Have you seen invisible city, the metropolis thriving right under our noses?
The citizens there outnumber humans by untold multitudes. Do they discuss the strangeness of the humans? Are they aware of how oblivious we can be to their previous lives? I’m convinced some are.
I sit and listen, observing this bustling city with its roadways, highways and byways. The keener my awareness, the clearer my senses perceive the living, thriving communities all around me.
In the lush Northeastern stretches of our country where I’m from, it’s easy to see these multitudes, but even in the seemingly barren desert there’s a lively metropolis bustling under our feet, on the ground and in the air.
Do You Know The City?
Sitting quietly here in my chair, surrounded by the Chihuahuan Desert of Northern New Mexico, I listen.
The crows quietly converse among themselves with strange guttural croaks, pausing occasionally to loudly caw out on the corvus social network. Graceful Sandhill Cranes fill the air high above with their delicate synchronized dance and musical vocals. The smaller desert birds stay closer to ground, twittering and singing as they shyly flit though the tangles of shrubs and juniper trees.
There are animal tracks everywhere in camp. Some I identify, rabbits, quail, coyote, and some are unidentified that are probably lizards or mice. Yesterday I came upon the intriguing tracks of some large cloven-hoofed animal not far from my campsite. Antelope? Dear? Maybe a javelina! It’s a wild city!
The coyotes are stealthy. I rarely see them as they’ve learned over millennia to be cautious of humans, but they party all around me at night. The village den here voices it’s territory after sundown with their hoots and howls, sometimes mere yards from my van. I wonder if they’re complaining about the human that invaded their village. Before setting up my own little temporary village here, the coyote tracks crossed everywhere through the soft sand of my camp. After setting up, the coyotes took a wider route around me, my presence changing their habits.
In the morning their footprints and scat tell me where they’ve been, and often outside of camp their fresh footprints cross mine.
Alongside the mammals and reptiles residing in the city, the insects buzz and fly and crawl and bite, filling the smaller spaces surrounding me. If I sit still long enough, I see the lizards scuttling through their rocky roundabouts, and the ants with their daily rhythmic flow back and forth on their major highways.
Last year there was a dead rattlesnake in this very camp, unwittingly run over by the car tire of a human occupant. I was camped next door, and she was so freaked out she didn’t know what to do. Making sure the flattened body had truly met its demise, I hooked it with a stick and flung it into the bushes. She left that day. It was a perfect spot with a big tree and a view of the lake, and it was empty the next time I was passing through. Maybe the word of its reptilian citizen got out and has kept the humans wary! There’s plenty more around, a woman right up the hill from me found one in her camp, and the rattlesnake’s deadly nemesis, the roadrunner, makes regular passes through my camp.
It’s a rich and varied metropolis, and like any major city, the invisible city provides its occupants with ample fare and habitats, with complex systems for waste disposal and transportation.
Take Care In The City!
I’m careful in this city of nature, there are rules. Here you must be conscious of where you put your soft human feet, and keep in mind that human belongings left outside are tempting homes for snakes, scorpions, spiders and other crawly and venomous creatures.
Some citizens just don’t want company and have no problem running you off, like the very persistent Tarantula Hawk Wasp that recently made an urgent request that I leave her territory. With a quick Google search I learned they aren’t usually aggressive but are known to have the most painful sting in the insect world. Not wanting a conflict, I carefully worked around her to get my outside stuff back into the van. She was confident in claiming her territory, and her intimidating presence kept me on my toes as she dive bombed around me like a little black fighter jet buzzing me as I tried to pack up.
One year I carried around a big fat huntsman spider in my van, hidden in the compressed folds of my screen shelter. I was grateful she stayed there until I could get her relocated, it would have been a traumatic scene for both of us to have an unexpected meeting inside my van.
So the next time you’re in nature, notice the invisible city of citizens around you sharing the planet. Once you see it, you’ll become aware of a vibrant, lively community of fellow earth dwellers.They accommodate us the best they can on this communal planet, and with the multitudes living around us with the ability to do us harm, it’s miraculous how few conflicts they actually start. Now if we could just learn to respectfully accommodate them as well as they do us.
Wild Women On The Road, found on Amazon! In Kindle and Paperback formats.
