Downtown Dallas. Not a place you normally go nature-spotting. And yet, sitting outside this old building with nothing but a green hedge around its perimeter for a garden, I had a lovely rendezvous.
I settled down on the steps outside as I waited for my daughter to finish her appointment. I decided to read an excerpt from Walden. It had been so long since I first read about Henry David Thoreau’s experiment to go on a self-imposed nature exile (unlike Lord Rama’s), and chronicle it. I don’t know why I was inspired to read it in these barren parts. Perhaps it was the deep-seated need to fill up my mental space with greenery as I sat on the cold steps embedded with pretty, colorful pebbles.
I had barely gotten into reading, when I felt something crawl up my leg. I swept it off with a quick stroke thinking it might be something that would bite. I turned to look at my handiwork, half expecting to find a spider or an ant, but to my delight, I discovered it was a lady bug. It had landed on the pebbled stair, and was now headed for my bag.
With its six tiny black legs, it made it to the bag, and started its way up using the fringes on my bag as ladders. Its little oval body was resplendent in an earthy orange –sporting tiny black splotches on it– ladybug style. The little neck that stuck out at front was off-white with similar black splotches like its body. Its little mandible hoisted two tiny antennae that swiveled all around as the bug navigated the course of my tote bag with Aztec prints on it.
It braved the “steppes” on the leathery fringes, laboriously making its way across- strip by strip- until it reached the nadir of the bag. Not happy with its destination, it turned around. Antennae pointed straight at me, it charged like a little military tanker headed straight for its target. Its tiny legs looked determined to keep up with each other-never colliding or mixing up and tripping their cargo over. Its tiny beady eyes were focused on me, but I almost lost sight of it as it made a camouflaged journey through the orangish brown rectangle of fabric with black stripes.
At the end of the black stripe, it emerged, climbed down the bag onto the stair, and promptly climbed up my leg again. This time I let it wander– holding in my ticklishness, as little gasps of delight and amusement escaped me.
I felt a connection to this ladybug– in its persistence, in its reaching till it found what it wanted to explore.
In this concrete jungle, I had found my nature fix for the day.
