Bee-stung Lids

Beware the corner of Ash Point Drive and Crockett's Beach Road. As we innocently turned that corner yesterday, taking the dog down to the sands at low tide for a good run, I was attacked, deviously, by something that flew between my left eye and glasses and stung me on the lower lid. It was an extremely efficient operation, and a success, for I've swelled up sexily and smoothly. The bee merely missed its mark by a few inches, assuming it was trying for the Angelina Jolie look.

Cosmetic dermatology aside, the bee did get me to think about how far removed most of us are from any dangers of nature. I don't mean weather here, or floods, or volcanoes, or earthquakes. Those are inanimate and irrational. They don't have it in for us personally, and other than the occasional dangerous blizzard or mostly-petered-out hurricane, we don't have them in Maine anyway. I'm talking about animal dangers, snakes and bears and wolverines and mountain lions who might attack our person, with malice, or even a moose that might try to get amatory. We go out in the woods, and don't really expect anything to happen. We're quite removed from nature red in tooth and claw, except of course "Nature," on PBS, in the comfort of our couches. But it might be good for us, to have a little respect, to understand our place, to connect to a place and all its creatures, a healthy antidote to media bombardments from afar, the meteorologists and their rumors of storms, terrorists of religion and oil, political fear-mongers. A plague of bees upon us! Give us a reason to remember how close we are to life.