by Amy Minato
And the increasing practice of building homes in the woods has firefighters risking their lives to save private property in situations where they would otherwise let the fire burn itself out.
Lightning storms. Floods. Tornadoes. Dramatic natural events thrill while they frighten, with nature pushing up her sleeves. They humble us who imagine we’ve got the cat in the bag.
When too strongly harnessed, our own flames—anger, desire—can rise, spring from their campfire, and rage around the room. And then they explode in actions we regret and didn’t see coming.
So I try to lose my own fires, to let them out on a rein and wheel them in, but with a lighter touch—to mix anger with humor or take long brisk walks fueled by passion. In my single state, allowing myself to be aroused by life. To let the Eros of quivering leaf, soil scent, and lush moss fill my senses, ring my bell.
Our music and literature narrows desire into a sexual realm—heterosexual, specifically, between young adults. And we must be beautiful, so the movies suggest, for this to happen. And the beauty must be of a particular shape and design.
Sensuality tingles my skin around men yes, yes—but also when touching the veins on my mother’s hands or hearing the cadence of a friend’s voice. And when dusk sweeps red lashes across the sky and breeze sends fingers up my shirt, Eros plays her seductive music through this body’s flute.
So wasn’t Walt Whitman on to something? When we constrict desire to the “lover,” focusing all loving attention on “him” or “her,” trouble brews. Jealousy. Insecurity. Clinging and clutching. End of relationship.
I once told a lover that our touch gave expression to the emotion generated by what I saw and heard all day—the pearled dew on the snowberry leaf, fluted gills on a chanterelle mushroom, silhouette of a hawk against a cloud—that our intimacy was a place for these kindled feelings to flare and reside. That it went beyond what I felt about him.
“You mean you’re thinking about other guys when you’re with me?”
I never tried explaining this to a lover again.
What would happen if we allowed desire to ripple our emotions with a constant breeze? So that we lived in a state of desiring what we already have. All our friends and family and this eager lover—this pulsing, fragrant earth.
Perception
Trees do not go straight up and down. This is one of many illusions created when we look at nature in the media or out of car windows.
On my hill there’s an oak that extends horizontal to the hill where it anchors. It grows exactly sideways, sticking out like a ship’s prow, with a girth of at least a foot. I could climb it and stand watch over the field. I could do pull-ups. I stop thinking about what I could do on it, and begin to honor it. Oak of the Long Arm. Oak Pointing South. Oak Wizard. Overcoming Gravity.
Another has limbs twisting and flowering out from the trunk. This one I climb, scraping my knee on the way up, a reminder of the difference in our skins, I feel, the tree’s way of showing its mettle, how tender are we humans. Once atop, I curve into a moss of legs and arms and body, wondering about this ancient form of yoga, this stretching and perching in trees. Our bodies were made to be cradled like this. See how weak our knees, how curved our spines.
An ecology teacher I know requires his students to sit in one place in nature for twenty-four hours watching, listening. They notice where wind sashays, where sun shifts her shawl of light, the least sound magnifies. Day ebbs and flows into night.
The Wider Lens
Although the way we study detaches
bud from twig, fossil from lake, still
I have not learned to separate
the dropped pine cone from its quilt
of fir and maple leaf, trout fin
from river rock, birdsong from
dawn light. Nor can rain smell
be severed from bare feet, snowfall
from red cheek, or the lake
from the wind combing its skin.
The arms of the manzanita cannot seem
to untangle from the horizon’s grey waist.
Because the speckled gall changes once it slips
from its shelf of oak bark to rot
on mud ridge and twig scatter. And
the curled fawn isn’t the same without
the calyx of grass against which it rests,
or the hemlock beyond that, any less the owl
in its top branch asleep with yellow eye open
on the mouse to be churned into a furred
pellet and spit out beneath
the dark cape and its
circling aperture
taking it all in.
I’m often late for appointments with friends in town because everything seems slowed down on Siesta Lane. The drone of crickets, waft of grass, the horizon’s long breath. As the days amble past the more I gaze on the field, submerged in a reverie of beauty, knowing that whatever needs doing can wait for this small homage. Duties here are more basic and labor intensive. Haul water. Split wood. Hang laundry. Life becomes not more simple, only more essential. And there are new responsibilities to claim: the spider webs to dodge, the furious bee to free from its battle with the window, the backrub for Sara who’s been weaving too long, watering Raul’s cilantro plant, petting the dog, Ceres.
Last week when I opened the washer, a dazed lizard stared up at me, its toes clamped to a wet towel, back arched and tensed. He must have been living in my laundry basket. Freeing him onto the grass, I marveled at his tenacity through the spin cycle—and puzzled over how to get the yellow lizard juice stains off my blouse.
Alliance
I hadn’t wanted to keep the dog Ceres around. I’d wanted wild birds and no barking, to leave my cereal undisturbed on the deck. She came with the place, Quin said. So I ignored her for awhile, except to moan about her ferocious announcement of guests.
But lately she’s been following me, her wet chestnut eyes in triangles of appeasement, ears akimbo, head atilt. Like a gallant gentleman, she escorts Sara and I, the only two single women, to and from our cabins every day. I begin to love her.
