Oh yeah...

And here are a few snapshots I took on the 16th of June. I woke up at 5AM and just couldn't go back to sleep. The location is Codorus lake at the marina.

Continuing... like I never left off.

I have houseplants, but I hardly consider them pets. For some reason they always seem to multiply. Every time I see one I adore at the home improvement store, regardless of time of year, I have to purchase another one. Now I've got them littered about the house in various pots, and I'm constantly forgetting to water them.

I have two cats too. I do consider these pets, though they spent the vast majority of their time lounging around in a few spots - a little like the house plants, if you ask me, only with the added chore of the litter box.

It's summer now, but I can think back to the winter, to the several feet of snow we had this year and remember how I relished these houseplants, the two cats, for offering me my only taste of nature indoors.

I've decided to continue this blog though the summer semester of Nature Writing is over. I managed an A, but I still don't think I've said enough. In the next year I'm going to continue to chronicle my run-ins with nature. This could involve my houseplants and cats in the winter - fair warning - but it will also involve my garden through the seasons (including the strangely shaped cucumbers we just picked) and it may include a few observations made on my family trip to Alabama in a few weeks. You might want to expect descriptions of mosquitoes as big as birds.

Either way, this little blog isn't quite over yet. I cannot say the blogging will be as frequent, but it will continue. Let's just say I'll make the effort of one post a week.

Roadkill Chronicles: Bird Kill

Birds are the extreme sports enthusiasts of the highway. It never fails. Whenever I’m driving anywhere, I have at least one bird who wants to tempt fate by nose diving somewhere in front of my car. I hold my breath every time. It’s not like I can swerve out of the way, I just have to hope this particular robin or starling has timed his performance perfectly.

Usually, the bird extends his wings and alights just a few inches or a foot away from my vehicle. A few times, they’ve even dropped a not so pleasant bird-bomb on my shiny blue car. That’s always a lovely addendum –insult to near injury.

Some birds fail as acrobats on the road, however; their lives ending in one of two ways. The first involves the bird hitting the windshield. While this is horrible as a driver, since one thinks the fowl is going to come straight through the glass, and one find oneself ducking although he is fairly well shielded by the vehicle. I can’t count how many times I’ve preemptively ducked behind the steering wheel because I fear the mourning dove is going to come through the windshield and smack me in the face in a bloody, feathery Alfred Hitchcock nightmare. If the bird hits the windshield, though, normally all one sees is the look of death at impact with perhaps a few twitches or some flailing as they go up over the glass to disappear behind the car or get hit again by the vehicle which is tailgating. If the other vehicle hits it, I just don’t feel as bad because I excuse myself –it wasn’t my car that finished the job. These are the bird corpses one sees flattened to the pavement with one wing up waving at passersby.

The more exciting death is actually more akin to an explosion. It’s not quite like the vaporization I have mentioned earlier, but it’s not entirely dissimilar either. Birds are small, light, and it’s not quite as surprising when they explode on the grill of one’s car (unlike the aforementioned deer which is large and meaty and, well, I’m sure we’re both still working on erasing those mental scars). It’s actually a little like a surprise party or a pillow fight. OK, perhaps not so exciting as a surprise party, but all one really sees is a great poof of feathers after one hears the twang of the bird hitting the grill. Depending on velocity and location, these feathers can come up over the windshield –momentarily blinding the driver –or they go under the car in a spray making the car look like it hit a star in a Mario game, though one doesn’t become invincible.

It’s an interesting affect, and I think a tribute to life. I mean, if I had a choice, I’d like to die like a daredevil and explode into a bunch of confetti, myself when I go. It has a startling affect, but for some strange reason, isn’t quite so gruesome as the unexplained vaporization kill or as sentimental as watching a pet kill.

Yeah, when I die, I want to blow up like a pillow stuffed with firecrackers.

