50 days of observations, insights, and contemplations...
by Tyler Volk
Tyler Volk’s “Mind Watching” Series Table of Contents
Day 37 -- High-sticking the Javelinas
In the morning around breakfast time I spied a local kind of wild pig-like critter called a javelina. A few dozen feet away was, nosing around my compost heap. Sounds of snorting cued me that I had more than one porcine visitor. I love the creatures when I see them in the wild, but am not wild about them becoming regular scavengers around my property. It’s not good for them (so I rationalize!) and besides, its could be dangerous for me.
Descending the porch steps, I grabbed a hiking stick, raised it, pounded the ground, and yelled. At first, one big male nosing near the outdoor fireplace just held his ground. He ran a few steps and then stopped and turned to me even more defiantly. I kept threatening (still standing safely at the base of the porch steps). He really ran away this time, and then a second javelina, maybe female, burst from the bushes behind the fireplace and hightailed it following the first. I thought the visitors gone when a third crashed forth with a snort from behind a scrub oak tree and ran west, like the others. Still others I only heard as the communal group left, probably with young, which I sometimes see as well. Go west, oh friends.
How confident I am with the stick. How fearful and ready to retreat I would be without it. The stick extends my will, a good four feet outward, protecting me, shielding me with an expanded circle of personal control.
We similarly expand our circle of safety and control with our homes, our cars, our monies in the bank. They are all elaborations of the primal stick of extended security.
The means to expand the circle of safety can even be more abstract. Some find it in religion. I tend to find it in the empirically shown fact that the collective process of science keeps making discoveries that will result in better health care toward longer life, more energy flux, thus material wealth, and, finally, more knowledge about myself as a mind-brain whirlpool of whirlpools. How I admire all that, and the wild javelinas, too.
© 2025 by Tyler Volk
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