Blizzard

Wind lacks clarity. It turns the snowy yard into a sort of desert: un-skiable, pine-needle-covered grass shows at one end, but raspberry bushes and currants lie buried at the other. There’s no way to tell what has happened, how many inches have fallen, the evidence all up in the air continuously turning.

It is so cold I cannot gather snow. Can’t shape it into a small world, packed between my gloves, then destroy it like an angry god; can’t roll it into three large worlds, stack them, and call it a man.

I wonder what my dog thinks. She brings winter in on long toe-hairs, accretions of ice and dirt from the road, like the nuclei of tiny comets that drop off and melt on the hardwood. Does she think this is the way things will be now—this constant rattle at the windows, the cold—or recognize it for what it is: a temporary lean away from the sun?

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.