Midnight musings

I woke last night at midnight to owl hooting. Which was weird because the windows were shut and they're triple pane. But I heard him anyway. He was a Great Horned Owl, whose hoots are softer and go like this: whoo whoo-whoo whoo whoo.

The Native Americans believe that birds carry messages from the spiritual plane to the physical plane, and revere the Eagle most of all because that bird flies the highest, closest to the Creator. Owls have always been revered also as birds of wisdom. In Greek mythology an Owl was sacred to Pallas Athene, the Goddess of wisdom. They are also associated with death and rebirth, real death and the metaphysical.

"Owl knows that all apparent manner of death is in fact a liberation into a new life. Something must first be cleared away for anything new to be born. When a person moves, leaves a job or relationship, has a baby, adopts a new animal friend, something in the old way of life had to die for the new to be created."

As I lay there listening to the hoots, I liked to think that the above is true. Deciding to move 1100 miles away to an unknown place and re-shaping my life into new challenges and adventures means that the old needs to be burned away to make room for the new. Necessary, but not an easy process.

Hearing the natural world at night is also a reminder that it exists. I know, we know it exists, but we forget. There's road construction going on in front of my apartment, and there are trucks, paving crews, and since I live a 1/4 mile from the fire barn, there's ambulance sounds, sirens...a lot of noise that drowns out the natural. It's nice to lie there in the night and be reminded of the other creatures that inhabit our world with us.