Tuesday, November 23
Yip yip yip yi
Last night, laying in bed around 11:30, we hear the distinctive barking/yipping of the neighborhood coyotes through the cracked-for-air window. Coyotes. They're yipping down by the river. A few weeks ago, I was driving home from somewhere in the late afternoon, and I turned the corner at the top of hill by our house and there was a coyote trotting/weaving down the sidewalk. He veered into the street, and then ducked into the space between our house and the neighbor's house to the south. There's fences there, of course, this being the suburbs, and some low bushes. Disappeared.
This might be the edge of nowhere, but it's also a large, paved suburban city pushing 80,000 people. I can walk due south for probably three miles and only be in subdivisions and neighborhoods. Going east, it's probably a good ten miles before I get back out in the open country. North: a cram-packed mile, as you can see from the windows up here on the second floor. And west, towards the now snow-capped mountains, it's a half-mile, but if you visit us in two years, it'll be more like three miles. They're plowing it under. That's the bad news, I guess, if you believe in value judgments (and/or share my values). The good news is I can still hear the coyotes yip yip yipping at night.
This might be the edge of nowhere, but it's also a large, paved suburban city pushing 80,000 people. I can walk due south for probably three miles and only be in subdivisions and neighborhoods. Going east, it's probably a good ten miles before I get back out in the open country. North: a cram-packed mile, as you can see from the windows up here on the second floor. And west, towards the now snow-capped mountains, it's a half-mile, but if you visit us in two years, it'll be more like three miles. They're plowing it under. That's the bad news, I guess, if you believe in value judgments (and/or share my values). The good news is I can still hear the coyotes yip yip yipping at night.
