by Rick Bass
My own mortal knee was aching, and after resting a while longer, we climbed higher, scrambling over that exploded boulder field of seemingly random talus and erratic rubble, and on past more of those same map rocks, each one of which afforded us, I think, a brief glimpse behind the curtain.
Sometimes I wonder if it is not as if some timeless master artist—God, or gods, surely—bored perhaps by a lack of challenge with canvas and palette, decided to limit the next project to but one or two patterns or themes, and yet strove—and strives—to see how complex and miraculous a thing could be made from even the limitations of those one or two rules or laws or patterns. And that we the living are the beneficiaries of that magnificent force, magnificent creation. And are perhaps at least partially central, or perhaps not.
Did we come last in the story, in the metaphor, because we're special, and the shining one-law world was made for us? Or was there simply—barely—room and fit for one more thing, us, after all the other cracks and corners were filled with their various treasures of lives and minerals and flowing waters and crackling fires?
Were we added in at the end, again as if in some kind of bored test—or challenge—to see if, or for how long, we could sustain and preserve and protect the glory of that incredible creation, that pulsing palace, into which we have wandered?
Frightful questions, and I suspect that our answers might be guided as accurately by ancient instinct as by science; that sometimes a rock in the shape of a knee, a billion years before life, has as much to instruct us as any fossil, fern, or snail, or anything that once, briefly, possessed life.
Orange hawkweed in July, prefacing the color of the coming fire; orange and black checkerspot butterflies pollinating the hawkweed, sparks of fire now flying through the air, swirling in the breezes just over our heads. Orange and black ladybugs, in July, flocking to my picnic table to reconnoiter in the dappled shade of the alder, in a light so rich and subaqueous green, subaqueous gold, that it seems conceivable that the ladybugs are drinking in that light as they would a nectar. Orange and black visible, that one July day, in at least a few peeks and glimpses, orange flames skipping over the blackened char of the already burned, Halloween colors, orange and black, story and metaphor from substance once again; and once more, there is a part of me that catches the scent and sight of a greater, occasional sameness, and I have to wonder if sometimes, as with the elegant orange and black, the message isn't perhaps being simplified, so that even we, with our own crude senses, can "get it," as if in a beginner's paint-by-numbers kit.
Or if we do not "get it," at least we can take notice of it.
And why, then? Does it matter whether we take notice of these things? Why is our one eye for beauty so ill balanced with our other eye, the one that would seem to focus on the ability, the desires, to preserve and protect: to utilize the best of our hoarding, hunter-gatherer instincts? This is beautiful, this is desirable. Protect this, and this, and this.
What is our purpose, our fit in this world—to preserve and protect, or to destroy and consume and lay level? Does the plan, the force, that designed us know which we are—creators and protectors, or destroyers? Does it—that force—want us to be one way or the other?
And what is the purpose of such war within us? Is something forged and fitted by such strugglings—something graceful, and worthy of the world—or lost, in each of us as individuals, and as communities, and as a culture?
If so—and how could that thing not be called spirit —then why isn't it bright orange and black, brightly visible to even the most inattentive gaze or ponderer?
And yet it, that spirit, whether growing and developing within an individual or being worn down and disintegrating, does glow orange and black, at certain times and in certain seasons. It burns white hot; it glows cold blue. It shimmers and skips with green and gold light; it sleeps or rests in the hazy color of autumn-cut wheat stubble. It idles within us, possessing no more color than the fog breathed from our lungs, our mouths and nostrils, on a cold day, silver plumes trailing away in whichever direction the wind is blowing.
And these days that we have of living—not enough, but in such a wide world as this one, ample—are the only opportunity we have, the only chance, to strike the sparks that will ignite those colors and build that spirit.
I'm not saying I think we're central to the turnings of the world, or that it was created expressly as a proving ground—a tool chest, of sorts—for our spirits.
I am certain, however, of the sparkings, the ignition within that occurs, for instance, when I stare at a vase of sunflowers, or at an uncut field of them, staring as if mesmerized—and of the peace and ease that remains within me for some time afterward, for nearly as long as I will allow it to stay, burning quietly, slowly, comfortably. Traveling.
I'm fairly certain that these days in the living, walking around upright, noticing sunflowers, noticing children, noticing elk, noticing rain, are our best and probably only chance to light those fires within us, again and again. And that, as with a healthy forest fire, they can prune away the clutter and debris, the buildup of tangled twigs and branches, leaving the new forest, the old forest, cleaner and stronger.
And that's one of the wonderful things about a fire too, after it's swept past and cleaned up all the litter. There's a new start, a clean surface, and you can see so much farther. Things stand out more starkly; it's easier to notice.
Against a briefly blackened backdrop, every bit of returning color is noticeable, bit by bit, piece by piece. One yellow blossom, one blue bird. One emerald fern, one orange blossom, like a spark uncovered, a spark that never quite burned out. It all comes back. Life comes flowing back into a burned forest like water flowing downhill, summoned as if by a force as dense and specific and enduring as gravity itself.
