Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wild animal.” Choose a wild animal (or many wild animals) and use it any way you’d like in your post. Enjoy!

Oh my! Where to go on a theme of wild animals?
I guess I’ll tell one of many tales of my encounters.
A connection with the Natural World IMHO is the greatest gift you can give a child.

My childhood was an absolutely enchanted one…
We spent family vacations at remote cabins we’re we went fishing, climbed trees, caught frogs, and sat around campfires. My Mom’s family even bundled their funds and bought a cabin by a lake when I was about 10. I would spend almost entire summers there.
Many whole days were all about catching, examining, and releasing, frogs and turtles and exploring. At night, we’d fish on the lake’s glassy surface using our favorite lure called a “jitterbug”. It mimicked the sound and motion of a frog on the water. In that near-silent scene (except for the lullaby of crickets), with the moon turning the water’s ‘smooth glass’ silver, I could hear (sometimes see) the lure lurching across the water.
“Glub, glug, glubbity”, {pause]…then repeat. Sometimes a small fish would take a slap at the lure. BUT the larger bass (lunkers) simply rose to the top making an almost inaudible sucking sound taking the whole lure in its mouth.
Then it was ON!
The pole would jerk as I ‘set the hook’ (pulled back). Larger, heavy, fish would take out line which is called “pulling out drag” and we’d fight as I reeled it in. On the best battles, the fish would leap fully out into the moonlight while shaking its head. That once quiet environment was now filled with splashing and the essence of the Natural World… a fight for survival.
If I had ‘set the hook’ quickly, once I bring the fish to the boat (if it hasn’t won the battle to get away), the hook is only lodged in the stiff corner of its mouth. That’s when the skilled ‘angler’ removes the hook and releases the bass back into the lake to hopefully pursue another day.

My husband and I honeymooned at a lake in Maine. Instead of going to bars or clubs, we sat on a moonlit lake and fished. Later on, we took our kids camping and finally bought 29 acres in the woods. We still spend weekends and vacations there ‘off the grid’ with our kids and grandkids. There’s no lake but plenty of Nature to ‘drinking in’.

I could have told you about the time I raised a baby raccoon, or kept frogs through one winter, or solved the mysteries of wild sounds I have encountered, or made friends with a Ruffed Grouse, but Stream of Consciousness takes its own course… maybe another time.

I could go on and on about the critical NEED for kids to connect to Nature. If the topic interests you, Richard Louv has written two outstanding books, The Nature Principle and Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.

Happy Saturday everyone!


https://lindaghill.com/2023/03/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-4-2023/
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