Still Mixed Up

Falling rain instead of falling leaves, a trail that smells of skunk. I follow the wet-mop coat of my dog down the warm path, past the Tickseed sunflowers. If I didn’t know better—these blooms come in late summer or fall—I’d think it was spring: water, odor, and primary yellow.

But back at the trailhead, something I earlier missed, a sure sign of autumn: four bent legs of a deer hacked off and neatly piled, as if running so quickly they’d left their body behind; a few feet over, a square of hide; and further still the carcass, snout raised mid-howl (as if it could), ribs exposed, innards gone mortician-style.

Mixed Up

The astringent air, fragrant as a washrag dipped in rubbing alcohol and lime—no doubt from the Witch Hazel blooms that abound in the understory of this autumn forest—carries a sound shrill and repetitious as a blacksmithing hammer, but more organic. It comes from far off, and from something small—a frog smaller than a pea-coat button: Hyla crucifer—the Spring Peeper.

Why does he call in fall? Amplexus—his pseudo-coital hug—accomplished long ago, his months of foraging nearly over, he should be hopping from his human-knee-high perch on a tree or shrub to slip noiselessly under a forest-floor leaf or log, where he’ll spend the winter sometimes frozen, sometimes thawing. Instead he chirps, over and over.

It’s likely the photo-period that has him going. October 10th could be April 9th as far as he knows, sunrise and sunset the same. He has no memory of mating, no knowledge of orbits and equinoxes, no calendar to keep him straight, only the sun on his throat, which seems to draw his call out and into its own fiery heart.

I listen to him sing, alone with the sun, doing what he thinks is right, no one to judge.

The Book is Out!

Interested in more lyrical accounts of encounters with nature? My book, Deranged: Finding a Sense of Place in the Landscape and in the Lifespan has just been published by Apprentice House of Loyola University Maryland. You can order it from your local bookstore or on Amazon.com.

Alert

Driving over, a new friend sees a bear.

I am all eyes on my walk later.

Two garter snakes out for one last bask on the sunny trail rustle through dry grass—long, dull, and flattened—as if leaving behind their stripes for the winter. Next, I spot a fallen bird’s nest, small, constructed of birch bark and lichens. In the distance, something the color of sandy soil flung from a recently dug hole takes the shape of a deer. Prom-gown purple, aster is everywhere. But what I love most: a witch hazel bloom, like the hair of a cartoon character, sparse and frazzled.

Born

What looks like a dollop of manure dropped from the spreader that regularly travels this road turns out to be a just-hatched snapping turtle headed for water. Supposedly he instinctively knows which way to go—by scent? by terrain?—but this one is bearing straight for the cornfield, away from Brekke Lake, where his indifferent mother has likely been swimming, her labor of digging and laying forgotten, for the last three months, and where his father has probably been living incognito for just as many years (in turtles, a single mating provides enough sperm to fertilize eggs for several seasons).

His shell is the size of a half-dollar; his tail, a little longer. His head and legs already have the fat, secure look of an animal that does not have to worry about predators. But it is premature: I notice one of his siblings a few yards down the road, smashed. I pinch his carapace between my thumb and forefinger, admittedly, in spite of his tiny size, a bit afraid. Yet snappers get a bad rap. Pester an adult snapper on land and you could lose a digit, but in the swimming hole the snapper glides away from your kicking foot to more practical foods: aquatic plants and minnows. I carry him home to a plastic terrarium I fill with a half-inch of water, a trilobite fossil from a Kansas friend’s farm that’s been on display on the windowsill, and a Tupperware lid that I garnish with a few fresh vegetables.

That night, I fantasize about keeping him until he is too large to slide down the gullet of a great blue heron. But he swims relentlessly against the corner of the terrarium as if his birth has been a joke, as if to say, Is this all? He doesn’t touch the slice of burpless cucumber or the bright shreds of carrot.

The next day, (and the next week, for I will find another like him, even further from the water) I carry the baby snapper to the lake. I place him in shallow water and he begins to swim. He keeps his head out of the water until I grow impatient, worried I have caused him to imprint on a certain depth, a depth that will surely result in his being eaten before night falls. I tap his shell and he goes under, and it is as if he is suddenly born—his journey across the road and to my house all contractions pushing him toward this moment. His front and back legs have met their proper medium like a lover, and carry him swiftly from the shore. Surrounded by a council of small fish, he hesitates, then swims through them, toward the cattails and lily pads and algae that edge the pond next to the boat slip. I watch him until he has become mud in the water. I look for him every night, but he is gone.

Beware

Red-Spotted-Purple, they call him, but at rest, wings open, he screams blue. It’s as if the Caribbean sprouted hind wings and flew onto the forewings of night. He’s as regal as the velvet that might line a coffin, or the bottom of a church collection plate. And make sure you tithe—or at least give thanks—when you see him because, God or not, he’s worth it.

I once saw Red-Spotted-Purples in my rear-view mirror like falling leaves all around my car as I sped home after a hike. They had gathered en masse on the road to suck up mineral-water from the gravel. They may appear for this same purpose in the ashes at your campsite after you extinguish the fire.

The Red-Spotted-Purple practices mimicry. He looks like the Pipevine Swallowtail, which is toxic and distasteful. To all things he cautions, “Beware.” To the Blue Jay and Praying Mantis he may be the memory of a dangerous meal, and to me he is a warning that nature can be almost too beautiful.

Katydid

In the sizzling voice of deep summer insects, somewhat mechanistic, or like office supplies clattering inside plastic containers—brass fasteners and paper clips—"Katy did, Katy didn’t," the True Katydid says outside my open bedroom window.

At least, that is the onomatopoeic language ordinarily ascribed to them—"Katy did, Katy didn’t," an argument. But really, in the song of the northern populations I heard in my central Maryland home growing up, it’s more of a gentle persuasion: "Katy did, she did," the insects collectively urge back and forth almost till morning, with only the occasional dissenter emitting a four-pulsed chirp.

The next time you find a small leaf, look closely—it might be a Katydid wing, laced with veins and chlorophyll-green. Katydids, a type of grasshopper distinguished by antennae often longer than their bodies, can also be identified by their large size and prominent, leaf-like wings. But Katydids prefer to walk to the tops of trees (mostly Oaks) to sing their mating song and from which they can complete a sort of expert fall, if need be, rather than fly.

The True Katydid has three main populations east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes (there are 6,399 other species, no less true to the family, but perhaps less common, all with spectacular names: Splendid Shield-back, Gladiator). Each population of the True Katydid has its own dialect. The dialects are characterized by how quickly and how often the insects pulse—a sound made by rubbing the serrated edge of one forewing— called the file—across the smooth edge of the other—the scraper. Where populations overlap, the songs vary, giving evidence of interbreeding. Large groups of Katydids call collectively, interacting with other large groups, often increasing the speed of their chirps.

As a child, I didn’t claim to understand what the Katydids said, whether their constant back and forth chatter was quarrel or applause. But lying in bed, unable to sleep in the way an 8-year old often is, I wondered which group of Katydids called and which answered. Who had started this conversation?

I flipped the calling Katydids’ chirps back and forth in my mind in the same way one alternates between foreground and background in an optical illusion—is it a picture of two faces or a wine glass? Which square is the forefront of a three dimensional cube sketched on a piece of paper?

Each night, I promised myself the next evening I would listen for the first calling Katydid. I would follow that dialogue through to be sure of the answer. But somehow, I could only become conscious of the True Katydids' song after it was already well underway, and that is the problem with understanding anything, isn’t it? Love, God, the cosmos, earth’s systems: it is so terribly difficult to detect things at their beginning.