Roadkill Chronicles: Unidentified Vaporization

My first year of college was in a small, private, liberal arts university in North Carolina. It’s a long drive from Pennsylvania, and most of the trip was spent on I-81 going South through Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. For the most part, it’s really a rural highway in large sections of Virginia –in fact, one can take 81 to the Blue Ridge Parkway easily as they intersect.

Between timing exits for a gas and restroom break (as not every exit along 81 has such relief, especially in the first part of Virginia), I came across a smear in the road. At first, it was difficult to discern what the smear was. There were several feet of a deep red color with a few bits and pieces of something that looked almost as black as the asphalt of the highway. For a few miles I had to conjecture over whether or not a bucket of paint had fallen off a truck or if this really was what I thought it was—blood. And if it was blood, where was the body? This was Virginia, not West Virginia, had someone managed to hit dinner, stop, pick up the kill and run home to cook it? All of the ideas buzzing through my head were a little unsavory and I managed to miss my exit. I had to drive another fifteen minutes ready to piss myself before I got to an exit with a bathroom –the urgency with which I needed to urinate made me forget my pondering altogether.

In the year I spent in North Carolina, driving back and forth for breaks, I came across several of these haunting ‘smears’ going north and south on I-81. It wasn’t until I was out of college that I actually witnessed the event that leads to these artful smudges of red in the highway –and it wasn’t on I-81 either. I witnessed the event on I-83 heading toward Baltimore.

I was in my little Toyota Matrix, having a conversation with my passenger who was anticipating another great Orioles game when I recognized that a large 18 wheeler wanted to pass me. He was heavy on my tail, so I glanced in my rearview mirror and shifted over the right lane of the highway (using my blinker –something that is otherwise optional in the state of Maryland). This speeding truck increased speed and sped by me –I turned and rolled my eyes at my passenger –apparently 10 over the speed limit isn’t fast enough for some people. And that’s precisely when it happened.

Out of the corner of my eyeroll I saw a doe bound, no –not bound –throw herself in front of the truck. At least, I don’t think I saw antlers, but it was so quick. Who could discern if it was doe or dog or horse? What I could not miss was the explosion. I’m not sure if I saw or heard it first; there was a loud bang, like the sound a jet makes when it breaks the sound barrier, and then an detonation, like fireworks –a blast of red and flesh and bone and obliteration airborne. Tiny little pieces of what once was doe splattered up and out and under the truck. It was no longer a deer, it was ground venison meets Mac Truck grill.

“Holy Shit!” I managed to say to my passenger who had not even been looking at the truck, but managing his cell phone during the previous conversation, “Did you just see that?” I somehow managed to not wreck my own vehicle as I witnessed it.
He didn’t. How could he? It happened so fast I was in disbelief of what had occurred. Had I really just seen that tractor trailer hit that deer? Was it just some sort of special affect? I wanted to turn the car around; I wanted to stop even though I was going 70 mph.

Dumbstruck, jaw half agape, I continued to drive while my passenger tried to wheel around in his seat, fighting the seatbelt in order to catch a glimpse of what I’d just witnessed. “What?” he said. “What was it?”

But it was too late to explain. I’m sure the deer felt no pain, though I don’t know what terrible travesties in her life had led her to choose such a suicide. After all, stepping directly into the path of that 18 wheeler could only be construed as such – it certainly couldn’t have been an accident.

And the fact that the body of the animal had been obliterated meant there would be no horrible burial or that no other deer would have to see the body and go back and tell the others what happened to Faline or whatever her name was. She’d simply disappeared in a flash of flesh.

Of course, now every time I’m driving down the highway I find myself trying to close my eyes when I have to motor over a great big red-tarnished patch of asphalt. It was a hell of a lot better when I didn’t know what caused it. Ignorance can sure be bliss sometimes.

Hashawa Observations IN CLASS

There are two catbirds which zip above my head. I’ve chosen a small break in the trees to rest and observe. At first, I thought they were both announcing my presenc with their cat calls, but then I realized there were precisely two. What I thought was the catbird’s harassment was really them courting each other between two trees. They’re a beautiful gray color, the color of dark storm clouds, not mottled or patchy, but solid, like a steel guard.

