I walk the path of the lioness
In which reports of a cougar loitering at the edge of town make my imagination run wild.
Have you ever held a conversation with a non-human being? How to translate such a thing, since it took place without words? This story on nature connection is admittedly a bit quirky but also meant to be playful and informative. It touches on ecosystem dynamics and the surprising benefits predators bring to humans. I never know what these fingers will type, whether news, memoir, or something like this. Thanks for riding along!
I walk the path of the lioness.
A path dripping on all sides with snowberries, poison oak, and wild blackberry. Graceful redwoods shade rivulets of rainwater. Giant eucalyptus trees shelter haunting owls. A nonchalant coyote trots away; a bunny stirs up twigs as it hides in the bushes. A mother turkey and her eighteen chicks peck quietly, but not silently enough. The woodpecker works above in the old rotting pine, round and round the trunk.
Thwack thwack thwack.
The forest animals are busy and loud.
All but the lioness. She is solitary and silent.
But I know she’s here, somewhere. And she knows I’m here. On her path.
I know she’s here, not by any of my dull senses, but my human brain, my insatiable appetite for stories and information. A news headline reported a mountain lion on campus. My friends who live in the nearby hills heard her tortured screaming next to their bedroom window. A lean 175 pounds of stealth slinking between houses, crying for a mate.
Now I’ve entered those very hills.
The lioness knows I’m on her path because I’m loud and smell odd. She can tell I eat meat, perhaps also tofu, cheese, and broccoli. Flesh built from food additives contorts my aroma. Plastics and dyes. Mint soaps, vanilla shampoo, almond lotion. Rubber shoes. Residue of apple and peanuts. When I skip along, I’m not like the other things in the forest, the things her body tells her to hunt and eat.
But if I skip too fast, it triggers her instinct. She can’t help but follow a running thing, colors flashing through the brush.
When she tracks me through the forest, I’m dumb and clumsy, never once, like the other forest animals, stopping to look around. When I pass another hiker, noises incautiously bubble from our mouths.
But she is soundless. Where the forest chirps and scurries and buzzes, she abides in silence.
Not a twig cracks. Not a leaf rustles. Not a pebble wobbles underfoot.
Never faltering, she watches all with burning gold eyes.
I know she’s there. I can’t see, hear, or smell her. But I know she’s there, following me.
I’ve dared enter her domain. A visitor. But she is the matriarch of this forest.
Here, coyotes hunt moles and rabbits. Deer and bunnies overeat flowers that bees and birds need to survive. Moles weave underground tunnels that house voles, snakes, stink bugs, and bumblebees. Feral cats prey on songbirds. Bobcats hunt wild turkeys. Deer collect ticks that endanger humans.
When the lioness arrives, everything changes. She leaves carcasses large enough for a California condor to pick over.1 Deer and feral cats decline, while songbirds thrive.23 Bobcats and coyotes scatter, allowing smaller predators and tick-eating possums to move in.4 Sly foxes and weasels hunt tick-bearing mice and small rodents, the main carriers of Lyme disease. Ticks can’t travel when deer numbers fall. Deer-vehicle collisions drop, saving human lives.5
The lioness doesn’t know what she does. She simply obeys her instincts.
An ecosystem wobbles and flexes and balances under her powerful prowl.
She tiptoes at the edge of eight million people who know nothing of what she gives.
I walk the path of the lioness.
I know she’s there, above me in the woods, through the snowberries, following, stalking, deciphering the smells of my human body.
I hike on without fear.
Now we walk side-by-side. She, golden and mighty. Me, a two-footed thinker, my imagination running wild.
Our strides match. Our eyes spy wet roots before us. We are calculating our next moves. I inhale, and all sound evaporates.
I am not afraid.
“Show me your heart, wild one,” I murmur.
Feline eyes dilate. Claws extend. I smell cat, close and pungent, earth and fur and thick hot breath of fresh meat.
pop!
A force seizes my body. My spine flexes. Sharp tingles shock my veins. A strange new heart thunders in my chest. My throat rumbles. My tongue hits fangs. Now, my gaze falls to huge furred paws. They are mine! My paw pads are soft and giving and absorb every sound. My limbs are fluid, robbing noise from each footstep with effortless grace. I am alive and wild — a huntress. The world fills with scents that my brain works to catalogue. My ears flood with sounds tiny and large. My eyes filter forest light in layers divided into prey and not prey.
