I do a lot of walking.  I do this because I hate exercise and am pretty sure I will live the rest of my life without ever joining a gym, and yet I like sleep.  When I walk, I sleep.  When I don't walk, I don't sleep.  Also, walking seems to make me better fit for human company; when I go too many days without walking, people don't seem to like me as much.  I would go running, but I need to save up all the running energy I may have.  If I'm ever being chased by a bad guy or a bear, I want to be fresh.

So I walk.  It's always the same walk, a loop from my house that is part sidewalk, part bike path, and part nature trail that circles through a marsh.  This is a perfect walk for me, for a couple of reasons.  One, I don't usually see people I have to say hello to, and two, this walk allows me to experience nature.  I don't really like nature.  I'm not likely to seek the natural world out on my own, but my walk forces me into it and I end up noticing the way the marsh changes through the seasons.  Feeling connected to the earth, the cycle of life...all that crap. 

My walk can be dangerous, though.  Unless I am with a friend, I'm always listening to podcasts as I walk, earbuds stuffed in my ears, which means I am easily startled.  Bicyclists zoom by, calling "On your left!" as if that's supposed to mean something, and terrifying dogs lunge at me from the other side of fences.  Yesterday I almost had a heart attack when a duck suddenly took off through the water a few feet away from me, and frankly, even the fierce little attitudes of squirrels in the fall can make me uncomfortable.

I do have a marsh friend now, though, and this afternoon I saw him for the first time since spring.  It's a muskrat.  Last spring I first saw what I thought was some kind of big nest, maybe for a goose or something, but then one day I saw this little head moving through the water.  Feeling like the children's character Stanley with his Great Big Book of Everything (in the later episodes, once the book had turned into a computer), I looked up the aquatic mammals living in the area and decided the creature was a muskrat. 

Somehow, this twenty minutes I spent on the internet back in April has made me feel very close to my muskrat, as if by naming him (as a muskrat, not Frank or Bob) I am at least partially responsible for his existence.  So today when I saw him gliding through the still water I got so excited I even took out my ear buds for a moment.  Muskrats are fairly silent animals, so having them out was much like having them in, but for me, that's about as intense as communing with nature gets.  So I stood there watching for a minute, until my muskrat swam away into the reeds.

Comments

[Sarah Adler]

Yet another excellent post! Thank you.

[Laura]

Is that a picture of your actual muskrat? Or is it a random muskrat? I feel very close to your muskrat and will be sad if that's a different one.

[Gail Kramer]

My friend Nancy walks through the marsh every day and often writes about it on FB. I wonder if you see her.

[Nothing To See Here]

Laura, that muskrat is EXACTLY like my muskrat. Except my muskrat likes to swim away from me toward the reeds and be harder to photograph.