Off on a walk, her heels click behind me. I am thinking to myself, “No, Ceres, you stay here.” I neither motion to her nor alter my step. Still, she stops immediately, and turns, returns to the house.
But how does Ceres understand if not by words or gesture? She seems to read my intent. As if she understands me at some pre-verbal level. I am left astonished and accompanied on a dusty road with myriad small bright eyes pointillating the woods around me, humbled and caught in a net of awareness of which I had been oblivious. I call Ceres back, and stroke her head and sides, surrendering another thread of affection.
This is spider territory—where invisible strands web me to what was once blur and background—the oak cradling my cabin, clouds on the hill, that sassy woodpecker in the pine. An orb-weave spider will draw steel-strong silk from her nozzle-like spinneret and weave complex webs daily in any suitable opening. Some strands will be sticky to catch insects, others smooth enough for her to walk along, others white as a warning to birds. She’ll sense the suitability of a mate from the strength of one’s pull on her web. If he’s not careful, she’ll eat him.
I have been walking more gently on vegetation, gingerly removing ants from my arm, leaving the impeccable deer antler where I found it in the woods. I am caught by love, here on this land where I’ve been living through so many quiet, dangerous hours, not knowing invisible nets were being cast, that the heart would have no refuge.
Immigrants
Autumn means apples. A tree a mile down the road on vacant property blushes with its heavy apron of fruit, tipping its crown as if to ask for help with its load. One late afternoon, I climb and linger and munch away the darkening day. Fall at dusk, spring at dawn, winter nights, summer days—double their potency, with autumn afternoons, for me, most poignant.
These apples are green and red, tart, crisp, bumpy, and small. They could be one of dozens of varieties or a hy
brid. Pioneers brought apple starts on wagon trains, sheltering the seedlings against cold, watering them even when water was scant. Apple trees could provide fruit, vinegar, shade, wood, blossoms, and alcohol to families for generations.
These introduced plants did no harm to native species and quickly became part of the lore and habitat of the West; unlike Homo sapiens who arrived in North America over twelve thousand years ago. We spread across the continent and encountered native species, such as mammoths, mastodons, horses, camels, ground sloths, lions, giant wolves, great bears, and saber-toothed cats, that had not developed defenses against humans and slaughtered them in large numbers, depleting our own food source and messing with the ecological balance.
Native American stories often stress moderation, a light touch, humility and gratitude toward the natural world. Such an extinction would have been an argument for a shift in paradigm, for a value system based on balance and sustainability. Even though they too have altered the land, North American tribal people seemed to have achieved a basic harmony with this continent before they were almost killed off by the wave of Europeans that washed across it starting in the fifteenth century.
Had the European settlers heeded this hard-earned wisdom and not massacred the buffalo, plowed the prairies, drained the wetlands, poisoned the air and water. We, like the apple tree, might have been a welcome new member of the community with whites and natives protecting each other, and the land, for the future—some of which is here now. Our current society might have looked something like Siesta Lane.
Twilight shoos away dusk with her shadowy hands. Laden with booty, woozy with apple dreams and fading vision, I pick my way in the growing dark back to my borrowed home.
October Crickets click outside, and inside, burnt wood drops to the flames. The fire burns what has been blocking me—fear and need, the desire for freedom and affirmation. Outside in the dark, juncos flit from branch to deck, clutching fat worms in their beaks. One eye tilts to me as if to say, “You’ll be one of us soon,” with the forest settling in the rain, the worm swallowed.
Earth
Chemical and biological weathering produce yellow/red iron minerals, black manganese/sulfur/nitrogen deposits, or brown organic compounds. Loam is a fertile mix of clay, silt, sand, and organic matter; Loess—a fine-grained yellowish brown deposit of soil left by wind; Till—sediment deposited by ice ...
I am developing a dirty mind.
Becoming more and more aware that everything, really, depends on the quality of the soil. Whether or not our great-grandchildren will have great-grandchildren, the state of our internal organs, art, government, romance. If unassuming lichen doesn’t chaw granite into accessible bits and microorganisms don’t fortify these with dead organic matter, plants will disappear. And without plants, no humans.
Aware of this in my bones, I dig potatoes today, like an Easter egg hunt, flailing dirt and shuffling for pale red globes in the moist soil, some tiny as pearls, some big as fists. What happens to make one potato boast a swell in the earth, while its neighbors pinch and pucker in? Yet the big ones are game for moles and groundhogs and the wary stab of the pitchfork. Those near the surface have turned green in the sun, gathered like billiard balls in their crumbly pockets.
Serious business, potato digging. Each spud enough, in a pinch, to nourish someone for a day. And for that we planted them, and cheered over their ample green laps spreading in the August sun. Because potatoes smell of earth, fit in your palm, fill a tummy. Once harvest starts, I want only them, raw as possible, with chunks of rock salt and crushed pepper. I crush the pepper in a mortar just enough to open the corn, fill a pot with water and potatoes, and boil them until the kitchen grows moist with potato vapor. And as I lift the lid, steam makes my face rosy and slippery as the softening spuds. I dip a whole tender potato into the salt, into the pepper, and into my mouth. I eat with my fingers, still with garden dirt in the creases, bent over the table, my whole body a chasm that can only be filled with potatoes, potatoes, salted and peppered and steamy, skins sliding off the opal flesh. Potatoes just up from the garden which has collected my sweat and song, where I have hoed through crisis and calm, whispering to the plant which has yielded me its root, to eat, to give us this day, amen.
