We were walking alone, Dear Husband and I, when I noticed a frog crossing the dirt road ahead of us.   We courted outside, lived for three years in a plywood tool shed barely removed from outside, and are at our best together outside.   But we don't get out alone together all that often these days.  We're very busy people.  And he has an hour commute to and from work.  Two hours driving off your day may be common. Nevertheless, it's a lot.  He's shopping for a new job, which will likely mean moving to a new city in a new house hopefully much closer to work.  And I'm all for it, but moving is very stressful.  Just thinking about moving is stressful.  We are edgy, filled with mundane grownup concerns.  So we made time to go for a walk together down a wooded dirt farm road.

As the frog hopped across, I noticed a snake was chasing it.   Which is rare enough to see that it felt nearly supernatural.  When you are shown a thing like that in nature, its a time stopping event.  Kind of like the moment of an accident but purely wondrous and happy.  When have you ever seen a frog crossing a road with a snake in pursuit?   For a second, its almost as if you are alive in a fairy tale, seeing a thing like that.

Once I took a toddler down to the river.  I was his nanny and we were out cruising around exploring the world rather aimlessly.   We were in a secluded spot, a place I'd never been, a place I wasn't in a hurry to stay alone with a toddler.   I felt a bit too isolated.  We puddled around a few minutes then turned to get back in the car.  And I saw an osprey rise from the little sandy round clearing we were sharing.  I hadn't noticed it before.  Our space was probably only thirty yards round.  I stood there holding the hand of a small child watching an enormous and powerful opsrey rise nearly in front of my face and it was holding a fish in its "hands."  I could clearly see its talons dug deeply into the sushi flesh of what might have been a small mouth bass.  The fish was moist and the sun flashed through it, broadside, bright gold.   Then they were gone.  And I was alone with a small boy in our sandy riverside lot.  A time stopping event.

I ran to the spot I thought I saw the frog leave the road.   And there it was, sitting very still.  A second later I saw the snake.  My husband was over my shoulder asking where where where was the frog?  He saw the snake.  I wondered if we should save the frog.  He was aghast at the idea --poor snake!  The we both saw it all, the snake connected to the frog, its foot in its mouth, then both separated, the frog escaping.  Maybe the snake letting go, now in fear for its own life, its jaw dropped?

We walked home, husband carrying snake and looking for all the world ten years old.  He grew up in New Mexico.  A family of horned toads lived in his front yard.  And he remembers the year he was in third or fourth grade walking to school many mornings with a horned toad in each of his coat pockets.  He must have walked carefully, proudly, a boy with a crowd of a secret in his pockets.

My third grade teacher, Sally Carothers, kept a horned toad in an aquarium in the back of our classroom.  I adored that strange gentle oddly soft creature who looked so tough, so able.  I couldn't imagine a land far far away that might hold such magic as this.  It might as well be a fairy tale land, a place of unicorns where a young king might grow up.  Where could such a place really be on this earth, outside, right now?   Sally was all about magic.  She taught magic to her third graders.  For me, it is real.  And it happens outside.