Systems are fully defined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved. We are predictable based on our initial conditions.Chaos theory. Funny name for a theory about predictable outcomes within a system.
It seemed to me that Maze and I were inside such a system, fully defined by its initial conditions. His loss fueled his need. My loss fueled my reluctance.
***
Before we set up camp for our last night, we stepped into the river to wash off the paint that covered our bodies. We used sponges we had brought to clean our mess kits. We soaped them up and took turns cleansing each other with the cold bubbly water. I had expected us to giggle and tease but this process took hold of us and we washed quietly in the river as if at a christening of some kind. We stood knee deep in the river on a bed of pebbles that sloshed under our feet as we moved about. The paint came off easily in streaks of color that slid into the water as if we were working in washes on a wet canvas. It flowed away from each of us, now red, now lilac, now dark blue, now green and yellow, this last from the sunflowers on Roz. And strangely the color did not dissipate as one would expect but each band remained a separate stream of color in the dark, clear water. I thought of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic and the Humboldt Current in the Pacific, currents that remain separate from the surrounding sea, each carrying abundant life that depends on the environment within its particular water. The Gulf Stream with its warm water and the Humboldt with its low salinity, how cleverly the planet protects life and provides for its renewal.
We were all sorry to see the paint mix with the water and flow away from us. We had, for a short time perhaps, become something other than ourselves, beings not so tied to the outward skin we had inherited. Now, in the washing off, we reverted back to our own skin, our own images of our bodies. Still, we had more paint. And limitless imagination. We dressed quickly. I don’t think any of us thought we looked better without the body paint, but maybe we felt a certain release because of it.
We made supper, fresh shucked ears of sweet corn, rice and beans, Erica’s wheat and walnut bread with strawberry jam and the bottle of tequila I had stashed in the duffel along with lemons and salt.
We did some shots and pretty soon we were all giggling over nothing at all and then Hope’s expression turned serious and she wagged her finger at all of us, one by one and said, “I vow to all you girls that by the next time we get together I will no longer be the same.”
“I think that’s a euphemism,” Roz poked me in the rib.
“I think you’re right,” I poked her back.
“Well I vow that by the next time you all see me I will be pregnant,” Charlene sounded a little more drunk than the rest of us.
We all howled and I said, “You already are pregnant.”
“Then if you’ve decided to have the baby, you should stop drinking,” Erica told her. “Here, I’ll take your glass.” She reached out to grab it but Charlene pulled her arm away.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said. “This is my last party as a non mother.” Her neck snapped back loosely and her eyes rolled a little.
“Anyone else made any decisions?” She asked and looked around the group.
“I’ve decided to stop drinking tequila,” I said. “And to put you girls to bed.”
Sometime later, I don’t know why, maybe it was the hooting of an owl, perhaps the squawk of a heron, or maybe rustling leaves as a breeze swept past my tent, but something awakened me in the night. The moon was no longer visible. I remembered it had been bright when we crept into our tents, a bit loopy from tequila. And the forest had been strangely quiet. Erica was sleeping on her side, turned away from me.
I could hear the river. It was a peaceful sound. Steady and soft. Far in the distance I thought I heard the rumble of something but it was not clear enough to tell what it was. Certainly we were too far downriver from the railroad trestle to hear any trains. A thunderstorm dozens of miles away perhaps, although I saw no flashes of lightning.
It was not unusual for me to waken during the night, leave the coop to pee in the grass, or just sit at the barn door and look at the stars. So I fumbled around next to my sleeping bag until I felt the small flashlight I had put there before going to sleep. Trying to be as quiet as possible, I slid into my creek shoes and crawled out of the tent into the night air, surprised by the difference between the closeness inside the tent and the cool air on the outside.
I stood and walked as quietly as possible to the edge of the woods where I squatted to pee in some undergrowth. I shined the light around in an arc but saw nothing unusual. Night shapes were always mysterious and a little ominous, yet there was a tranquility to being the only person awake while the night creatures wandered the woods. I knew there must be raccoons and possum, or fox roaming nearby. The scent of people would likely keep them away. There could be black bears but they would only come around if they smelled food and were used to foraging in this spot. Still I watched for signs of bears, which was not easy to do with no moonlight. I wondered if it had indeed set, if it was that late. But I saw no indication of sunrise and I thought I couldn’t have been asleep too long.
I was not the least tired. Whatever had stirred me had not yet receded. I wandered over to the canoes by the river and waited until my eyes became accustomed to the dark. I sat backwards in the bow of the nearest one facing the water with my feet propped up on the thwart. This was our last night together. Tomorrow would be the last day. Then it was back to the farm, the coop, my work, the garden, and Maze. I had not made any decision. It seemed foolish, sitting there in the canoe, staring at the dark water flowing past me, that I had even entertained the thought that I would gain some sort of clarity during three days on the Trout River. Foolish and naïve.
