Chapter 11

Found in the woods

Buster bounded along besides me, always running a bit ahead in order to see where we were going, but then looking back to see that I was following on my short, stocky legs.

"Come on, come on - howya doin' there, eh?" Buster panted, his long tongue giving him some relief from all the heat he had pent up inside by running. His coat always was too thick in summer and too thin in winter, although he seemed to survive well enough. By spring he had put on another layer of fat, but it took until August to lose it all again.

He had slowed down a little and was just standing there, while I worked to catch up with him, my own breath starting to come in pants. I shouldn't have tried to run all that way - or needed practice running.

We were in the pasture next to the House. Pa grew grass here, clover and fescue on one side, alfalfa on the other. We were told to stay out of the alfalfa, since it bent over the grass and made it not grow so well afterwards.

For now, we walked - both panting a bit - on the trail meant for both tractors, trucks and animals which edged the boundaries of the field and a small pond tucked in a corner of it.

Buster left this cropped space to dive into the tall grasses surrounding the pond. I followed.

"Mmmm - smell that? Not that my friends have been out here, but that particular smell is the water and the cattails. Muskrats eat cattails and will come here tolive if you give them the change. Over there - your dad filled that hole they left, or tried to. He used good topsoil instead of clay, so it didn't work exactly. When it gets too full, it drains out the bottom like a filter. The whole bank went down because of muskrats burrowing in the bank, then water and erosion doing the rest. Muskrats are bad for the dams man makes.

"Another thing - look there. What do you see. Trees. Trees aren't so good for a bank either. That's why muskrats live in the banks. They can burrow in the tree roots. So get rid of trees, get rid of cattails. That's what a man needs to do if he wants to keep his dam.

"Same thing with alfalfa. Replant it every three years. Plow it up. Plant it into corn, plant new alfalfa. That alfalfa is too old. Not supposed to be much good for cattle. But then cattle will live on just about anything if you left them to it.

"Prairie grass will grow with no fertilizer, no plowing, leaving the land sweet and ripe. But it takes more care to grow and won't make as much hay. Have to cut it tall. Has more than 100 species of plants in it. Lasts forever once you start growing it - but you have to kill out the fescue 0 that's a killer weed to the prarie grass - it'll kill it out."

All this Bowser said without opening his mouth. We sat there on that bank in the beautiful spring dawn, listening to the insects buzz, the bees flying to their flowers and straight back to their hives. All the trees around us kept a low chorus in time with the wind. They sang the songs of older days than I had known, they sang of life not yet grown, of histories and cultures - that the two-legged creature man had left on the land, that others before them had passed down to them in the same songs.

The cattails took this song up. Theirs was one of annual growth and rebirth, different from the trees who only sang more slowly during winter - not sleeping but almost.

We watched the birds as they flit from branch to branch to ground to branch. There's was a more audible song. One of an even shorter life, but one which told of cousins which flew long to the south and then back long to the north. Humming bees, geese, ducks, egrets. They told of the summer humidity and swamps, as well as the long, ever long days of the north where the insects were fat and swarmed as clouds, of their ancestors who made this route and told them of it, taking them in their first year of life.

Insects sang a different song. Theirs was a busier time, faster, more work to do, more work to do. They had jobs in the land, of making the dead trees into soil, of taking the tough oak leaves and helping the bacteria turn them into dark compost which the worms would burrow through and around, so that other plants could make this into green leaves again, so that other trees could take these foods into their roots and up through the innerbark up, up into the sky again where God would touch it and bless it as leaves so that it could return to the soil again. Thus did the insects and worms and bacteria recieve God's blessing for the work they did.

"Funny how noizy it is out here, eh?" Buster was grinning at me. "If you sit for awhile and just notice things around you, there isn't any lack of entertainment to be had. Most two-leggeds won't sit still very long. They have to be in motion, have to be doing something. You at least will walk out here with me. More just zoom by in their cars and trucks.

"Not that I don't like riding. I like the backends of trucks where I can sit and listen and smell all the alive Land sending out their songs and filling the spaces in my nostrils and ears with an intense chorus of living. It's like these people who listen with their loud music on all the time. Behind their cabs of steel and glass, it is too quiet, so they turn on their music and talking heads to fill their spaces in their ears and head with other thoughts and plastic filler so that they do not have to sing with the Land, so that they can forget who they are and why they are."

Silent again, we listened to all the world around us.

"Hear that? That? Right there -- that is the song of the earth. It is the hardest song to listen for. Sometimes it is better to just find a bare patch of ground or a hard rock and lay on it to here. It is the sound of sleep, you hear it in your sleep. Low, low notes and melody which helps you to sleep. The burrowing of the worms is just accent, the high notes. But really listen deep and you will hear a history which man-the-two-footed doesn't hear or want to hear.

