The pheasant will still run in circles

Mostly I am preoccupied with the state of humanity and - as we all know - it weighs heavy sometimes. Certainly, I am amazed by its beauty (especially when hanging out with the interns), but there's an underlying human pain on this planet, and at the end of the day, sometimes I find it hard to even read about the history of the very land on which I am living. The questions of why things are this way and how I can help are unyielding. What's worse is that I can not count on 20 hands the amount of times I have personally failed to care for others as I should. At some points, it has felt as if I've been wearing global human problems like heavy ornaments on the Charlie Brown's Christmas tree that is my weakened spirit.

So that's why, this weekend, I craved only trees and animals -- a break from the human world, please.

Saturday (this blip), we spent at the local aviary among these jaw-droppingly beautiful birds with the coolest attitudes. A fluffy white chicken with feathers covering his feet like a Clydesdale horse, a polka-dotted pheasant who ran in circles around my feet as if training for a marathon, and an unnamed bird with 18-inch legs strutting her stuff around the pond. They were so cool.

And the sunset afterward at Hout Bay (pictured) wasn't too bad, either.

I found a great deal of renewal in this. For some reason, I draw a lot of peace from the fact that if we continue to fail to support each other, and if we ultimately fail to live on this Earth, the natural world will still be here. The sun will still set. The pheasant will still run in circles.