The air had become heavy. I thought it was because dew was falling, a mysterious event to me, the air letting go its moisture during the night to cover the earth. The air was still. No leaves moved, no tree branches swayed. It was as if the night was waiting, holding its breath.
As I sat there alone, the night sounds came into focus. There was the river, whooshing past, sometimes gurgling. A fish snapped at something on the water’s surface. From somewhere frogs croaked to each other. And there was the music of crickets chirping along with katydids. The forest and the river had a secret nighttime life. I heard it all but I couldn’t quite hear my own voice telling me what to do. Not yet.
***
The first boom of thunder woke me from a deep sleep. I was back in the tent zipped up in my sleeping bag. A crack of lightning followed almost immediately. A second ground trembling rumble of thunder woke Erica, too.
“What’s going on?” Erica’s voice was raspy from sleep.
“It’s a thunderstorm.”
I reached forward and pulled the tent flaps open just as another bolt lit the night like a strobe – a flash and then a shorter flash – just for an instant. A long rumble of thunder followed.
“I can’t tell if it’s coming toward us or going away from us.”
Thunder rolled and rolled until it finally faded out and then another bolt hit, bam, very close with the clap almost immediately following. It seemed to be all around us.
When the lightning flashed Erica flinched. “Are we okay in the tent?”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine. Probably just a passing thunderstorm. It’ll be over soon.”
But then another bolt struck and I heard the patter of raindrops on the tent. Lightly at first. Just a slight tapping. A summer storm, no more.
I aimed the flashlight out at the night sky. Not nearly dawn. I thought about the heaviness of the air when I was sitting in the canoe earlier. So this is what it was, an approaching storm.
Across from our tent, Charlene was looking out with her flashlight. Our beams crossed and she yelled to me.
“So what’s this? Should we take the tents down or what?”
“I don’t know how long it’ll last. I think we should hang tight the way we are.”
; A third beam crossed ours as Valerie emerged from the tent she was sharing with Hope.
“Hey,” she started to say but an enormous bolt struck somewhere on the other side of the river, followed by a rumble of thunder and a huge crack as another bolt lit up the night.
“Oh my God,” she yelled. “What happens if a tent gets hit?”
“Don’t get crazy,” I called to her. And she ran to our tent.
The patter of rain became a drumbeat, louder and more ferocious. I knew the wind would follow. In the darkness of night, it was impossible to tell how big a storm this was going to be. I tried to pick up cues from the sounds but it was no use. We would have to ride it out the best we could. Before I could think about anything else Hope came running across the leafy ground, barefoot, in her pajamas. She pushed her way past me and collapsed on my sleeping bag. “I hate storms.”
With the next flash of lightning she cuddled against Erica like a child and hid her face. Erica put her arms around Hope, who disappeared into Erica’s large frame until they became one.
“It’ll be over soon.” I tried to sound comforting but it came out a bit rougher than I intended, more like a command than a reassurance.
Rain started splattering now, and I could hear that it had reached enough mass that it was also running rapidly off the trees. I had observed this process many times from the coop. Rain falls. It hits the tree leaves. For a while it doesn’t reach the ground. Finally, if it rains hard enough or long enough, the leaves grow heavy and turn down. The rain falls off the leaves and more rain can’t collect on them.
Pattering turned to drumming. Drumming turned to a steady loud hum. And then I heard the unmistakable sound of clicking and I knew it had begun to hail.
Charlene appeared at our tent flaps, followed immediately by Roz. Now we were all crowded together so that if there was a lightning strike, it could hit us all. I was about to say something about at least spreading out to three in two tents but outside the wind picked up and when I pointed the flashlight at the trees I could see the branches bending sideways in the wind and then one of the tents upended and rolled over and over until it wedged on its side against a tree. One zipper flap waved wildly, smacking against the tree trunk
“It’s just a thunderstorm. It will pass quickly. Nothing’s going to happen.” It sounded confident but everyone knew I had no idea what was coming.
Erica rummaged in her small duffel and pulled out a little battery radio. We tried to get a local station but could only hear static so we switched it off to save the battery.
The wind picked up, lightning flashed all around us, rumbles of thunder roared one on top of the other in an endless kettle drumming crescendo. The hail stopped but rain pelted the tent in enormous drops and we could hear the trees swaying like a giant thresher going around and around. The tent was still dry inside but outside rivulets of water were now flowing freely toward the river in a swirling soup of leaves, branches, and mud. I watched out a crack in the tent flap, as the wind whipped around and the treetops bent down.
Charlene and I decided to make a dash to the canoes to drag them back from the river and turn them over to protect whatever we could. By that time our food, equipment, clothes, and whatever else we had left in the canoes had been pummeled by the rain. But we reasoned it was all in duffels or cans and would not have been ruined yet so we had to try before it was really too late. We pulled on our creek shoes, grabbed two flashlights, and with our heads down, we slid through the tent flaps out into the storm.