In front of me stands the skeleton of a pine. The bark is starting to peel from the offwhite bones beneath like paper or dead skin, revealing the smooth wood that looks just like bone.

To my right, I hear a gentle whisper of a call which I cannot identify in the bushes. The two catbirds call in such a fashion that it is difficult to identify what the you-who sound might be.

And then there is a third catbird. I wonder if perhaps I had disturbing a next. They have me surrounded -one chirping incessantly behind me, another to my left and one to my right. I think if I listen closely I can hear a woodpecker in a tree top, but over these catbirds, who can hear anything? Is it just in their nature to harass? Are they Hashawa’s jesters? Are they the centries wom I must impress to observe another other natural occurrences? There’s no fooling them now that they’ve spotted me. I think they’ve even chased off all the other birds who might share my company. They’re getting so close, I think I might just start to take offense out their yelling at me.

I’m just sitting here, after all. I want to yell back at them as they scream and yell at me “HEY HEY HEY!” But if I do, I might miss something, like whatever it is that whistling a you-who to me. There are two of them -coming from two different sections. I think maybe they are tormenting me too, like some horrible game of marco-polo. I think they’re red-winged blackbirds, but I can only guess.

And then I hear a frog, but at first, I thought it was the growling of my stomach or a mourning dove, but it became clear it was coming from in the marsh. It must be a frog. And then there is another … woooahh—awooo… deep and low.

They’ve got me surrounded. I’d better give up soon or face the agony of defeat which constitutes as arms pocked with mosquito bites.

Wrens

When I bought my first house, my mother gave me a birdhouse. It's a tiny little white wooden house hanging in my Rose of Sharon which was, at the time, the closest thing I had to a tree.

It has hung there for three summers. Generally, I find myself too busy to stop and admire whether or not the birds have decided to nest in it. In fact, it is so close to my neighbor's fence that my neighbor is generally more 'in the know' about what is residing in the little white house than I am.

Over the past two years we've acquired two cats as well. A larger male tabby named Lex and a small black and white female we named Harlequin. They generally do not get along well, preferring to reside on different floors of the house when they can, so one can imagine my surprise when I spotted both of them sitting in the windowsill which overlooks the patio and the Rose of Sharon.


I decided to venture out to the patio and watch for a little, much to a little wren's chagrin. It took me awhile before I could visually locate the chatter, but I soon realized it was either the male or female wren in the Rose of Sharon complaining about my proximity to the little white birdhouse. I had a seat so as to appear less threatening.

For thirty minutes I watched as male and female wren took turns coming to the house and feeding the babies. In the quiet of the afternoon I could hear the children raising their little voices, enthralled at hearing a parent near the house. It reminded me of walking into the classroom at the end of the school year when spirits are high and the students are all excited for the last days.

I haven't seen the little wren-lings yet. I just know they're there. I'm hoping if I'm diligent, I'll get the chance to see them when they first come out of the little wren house into the light of day.

Barefooting

I hate shoes. My grandmother tels me it is a genetic predisposition - the loathing of shoes. She prefers barefoot as did her mother before her. It must've skipped a generation since neither of my parents are really preferential to barefeet.

I think I just like the texture under my toes. It's not that I enjoy walking on the hot cement in bare feet in the summer, but I love the feel of cool grass, or the heat of the beach sand under my feet.

Even moreso, I think I like the feel of cool dirt or mud. I feel like I can just dig my toes into the wetness of it, take root and become some unmoving tree.

I wear my sandals into fall and I'm the first to break them out in the spring. I want the least resistance between the soles of my feet and the breath of the earth.

Cancer - Nature

When we talk about cancer as humans, we immediately view it as a perversion of nature, of the natural order of things. It's a growth, something malignant, it's terrible, it destroys. Cancer is an uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells. It invades the body like a virus, but it's not necessarily a virus. Some even travel the body creating cancers in various places. It is the body turned against itself.

