Prince of Wales Island, AK

Alone in the woods
Deprived?
Lost?
A vole (I think it is because it is a dark furry little critter smaller than a mouse) trots out of the ferns to my feet.
Oblivious of any danger
I am a thousand times larger.
He snatches up a dropped piece of grilled onion off the ground and waddle-runs back into the bush.
His actor’s script is to eat and mate
Quickly
I am not even a prop
Alone in this place?
On this stage?
I am sitting now on a ledge overlooking a beaver lodge on a lake
I’ve been here with the laptop and camera and beer and cigar for two hours.
Solitude?
The beaver comes up and looks at me finally.
I capture his studied eye ball at 30 yards.
Alone?

“To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, 'tis but to hold
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled.”

Lord Byron

Solitude in nature is not being alone
It is being an appreciative audience of things otherwise unwitnessed
Applause
Curtain call
Shhhhhhh
Now just be quiet
The second act begins