#;nature

I didn't realize how much I'd miss the ocean until I moved here. The beach was never my favorite place -I actually hated going as a teenager- but now that I live in eastern Montana I miss it dearly. The sand there is unpleasant, the water cold, and the lack of shade downright dangerous. But those things aren't what comes to mind now.

Now I remember the way the horseshoe crabs swam in the shallow surf. I remember their strange, otherworldly bodies. The people I'm with, people who made my life miserable, disappear when I see those strange little earthlings scuttling through the sea.

I say I love animals, and it's true, but what I really love are critters. Few things are more precious than a baby rabbit huddling beneath a thick sagebrush. Few things capture my heart like a fat, lone toad, protecting itself from the cruel summer heat in a puddle of slick mud.

I love the soft whisks of chipmunks in the grass, the pulse-pounding beat of a nervous rattlesnake, the near-silent patter of bat wings in the night. I love horse hoovesteps and owl calls and the quiet nobility of bison, but the scuttle of a lizard over shattered sandstone boulders is in my heart and soul like nothing else.