4) Safe or Unsafe

Again, I took a few more steps. Just beyond a tree stump, I saw it. I scared it more than it scared me because the minute I greeted it as a sweet little thing, she struggled intensely to get her horns out of the barb wire fence. It was a little, white, very pregnant pygmy goat who got caught in the wires while trying to get a nibble of the raspberry plant just beyond. I suppose I really did save its life. From what I've heard, those goats are not very smart, and will die before trying to escape any trap most times.

Getting back to the issue at hand: I want a dog out here. If I had a dog, I am certain I would not have gone walking blindly into a forest. My self-assuredness would not have waned, and I would have followed the dog into the forest without a need for a gun or knife to keep me safe. Was it safe for me to go? I don’t know. I know I’ve seen many deer running through the clearing. I know the stories I’ve heard of the bear outside the window, and the wolves devouring their prey on the side of the road. I do know that I had an extremely exciting journey for those 15 minutes in the wild whether or not I was safe.

So I had a successful adventure out in the woods by myself! That hardly makes me savage, but I think I broke in the city girl fright by immersing her into a soup of wild life. I was in it, surrounded by it, hearing it, seeing it, breathing it, holding it, letting it go, letting it in me, and saving it as it saved me. I'm learning slowly that the flora is not so scary. It's just a bunch of bushes, and hopefully I'll be rescuing a stranded or hurt animal more often than running into a bear or wolf in my new home land.