my morning coffee

This is how I make my coffee these days.
Over an open fire, outside at dawn.
I sip to the sunrise.

pssst….

It’s been pretty quiet, here on this blog.

Sometimes I just can’t stand

being on this computer.

Sometimes I wish I could just send all of you

a handwritten note

a pressed flower

and a grasshopper leg.

Moth, Emerging

Last Friday was a profound day for me. Intense, and intensely profound. And each day since has been either one or the other. The lack of details is not my being coy, but because I simply cannot share everything right now for various reasons. But I can share this moth.

Last Friday evening, immediately following this bout of profundity, a crazzzzzzy windstorm blew up. One moment, all was calm; the next, the sky was solid with whipped-up dust and trees were bending sideways. And then, perhaps half an hour later, the wind was gone, and all was calm again.

I went outside, because I love to be outside just after a windstorm. And I spotted this moth, clinging to a weed near the ground, next to one of my garden patches. I knelt beside it, my head low to the ground, studying this incredible moth. Its body was huge and fat, black and gray and yellow and white, about the size of my thumb but slightly longer. Its face was awesome; it looked carnivorous, strong, and so incredibly graceful, its wings hanging behind it like a cape.

The moth swayed softly in the remaining breeze, clutching the weed, waiting for something. Unhurried, unworried, secure in itself and waiting. Then I saw the hole. And now I must back up in this story-telling for a moment: Roughly seven weeks ago, I was weeding my garden and saw an enormous caterpillar amongst my watermelons. It was a glossy bright green, larger than my thumb. Huge! I took two twigs as chopsticks and gently moved the massive ‘pillar to the dirt outside my garden plot, near a clump of weeds. And then watched in awe as the caterpillar disappeared into the earth. It started digging a hole with its nose and down into the dirt it went, disappearing completely. The next day, I had forgotten about it.

Now, I noticed the hole in the ground near this magnificent moth. A hole exactly the size of its body. A hole where the strange caterpillar had disappeared. I do believe it made its cocoon in the earth ~ or that perhaps the earth itself was the cocoon ~ and that this moth had just emerged. And was waiting to fly.

Darkness crept in and I walked Daisy & Co to the corrals, and the next morning, the moth was gone. Days passed; I wondered about the moth, wondered where it went. I spent nights sitting outside, watching the silhouette of a bat swooping between my home and the stars every night.

This morning, I saw the moth again, clutching a large rock I have on my deck. Resting again. And this makes me wonder, perhaps it is not a bat visiting me every night, but is, in fact, this moth in flight.

UPDATE: The moth is Manduca quinquemaculatus, aka Five Spotted Hawk Moth. More info HERE. I noticed this morning that the “eyes” on its shoulder are actually three-dimensional and raised! Thanks, Keitha, for the link!

UPDATE II: The moth is still sleeping (?) on the side of the big rock on my deck, but has been moving as the sun crosses the sky, to stay on the shady side of the rock!