This is the basic component of living things, the cell. It is in plants, animals, insects, fungus. It blows around as pollen in the breeze. Cells are in the lakewater - protazoans, planeria, surface skimmers, algae, fish. Cells are everywhere in nature.

But is cancer nature?

It's caused by abnormalities in the cell's genetic makeup. Something in the coding goes wrong (wrong... is it really wrong or just different?), and the cell becomes this terrible thing, replicating and destroying.

It's caused by all types of diet imbalances or viruses or drug use, but does that make it any less natural?

I've talked about Jeff before - in my horseback riding journal entry. He was diagnosed a few weeks ago with a rapid brain cancer - the kind of thing that would make me panic, that makes me want to panic for him. He's 51, healthy enough, and one of those human beings that everyone knows not because he's over the top, but because he's one of the most humble, kind, caring people one would ever meet. Even those adjectives do him little justice.

Jeff has gone from the initial shock to acceptance with the kind of grace that is only told in the likes of religious fiction such as The Bible. He smiles humbly, without questioning "the Lord's plan" for him, and knows well that he may not live to see fourteen months or four years or tomorrow. He's gracious for the condolences, the people showing up in tears at his front door in disbelief, and he's gracious for the life he's had and the life he has left.

Is this nature? Is cancer, a bringer of doubt and death, something we've quickly categorized as wrong - an abnormality - a destroyer of life - is it as important to the world as rainfall and the change of seasons? No... is it as important to the human race as the air we breathe?

I cannot begin to know even though I begin to question.

Mosquitoes

Nothing works at repelling mosquitoes. It's true.

We went as far as dumping citronella wax on our ankles and we still were bit.

Note to self - explore this further at a later date... when I'm itching mosquito bites.

Damn bastards.

Not my Hydrangeas

In front of my small suburban home is a row of hydrangeas. We purchased the home in March, when they were still twigs poking up in front of the porch. As the leaves flushed out, I began anticipating the blooms. Blue? Purple? Pink? It all depended upon the soil.

As I started yardwork, and the buds began forming on the tips of the branches, passers-by started saying hello. A neighbor leaned over the fence and remarked, "Those are the most beautiful hydrangeas in all of Hanover." I started at them a moment, smiling, nodding, and remarking, "Thanks."

But for what? I had not planted them here, and though I have a front lawn, I park in the back, use the backdoor, and only occasionally sit on my front porch.

Two days later, a Mennonite lady walked by while I was ripping out rampant spring onion and remarked, "Every year, I take a picture of my grand daughter in front of those hydrangeas."

What was I supposed to say? I had yet to see the plants bloom, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to invite some random woman to take pictures in front of the house that I'd bought and paid for.

With slight hesitation, I responded, "Well, you're welcome to keep doing that once they start blooming." And she responded as if relieved with gratitude and thanks.

I pushed my bandana back, tightening the my ponytail with a tug, and continued weeding.

When they bloomed a week later, my lawn was host to blue fireworks and shades of purple and pink, like cotton candy in petal form. I snagged my own camera, and though I have no grandchildren, I began taking snapshots.

Over the course of the following weeks and months (as hydrangeas' blooms last all summer) I had several neighbors and passersby stop, take pictures, pose in front of these plants.

I wasn't the one that planted them. They're not my hydrangeas. I own the home, the land they grow on, but they are everyone's hydrangeas, and the woman who passed, leaving this home to sold, they are her hydrangeas, and I think she left these hydrangeas to everyone.

Mulch

I want to take a moment to explore the concept of mulch. It comes in several varieties at the home improvement store. Having worked there, I recall pine bark, hardwood, died hardwood (in red and black), natural cedar, and treated mulch which usually contained some type of weed deterent to keep weeds from growing up through the mulch. I recently discovered cocoa mulch which is made out of parts of the seeds of the cocoa plant. It's a nice dark color and when first put on the ground it confuses the neighbors because they think you're baking brownies. Even yet, there is non-roganic mulch made of rubber. Is that something we really want to be throwing around the ground? It is an oil product after all. It'll never decompose, so it is somewhat economical, but the lack of decomposition will take away from the nutrients in the soil.

