Lost and found is my eureka! blog, my rediscovery of my short fiction and poetry submissions published in literary magazines and university literary journals some decades ago. Interspersed, occasionally, with more recent, hitherto unpublished pieces.
We have joyfully shared comradeship for so many years, it is difficult to imagine life without her. She has trusted us to return with her, safe and content, after all our adventures, none of which, as a small and delicate dog, had she ever shirked, but met full on, trustingly and as curious as we.
She has canoed lakes and rivers with us, portaged long stretches of broken trails, snuggled deep down into our shared sleeping bag after torrential forest storms, climbed mountain peaks under the sun's fierce glare, leaped boulders that daunted us, her guides.
She has outlived those of her canine peers when as a puppy, she was being introduced to the arcane world of canines and their human pack leaders. She has grown progressively fragile, dim of sight, faint of hearing and inexplicably mute. Her dark eyes see far-off visions that we cannot see, and she stands motionless, waiting for something we cannot know.
She must linger yet awhile with us, for nothing, including her growing feebleness, has yet convinced us she must leave. She yet craves life, so it must be carefully nurtured. The great adventure that lurks too near, which will be hers alone this time, has been waylaid and we are, for the moment, grateful.
He's a good neighbour, a perfectly nice man, who never fails to ask your opinion and advice, perversely to ignore it and proceed elsewise. The possessor of a stately blue spruce, he claimed it imposed upon the maple that had ventured as a gifted seedling within his lawn which he tenderly nurtured to maturity, though the two had more than ample space for amicable growth. In came an arborist, down came the flawless specimen tree in all its ornamental perfection.
Its pungently aromatic boughs festooned the lawn, then were carted off for a proper burial. Its large and sturdy trunk carved to sections, its stump and roots to ground level left to languish. A perfectly spherical, raised flowerbed installed over the grave. And yes, I divided perennials and gave them to my neighbour for his new central lawn piece, even as I mourned the untimely departure of an admired gentle giant.
Newly aged fifteen, she is a lone and lonely child, home in a semi-isolated stretch of rural property, school out for the summer months and she is b-o-r-e-d. There is no cure for the moody teens, one must simply forbear. As for missed siblings, those are among the manifold details of her young life.
Iterations and reiterations of boredom solve nothing. Where once, in still living memory she would have been assigned household tasks, none now urgently present. Time yawns at her imaginative disposal. Social interaction at a remote, as near as a texting cellphone, as distant as an actual human touch.
Reaching toward and embracing opportunity and the flexing of the curious mind, where once an Encyclopedia, the presence of grandparents, the ubiquity of public libraries enabled entry to knowledge and wisdom, now the World Wide Web that internets us to the information age offers her books on order, poetry readings, geography lessons, science facts, introductions to art, archaeology and architecture, studies in human development and more.
Lonely? For What, please tell.... The whispered confidence of one standing directly beside her. A laugh shared by someone hosting both physical presence and amused sensibilities. A silence and an oppressive sense of social alienation by one for whom extended solitude expresses a longing for comfort in peer companionship. Failing that, she endures, her brain steeped in the profound mystery of life electronic.
There is still a faded sign remaining reading "private" verging where public property exists and which should include that stretch of ravined forested streambed the sign identifies. An inexplicable legal glitch representing personal entitlement where none should be. A pillar of his community, church elder, friends on the municipal, law-making, law-breaking council.
The once lovingly, energetically tended area, where he worked mightily in his retirement years to wrest the initiative from nature in his own untamed gardening zeal had produced from her raw elements through his botanical vision a veritable hanging gardens albeit replete with plants that ancient Babylon never saw.
He moved mountains of seasonal detritus to be replaced laboriously by richly amended soil, where ordered and mannerly ornamental trees, shrubs and perennials would lustily thrive. He constructed an elaborate series of stairs and terraces, arbors and gazebos, fountains and ponds where swam exotic gold and silver fish from the East.
