A MOMENT OF LEISURE

Rex Burress

“When breezes are soft and skies are fair,/I steal an hour from study and care,/And hie me away to the woodland scene,/Where wanders the stream with waters of green...” --Bryant

I had found a little leisure time to sit down on Richard Harvey's bench beside the river and mediate for a moment. The Feather River Nature Center park is conducive to relaxing and watching the outdoor world-wonders, or as Thomas Carlyle said, “Look round a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes!”

What was under my very eyes was a gray squirrel, loping over the big basaltic boulders and 'leisurely' sniffing the crevices. It was so relaxed that even with me sitting a short distance away, it laid down in the sun on the pinnacle and dozed. There isn't much time for a squirrel to doze during the day when danger lurks and food must be found, somewhat like in war-torn Syria where people never know when explosions will rent the air.

Even though every living organism on earth is constantly endangered by meteors or malignant maliciousness or war [birds are killed by those blasts, too] or predators, the immediate peril of stress for human's work-routine is minimized by bits of leisure time, at least in our civilization. In our technical supported work system, industrial jobs are eased and man-power is assisted by machines, allowing leisure time[and sometimes loss of jobs to a robot!].

Moments for animals to lull like the gray squirrel in the outdoor world are rare for wild creatures where something eats something all the time. The squirrel-nap didn't last long. Soon it was on the move, long fluffy tail flowing fluidly in the breeze, on to the next random encounter with the unknown—a life of adventure and discoveries every moment! Being equipped with a flexible body and a pair of potent paws, plus great agility and balance, Sir Sciurus griseus is well prepared for exploration. A squirrel in our neighborhood has incorporated its high-wire-act ability to walk the overhead powerline to safely reach the other side of the road! That's good, because roads take a toll.

A few days previously, I observed a beechy ground squirrel sitting up, ramrod stiff as a prairie dog, watching from the embankment boulders as a hunting gray fox approached—and as quick as a wink the fox was there, grabbing futilely into a crevasse at a diving meal that barely made it! Moral: Watch out when you're watching! Curiosity of the foxes' intentions almost led to the ground squirrel's demise.

While I was watching the gray squirrel doze, a tattered butterfly was flitting from flower to flower, taking a few sips in the last days of its two-week life span. All day it had foraged for fluid food, or laid some eggs on a pipevine leaf, stopping for a moment of leisure only in the early morning chill. Does sleep count as leisure?

A pair of rufous-crowned sparrows were actively searching for fledgling-food amid the seed and stone debris, all the while alert to danger from potential bird-eaters in the vegetative matrix. Eternal vigilance is the price the sparrow pays for freedom. Successful capture is the price the hawk pays for freedom and a moment of leisure. There is no leisure when you're hungry or scared.

“Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy” --Thomas Hobbes

“The end of labor is to gain leisure.” --Aristotle