Beauty in Nature

While the above photo is NOT from my work, it was photographed by me and exemplifies what I am privelidged to witness while toiling at work.

This post was inspired by "The Other Side of Hunting" on Thoughts from a Yodeling Goatherder.

I'm employed as a railroad brakeman in a stone quarry. Not exactly a place which instills visions of owls, turtles, deer, frogs, or ravens is it? At first I didn't think so either. When I began employment I was warned about the black snakes and copperheads and I've seen and shared the same space with them subsequent times, all thankfully with positive outcomes (I think the copperhead was more frightened than I was that day)!

Deer frequent our facility, as we border water company property there's lots of land for them to roam, and most of last year I was able to spot a doe and some others either lazily sunning themselves in the grass which borders the quarry, or hopping the berm to get away from the obtrusive pick-up truck and noisy train. Some of them are brazen though. My first encounter was just a shadow of a frightened deer which ran along the travelway next to our train between two front end loaders (one backing up and the other approaching) which were busy loading the empty rail cars.

One morning while cutting new flangeways in the mud between the rails, a turtle happened to try crossing our tracks. The locomotive couldn't stop in time, but the space between the ties was large enough for the turtle to duck and avoid becoming soup. The loco backed up and the engineer and I scooped the critter up and drove it across the street to the swamp where we let it go. (There's a photo in my collection of the turtle in the back of the pick-up. I'll have to go digging for it).

I almost forgot to mention the geese which graze on the quarry's front lawn for passers-by to see, and the swans that live in the swamp across the street.

One day at lunchtime, during a Winter shut-down for repair, we men were summoned up into the mill. An owl had made its nest near the top of one of the spires in the complex, and seemed to tolerate all of us gawking hardhatted workers. The day before start up a wildlife specialist was brought in to relocate the owl so our noisy production wouldn't disturb it or the family, but each Winter for three years the owl returned to that spot. It even made the company magazine one year.

There was the Summer the track department was installing a spur and one of the crew discovered what appears to be a tomato horn worm. It looked like a green caterpillar but with a spike on its rear, and it stabbed at anything it felt provoked by!!

Then there's the spiders and deadly flying insects. I haven't been fond of spiders since being bitten in my youth by a hairy brown arachnid (I had a lump on my neck from the bite for over ten years). So when I see the eight legged beasties scurrying about, I usually scurry the opposite way, especially if they're larger than my big toe.

Speaking of Jurassic sized bugs: how about dragon flies and gypsy moths with six inch wingspans? Yeah, we got 'em.

Anyways, 90% of these encounters generally bring a smile to my face, as I'm witnessing nature in the wild, all by myself. Nobody else experienced it, just me, and that tiny connection is a special thing (like the chipmunk my father would feed every morning by tossing a piece of hard roll from his front end loader while he parked for coffee break).

Of course, work isn't the only place I can find the beauty of nature in the raw. One afternoon while in college, I photographed a squirrel eating a brownie.