Where sun filtered through the forest canopy he planted perennials that thrived in semi-shade, and where shade prevailed he thoughtfully planted shade-loving plants. He surveyed his work and proclaimed it good, then posted additional "private" and "keep out" warning signs lest anyone blunder unaware, upon his treasures.
He feasted his eyes and his gloating pride upon his success, his Shangri-la, inviting glossy gardening journals to come along at his behest to photograph and feature his very private, exclusive, most exceptional Paradise. Viewers were charmed, enthralled and outraged at his assumption of the private upon the public space and much heated discussion ensued, two camps emerging, those who deplored his hubris and those who staunchly defended his green genius.
All moot, now. Nature has reclaimed her possession. Gone the plethora of urns and overflowing terra-cotta pots brimful of form, texture and colourful blooms. Gone the leisure chairs, lounges and tea tables. The stream now runs unimpeded - gone the pools and the exotic fish. Squirrels now run freely, no longer trapped and excluded. Time has swept him into history and his gardens to nature's reckoning.
The trees bare as straw brooms bleed bright yellow blazes, sharp counterpoint on grey beech; dark needles of conifers comb the winter air shoved by a bitter wind. The snow is loosely sifted glaringly bright under the winter sun as we cross-tuft a pattern striding snowshoed. The silence echoes as we whisper in the cathedral stillness of the wood watch two deer panic red rumps flicking white flags dark droppings steaming in the snow. They're still spooked by vague ghosts of hunting incursions in this game sanctuary.
(We'd watched helplessly as scaups frantically beat the air rising from a quiet autumn lake air thick with shot. Later looked down from protected heights as a deer veed another lake trying to escape the hunters finally standing frozen in fear on the cusp of the lake a perfect target.)
They're forgetful in the summer, memory of terror dimmed let us watch them browsing. Yet it was just last summer we discovered this same forest pathway plush with fawn-coloured hair yawning with the chalk-white skull of an unwary deer.
Oh, so comfortably I sit on a cushioned glider, tiny companion dog asleep beside me, as a robin sings brilliantly in the garden below and rain pelts the canopy sheltering us. We could abandon our outdoor leisure perch but no need, as we're kept dry and secure.
This is our outdoor space as extension of our indoor haven from the vicissitudes of the elements. From our shared shelter can be observed the bright orange sprays of blooming honeysuckle, the manifold-petalled, exquisitely frangranced peonies and the deep-pink roses bursting pride.
The steady sound of the rain under the aluminum-coloured aquarium that has become the sky a comforting murmur nurturing the gardens below, filling the bird-bath that will delight the robins anticipating the festive offerings emerging from the creature-drenched garden soil.
Like a primeval vision, mist lifts hazily from the turgidly swollen water rushing along the forested ravine. The mist aspires toward the sky, as though to return to the darkly enveloping clouds still lowering above, though a scant half-hour before they had bathed the landscape in torrents of rain, still gathering on hillsides and spilling into the ravine below, freshly endowing the mud-roiling creek, its surface surfeit with the storm's detritus.
The dark, outspread wings of crows crest on the wet wind, their calls absorbed into the moist air. Tree foliage, slick-bright in shades of living greens, steadily drip excess. The fruit of the hazelnut shrubs increasing their volume, well irrigated by nature's generosity. A hare leaps into the underbrush, stops, alert suddenly to instinct's ancient awareness and the imperative invested in survival.
It is from a distance, although not remotely, that the echo and re-echo of an owl reverberates and repeats urgently, and the drenched but brilliant landscape sinks into its mysterious thrum of life and cessation, all assuming myriad forms in the endless, purposeful pursuit whereby each life form, each exceptional organism, finds its hallowed place, and strives to retain it.
The gentle morning has been transformed by the cunning stealth of storm clouds conspiring to occlude the sweet azure sky with angrily bruised clouds anxious to relieve themselves of their burden of moisture, releasing a smothering waterfall on the unsuspecting landscape shuddering below.