In the South - namely Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, they use pine needles. The long pine needles are used over areas that are needing mulch almost exclusively and sold in large bales instead of in bags or in bulk trucks.

Why? I've always wondered why the south uses such mulch, but the north has such a variety. Moreover, why don't we just use the natural leaves that fall around the yard and rake them into the gardens for mulch.

A wise gardener plants the perennials so close that mulching becomes nearly unnecessary. Is this the wisest and most economical decision?

Why mulch? To cover the ground to prevent weeds - but it also adds to the manicured look, a sign of wealth? Mulch also helps the earth retain moisture and keep from erroding and washing away, leaving one's plants as dry little twigs.

What a strange invention - mulch. http://web.extension.illinois.edu/springfieldcenter/iclgarden/060401.html - Dave Robson links mulch back to the ancient Egyptians. It's difficult to argue that the Egyptians didn't need mulch in their location. It was, after all, a desert for the most part.

Robson also explains that mulch is a sign of civilization. How remarkable, that the rise and fall of civilization could be based on mulch.

Roadkill Chronicles: Part 2 - Pet Kill

Nobody ever says much about the pet kill when they’re in the car. Sometimes, a traveler with a heart will mutter an ‘awwww’ at the corpse of someone’s cat or dog, but for the most part, it seems as though a silent cringe tenses at the shoulders of the bystanders or by-travelers as they pass such a dead animal.

When I was 16, my mother made me get my license. She pretty much abducted me from all my previous plans and drove me to the licensing place. A few weeks later, when I was leaving the school on a Friday amidst the rush of other shouting high school students, the smell of burnt rubber, the squealing of tires, a black cat crossed my trajectory. A pile of teenage traffic behind me, I mentally froze as I was speeding down the suburban road, unable to take my foot off the gas pedal. I wavered in my steering trying to straddle the little cat, his pleading, stunned green eyes looking up to recognize a red 1989 Honda Prelude zooming at him, but it was too late.

The all too familiar and tragic “thump-thump” left me clenching the wheel, one eye still open and searching the rear-view mirror for the remnants of the cat. Half of him remained standing, half of him flattened – he was dragging himself off the road. I even caught a glimpse of a few gasping walkers who had seen the incident happen, but I could not bring myself to stop. Again and again, I told myself there was no little girl waiting for her little injured black cat to come home –it was probably just a stray.

Why was it that I visibly cringed, and I evaluate my maneuvers of that day even now with criticism as that’s the only domesticated critter I’ve ever mowed over in my car. I don’t review hitting squirrels or rabbits with such distress. I dare say I take some pleasure in hitting the occasional tree rat because they infest my neighborhood.

At a dinner with a friend, I mentioned having seen several dead dogs along the interstate on my trip to visit her in Allentown. An animal lover and a vegetarian, she remarked that she says a prayer for every dead animal she sees at the side of the road – domesticated or otherwise – but that she takes extra care to pray for the domesticated animals. Nevermind the fact that this woman probably spends more time praying than driving on long trips, but why do these domesticated animals fall so near and dear?

There’s nothing quite so chilling as seeing man’s best friend lying, somewhat crushed, next to highway 9. Has nobody noticed he’s missing? Or is there is little boy wondering the neighborhood, posting signs on every streetcorner and knocking on neighbors doors?

It seems to me we care the most for the things that affect us most immediately. It is the dog and the cat which greets someone when they come home if there is nobody else there to greet them –not a possum or a rabbit or a squirrel. We see these animals in such quick passing most of the time that we rarely notice them when they’re alive and give them a shorter shrift when we pass their decaying bodies on the roadside.