I am the lioness.
The mother of an ecosystem, attuned to winds, seasons, electromagnetic waves.
I roam mountains and seasides. Against snow, rain, sun, and wind, I am impervious.
I listen, always, waiting for that tiny sound announcing another’s mistake.
I coexist with oblivious beings.
For many years, the smelly loud ones have lumbered along my path. They must be lost. Sounds pour from their mouths in a never-ending torrent. They point their odd black goggles toward the sky, never noticing me, waving metal squares at plants, poking shiny screens. They allow dogs to pull them by ropes. They breathe heavily and trip on perfectly flat ground. They run even when I’m not chasing them. Nothing is chasing them, yet they run faster and faster. They are lost.
Now, winter has drenched the path. Mushrooms explode under ancient oaks. Newts slither from the creek by the hundreds. The deer have fled into town, where the dull ones grow flowers and herbs. But here, a tall one with fruit-scented fingers dares enter my territory. She steps carefully, raises her head to the woodpecker, then down to the snowberries. Then her gaze pierces the brush, to me. Does she see me? I’m the color of dried oak leaves, sunburnt earth, and mottled light. I’m hungry.
I sense not a whiff of fear in this one.
I scan and listen and mull this clue.
Who is this bold one? For a moment, my lips curl. Should I be afraid? I blink. She’s different. A wild one. A visiting sister.
Hmph. I stride along.
Together, we wander a path sprinkled with coyote scat, bunny fur, hornet nests, thistle fluff, feathers, canine poop, and humans who run when they aren’t being chased.
I am the lioness.
I know when to freeze, when to breathe, when to feast, when to leave.
Stealth, cunning, patience.
SEE with the eyes of a lioness.
HEAR with the ears of a lioness.
FEEL with the heart of a lioness.
The world is alive.
Scintillating life.
Networks, connections, domino effects.
Creatures thriving, dying, blooming, decaying, napping, waking, fleeing, being.
All await my deadly footfall and life-altering decisions.
Invisible, light and shadow in motion.
I am nature. I am mountain-dweller and stream-swimmer. I am silent and cautious. I am powerful and fierce.
I break my silence only once: I scream when I love.
I am the lioness. I bring the world into balance.
“If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us.”
― Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature
(submitted by Alissa Bonnell)
Predators save more human lives than we credit
Communities around the world are debating whether to reintroduce or tolerate big predators. Coexistence is not just possible but beneficial.
Mountain lions do occasionally attack humans, but fatalities are extremely rare. Meanwhile, many scientists and advocates6 believe they are saving hundreds of human lives per year. An adult mountain lion eats about 50 deer annually. Deer predation helps prevent human tick-borne diseases like Lyme disease. Studies have shown that Lyme disease and vehicle collisions with deer are more prevalent where mountain lions are absent. Lyme disease is rising on the U.S. East Coast, where mountain lions and wolves are both missing, though supposed mountain lion sightings are rising in states where they’ve been absent for over a hundred years. To bring back these ecosystem benefits, Mighty Earth’s “Bring Catamounts Home” project is trying to reintroduce cougars to the state of Vermont, reports The Guardian.
This story is real
Though the tale above sprouted from my imagination, it is real in many ways. It takes place in a regional park that is adjacent to a dense residential area in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is home to eight million people. The mating call next to my friend’s house actually happened. The park I frequently hike, where I took these photos, is across the street from their house. I walked the path used by the mountain lion, and our paths may have coincided at some point. I gained insight into her world by having this “conversation” with her. I don’t believe she’s still there because of all the coyotes and bobcats I’ve seen recently. All photos (with the exception of the stock photo of the mountain lion) were taken within a few square miles of each other, at different times of year.
The Bay Area is surrounded by more than 200,000 acres of state, regional, and national parks that are a mix of coastal chaparral blended with oak, eucalyptus, and redwood forests. California is home to 5,000 mountain lions, many of whom live on the edges of our civilizations without causing any trouble. I’ve never spotted one.