So July is two things: its own sleeping summertime, suspended and whole, as round and complete and balanced as a full moon, and yet it is the second thing too, the steppingstone to the fire. There's still a little time left to be lazy, to be slow, though soon enough the mind, and one's actions, will need to quicken, and be more alert, less leisurely.
July's a time for lounging, when you can, if you can—for pausing to watch a young goldfinch wrestle with a buzzing dragonfly nearly its size, clipping with its beak the dragonfly's glittering lacy wings, and then like a savage eating the prehistoric insect one piece at a time, head, thorax, and abdomen, before flying quickly away, that little bit much more strengthened and fattened for the coming migration, leaving behind on the picnic table outside my window nothing but that twin pair of sequined dragonfly wings, the only clue to that sixty-second war.
But it's a time for beginning, already, to prepare for what's coming: to continue pulling those damn weeds, and to be picking up twigs and branches around the house—the fine fuels—and to be moving any flammable materials away from the house—lumber, fiberglass canoes, and so on—to be sweeping last fall's larch needles from the roof, and to be watching the weather reports. To keep the hoses rolled up and ready, attached to all the outside hydrants, and to be knocking back that summer-tall grass all around the house, with either a lawn mower or a swing.
Although it takes more time, I greatly prefer the latter. I love the sweeping scythelike motion, love the rhythm of it, and love the whispering, cutting sounds too, particularly in contrast to the two-cycle smoky roar of a lawn mower. The rhythmic murmur of the swing disturbs the birds down in the marsh, I like to imagine, no more than the wind itself, while the roar of a lawn mower would surely be displeasing to them.
Who am I kidding? Would surely be displeasing to me.
There's really nothing quite like it, swinging the blade through tall grass. When the blade is nice and sharp, you can feel it intimately, can feel in your arm and shoulder and all the way into the rest of your body the way the energy of the meadow changes, over the course of even a day, let alone a season.
With the same swing, day after day, you can tell the difference between high overhead
sun and cooling green evening, just by the way the grass falls. It cuts easiest, falls softer, in the evening—lying down quietly in bundles and sheaves—whereas the midday cuts are ragged and resisting, and the grass scatters wildly in all directions. I would have guessed differently—the opposite. Is the grass still growing midday, so that you're disrupting that force? Is it resting in the evening? Where does the water go? What balance or relationship exists between the roots underground and the waving blades of grass above, and how does that change with the weather? Right after a rain, the grass is heavy, and harder to cut. If you can afford to wait, it's nicest to cut it right in that first cooling of evening, when it's dry—though by mid-July, or the third week of July, you're definitely starting to ease into that quickening of the current where it might be best not to wait but to go ahead and cut the tall grass around the house, whether raggedly or gracefully. Where the most ragged thing of all might be not to acknowledge that current.
There is rarely a set day for any of these whirrings, or any of these relationships, much less the relationships within the relationships, but this year, on the twenty-fifth of July, I look out my window for the first time that morning and notice, as if with the focus one gives a ringing alarm clock, or some shouted beckon, that there is complete leaf interlock between the alders, just outside my window.
Each day, the light coming through my window has become greener and shadier, more dappled and cooler; and my corresponding view of the brighter, wind-waving marsh beyond, a softer green (against the dark blue of the old spruce forest beyond), has grown smaller and more kaleidoscoped each day, until finally, this day, the twenty-fifth, some last growth has fanned the alder leaves into the last available light, and the mesh and interbranching of them has clicked fully into position.
And enveloped deliciously by them, it seems to me that they have achieved a moment of earned rest; that though the solstice, the balance of light, was almost five weeks ago, only now has some balance or peak of growth—of heat, perhaps, and the exhalation of nutrients from this rich site—been reached.
And as with mountain climbers who have ascended some daunting and glorious summit (and who will be descending not along the same route but rather a back side familiar from all the previous descents, yet also daunting despite that intimacy), the alders, on the twenty-fifth of this year, seem to me to be spending a brief window of time paused at that summit, taking in the balanced view.
Very soon—tomorrow, perhaps—they will need to start down the mountain, but this one day, they seem to be hanging poised; and the world, this world, seems inflated, as saturated with life and growth as it possibly can be.
Is it this way for every living thing residing in the bowl of this landscape? Are the larch likewise holding their breath, having also reached the summit, and are now gathering their thoughts and preparing to loosen their energies and begin the same slow descent, their vivid green needles, previously almost fluorescent, starting to dull toward the ultimate lovely gold and bronze and orange of the fall? Has the landscape itself taken one last long, full breath and is now preparing—the next day, or the next—to exhale?
Such a model or pattern is pleasing to consider, and yet the thought itself possesses a life no longer than a moment's rest, a held breath, for I remember almost immediately that it is not this way for the bears, who will later be entering hyperphagia, gorging on berries in order to put on as much fat as possible prior to winter's hibernation; and that the antlers of the deer, elk, and moose are still wrapped in the blood-filled nourishing tissue of velvet, still growing.