Sometimes I want to travel the countryside with a shovel and bury all of these little critters in “Johnny Appleseed” style. Of course, then the little boy or the little girl pining for their missing pet would never discover that they’re Fluffy or Fido has been mowed over by a passing vehicle, but maybe it would be better that way.

Landscaping - Taming

On McDaniel's campus, by the parking lots and beside the chapel looms a little tree. I cannot recall it's particular species, but it's trunk's diameter cannot be more than the span of my hand. Some landscaper decided after this tree was planted that he or she did not appreciate the direction in which the tree had decided to grow. He's leaning back up the hill as if to reach up the slope instead of falling down it. In an effort to correct the tree's posture, a white PVC pipe has been plunged into the ground next to it, with a wire roping the little tree to it. It doesn't appear to be doing much good since the tree is strapped so far up the trunk.

I've seen this before, when I've walked to Walmart. In an effort to disguise the vast cementation of fields, the landscapers of the local super Walmart planted a host of evergreens along the side road to disguise the truck terminals and pull-ins behind the building. In an effort to keep the pines growing straight on the slope next to the road, the little pine saplings were staked. These same neglectful landscapers never removed the wire ties or the stakes so that the pines grew into their bindings and weakened at the middle, the pinnacles of the pines dying, sometimes actually falling off. Now there are a few still clinging to life, but most have been halved so that not only can one still see the ass-end of the super Walmart, but they've also got these halfling pine trees to enjoy.

This makes me wonder if all the troubles I face as a gardener are all for naught. I spent the weekend mulching, which entailed pulling weeds of many varieties - dandilion, chickweed, grass, clover, wild morning glory - and then edging the lawn where it meets what I've decided shall be a garden bed. I sprayed the weeds growing up through the gravel of the parking pad. I went so far as to sprinkle a weed deterent which will keep seeds from germinating and growing before I laid down mulch - consisting of ground trees which were once living and cut down by some other human being because they didn't like their placement or growth habit.

Am I taking on the qualities of a god in choosing what shall live and what shall die? Is this a decision I should be making, or should I let my backyard garden grow amuck? I've never seen a garden full of weeds and remarked, "That's beautiful!" but is that because I've been trained to see it as hideous? Am I really cultivating nature or destroying it as I rip out one thing and put something else more 'beautiful' in it's place?

I guess it comes back to that PVC pipe holding up the sapling. The robin sees no difference in a curved trunk or a straight one when she builds her nest. She's only concerned with the branches and any possible predators. My guess is that she does not alight on the limbs of this curved tree and chirp in disgust at its shape. Why not let the little tree lean inward toward campus instead of suffering its binding like I suffered through braces? Though I was happy for straight teeth, is this tree going to rejoice in being forced straight like all the other trees? I doubt it. I'm sure the campus squirrels will find it just as good to make a nest in as well.

If someone finds the tree untethered in the future... I left my wiresnips at home.

Garden Warrior

As I have mentioned, I live in a suburban neighborhood. All of the streets have sidewalks and most are lined with trees. Most yards are modest and landscaped with a few shrubs, a maple or two, and the average cast of annuals in the summer.

I've also noticed that most yards (that are well kept anyway) come with a gardener. This does not mean that every home hires out for a landscaper and gardener to tend their lawn (though many do on the richer side of town), but it does mean that in most households there is one person who does the gardening.

I am that person, and I contracted the urge to garden from my mother, a self-professed garden-warrior. To clarify, there are many classifications of gardeners. For instance, down the block the "Crazy Azalea Man" resides. His house is literally surrounded by azaleas and rhodedendrons in pinks and purples and whites and even orange. This elderly gentleman (easily in his 80s) comes out with pruners and carefully prunes the individual branches. He has each plant labeled with Genus and species. This is the meticulous type, careful and... well, pleasantly retired.

There is also the housewife variety. These are the women who don their wide-brimmed sun hats, their patterned gardening gloves, their cute white keds, and their little kneeling pad. They have a little garden cart with cute little hand trowels and their husbands teeter out to fill up their lemonade glass with a gleaming smile. Some are just happy to plant their petunias, but some are just as knowledgeable as "Crazy Azalea Man" and will in retirement take up similar habits. Many may already be studying Latin names of their shrubbery.