There’s something about wind and rain hitting you at the same time that seems to get to your bones. Like you have no skin. The transition from the warmth of bodies together in the tent to that howling wind and rushing rain hit us like a cruel wave. And it kept coming. Beneath my feet the ground had turned to such mush it was hard to move forward. With every step it felt as if my creek shoes were pulling me down.
Charlene kept her flashlight steady in front of us but I couldn’t hear anything she said above the wind and pounding rain. We tried to run but it was impossible.
We stopped at the first canoe, and I yelled.
“Let’s drag another one next to this and store the stuff from both in one then turn it over and put the stuff under it.”
She couldn’t hear half of what I yelled so I made hand motions and she nodded. We dragged another one so they sat side by side. We transferred everything into one of them then we dragged the third up away from the river.
I didn’t say anything to Charlene but when I reached the last canoe I scanned my flashlight beam out over the water. It was starting to rise. And flowing very fast. Streams of water and mud ran past my feet onto what had been the dry riverbank. The bank where that afternoon we had pulled out had now disappeared under rising water. This meant the storm was moving from upriver of us, down to us. We were at its leading edge and there was no telling how long it would last.
We had to drag the canoes farther away into the woods where there was no mud so we could hide the gear under the overturned canoes. By the time we finished we were completely soaked through, our hair hanging, dripping water as if we were standing under a shower. We slogged our way back to the tent and backed in one at a time, taking our shoes off outside the tent flaps. The others dried us with towels. We were both shivering.
“How bad is it?” Hope wanted to know.
“Bad,” was all Charlene said.
I didn’t mention the river. I was calculating our food and water supply. No way would we be able to boil that river water now. There would be no fire for cooking breakfast. It was a different river now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE STORM
I don’t know when I fell asleep or if we all drifted off at the same time. Somehow, even with the storm pounding us, we got so tired that we couldn’t resist closing our eyes. Bunched together like puppies in a basket we huddled in the small tent through it all. I suppose the storm abated after a while and that allowed us some peace. I was chilled through and my feet felt like they’d been in a tub of ice. It was good to feel the warmth of other bodies against mine after the struggle to secure the canoes and all our gear, fighting against the wind and rain.
I slept deeply at times, at others I woke abruptly at a sharp crack or perhaps only a dream of one. Breaking branches, I thought dimly, and went back to sleep.
In the morning there was no dawn chorus. I peered out from between the tent flaps like a wary animal. It seemed that the whole forest had erupted since yesterday. It had the violent look of a battle scene. Branches littered the ground. Some stuck straight up in the air, some stacked one atop the other, their leaves all askew, hanging down with their undersides, bright green with a whitish tint, exposed.
One large tree limb had cracked and was hanging suspended just over the canoes. It looked like the tiniest breeze might dislodge its tenuous connection to the tree trunk, sending it crashing down. I thought I should move the canoes but what if the branch crashed down on me? Leaves and small branches covered everything in a disordered maze.
“What a night.”
Valerie sat up, stretched, yawned.
“Shhh.” Roz put a finger to her lips. “What’s that sound?”
“What sound? It’s blessedly quiet after that horrible storm,” Charlene sat up and pulled at the tent flap.
“What is that sound?” Erica asked.
I had heard it, too. And I knew what it was, that sound I would never forget.. Exactly as I had heard it years ago.
I pushed at the tent flaps and pulled on my creek shoes.
We all tumbled out of the tent and saw it at the same time. The raging river. Gushing past just grazing the edge of one canoe. A large tree limb had fallen over it during the night and landed upside down, with the underside of the leaves facing the sky so they looked pale and strange. It couldn’t have happened too long ago because the leaves were not yet wilted.
Hope picked her way through the rubble and branches until she stood at the river’s edge. I
followed close behind and we stood there, arms crossed, very still. What had been a peaceful, lazy, clear stretch of water was now a roiling, muddy, torrent. For the first time on this trip I was afraid. Not because I thought we couldn’t survive out here. But because I felt such a strong urge to ride this river.
“I had no idea a river could change so much,” Hope said.
Charlene and Roz tried to pull the canoe back from the water. The branch groaned. Pulling got them nowhere. They dragged a heavier branch over and stuck it under the end of the branch lying on the canoe, then wedged this under the heavier one and using it as a lever were able to lift the branch off the canoe. Then we all tied a rope around the higher end and pulled it back and away long enough to drag the canoe out from under it. When we were done we just stood there in a kind of daze.
“Oh God,” said Valerie. “The stuff’s all mangled and soaked.”
For the first time we looked around. It was as if a bomb had detonated all around us. Trees had been cracked in half. They hung one atop the other, branches tilted at odd angles, leaves askew. Some trees just a little way from where we had slept were twisted at the top like a giant had wrung them out and tossed the tops away. Rivers of mud had swept past the tent leaving deep crevices and piles of leaves behind. Broken branches littered the ground. Where we had made a fire was now a mud bog. And past it all flowed the relentless river, churning, brown, opaque where the day before it had been clear and placid.
The Naked Gardener Page 13