Two poems and an essay from
In the Chesnim Country
~
The Nature of Fear
You ask
if I was ever afraid up there,
alone for weeks and so far
from anybody.
A few times, yes.
Mostly I was studying
joy, reading and writing
in the company of mosquitoes
and quiet pine trees.
But once, out hiking,
I heard a dry branch snap close by,
then a chuffing grunt, and the sudden thought
bear
set my blood pumping.
And one night
I was startled awake—coyotes howling
mighty close—
though after my heart calmed I realized
what a fine trick that was.
The only time
I was dead frightened—
crazy, in fact, I wished I’d had a gun—
was when I woke up at something like 3 a.m. and heard
coming slow down the gravel road
a car.
* * *
The Cabin at Billy Meadows
Call it working-class
Craftsman-style
this Forest Service cabin
the CCC built
in 1937
beside the meadow
in mixed conifer forest in far
northeastern Oregon.
Open the heavy, double-plank front door
with the hand-forged strap hinges
the shape of tall fir trees
and enter the living room—
fir floors, pine paneling
ceiling of clear pine boards
and clear battens
like being inside a tree.
To your right
is a built-in sideboard
of clear pine
with glass-panel cabinet doors
with black butterfly hinges and drawer pulls.
At the other end
is a massive stone fireplace
made of local basalt
the pine-slab mantle
blackened with smoke.
Call it
government work
all the lumber
logged and milled
right here
everything built in place
by young indigents
learning a trade
as the world convulsed
into war.
The panes of all
the double-hung windows
still tightly glazed
the sashes
still tied to their counterweights
with sash-cord somebody
put good knots in
seventy-two years ago
the window
above the desk
glides right open.
* * *
The Squeal of Silence
To savor the shiver of a breeze through aspen leaves, or the zither of flies and bees, or the beeping of chickadees—that’s what I’m here for. The sounds of this place are delicious, and I hear more of them the quieter I get. Quiet is never just for its own sake. Quiet is the germ of all things audible.
I’m at a Forest Service cabin in far northeastern Oregon, a place called Billy Meadows. For the first four days I shared the place with a bunch of friends, then they all left and the place became blessedly mine. In their absence fresh sounds emerge—the skitter of bird-feet on the roof, the wing-hum of hoverflies.
Quiet is my watchword. I’m getting quieter by the day, tiptoeing around the cabin, easing the doors open and closed. I roam the woods in search of elk every morning, but I have not yet seen a one. Moths, chickadees, squirrels, yes. A fawn and a doe one morning in the meadow. But no elk.
I read and write for hours a day, and hike the gravel roads through the forest and open meadows, and I’m mostly productive and very happy here. But tiptoeing around isn’t quite working. I’m trying too hard to be quiet, and the effort itself turns mere sounds into noise. There’s a pine by the front door with a dry branch that screeches in any breeze. The dripping of the kitchen sink starts to irritate me. The whine of a mosquito rubs a nerve.
Late afternoon of my fourth day alone, I’m reading on the porch, when a chickaree scampers into the nearest pine and starts barking at me. I haven’t moved suddenly, haven’t budged but for turning book pages, haven’t made a sound. Why this squirrel lights into me, I have no idea, but now, in his simple, straightforward vocabulary, he gives me hell. He barks and barks, recoiling a little with each vocal detonation. I try to ignore him, drawing on days of quiet composure. I keep to my reading, willing my mind to float on its own pool of silence.
But, tell me, how long can a chickaree keep up that barking? What is the longest time a human has endured the scolding of a squirrel?
After a mere ten minutes of being harangued, I broke.
“Shut your yap!” I shouted.
The chickaree clenched and gulped, scrambled to the backside of the pine trunk, then emerged a moment later on a branch higher up. He barked a few more times without conviction, then began to worry a nut.
I was ashamed of my outburst, but pretty soon I began to feel lighter, disburdened, the way you feel when you tell a friend about something embarrassing you’ve done. It was a relief to put my little neurosis out there in the world. After that I knocked around the cabin more casually. I had been an extra-careful visitor, but now I felt at home. I could still open the front door with barely a sound, and always, when I stepped out onto the porch, I quietly scanned the meadow for elk, deer, coyotes. But I also started singing aloud more often, and I didn’t fret about rattling dishes in the kitchen.
On the evening of my sixth day alone, I took my guitar onto the front porch. I was banging chords and singing This Land Is Your Land, when I heard some high-pitched squeals—coyotes, maybe. But then more voices joined in—weird wailing and grunting. Elk! A bunch of them, and coming closer. A minute later, I heard also a clattering sound, like water rushing over stones—a clamor of hooves on gravel—and a huge herd of elk, more than two hundred of them, poured down the road into the meadow. What an uproar! The calves bawled for their mothers, the cows called back, the bulls barked out orders, all in squeals and grunts and moaning expectorations. I sat quiet at first, afraid I might spook them. But then I strummed the guitar a little, and hummed a ragged harmony while the elk grazed loudly in the meadow.
I sat on the porch for hours that evening, home at last. A sense of belonging like that brings an inner quiet that coexists with the sounds of place. It’s different from tiptoeing around hoping to have a trophy experience, more like a gentle detachment from the constant commentary of one’s ego. Sometimes the nights here have seemed so quiet I imagined I could hear the sizzle of starlight piercing the atmosphere. That raucous jawboning of the elk, on the other hand, rivaled the noise of a marching band. Maybe quiet can happen at any decibel level.
--first published in High Country News
Three Dispatches from Going to Seed
Calico
Sixteen years old and crippled with arthritis, she couldn’t have weighed more than a half gallon of milk. Her cloudy eyes oozed a milky fluid. We talked about putting her down, but if you scratched her behind the ear, she would purr until she couldn’t catch a breath. And she’d still hobble over to the dish for her kibbles.
This morning, I found her on her pillow, cold and empty, lighter than a bird. My wife wrapped her in a scrap of wool tartan, and I went to dig a grave between the lilacs. My first shovel of earth came up full of new potatoes, the size of eggs.
I know nothing about the transmigration of souls, but I made potato salad for supper, and we talked about what kind of bird a cat might become.
Drip
The nurse swabs antiseptic on my knee. It smells like spinach with lime. My stomach rumbles. “Hungry are we?” she asks. I can’t see her mouth behind the mask, so I stare right into her eyes, and she stares back.
The first time they reamed out this knee, I watched it on the video screen. The bone was whiter than teeth. There was hardly any blood. The surgeon told us his favorite marinade for grilled snapper—lemon, paprika, and ginger—while his tiny pneumatic scissors trimmed my meniscus.
Now the anesthesiologist slides an IV needle into my arm. “What’ll it be this time—the epidural or the full monte?” Suddenly I remember—I left the drip irrigation running in the garden. Shit. Too late to call home. If the potatoes get scab, I’ll kick myself.
Wild Geese
I’m picking beans when the geese fly over, Blue Lake pole beans I figure to blanch and freeze. Maybe pickle some dilly beans. And there will be more beans to give to the neighbors, forcibly if necessary.
The geese come over so low I can hear their wings creak, can see their tail feathers making fine adjustments. They slip-stream along so gracefully, riding on each other’s wind, surfing the sky. Maybe after the harvest I’ll head south. Somebody told me Puerto Vallarta is nice. I’d be happy with a cheap room. Rice and beans for every meal. Swim a little, lay on the beach.
Who are you kidding, Charles? You don’t like to leave home in the winter. Spring, fall, or summer either. True. But I do love to watch those wild geese fly over, feel these impertinent desires glide through me. Then get back to work.
Charles Goodrich ©2007 |
