Brooks Williams

I stepped out the back door into the garden to gaze at the night sky and my left barefoot lightly brushed over something spikey and fuzzy. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could just make out the shadow of a shape kind of like a small upside-down bowl. I fumbled with my phone for the light but by the time I got to it the little spikey, fuzzy bump had moved on. I'm pretty sure it was Norma, the hedgehog who has taken up residence in our back garden. Jo named her after first seeing her a couple months ago, bold as brass, walking back and forth with straw in her mouth. It lives under the decking, which is under the trees where all the little birds have been nesting since I first started noticing stuff like this in mid-March. Some days it gets pretty lively out there. Perhaps Norma and all these noisy birds have always been here and I wasn't, or wasn't paying attention. Now I have a little more time to pay attention I notice a bit more. I listen a bit more too and, when I'm not stubbing my toe on Norma, have found some inspiring music out there, Molly Tuttle and Mimi Fox, to name but two. It has been there all along. I just wasn't taking the time to listen. Friends are recommending books that I actually read. The global conversation gets our full attention, as it should, and uncertainty for the long-term can kidnap our thinking. However, in the big picture, even though it means little-to-nothing, what are the chances of me stepping out my back door onto a hedgehog?