Oddly variant, the day closed in on itself. Having just attained to the lightness of dawn, the sky succumbed to the darkened aspect of dusk. A rumble of ill-natured discontent rent the atmosphere and the gardens, startled from their placid display of charmed form and brash colour in defiance of the intrusive elements, sparked their pride in a tangled conceit.
Its adorable face masked like that of a raccoon, its softly alert eyes regarding me with curiosity, the ferret sniffs my extended palm, yawns, revealing tiny teeth perfectly geared to ripping and tearing; more than capable of defending itself from other carnivores; and a pink, very devilishly-pink tongue.
Is this trust or merely the ennui of timeless boredom?
The tall bearded man holding the soft-furred animal and its leash bends to deposit it on the woodland trail, exhorting Winston to exercise himself and not merely breathe the freshly scrubbed air. My similarly leashed dog, a toy breed yet giant in comparison, snarls, and the ferret fearlessly responds, hissing its warning.
The investment, as of all pursuits, that have, along with their intrinsic value, returns far outstripping the original vestment of time, energy and devoted attention in a world whose manifold pursuits are required for undeniably practical purposes; this growing pursuit relates to life-quality.
Time demands, leading to a scarcity of that demanding and elusive element persuades many to involve themselves elsewhere. Yet doing so denies the instructive urge recalling an indistinct genetic memory of land husbandry once so vital to human existence.
For us, now, survival no longer the issue, gratified satisfaction, aesthetic pleasure and lending ourselves to an apprenticeship to nature, as fervent accomplices to the verdant fecundity of the growing season, feeds a passion.
Feeling the sun's warmth on the firmness of a fragrant tomato ripe for the table, the pungent green parsley and sweetness of basil, piquant thyme and chives garnishing one's food. Bowers of roses blooming, a unified paean to the sun.
Peonies and Canterbury bells, lilies and lilacs, their sublime and graceful forms and rainbow presence, their divine fragrance pervading the atmosphere, bringing bees and butterflies, dragonflies and songbirds to share in the plenty of nature's bidding and our desire.
With cutting edge scissors firmly in hand and the object of my unwilling attention cowering submissively before me, I begin to snip a trajectory of recognition upon the mass of soft apricot curls that have succeeded in masking those pleading eyes requesting kindly cease and desist.
He would far prefer, thank you very much, to sport the undisciplined mass of hair that transforms him into a saucily rotund mop, while I prefer the clipped visage of a dog as a dog is a dog.
Away the tangle, begone the knots. Done with the delicate fibres of hair to which woody detritus, withered leaves and nasty burrs so fondly cling. What emerges is a dour, albeit sweet-faced, docile dawg.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
The day yawns clear and blue with but a few fluffs of cloud trickling the distant sky, inviting us to wander trails in a forest settled most comfortably into a late spring that truly was late arriving.
Finally, the creek which had been compelled by never-ceasing cold rains to industriously drive fallen detritus from winter excess and the fall preceding has paused to a turbid trickle.
Water striders frantically skate its surface, caddisfly larvae conceal themselves in its clay-wet banks within their purloined homes, and sun-streaked slashes of iridescent blues, greens, reds and gold dragonflies play arabesques on the gliding breeze.
At the trail, blooming bedding grasses send their aromatic pear essence into the wind. Among the fleabane the daisies and the clambering cowvetch, cinquefoil's pale yellow five-petalled flowers gently prevail. Goldfinches seek one another out within the cool, green haven of surrounding hemlock.
We've an especial horde of private treasure in urns of Renaissance design and heft, pots of Mediterranean origins contrived of terra-cotta, glazed and not, stone impervious to weather and ageing gracefully, moss-impregnated and haughtily-stately; all devoted to our consuming garden deceit.
Nature never did design such homes for her delectably lovely flowers whose origins, shapes, textures and colours fixate the senses with their exotic appeal, their sensuous gracefulness and aromatic fragrances bringing the insect world to worship at their mysteriously nectared and irresistibly-pollinated interiors.