As I was saying, I've inherited the garden warrior gene from my mother. We don't wear gloves, and only occasionally use little hand trowels, usually opting for a heavy spade. When we go out to garden, we wear gardening clothes that consist of previously ripped garments, throw our hair back in a bandana or a headband and refuse to wear makeup. If we don't like a bed, we change it, mold it, destroy it, remake it. My mother is notorious for deciding to move entire shrubberies, hacking it down to a nub, digging it out with an iron, hauling it across her backyard, and placing it somewhere more appropriate. She's also notorious for busting out the chainsaw whenever someone mentions they don't like the shape of a tree.

Though I don't wield a chainsaw, I share her outlook on gardening and I decided to mulch for two days straight. I wore the rattiest jeans in the closet, a tank top for a tan. I tied my hair back in a bandana, and wore the mulch dust and dirt caked in a sweaty film like war paint. I edged the gardens with the spade, heaving the shovel into the turn and ripping out the sod that grew too close to the beds. I weeded them like an assassin, with a quick rip at all offenders, and busting out the trowel for the particularly nasty ones. Then, I dragged mulch from one corner of the yard to another with a tarp and a shovel. I used my bare hands to spread it in the garden beds and when I ran out of mulch, I wiped a damp rag on my face and went out to the home improvement center to get more. Yes. You've probably seen these gardening warriors, or at least sensed their smell with some sort of disgust dismissing them as landscapers, but we do exist. And, believe it or not, we usually know what we're talking about if you can't find a customer service representative.

And when we're done with our projects, moving shrubs, mulching, cutting down trees, we don't relax with a glass of lemonade. We generally opt for a beer.

The Ideal Home

The ideal home is anywhere I can sleep for 8 hours, wake up, and eat a decent breakfast. It’s somewhere close to where I work or it is where I work. The ideal home is within 10 minutes of the nearest town or a village, but is surrounded by farmland and paddocks full of horses. There’s a stableman who takes care of mucking the stalls.

I never have to clean the house. There are two full bathrooms, two bedrooms, a library, and a large kitchen. The dining room is unnecessary because we will always eat out on the back porch. There are no mosquitoes at this place, only friendly insects like lady bugs and fireflies.

There’s a garden filled with tomato plants and cucumbers that never catch blight. There are onions and fresh garlic in this garden too. Beyond the vegetable garden, there is a garden full of roses, climbers and shrubs alike, and in the fields that have not been converted to pasture, there are wildflowers that roam up the hillsides. One pasture is simply full of nothing but lavender plants. Beyond the hillsides are quaint trails meant for horseback riding through well kept woods.

Decomposition - Bloating

This is also known as putrefaction (according to wikipedia). Bloating is the second stage of decay. When a corpse has been sitting for more than 24 hours, it begins to bloat. This is the building of gases as bacteria eats away at the remains of the inside of the dead animal. Essentially bloating takes place in the abdomen of the creature, but sometimes it extends into the neck. I call this the “Teddy Bear” affect.
At first glance or if you’re speeding, the creature… let’s just say it’s a groundhog, looks like a stuffed animal. In fact, I distinctly remember hiking at girl scouts through cattails next to a lake one summer and seeing an old pillow in the distance which we wanted to explore. Our troop leader kindly explained it wasn’t a pillow much to our disgust. Anyway, as the animal bloats, it often turns to its back since gases rise in the abdomen, and it’s little paws stretch open like a teddy bear waiting for a hug.
I wouldn’t suggest hugging or popping the poor groundhog in “Teddy Bear” state. I have, however, heard a tale of someone choosing to release a groundhog from its expanded slumber. Two gentlemen, who we’ll just call Josh and Joe, were hooking school and happened upon a particularly plump groundhog lying on his back, dead eyes searching the sky. Unable to pass up this bulging sack of mischief, Josh and Joe decided to deflate said unfortunate with the rear passenger tire of their 1992 blue Geo Metro.
After arranging the vehicle in perfect alignment – tire to tummy – Josh and Joe shifted the Metro into reverse. The tire rolled slowly back until the ever famous and familiar ‘thump’ was felt followed immediately by ‘Ssss.’
In concert, both car doors shot open and the occupants of the Metro – our friends Josh and Joe – bailed out of the little blue compact flailing, coughing, and gagging in surprise and utter dismay. You see, the gasses of said “Teddy Bear” groundhog escaped the vessel and emanated into the undercarriage of the tiny Geo to be sucked into the ventilation and thus into the faces of the simple occupants.
This is the first lesson all must learn in regards to roadkill. Just because a creature is dead does not mean it is harmless. Just because the corpse looks like a teddy bear, doesn’t mean you should hug it either. In other words, while I will be taking time to observe roadkill in this piece, I will also always observe the rule to let bloated roadkill lay.

