesterdsay, here is what I saw when I looked to the north.
The neighbors' cows were grazing peacefully in the field. Puffy white clouds hung in the azure sky. I went for a walk down the path in our pasture that leads south, and I saw the wild persimmons ripening.
Nobody planted them. They just grew there themselves. Some conservationists say "plant a tree." They imply that nature is like an underprivileged child, and it needs our charity. But nature is rich with its own wealth. I say: "Get out of the way, stop interfering, and the trees will plant themselves."
There is a great bounty to be had, if only we would get out of the way, make ourselves scarce and appear only in small numbers. My five acres of pasture in a natural state might not be enough to feed Bow, but five thousand acres just might do the trick!
I stopped for a moment to watch a bumblebee harvest nectar on a thistle flower. Somebody keeps telling me that the thistle is a noxious weed that needs to be eradicated. But the bumblebee did not seem to think so. It was doing its very best, hanging on despite the wind, trying to get as much as it could before the weather changed.
By evening, the skies had turned grey over the woods to the east. The wind moved the branches to and fro and dry leaves came tumbling to ground, occasionally seeming to stop for a moment in midair, as the wind changed.
The thing that Bow most enjoys about the iPhone is not watching nature videos -- it's taking selfies. And so I humor him.
Someday, I want Bow to be able to go on those walks with me again. That would require building a force field or at least a moat around the pasture. But the purpose is not to "liberate" Bow from an unhappy "captivity". It is just to expand his domain!
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