…on Groundhog Songs: from the Woods to the Underground

For your amusement and whimsy – and, if I am honest, it is likely that only Gerri and Michele will enjoy a chortle – I present a sampling of my observations on PHIL, et al, with a little support from The Great One and my home city…

Groundhogs are magnanimous creatures, if not hammy, as well as being a trifle – nay, VERY! – reticent; for, on how many occasions have we beheld the diminutive prognosticators being forcibly extracted from their acceptably cramped warrens of peace for the benefit of the assembly?  Were the choices the groundhogs’, the multitudes above would tarry in expectation ad infinitum, as our friends declined to conform to the wishes of said masses hovering above ground.  Kinda like this; but not for the amusement of onlookers and travellers (this they do out of generosity); rather themselves.

“…the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds until the wayfarer has passed onward.”

~ Emerson, History

Groundhogs are underrated artists, who most likely should – and probably wish to! – be left to excavate underground; also ad infinitum…ya know, how the hordes on the surface should be rightly compelled to linger!

“…without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw, and plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir, and spruce.”

~ Emerson, History

The self-reliant and non-conformist groundhog unearths joy in celebrating and lauding his very existence in a way so perfect as to conspire to emulate the most perfect serendipity!  Thus:

“…But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, — ‘Come out unto us.’ But keep thy state; come not into their confusion.”

~ Emerson, Self Reliance

Their own brand of churlish objection to circumnavigation of the (beneath the crust portion) globe is precisely why groundhogs, if left to their own devices, would choose to remain…