The Night - In Class Writing - Freewrite

When I think of the night, I think of a blanket of nothingness – a tapestry with artful glimpses, like pinholes, into some glowing beyond. I think of the moon in all her waxing and waning –when she is full, I can go outside without a flashlight.
When I think of the night, I think of raccoons and possum going through my garbage can. I think of lightning bugs and moths, and I think of mosquitoes getting caught in the luminescent bug zapper, setting it off in electrical snaps and jumps, mini-lightning bolt flashes.
When I think of the night, I think of Juliet pining for Romeo he is neither sun nor moon nor stars. I think of a Midsummer Night’s Dream. I think of the ghosts in Macbeth and the death of Desdemona in Othello.
When I think of the night, I think of passing through some alternate plain, lifting back some veil of knowledge and transforming into something else, anything else. I think of the cosmos. I think it inspired Einstein and Hawking to look beyond the norm all that was previously accepted.
When I think of the night, I think of hot cocoa and blankets in the back of a pickup, pointing at the Leonids, punch drunk laughing, and UFOs.
When I think of the night, I think of Jazz music in the sweltering streets of the French quarter, the smell of liquor and sweat mixing with the sewage vapors rising from storm drains in humid smotherings. I think of wild laughter.
When I think of the night, I think of Van Gogh’s paintings, a hazy suggested swirl, a foreground tree, and rooms always painted in the strangest colors. I think of heavy oil on canvas.

In an effort to escape...

There are reason s to want to escape into the wilderness. Upon some particularly bad news, I found myself yearning to rush out into the Appalachian Mountains with a pack strapped on my back, but a weather forecast and some rational thought kept me from camping in a tent on a mountain in the middle of thunderstorms.

Instead, we decided to tack up some horses and take a trail in. The knowledge of these creatures astounds me. My mount, TJ, a chestnut thoroughbred, eyed me up with a quick glance, assessing how green I was to the back of a horse, but once tacked, despite the tossing of his head, it was smooth riding.

The forest is always ten degrees cooler like a cellar, but the branches always reach out at riders, and TJ is never aware of the branches that reach out to snatch me from his back. It takes careful ducking and rein manipulation to keep from being ousted from the saddle.

The fields beyond the forest are so tall that the grass smacked at my boots. I cringed simply imagining the ticks which were waiting at the top of each tall blade to crawl onto my skin.

But the breeze cut through the blades and they undulated in beach-like waves towards us, and the cattle dogs cut in through the fronds and weaved with us in our cyclical path as we rounded toward our destination back at the barn.

It isn't until TJ decides to break into a trot that I realized I'm daydreaming about Jeff's brain tumor, and he yanks me back to reality as I jerk back his reins.

I'd like to run. I'd like to gallop across the fields carelessly, without a mind to the groundhog holes or the ticks, but in an English saddle I feel weak, insecure, and when be break back into the forest, there are so many branches to begin ducking again.