Once I took some leftover garden seeds into the woods and sprinkled them near me, and then sat down to see what would happen. I sat very still for a long time and slowly, very gradually and tentatively, two squirrels approached, shying, chasing each other away, but almost imperceptibly coming closer each time, and I sat rock-still until finally they nibbled at the seeds, and I wanted to reach down and stroke them, incredible flurried tails they had, wide and gray and proud, and fat bellies too, stuffing themselves, greedy animals, but it is dangerous to try to touch a squirrel, they are nervous and sensitive and will attack; and besides I did not want to affect or change the life here; I wanted just to be part of it, have it accept me. It was necessary to put away fancy human urges to capture or control, or just to make some kind of difference, to be noticed; it was necessary to be an animal. I did not know that right away, and made mistakes, but as time, years, went on I became, I think, part of the wildness, inseparable from it and acutely aware of my very minimal place in it. And I have found it comforting, that I am not so important.

(I became an animal, which is a fine thing, and now after so many years I am going back, pulled back by Katie and words and time and memories, into a person, a thinking, rationalizing, remembering person, and it is not comfortable. I have lost both my worlds, the old one that she knew, that I am unfitted for now, although once I may have suited it; and this more recent one that has become mine.)

There was time, that first summer, to notice many things, slowly, at my own rate, not thoughtfully but wholly, so that they rolled under and over and through me until they became myself.

Still, I could be surprised by a self separated from the experiencing, so that, startled, I would find myself watching myself and know that something new was happening. It was like a visit from the old Abra, those moments. (And that is what I feel is happening now. Eventually the visits stopped, but in the beginning it was the way it is now, a watching, an assessing.)