Election Day Musings
Weather was gloomy . . .
Election day got off to a rainy, gloomy start – but we welcomed the gentle, much-needed precipitation.
Following a couple of months of a very dry fall, farmers’ cover crops finally were getting a drink, and our late-planted garden lettuce could use the moisture to provide us with a few more salads before a hard freeze.
Even with the rut in full swing and sex-crazed bucks losing their usual caution, my wife, Margaret, managed to avoid a white-tail collision on her half-hour, pre-dawn drive through prime deer country to her job as a poll worker.
I stayed home to tend the bird feeders, where we’re already offering handouts to nuthatches, chickadees, and goldfinches. The first juncos arrived from the north several weeks ago, happy to forage on the ground for sunflower seeds spilled by the others.
Feeling temporarily tolerant, I even let the soggy gray squirrel munch a few breakfast sunflower hearts before I chased him away from the window feeder.
Migrating robins splashed at the edge of the bird bath, while our resident bluebirds sang softly but cheerily in the misty morning.
The rain accented our prairie’s light brown Indiangrass and big bluestem, which have kept their subtle colors into November – unlike the scarlet oaks, golden cottonwoods and crimson maples, which mostly have dropped their leaves.
I was somehow reassured to savor these autumn sights – albeit through my rain-speckled window. Nature seemed to temper the harsh rhetoric and vitriol spewing from recent months of political campaigning.
Growing restless indoors, listening to radio commentators’ endless speculation about turnout and voting trends, I impatiently studied the radar for signs of a hole in the rain that would allow at least a brief, semi-dry walk outside. Alas, the green-yellow-orange-red mosaic kept dancing across the screen.
By late afternoon, however, the rain moved east, allowing a sliver of sunshine to brighten a neighbor’s bronze field of little bluestem. My mood lifted with the clouds.
As darkness fell, a delicate but hardy moth clung to the outside of my window. In search of lingering warmth from the house? Attracted by the light? A symbol of hope?
Perhaps it was a mistake to turn on the TV in search of early election returns. Talking heads analyzed, spun, and speculated about the impending results. I’ll leave details to the pundits – and ultimately to the American people. What soon became clear to me, however, is that our country is in store for calls to “drill baby drill,” less protection for the environment, firing of civil servants, and attacks on “the enemy within.”
Unity? That remains to be seen!
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Lovely, Larry. As I read your writing about the wondrous and the mundane in our natural world, it's almost as profound as a walk in the timber where I heal every morning, at dawn.
Seek the moth and the light!! Agree