His eyes are dark and piercing. His coat tan and shaggy, fluffy fur collar around his neck.

From where I sit at my desk, looking out the window, he appears like a wraith flowing through the forest.

He stops at the edge of the trees, just by the fence that separates our property from the trees and bushes that line the river.

He stares up at me.

I stare back.

I reach for my phone to take a photo. It’s not on my desk.

I get up, grab it from the island and race back to my desk. He is gone.

I wonder if I actually saw him. If this big, fluffy wild thing really was there.

I open the deck door. Step out into the chilly January air, move across its cold surface in my bare feet and peer upriver, through the trees.

And there he is. Loping along the river bank further upriver. He stops. Pauses. Turns his head to look back at me. He turns back towards the way he was going and continues on his way.

I snap a photo of his retreating back and he is gone.

I sat at my desk yesterday and a wild thing appeared in the woods in front of my window.

For a moment, I was surprised. Taken aback.

He looked at me as if to say, “Look at you sitting there in warmth and comfort, all domesticated while I wander the woods, wild and free. Come. Play with me.”

From the safety of the deck, which is 10 feet off the ground, I watched him lope gracefully through the woods, following the upstream bend of the river.

The closest I came to playing with him was to capture a photo from afar.

Perhaps it is best to keep my distance from the wild things. To watch from afar their fearless journey through the wilds of the city where the river flows through it and houses edge its banks.

Perhaps, being wild at heart doesn’t mean throwing off the cloak of gentility I wear to fit into this tamed and wild world I inhabit.

Perhaps, his call was not to come play with him but to remember the wildness of my heart calling me to cast off fear and run free as the wind through all my creative explorations.

Perhaps, he is my spirit animal calling me to remember I am wild at heart.

Or perhaps, he was really just saying, “This land is my land. I live here too.”

A coyote watched me as I sat writing at my desk yesterday.

A wild thing wandering the banks of the river as it flows through the city.

He paused, looked at me and continued on his journey to the west. To the grasslands beyond the city, the rolling foothills that lead to the Rockies.

He didn’t stay long in my view but his passing through reminded me to give in to the wild callings of my heart.

I am grateful.