Symbiosis
Digging around in a nearby woods I find a cluster of wizened Oregon white truffles the size of pool balls. They smell like must, like walnuts, and my imagination adds garlic, onion, and olive oil. I take it home to check it, again and again, against the pictures in my mushroom field guide before convincing myself (but no one else) to eat them.
These potato-like fungi grow around the roots of the oak, enhancing the tree’s absorption of water and nutrients from the soil. In turn, truffles borrow sugars from the tree, and perhaps take advantage of acorn-scavenging squirrels for spore transport. Truffles, truly welcome guests, are the prime example of one kind of symbiosis: mutualism.
Symbiosis occurs when species live in association: one harming the other (parasitism), one benefiting without affecting the other (commensalism), or both benefiting (mutualism).
Oaks have all three forms of symbiosis. Mistletoe, romantic to us, is deadly to oaks. It wraps its lethal arms around the limbs and suffocates the tree. Mistletoe seeds are disseminated by birds that wipe their sticky, seed-filled beaks on limbs after gorging themselves on the red berries. Parasites, truly.
Opportunistic but harmless gall wasps demonstrate commensalism. They scratch an oak twig, lay their eggs, and leave a secretion that triggers a chemical response prompting an oak to grow a round scab, like a brown, freckled ping-pong ball, around the wasp eggs. This scab, or gall, provides protection for the larvae until they peck their way out as adults in spring, with no harm to the tree.
To foster a form of mutualistic symbiosis at Siesta Lane we hold meetings to split chores and bills and to check in. But we find that our heritage of rugged individualism makes it way easier to nurture a particular peeve than to think about group stability.
“The bathroom smells moldy.”
“SOMEBODY’S WEARING MUDDY BOOTS ON THE CARPET!”
“The last person to split wood left the axe out in the rain.”
“The oven cleaner’s shit.” “It’s environmentally sound.” “It’s still shit.”
“How come the water bill’s so high, Bath Queen?”
“Could someone besides Raul take out the garbage for once?”
“I forgot what my chore was this week.” “Check the list!” “I forgot where the list was.”
Knowing parasitism will destroy us, we try the truffle way.
Sara is sick for a week so I bring her soup and clean her cabin. She knits me a scarf.
Raul’s truck breaks down and Luke drives him to school. Raul teaches Luke’s class so he can go to Los Angeles for his folks’ anniversary.
Jack uses more wood so he chops more. Mick puts bouquets on the table in return for our help with plant collecting.
The communal spirit is a spider running on slender legs across the threads of the web, strengthening here, slackening there, making sure the relationships can carry her shimmering, necessary weight.
Choices
Going into town after a week in the country makes me dizzy. I have to steel myself against the traffic and pace of what is not a very large city, Eugene.
Shopping is particularly agitating. Why must there be thirty kinds of cereal? And how do I weigh the merits between low-fat yogurt with acidophilus culture and honey-sweetened nonfat yogurt, or a lotion with aloe vera as opposed to one with coconut oil?
And afterwards there’s the second guessing: “Maybe the rosemary-garlic vinaigrette would have been a more versatile choice than the sesame shiitake ...”
I had always believed that the more choices in life, the better, but now it doesn’t seem true. It feels more like oppression of its own kind. Every minuscule decision takes time and energy, takes me that much farther away from my writing, the land, the people I love, and my c
onnection with everything deeper in life.
My Norwegian friend, Pär, who may be the reincarnation of John Muir, explodes every time he eats in a restaurant in our country. He opens the menu and starts pulling at clumps of very blond hair and twittering his leg. “Just bring me some toast,” he pleads with the waitperson, quickly folding up the extensive menu. “Would that be white, wheat, rye, sourdough, or pumpernickel?”
The vague sensation haunts me that I once reveled in the variety of choices open to me. What people to befriend, jobs to take, groups to join, places to live. Looking back on my various relationships, moves, and jobs, such options appear to have cultivated breadth at the expense of depth.
Before moving to Siesta Lane, I lived in ten different places in the same small city. One day a guy looking like Rip Van Winkle showed up at my door with the mail.
“Hello. This was sent to your old address.”
I looked down at the address, which was at least three moves ago. “How did you trace me here?”
“Well, I been a mail carrier for awhile in this town, yours a lot of the time. Name’s Ned. First delivered mail to you at 1020 Lincoln Street—nice place! Then 804 Chestnut Street, then you moved in with that older lady at 471 Atkinson Avenue, lessee, then down the street to the upstairs apartment at 1219 Beech Boulevard.”
I shrunk backward into the latest of my hermit crab homes. Ned tucked his very long beard into his postal shirt and adjusted his bag. “Guess I got a mind for numbers, doin’ this job. Nice day, Ma’am.”