But for the vegetative world—the underpinning of life—perhaps it is this held-breath way, for the huckleberries are fruiting and beginning to fill with sugar and color; their leaves too have stopped growing as they now pour their energy into seed production, wrapping their seeds in luscious, desirable packages for greater dissemination into the great wide world, and the coming years...
And it makes me wonder, if there is indeed a summit or held-breath moment for the vegetation in a landscape—a specific construct of invisible formula and cant, like some vast unseen complexity of hidden wires and planes and arcs and angles and movements and countermovements, both subtle and large—then could there likewise be such a moment for even the underpinning of the vegetation: an earlier, similar moment for the sun-warmed soil, and even the ancient shield of rock itself? The stony mountains loosening slightly, stretching and expanding in the heat, and weathering in the summer thunderstorms: releasing their ironclad nutrients grain by grain. Heat waves rising in shimmers from the slick-rock domes and crests of glacier-scalped mountaintops, as if, in that moment, they are burning, coming back to life after only a billion years of rest: as if it all has been but as a nap.
I can't see the marsh grass through this day's final interlock of alder leaf, but with the window open, I can hear it rustling in the wind; and even the grass sounds a little different, as those spirited, swirling winds pass through it.
I rise and walk over to the other window so that I can see out into the marsh. I watch the patterns of the dry west wind spreading and fanning and parting the high, luxuriant sheaves of marsh as if searching idly for something misplaced, if not hiding—something left behind, is what it seems like.
The graceful rhythm of the wind, a thousand rivers of wind sweeping across and braiding and unbraiding and rebraiding the marsh, caressing the grass, sounds only slightly different this morning—a little drier, a little more rattly—but otherwise the visual patterns of those rivers of wind seem little changed: as if I am mistaken and that today they do not hold somehow in their essence the coming secret, if not quite a betrayal, of their departure.
Or betraying July while shifting allegiance to August.
It is no betrayal. It is only a fullness: a thing being completed. You can hear it out there in the marsh, for the first time, on this one day.
It's still early enough in the summer that you can turn away from it. You can tune it out if you want to. You can go back and lie in the hammock a while longer. But it's out there, rustling beneath the drying grass and among the reed nests of the rails and blackbirds, like tiny mice scampering through the drying husks of the grass itself.
And what of our own seasons, both external and internal, physical and emotional, or spiritual? In this too are we obstinate, resolutely individual, with some of us reaching full breath early, others midlife, and still others, on the last day, in the first darkness of the last evening, in the last breath, the last thought?
How we must seem to the rest of the natural world like random scattered leaves blowing across the landscape, in all seasons: not like matrix or foundation or centerpiece, but like filler, like dust, seeking to rest and finally fit between the cracks of all the other existing systems of grace. Perhaps this identity, more than any other, explains our restlessness, our almost ceaseless motion.
Perhaps this identity—our whirlingness—helps explain also our deep affinity for stone, and tradition, and regularity, and enduring-ness—the things we have not yet earned—though how we might ever earn them, other than by letting go and releasing ourselves as if into some current, I could not say; neither could I guess as to where such a current might be found, either within us or without.
How else to consider the slight components of both comfort and loneliness that attend to our watching of the movements of a flowing river, or a wavering fire, or even the movements of the gusting summer wind passing through tall grass?
After twenty years of listening and watching and hiking around and hunting—twenty youthful years, no less—we're starting to learn some things about this valley. We'll never know enough, or even a fraction of what we'd like to; but we know, for instance, or believe that we know, where the wild strawberries are sweetest, in the tiny little lanes and clearings no larger than a house, where little patches of soft, filtered, damp light fall down from the midst of the old-growth larch forests, little clearings where the snowshoe hares come out (despite the protestati
ons of timber company biologists who say the rabbits, and their primary predators, lynx, don't live in the old forests) to nibble on those new sweet berries, in July.
Late in July, we like to try to get into some of those patches just before the legions of rabbits do, and pick a little basket of berries. The girls have a tiny doll's basket (the berries are no larger than the nub of a pencil eraser, but contain more sweetness within them, concentrated, than an entire bushel of the supermarket mega-irradiated jumbo giants), and because I'm red-green colorblind, I can't find the tiny strawberries and have to rely on the girls to do the harvest.
They're delighted by my weakness, and by their sharp-eyed superiority, and delighted also, as junior hunter-gatherers, to be providing for me. We all three have little baskets—in the dimming blue light of dusk, I absolutely can't find a single one—and from time to time the girls take pity, and come over to where I'm searching, down on my hands and knees, and drop a few into my basket.
And as is their habit, they eat far more than they pick, not even really hunter-gatherers but more like wild animals, feasting in the moment, letting their bodies do the hoarding rather than jars or cabinets—the girls more a part of the forest, in that manner, in that moment—and by the time it is too dark to see well and we walk back toward our truck, our baskets have barely enough strawberries to drop into our pancake batter the next morning. But they will be memorable pancakes, and it will be enough.
Just as we reach the truck some friends come driving by, and they stop to visit for a while in the dusk, with the old sentinel larches so immense all around us. Their children are grown now, and they reminisce about picking wild strawberries with their children, when their children were Mary Katherine's and Lowry's ages.