I stayed home from work last Thursday, a rare and indulgent treat for me. My PTO bank reached its limit and stopped accumulating hours, so I suspect the cold that knocked me flat was Someone’s way of telling me to take a day off. I hardly ever miss work, and I’m hardly ever sick (all we need for this story now is a Bigfoot sighting and the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes van in our driveway).

I’ve lamented here before the perpetual ache of having to leave the land behind to work a full time job that gives me money to pay for the land (and the house and a truck and food) in the first place. I take my dreams of an early retirement with me down the road that leads to a parking place and an office with my name on it, and at the lunch table I wonder what the cats are up to back home. Rearranging the throw rugs like they do? Crouching in hope below the bird feeder on the ridge, mouths open and eyes hunter-wide? Who knows? At the end of my day, I’m greeted with innocent faces and evidence of their time spent redecorating the living room. No stray feathers on the welcome mat today, thank goodness.

But staying home AND not feeling well is the height of unfairness, especially in a place like ours, with so many moving parts and spectacles of nature whizzing by nonstop. Shortly after I woke up, I took my thick and congested head for a short walk through the entrance to the meadow, thinking the fresh cold air would chill-kill any residual germs still hanging onto the balance of my immune system for dear life. I opened the door to the chicken hutch and released the last two remaining girls from a flock that boasted 28 layers just a year ago, and stood watching as they pecked their way through some frost-encrusted pigweed leftover from August before rushing to that same bird feeder on the ridge where the kittens wished for breakfast just thirty minutes earlier. As I felt the next round of coughing fits stirring in my dry throat, I turned and went back inside, cranky and resentful that I couldn’t enjoy this paycheck paid-for moment in full health. I knocked back a teaspoon-size slug of some homemade elecampane syrup purchased from our friends’ new apothecary (Old Mr. Bailiwick’s), chased it down with some of their elderberry syrup and parked myself on the couch near a fresh box of Kleenex. Sigh. The view through the front windows would have to do.

It didn’t take long for the show to begin, a series of random (?) one-act plays and improv entitled “This Is What Happens When You’re Not Here”:

The chickens standing perfectly still beneath the needled boughs of the blue spruce while a red-tail hawk circles low and tight overhead. Even with the windows shut I can hear its hungry cry.

A football-sized possum carrying in its mouth one of the stale corn tortillas I had tossed out the back door for the chickens, who apparently never saw it. I don’t know why he felt it needed to travel a few feet before it was edible, but this wasn’t my moment. He chewed his way through nearly all of it as the chickens watched from their hawk-proof shelter. I don’t know if possums and poultry are mortal enemies, but I was observing a simple “Peaceable Kingdom” tableau using the wildlife we had available (not many lions in this part of the state, though our neighbors raise sheep, so we’re halfway there, I suppose). It occurred to me that perhaps a daytime possum sighting was rare. Wonderful—another research project, like hibernating bees (see a couple posts back).

Though I’d prefer to be outside rather than in most days—ok, every day—I did understand that were I outside, much of what I just saw wouldn’t be happening. Most of our four-legged and winged relatives save their best stuff for when we’re not around, or at least not visible to them. It’s sheer luck and gift when the buck rubbing the velvet from his antlers is on the same tree-lined path back to the woods as I am, and he’s so intent on removing that last strip he doesn’t hear my boots crunching through the frosty grass. Or when I snap my gaze toward the movement of a red fox in the cut field to the west, its tail a straight line above the ground as it runs north to the woods.

I watched that possum for a good three minutes while it dawned on me that its face wasn’t screwed up into the defensive snarling expression I usually see; it looked peaceful and content making short work of that tortilla. I’m committing that image to memory for the next time I startle one in the old goat barn—a humble reminder that I’ve made more than a few snarling faces in my day, sometimes without having been startled.

I’m glad my cold is on its way out, of course. I’m back at the office and caught up on most emails. But I doubt anyone would notice if I took a day off work ever so often while I was feeling fine, just to walk the land and pay attention to what this place looks like on a Tuesday at 10am.

Maybe I will. I’ve got the time…