Walking Across Bethesda
We’ve all seen the scenes: Humanity has destroyed themselves and now nature has reclaimed our cities and streets! From Logan’s Run to I Am Legend and every 12 Monkeys in between, we’ve been schooled in the thought that nature is just waiting for our demise so that the animals and grasses can again rule the plains.
I don’t think that’s exactly right. I love walking across Bethesda in the mornings. It’s not the exhaust or naughty honking that captivates me, but the bunnies and the chipmunks, the grass and the trees. It was just last year when Asplundh came through and devastated our trees with wanton limb trimming, and we wailed and gnashed our teeth. But a couple of seasonal turns later and they look like they’ll be ok, as if to make a rude gestures back at the trimmers and taunt, “Try it again, buddy!”
And the bunnies move like the tide across the heart of downtown Bethesda, ebbing and flowing into our flower gardens and munching our wild growing clover. They are gorgeous. They belong among us. Nature isn’t waiting for our demise, just for more of us to leave a seat at the table, to make a little more room for green things and furry things.
So this morning as I walked to my big glass and stone Starbucks to sit inside and sip my coffee in air conditioned humanness, I was so blessed to watch a young rabbit having it’s breakfast in the fresh, green dew-covered grass. I always cringe when it rains and I imagine what our dogs will do to our floors after going outside, but I am so happy for the bright new buds that the bunnies reap after those showers.
I wrote a haiku after watching the bunny…
paving, bricks, exhaust
a young rabbit / eats the new grass
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