Nature has been one of Henry’s gifts.

I thought this the other day inadequately bundled against the cold beneath an ashy sky. It was too early for my taste but Henry needed to pee. Henry these days is polite yet insistent about his needs. I cringe considering the humiliation of having to plead to “go out.” Maybe enfeebled that will one day be me. In theory we could install a dog door but if you knew our house, with its glass walls, you’d recognize the impracticality, much less the expense, of such an arrangement. Henry doesn’t resent present procedure as long as we hup two. (Never having written “hup two”, I almost misspelled two. Words @ favorite rabbit hole: note for future.)

By “gift” I don’t mean Henry owns Nature and presents it to me beribboned. We do not give things but ideas, enchanting invitations to elsewhere. Giving’s a peculiarly human transaction. Other creatures provide for one another, but is a requirement a gift? I don’t give Jane her breakfast, I make it for her, as she makes other things for me, my life, for example.

Before Henry, those seven decades B.H., nature existed for my convenience. I used it, liked it fine, grumbled at it when it failed to cooperate. Mostly humans kvetch about the weather – it’s a conversational staple. Where would human intercourse be without too hot, too cold, an impending nor’easter? Younger I worshipped the sun, beseeching tan to enhance my allure, to the enrichment of today’s dermatologists. (Medicare, happily, covers the extraction of spots and lumps – but what about teeth? Teeth should organize and sue – acting collectively, they could wreak havoc. Don’t teeth have rights?)

I did not love nature because I was too busy. Love takes time. Nature was wallpaper. How often my indolence glanced out a window and shrugged, eh, not today.

Henry hurtles me out of doors. We could have paper-trained him, I guess, but that seemed silly living in a forest. Paper-training feels a violation of canine entitlement, unless the pooch is cat-sized or smaller. Henry goes when he needs to, penalizing neglect. The penalty is sufficient to enforce compliance.

Which introduces me to the sky at all hours, at all temperatures, snow or shine. “Unseasonable” is a human overlay. To creatures, animate and inanimate, no weather is unseasonable. The way things are is the way things are, no shoulda-woulda-coulda.

And the way things are is, well, startling almost every outing. The stars are not what I thought, or the whirring wind, or creaking branches, or involute underbrush. How squirrels scamper or deer stiffen supply boundless syllabi. Awaiting Henry to “do his business” – curious locution – I’ve no choice but to heed what I’m being told. And what is that? What do the birds say? – (for there are birds in deepest frost – how do they manage?)

Nature resounds with the insistent theme of my retirement, the ground bass of so many missives: infinity streams from us in all directions, the glory of ignorance, we need only look. The trick to setting the world right is not to tinker or devise but wake. Nature makes no mistakes, for it does not presume to compare the extant with the preferable. No day is preferable to today. Now, human, tell me why.

This realization isn’t esoteric or complex. Yet in pursuit of specious advantage we rush past our luck. We are born rich – yet few are taught to tally their treasure, how to spend their time. At present I’m studying the shapes of clouds. You probably know this subject but it’s new to me.