This morning, Bodi and I head out for our daily walk. The air is colder, 38 degrees, and a heavy frost has crept in overnight. As the season shifts into Fall, leaves that were green for so long are flaming into orange and scarlet and gold, then falling, carpeting the yards and roads and waterways.

At the head of a nearby lake, a single loon watches us, one of this year’s chicks, full grown but not adult enough to get her solid colors. I stop to take photos, and wonder how long it will take for her to realize it is time to go – to lift up and sail toward the coast where she can settle into the ocean waters that won’t freeze during the long winter.

Near the boat launch convenience store, we greet the woman who tends the counter. She is out after the early morning coffee rush to smoke her cigarette. I tell her about the loon, and she points out a nearby cormorant that sails away from the dock, keeping an eye on us. She shows me the odd angle of one of its wings – instead of folding close to its body as it swims, the wing tip points up and out of the water. We talk for a while about all the animals who share this place with us – how lucky we are to live so wrapped-around with Nature. There are so many joys, but some worries, too.

In this small town, we notice not just the daily lives of the creatures around us, but their vulnerability as well. We all stand at the little swimming beach on the lake through the summer days, cheering on the progress of loon chicks who are learning to dive. We notice when the snapping turtle eggs, laid in mid-summer sandy nests, are hatching and when the babies start their trek across roads to the river. We take turns scooping up the tiny newcomers, and putting them safely into the shallow water where they can start their wild lives. We notice the fox as she carries her kits to their new den. And one day recently, we watched a raccoon lurch across a yard, stricken with what looked like rabies, and we chatted about what to do.

Like our natural neighbors, we humans are vulnerable too, but that’s easy to forget. We spend so much of our lives “managing things” – we’re so good at being “in control.” But grief – the Great Leveler – just wrecks that control to smithereens.

When grief surprises us, we are taken down. We lurch across the everydays of our lives much like the stricken raccoon – trying so hard, but stopped in our tracks. We struggle, like the cormorant with her wounded wing, hoping to keep up. But eventually we fall prey to reality – each of us is a feisty flickering up of life – lush and fiery and glorious – until we’re not. And grief will be our life-long companion – always showing up to remind us of the exquisite and wrenching tenderness of being alive. Like all the wild creatures around us, we are vulnerable. We take our place in the natural order of things – we start anew, we bloom up and thrive, we dwindle, and we disappear.

In reflecting on grief, Author Elizabeth Gilbert writes about her own experience on learning to live with the vulnerability of grief :

“I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love. The only way that I can ‘handle’ Grief, then, is the same way that I ‘handle’ Love—by not ‘handling’ it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility.”

Every single day, the natural world in which I live reminds me that I am not in charge. And grief, when it comes, reminds me that I am powerless over the inescapable truth. So I pray every day to be brought to my knees by the beauty and joy and wonder of this fragile and vulnerable life. And as my heart is torn open with grief, and with joy, I join my wild neighbors in the faithful trek forward – through this wondrous and mysterious life.