Snake

My neighbor poured a snake repellant that smells like sulphur along the property line. Two weeks later, she added mothballs.  It is a sickening combination that can be detected throughout my garden.


She has never seen a snake but someone on another street reported on a black one.  She did not mention the size, but I have never seen a large snake, or even a medium sized one.  Snakes are good at hiding.


I didn't ask my neighbor how she would know if the sulphur and mothballs were blocking the snakes out or trapping them inside her yard.


Not that I mind snakes in my own yard, at least theoretically.  They control pests in the garden.

I didn't tell my neighbor about the baby gray snake hiding under a log near the hellebores.  Or the soft pink baby along the pathway.  The pink was the underside and this snake was already dead, intended as a meal for a predator. 


My neighbor would not understand that life is hard, even for a snake.

Hidden

We walked on a trail cut through the woods at the North Carolina Arboretum.  It was autumn and as we passed the asters and the coreopsis and the solidago, I identified them by name.

"You taught me to hate nature," my daughter said. After a moment she added, "But whenever my friends ask a question, I know the answer."

That was six years ago.  Now at every opportunity, she walks her dog on the trail through the woods at the rock quarry near her home. 

Sometimes the things we love are hidden from us.  Or maybe they are best left unidentified.

In late winter, I tapped the compost pile to mulch the earliest wildflowers, Virginia bluebells and trout lilies.  My shovel uncovered a tunnel running deeply through the pile.  I left it undisturbed until midsummer, when it seemed to be deserted.

It was a good home, well hidden among the brown leaves and pine straw, kept warm by the heat of the composting coffee grounds and banana peels, with a steady food source of worms and insects.  

The knots and nodes of tree roots are hidden underground, but they are the most important part of the organism.  In their subterranean home, nutrients of soil and rainwater begin their transformation into bark and leaves.

I wish that the birds would be silent and the squirrels would stand still, while we listened to the roots at work in their dark world.

Yesterday

Yesterday, I thought of him as I walked across campus under the shade of tall trees. It was almost noon and I knew you would be awake, thinking of him too.



His slow, deliberate manner when telling a story.

The way he unfolded himself as he stood.

How gaunt his face seemed near the end.

The oaks and maples on campus were planted in the 30's. Someone calculated the correct depth and dug a wide hole. He, for it was surely a he, supplemented the soil with compost and watered deeply the first time. The trees were treated tenderly throughout their first year, and perhaps longer, for droughts came often in that decade.


The caretakers are gone, but the trees have grown tall and cast a deep shade.

Endings.  People leave before you are ready, no matter how much time you have to prepare. Then the long night of missing begins.