My friend Joe lives in Montana. He calls it the suburbs. I’m pretty sure his closest human neighbor is at least a mile away. The animal neighbors are everywhere.
A photographer, he enjoys thinking he might sneak up on an animal neighbor and get a candid shot of say, a “suburban” antelope. He believes this will occur until he develops a photo. The animal neighbor always see him.
Most days I take a walk through my neighborhood. Inevitably, a mourning dove startles cooing from its place on a lawn to a nearby tree branch. I too imagine the day I’ll see one before it sees me. It hasn’t happened yet.
Liz Glibert talked to Tim Ferris’s on his podcast about how our conscious minds are the part of our brains that developed last. Only 400,000 or so years old against the long history of animal intelligence and intuition in our bodies. I might see a mourning dove before it saw me if my big toddler brain wasn’t ponderously galumphing through the neighborhood.
The Muse is an old creature. Much older creature than my big toddler brain. It also sees me first. I like to believe I might sneak up on it, but it always sees me first, and it waits. If my big toddler brain quiets, it may approach me.
timmyr.com 