Transition Cafe notes from William Mutch

I arrived home, the other night, at the beginning of a concert. The players were just warming up, gathering, tuning their instruments, figuring out where they could play to best advantage. I was sitting in my car, in the driveway, when I felt like I should walk around the house. When I arrived at the front of the house, my headlamp picked out eyeshine, in the dark between the clothesline and the big Cork Oak. Probably seven individuals, glowing eyes bobbing and weaving as they checked me out, then they disappeared toward my neighbors’ place. I circled back around, encountering them again on the little road that runs up the hill, still checking me out. Then the concert began, Coyotes bursting into full voice.

If you’ve never experienced being near Coyotes howling in large numbers, it is something. I’d only been close to it a couple of times, before moving onto this land. My first Coyote song was scary to me, actually. I couldn’t figure out what it was, and the alien, not-Dog-ness of it had me jumpy. It didn’t help that I was one of two Humans designated to scout the Dark and figure out what on Earth that sound was… The second close experience had me right in the middle of a howling pack. I still don’t know how they felt, having me there, but I was close enough to feel the compression waves as their voices hit the air between us, and it took my breath away.

The current concert seemed to involve three packs, or three sizeable subsets of the same pack. The music swirled around, for awhile, then moved down the driveway and across the hill. I was right in the middle of it for around…awhile…which was probably shorter than it felt…

The first time I heard a Coyote, I couldn’t sleep through the night for worrying about what it might be. On a recent campout, I apparently slept right through a great chorus. I usually find it soothing, for reasons contemplated in the Transition Café archives. Not that I’m advocating for standing in the Dark, in the middle of a pack of howling omnivores…do be safe out there…

It’s funny, living in the Age of Convenience. We think nothing of traveling great distances to see things we can’t see around these parts, visit relatives who live far away, but so close via powered vehicles, order stuff from all over the globe. So much I will miss about this, when it all goes away, not least of which being the access to books, tools, and seeds I haven’t heard of. And it will, of course. I love being able to “easily” visit my sister in the North Bay, friends in the East Bay, places I love, like Mendocino, Ashland, Corvallis…things which will be so much farther away, when the cheap oil disappears. So many things we take for granted, that won’t be available anymore, at least not at a price most of us can afford. Mostly I probably miss the innocent ignorance of the early and mid-era.