Peekaboo!

 We know!

Some of us have seen you!

Wild thing,

(We think we love you,)

In your essential freedom.

Is there something,

You can teach us?

Just by being allowed to see you?

🤍

            My current wild thing is a cat, as you know. Suzy. She is apparently not fully domesticated. There is no slop in her happy/flee decision making apparatus. She is not broadminded. Danger lurks behind every random happenstance.
            Once I had a lady wolf for a companion. She was a lot more broadminded, but also not truly domesticated. She was sweet, loving, and kind, but not trained in the dog sense. There was no way I could have let her run off leash outdoors. I had no idea if she would come back. So, I guess in a sense, she was a captive wolf, though her captivity was pleasant for her.
            I think back to other wild things that I met in my own rather feral childhood as a grubby woodland creature. There were a few.
            I was often sent out into the forest with a bucket or something to pick blackberries into. As a result, I spent long solitary hours out there. Blackberries, the little vining ones that grow on the ground, need some sunlight. So, I had to go through the forested sections to get to places that had been logged fairly recently.
            When I got tired, or the bucket was full, I would sit on a  log usually and disappear. I mean I was utterly silent for long periods of time, until the wildlife forgot that I was there or figured I was a stump or something. I was approached by birds, and once by something like a martin, like a weasel.
            On my grandparents’ farm once, I discovered a bird who had nested in hanging burlap bag. Of course I reached in and captured her. She was furious. She fought me with all her strength. But she couldn't escape my hand. After I looked her over, I let her go of course.
            So many creatures. There was a shrew, just the size of a peanut. It tried its best to bite me to death, but I couldn’t even feel its little teeth. There was a mountain beaver which I grabbed, naturally. Who wouldn’t grab a wild rodent? Well, I did feel his teeth! He bloodied me up good.
            I’m trying to get a grip on the nature of wildness for a reason. Maybe I should turn it upside down and get a grip on the nature of domestication? A domesticated animal doesn’t run from people, more or less, because they have been brought up by some person, or have been broken, like a horse. I told you guys about my dad when he was a kid and the coyote pup. He grabbed it and held it until it stopped fighting him, then it followed him like a dog.
            It’s almost like one of those matters of authority I keep going on about. A wild animal is on his own recognizance. He owns himself, even if that doesn’t get him much. A domesticated animal belong to another. He is under headship, isn’t he?
            What does all of that have to do with anything?
            I continue to try to understand those strangers, with whatever name people give them, who seem to live in the forests, maybe the tundra, maybe even in the suburbs somehow. They pop up everywhere.
            Maybe I have to think of them as utterly wild. That doesn’t mean bad or cruel, necessarily. They are no more domesticated than a whale or a bear, and yet many seem to use reason. It confuses us. What in the world are they up to? What do they want? Why are they here and where did they come from? Are they merely flesh and blood? Don’t think so. Do they know God? What is their essential nature? Are they all alike? Do we even get to understand them?
            Those are wide open questions. Maybe their unknowable-ness is the point.
            I do know a couple of things about them. They are not domesticated. They live under their own authority. No man owns a Sasquatch. The idea is ridiculous.
            All of this has to do with wildness, but maybe freedom would be a better word.
            Maybe that’s what’s so lovable about Ralph. He’s both free and good. He’s a fine example to us all!