"Sometimes we here the two-footeds radio talk of the 'native' two-footeds who came before them. But these two-footeds were still just man, as you are. There were two-footeds before them and these both after and before the ice. And before them.

"You see, time doesn't mean as much as living does. Living has its history to learn from. On this land you can see both good and bad living. But living is now, as well as past. You can take the past to tell you more about the now. You are living in different times from your parents. But you learn from your parents.

"One day you will write a book about this and tell other two-footeds what I tell you, what the Land tells you. Some will think you crazy, others will consider your thoughts, your words and see what they can learn from them. These last are the wise ones, or at least they are trying to be wise.

"Do we four-footeds have more to learn? Yes. I help you and you feed me. But I am here to help you learn. My old ancestors always helped your kind to learn. For I can smell the land and listen to the songs in the wind and sing my songs with my barking and whining. You can learn from these, even though you outlive me in body."

He rose and I followed. He found a trail through the shrubby, sticky, weeding pond bank and I followed.

It was interesting to see how his fur shed the stickies and cockleburs which clung to my cotton shirt but not to my denim pants, clung to my socks but not to my shoes.

"That is because you wore some right, some wrong fur today. You clean your clothes with machines, we clean them with our tongues, teeth and claws. Those who went before you would wear high leather boots and even high leather or canvas chaps which would cover their canvas pants. This was because they rode where the plants would grow over their heads on the praries, along with the bushes and trees. No one knows except the land what used to grow here and how. The soil can tell you if you will listen. But their story is a long one and they keep trying to start at the beginning, while what you are looking for is at the end nearest you.

"Those you call Indians would wear only leather, which the respectful among them would ask blessing from God - which had a different meaning than the God of your Book. Anyway, God would bless them as he blessed the trees and plants who were food for these animals. It was all his gift, afterall. But two-footeds, those who were wise, knew they lived in the shadow and light of
a God who was in and encompassed all. Your Book mentions this in parts."

I was impressed with all this. I had never imagined such truth was there to be had. All one had to do was to stop and listen.

We had been moving along through the pasture as we went and were now coming to a second pond after we topped the rise.

"Now, listen to the water. Hear that? There's your song, your joy of living. The water reflects and amplifies the tune which the weather itself sings. Hear that? You can hear the wind reply, hear it shift - cadence, rhythm, beat, syncopation - all there for the listening. All that you two-footers have held in your radios and music boxes is there. Not 'Top 40' tunes which only last 3 minutes, but whole orchestral pieces which move for hours and even days at a time. I only wish that I could sit here that long. Come fishing sometime and I will."

We kept moving, down the bank of that pond, across a diversion to keep the water from flooding and eroding the arable farm land, then back into the woods.

"Here's something special. Let's see if you can find it. There are two things here actually, but tell me one of them and I will know you can listen."

We were quiet then, Buster sitting and I leaning sitting on a tree stump. Some sadness filled the air. It was different from all the optimistic life which had spread through me that day from all the insects and flowers and trees busy making life and growing through that sunny day. We sat in shade now and for some reason there was sadness in this grove. While the stump I sat on held only the songs and voices of the insects making it back to soil, the trees around me were carrying a mournful tune.

"That's right, that's one of them - but why are they sad? What are the lyrics to this tune?"

I listened more. It wasn't clear, except I saw that there were many large stumps in the area, with many old trees still standing. The trees standing were bent or had branchs close to the ground, or had some deformity. But they weren't singing for themselves...

Then I finally got that they were singing for these stumps. Somehow, my presence tuned into the sadness of their loss for those who had been cut down by lumber harvesters. This was their song. I then went to touch these trees, to console and apologize as I could with my quiet mind and touch. The song quit then, as if only an acknowledgement were needed. What was left was a silence a peacefulness.

The stark reality of that made me stop. For a small time, all the noise which usually followed me around, even when the house was quiet and all kids and adults asleep - that noise had vanished. This must be what the adults (especially in their TV advertisements) called "peace of mind." Yet I had somehow stumbled into this by sitting and listening for the quiet songs from the Earth. So I was no longer creating noise in my head, apparently, but simply confronting the noises of Nature and being quiet enough myself in order to be able to listen.

Amazing.

Buster and I returned to the house after that, both of us quiet and reflective.

A few days later, I came back to the woods at a different spot without Buster, to see if there was any difference. Once I made myself quiet enough by just listening, the feeling returned. And I could do it myself.

That was a change I'd not soon forget.