Coyote

I topped the hill at Brady Farm and slowed down as I always do to take in the view of the valley. It is one of my favorite places; I am a flatlander after all and I do not get big sky often. As I crawled past the fields of Black Angus, barns stuffed with round bales and the white farm house with its enormous kitchen garden; I saw movement in a field. I pulled up and stopped to see a coyote lounging with just its head poking above the waving grass.

I have not heard or seen a coyote in 9 years, since I moved to the mountain. I used to have them when I lived on the farm. They would bring me straight up out of bed in the wee hours of the night with their eerie howling and yipping. Instead of their constant presence, I now have the eerie silence of the deep woods with only the occasional owl hoot to keep me company in the dead of night. I sort of miss them.