Outside Naked on Blood-slick Snow

I've changed the title of my blog.
Part monumental shift; part seasonal thaw.
Or may be it's the extra cardamon I tossed into the gingerbread yesterday.

The words "Outside Naked" have been swelling my brain for months.

"Outside Naked" because it is here, within the roiling seasons, I am  laid bare.
Chickadee. Song Dog. Beaver. Elk. Bobcat. Moose. Whale. Soul is stripped to essence in the presence of the wild ones and the lands they call home.

There's much to say; even more to feel and synthesize in that place beyond words.

I sit at ground zero in NW Montana.

Wolves, the ultimate symbol of what little wild remains, are under assault as men consider poisoning, trapping, extending the season and hiring bounty killers to take down the beast.

We have been there. Done that.

Men killed over 75 million buffalo between 1850 and 1880. Seventy. Five. Million. Not for food. For hides. For fun. Rotting meat and wild spirits strewn across the west. Wolves, of course, proliferated in the protein rich backwoods and plains. Then came ranchers with cattle. 100,000 wolves exterminated between  1870 and 1877 in Montana alone! As of this month's count, there are estimated to be 653 wolves in Montana, 87 more than at last year. 130 packs and 39 breeding pairs. A 15% increase and the guys are riled. They'd like to be paid $100 for every wolf carcass they can deliver; $20 for every pup. Meanwhile, Utah is encouraging hunters to exterminate 20,000 coyotes.

Manifest destiny. The God-given right to control, dominate and conquer.

Scene Two: Rush Limbaugh, who recently screamed slut and whore across the clear channel airwaves, telling a female law student that her parents would be ashamed that she spoke publicly of a woman's right and need for birth control; how those costs should be covered by health insurance. Because you see, at the heart of this madness is woman's freedom. She must be controlled. Shamed to submission. Just ask Santorum, who would compel a woman carry a rape fetus to full term, and give the rapist parental rights.

We have been there; done that.

Today is the warmest day of the year. The gravel roads are thick with slush and water runs free with the magic of thaw.  The earth stirs. My ears perk up at new bird songs. I pay attention to Ponderosa's sway in the wind as much as the synchronicity of human-made stories. It's all connected.

I want to believe that everyone is gathering force and placing themselves at their personal ground zero, prepared to watch and witness. I like my vantage point at the crossroads of wisdom and wild.

I stand with the holy feral, outside naked.