Never run from a mountain lion. Face the animal, raise your arms, look big, and yell.
Never attempt to walk alongside a real mountain lion. Don’t try this at home!
Finally, please check out an artfully written piece, “The Trouble with Loving Deer,” by Carrie Starbuck, a conservationist and farmer writing from the UK: “In parts of Scotland, deer numbers are so high that whole hillsides are locked into ecological stasis: no natural woodland regeneration, no understory, no future forest, just grass, heather, and the slow erosion of resilience.”
“Remembering the Buddhist belief in non-self, known as anatta, it became clear in this moment that the lovingkindness which she felt for these creatures was part of a connection that went beyond the confines of her small body and mind. A giant self, composed of all the little selves. Closing her eyes, she took in the sharp scents of conifers and the moans of harbor seals.”
— excerpt, “Chapel Bay Secrets” by Julie Snider
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.”
— Book of Job 12:7-10
(submitted by Brian Lynch)
“There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, also close and invisible. That is where God lives, where the dead and the saints live. A world where everything has already happened, and everything is known. That world speaks. It has its own language. I report what he says. The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and leads me to the world where everything is known. There are the sacred mushrooms, which speak in a way that I can understand. I ask them and they answer me.”
— Maria Sabina, Indigenous Mexican shaman
(submitted by Ankita Singh)
“In Western literary fiction there is the separate story called humankind and a separate story called nature. It is a great illusion.”
— Nina Schuyler, award-winning author, “In this Ravishing World”
“Our results suggest that biodiversity is critical not only for the health of our natural environments but also for the mental wellbeing of the people who live in these environments. It is time to recognise that biodiversity brings co-benefits for planetary and human health and needs to be considered vital infrastructure within our cities.”
— Andrea Mechelli, Professor of Early Intervention in Mental Health at King’s College London (Biodiversity is key to the mental health benefits of nature, new study finds)
(submitted by Joe Seals)
I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.
”Sabbaths 1999 II”
― Wendell Berry, Given
(Submitted by David E. Perry)
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About Earth Hope
Earth Hope is a solutions-based journalism project that highlights environmental success stories to inspire action. I’m Amanda Royal, a former newspaper reporter and current eco-news junkie. Read more about this project and what inspired it. I aggregate news under my “hopeful headlines,” conduct original reporting and interviews, and share occasional personal narratives. Visit earthhope.substack.com for more stories. To understand why I write about hope, please read “As I went down in the river to pray …”
US songbirds decline as deer populations rise: “Songbirds in North America need wolves and cougars. In the ecological equivalent of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, songbirds benefit from large predators that kill deer that eat out their understory habitat.” The article cites a 2013 study published in Diversity and Distributions titled “Declining woodland birds in North America: should we blame Bambi?”
Cornell Labs: outdoor and feral house cats kill 1.3 to 4 billion songbirds a year in the U.S.
“Deer, predators, and the emergence of Lyme disease,” a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “The extirpation of top predators and the consequent restructuring of predator communities (4, 5) may thus increase the risk of zoonotic diseases if predation of reservoir hosts plays a key role in disease suppression.”
The Economic and Ecological Value of Mountain Lions and Bobcats in the West: Part I: Researchers “predicted that mountain lions would reduce deer numbers by 22%, prevent 21,400 human injuries and 155 fatalities, and avert $2.13 billion in avoided costs in damages within 30 years of establishment, after which the deer density would stabilize again at a reduced (and healthier) number.”
“A Natural Cure for Lyme Disease,” a New York Times opinion piece by Moises Velasquez-Manoff: “If humans have inadvertently increased the chances of contracting Lyme disease, the good news is that there’s a potential fix: allow large predators, particularly wolves and cougars, to return.”
Great connections, Amanda. Who knew that mountain lions could reduce your risk of Lyme disease and reduce your auto insurance bill by reducing auto & deer collisions?!
Keep doing the research and
Connecting the Disparate Dots!!!
I liked how you have weaved your observations into into this poetically beautiful essay. I felt like I was on that path too. And thanks for sharing the beautiful images of the forest and its inhabitants.