For Worms and Wolves

I’m at the Western North Carolina Nature Center today. It’s an excitingly brisk morning and the bears are hibernating. I learn that a bear can smell from food ten miles away, and  that the southern Appalachians have the richest diversity of native plants anywhere outside of the tropics, plants that have lived here for thousands of years and were not introduced by people– no where else in the United States does such a diversity of plant species occur in such a small geographic area as in these beautiful mountains!

I move on to the wolves, who were once all over Western North Carolina, a social animal living in family units that work together, and I learn that a wolf’s wonderful howl can often be heard at a distance of, yes, ten miles. Humans have feared wolves, if story lore is any indication, yet I learn there’s never been an authenticated record of a healthy wild wolf attacking a human being in North America.

These beauties remind me of Mora, my old German Shepherd, beloved dog companion, long gone. I can feel Mora’s fur when I look at the wolves, I can see again, Mora’s eyes, when I look at theirs. Their kind her ancestors, they bring Mora present at my side this day. That these stunning wild wolves have to live in captivity fills me with sadness.

And the great horned owl, trapped here in her tree cabin. Rescued, and also imprisoned. Yet the otters seem so playfully happy, sliding and diving here, floating on their backs, chasing leaves that land in their waters.

The lowly worm I visit last, in an exhibit of the Underground that takes me to a world that seems as much fantasy as any teen fantasy fiction. Says the sign: Animals that have both male and female sex organs are known as hermaphrodites. Being both male and female is very advantageous to earthworms because they are very solitary and only occasionally meet other worms when they are burrowing underground. Being both sexes at once means that any worm they encounter is a potential mate. As well as making everything possible for us, worms have got their groove on, that’s for sure.

At the exit of the exhibit of cave dwellers (trogloxenes at the entrance, troglophiles in the we-go-both-ways section, and troglobytes who never leave the deep darkness) is a poem:

Emerging from a world underground,

         we enter a world of light and color.

         Leaving a world of touch and taste,

         we enter a world of sound and sight;

         leaving a safe and sheltered home,

         finding room, and reason to run.

 I myself emerge from the Western North Carolina Nature Center, grateful for the unique lives of the plants and creatures in this region, grateful for being gifted with such wonders as  worms and wolves. I give thanks for the invigorating mountain air, for landing in this place, which for so many decades has had a reputation for curing. I give thanks for being alive at such a cusp of change on our amazing planet.

So deeply gifted am I, as are you. May we wake to our bounty!