our huge backyard

 a bobcat ambassador

just got a text from the caretaker at our Gatlinburg cabin:

"Opened the door to see a young skinny bobcat 

trotting along the treeline back to the trail."

my dad used to say that out our backdoor

we have over half a million acres in our backyard,

valley and mountain slowly return toward old growth,

two sides of our land border the national park,

on one side, a former cornfield a hundred years ago, then pine woods,

now maturing toward the richness of cove hardwood,

from which a rich diversity of fauna can appear,

on another side,  right by the edge of LeConte Creek,

the water draws the eye and the ear and the soul toward harmony,

black bear often cross over from their world into ours here,

a few times I have seen foxes visit and claim this territory,

I've heard of river otters visiting the creek,

and I have savored great blue heron checking out

what its waters can feed them,

we love our windows and our screened porch,

through which birds and bears 

and rhododendron flower

can visit our eyes,

through which the clear mountain creek entices us

to get lost in its magnificence 

and be soothed by its murmuring voice,

countless times: "Is it raining?" 

"No, it's the creek,"

we can walk out our door and pass through a green veil

into a natural world from which we came,

and into which we return when we act upon our need

for what Wendell Berry would describe as 

"the peace of wild things,"

borders intrigue us, frontiers,

where one world intersects with another,

the beach must be that for many,

the edge where comfort and control meet the ocean,

where what it reveals

is but an appetizer for what is within it,

perhaps the skinny bobcat is an unconscious ambassador

who doesn't want to interact with us, to know us,

but, like the bears, can put up with us near its world,

where it can still be who it is,

despite how alien our worlds can be to it,

if our yards can produce a meal of squirrel,

it will chance putting up with cultural contagion

for the hope of a good meal,

less hard won than in the national park.

by Henry H. Walker

September 8, ‘26