These frequently appear near the house during spring and summer months, making me glad a wild creature felt comfortable enough to rest so close to my own sleeping spot. Sometimes as I drift off, I imagine them out there choosing their bedding place and circling a few times before settling down for a peaceful night under open sky awash in stars. This is how life should be. Simple. Quiet. Comfortable. Enjoyed.
A boring world for many but not for me. This temporary sign of simple, earthly utility symbolizes all the world can be without inflicting undue harm to it. The mule deer or elk or bear that stopped to sleep here caused no enduring damage, raised no ruckus, irritated nothing and no one. Signs of its passing occupancy disappeared within days. Having personally slept this way many times while wandering about well away from over-mechanized civilization (and a few fitful times right in the loud, foul, odorous middle of it) when sleep wouldn't wait to allow time to set camp or get back home, the beauty of it is striking reminder of how easily one can tread softly upon this precious planet we all spring into brief existence upon.
Designing and planning construction of a small house of minimal utility I can live in simply, safely, comfortably and economically as advanced age becomes my keeper, it makes me wonder at humanity's illogically driven, frenetic construction of massive, modern, automated homes. Why construct such huge, over-energized edifices of opulence and grandeur to dwell in for such short lives we all are biologically bound to experience? For what purpose in the greater scheme of things? Recognition? Self-aggrandizement? Security?
A friend recently related her preference for cozy living spaces over mansionesque monstrosities. She owns a small adobe nestled in semiarid wilderness a few dozen miles south of here. A home built by her grandfather from sun-cured bricks created from a recipe of mud and straw that soak up sunlight to keep its occupants warm through cool nights and cool through hot days by natural thermal mechanics. No steel, no processed sheets of paper-faced gypsum, no plastics or spun fiberglass or huge sheets of multi-pane glass. It inspires desire to build as minimally as possible.
If I only I had more fur and fat that I might just choose a good spot to rest upon grass wherever need for sleep arises.
