There’s nothing better than the pond, on a hot summer day.

  

Hi folks, Vick here. I hope you enjoyed your week; we at Dancing Rabbit have been relishing the cooler weather, and spending lots of time outdoors. 

Here’s the next piece in my series about the top five things I love about living in this magical village, reason number four:

4. I get to be surrounded by scads of beautiful, amazing living things.

When I was twelve or so, I was driving with my granddad down a highway in west Texas, and it started to rain. He pulled over. We both got out of the car, and stood with our arms outspread, palms up. For half an hour, we basked in the cool downpour, staring up at the sky in wonder. (That’s what it’s like to see water randomly falling out of the sky, for folks who live in a place where rocks are more common than grass.)

Northeast Missouri might as well be a different planet, when compared to the place I grew up. Every now and then I cover my eyes for a few moments, and open them suddenly on a lush vista of trees, grass and flowers. The sheer green still blows me away, sometimes.

I’ve seen lots of wildlife, too. The dimension of ecological sustainability that resonates the most with me is species conservation, so this makes my heart sing. 

Thus far, my list includes: a Missouri red fox that I at first thought was my friend Dan’s dog, Banjo; many a muskrat, including one that swam tauntingly beneath a clear layer of ice as I watched; and a milk-chocolate mink that walked right up to the front opening of my tent and poked its head in to say hello. I’ve yet to see a coyote, but I often hear their solemn calls, in the wee hours of the morning, in response to the lonesome whistle of the night train. 

Birders might be interested in the great blue heron I saw at our swimming pond a couple of years ago; the red wing blackbird that unceremoniously evacuated its bowels onto my shoulder one day (they say it’s good luck, but I’m dubious about that) as I was walking to the local Mennonite grocery store; or the pileated woodpecker (I’m pretty sure that’s what it was) that made a nest in an apple tree near a cottage I used to live in; not to mention loads of hummingbirds, goldfinches, ducks, grebes and all the rest. 

There are more butterflies here than I can name, along with 10-inch long praying mantises stalking the weeds, and ground hornets sometimes waiting to ambush people picking raspberries; (Ben and I got stung one year while painting the exterior walls of the village common house, during our annual land clean). A frog recently joined me for a shower (unbeknownst to me at first), and during my visitor session I managed to gently pick up a young plains garter snake and hold it out for my fellow visitors to stroke; after a few moments, I set it back on the path, and it slithered merrily on its way. Althea, one of the village kids, has helped me to relive that experience a time or two since then. That’s how plentiful wildlife is here.

My favorite thing is the pond. This time of year, especially, it feels like a luxury I shouldn’t be able to afford. (Well, I wouldn’t, if not for my community mates.) Keep this a secret between us: the best time to go is about nine o’clock, when it gets dark in the summer months. Usually, no one else is around and you can float for as long as you like on the cool, inky water surrounded by silence, while you watch the fireflies dance among the trees, or contemplate the stars.

The downside is that Mother Nature has it in for us humans, sometimes. Bloodsucking parasites, such as mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers, live here in abundance. I know multiple people who have stepped on honey locust thorns, folks who have been driven almost mad by recurrent poison ivy outbreaks, and there’s a plant here called the wild parsnip — if you get a little sap on you, and it reacts with sunlight, it will blister your skin something fierce.

The weather sucks too, a lot of the time. Dancing Rabbit was basically a skating rink for the entire month of February 2019, and 90+ degree summer temperatures are a lot worse when the humidity is high enough to make your clothes rot on the line. The thing I dread the most every year is the spring thaw, around the second half of March or so, when the world turns to mud and stays that way for weeks on end, because the subsoil layer is still frozen, and the melted ice can’t drain away. (Good luck driving in to town for an ice cream, or a lifesaving medical procedure.)

Are the hardships worth it, to live here? Absolutely. But you don’t have to settle for taking my word for it. You can come visit us for one or two weeks, and see our beautiful acreage first hand. Perhaps you’ll get a glimpse of one of the special little critters that share this place with us. We hope to see you soon.