Tuesday, April 27, 2010 7:40 a.m.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010
7:40 a.m.
Business Park on UCI Campus near California & Academy Way

10 Minutes in Nature

Over the past few weeks I’ve discovered that a quick walk through the corporate parking lot resets my brain when I need to switch from one project to another. At 7:40 a.m. today, I'd already been at work for 90 minutes, finished writing a three-page document and wasn’t quite alert enough to move on to the next thing.

I stepped into the 55 degree morning air so cloudy and thick that not a single strand of sunlight penetrated the fog. My head was filled with work concerns, chewing around and around until I spotted him—our resident road runner. My thoughts of work vanished and my heart was filled with the delight of encountering an actual wild creature. I was surprised to see him sitting on top of a hedge. Given that he's a road runner, I would have never thought of him as given to flight. Yet there he was, peering intently into the leaves, searching for that one delicious opportunity.

I gave him a wide berth because I wanted to observe his wildness for as many seconds as possible before returning to my corporate cage. I loved his Mohawk and long floppy tail. I know that lizards sleep in late so I wondered what he could be hunting for breakfast. But, at last, I rounded the corner and lost sight of him.

And yet…

I was rewarded with the sight of a small rabbit, hunched against the chill air, quietly cropping at the grass. Again, my heart thrilled at the sight of a wild thing. I turned my front-facing predator eyes away and swung a wide circle around him knowing that I was the intruder on his morning meal. How much I wanted to put just one fingertip on its fur to know if its pelt is as soft as I imagine. How much I regret the divide of fear that separates us.

I turned the final corner and climbed the stairs to my office, reluctant at leaving the wild things but with renewed energy to dig into my project. Still, before I return to my corporate cage, I wrote these few lines so I can remember that, even for just a few moments today, I walked where the wild things are.