Those miniature gardens, whose tenants we so hugely admire represent the cosmopolitan aristocracy whose migration from the Himalaya to broaden their horizons and our gardening prospects captivate and enthrall us with their heady beauty.
In those minuscule gardens are creative choices of foliage and flowers allowing us the freedom of manipulating conceitedly what nature has obligingly provided in our self-centric devotion to surpass in fortuitous design what she has nonchalantly produced. The result, a satisfied sigh of providence as the garden containers bloom and thrive their sumptuous entrance to summer.
They are rivals, competing daily for the same edible treats, doled courtesy of those who appreciate all such creatures of the woods. Swift, cleverly adaptive they adjust with alacrity to maximize providential gifts.
One a ground species, the other aerial, both firmly devoted to the acquisition of ground nuts, the feathered fully as capable as the furred of dislodging the nutmeats from their firm inedible receptacles.
The signal is expressed the moment we enter the trailhead to the wooded ravine. Loud and clear, the dark sentry's declaration "they're here!" followed by a curiously silent and determined retinue appearing in the trees above, to stalk our daily disbursements.
The contest is then afoot, and on wing, as the spoils, tree by tree, are retrieved and possessed, for to the swift and the fearless go the spoils. There is no belligerence, grievance or aggravated assault in evidence, merely a lively game to succeed.
The natural surroundings, of nature's elements, the timeless pursuit of sustenance and serendipity may provide the stage for creatures to develop a means of conflict resolution that has strangely and inexcusably evaded the consciousness of humankind.
The wide, blue lid of the world blazes with luminous light and energy-sapping heat over a languid landscape barely cooled by an uncommitted breeze ruffling the dark green canopy of the forest below.
Shafts of brilliant sun illuminate Nature's creative design in the embroidered wings of a Swallowtail, the exquisitely delicate body of a damselfly, glinting watery gold on the ripples of a stream gliding casually within the ravine.
The air is still redolent with the fragrance of honeysuckle past their prime. Now canes of blackberry are sumptuous with blossoms and the showy pink flowers of thimbleberries. There is a promiscuous display of bright buttercups in the meadow reflecting the sun, among the orange hawkweed.
The divine trill of a cardinal bells the landscape with its unparalleled melody of sublime provenance which the Red Priest Vivaldi must have emulated for the stringed instruments of his beloved orphans. The unrestrained mocking taunt of a woodpecker responds.
I am many where I would be one fearing forced explication of the face turned away from mine so I become malleable as clay responding to others' biases tamping down my inside self forcing up those double images parroting words to evoke pleasant acceptance prevent awkwardness yet disliking this stranger making her uncomfortable sojourn nestling among my sinews my bones where that one and that one is all things to all men and that too-quiet lonely voice calls out yet unheard hear me! let me out ... . . . . . I cannot.
Have I then, in my dotage, missed something truly fundamental in the zeitgeist of teen angst and generational polarization? Is morose denial and belligerent waywardness of social mores truly the current badge of honour among the young, intransigently suffering, never seen in an earlier agrarian society?
The pathology and delusion appears to have become a universal affliction, somehow infecting the societally empowered the spoiled generation of the privileged, anon. Their voraciously grim and gloomy dissatisfaction and estrangements volatile and threateningly explosive.
In discarding the yoke of direction and expectation they have imputed to intolerable interference of their sovereignty of self, denying the dictates of adults urging them to conform to values whose worth they dispute, they have themselves evolved through a process of militant rejection and obstinate demands, the world's new class of tyrants.
The authentic acuity of my vision was never in doubt, for in our childhood together, both fourteen, it was he who wore corrective lenses, never me, and I was tasked to parse dim distant legends with the accuracy of an eagle's sight.
Fully sixty years later, his vision remains as it once was, and I am now dependent on his balming patience to enable me to perform the rudest sewing tasks, from a hand that could once guide a needle to execute the most delicately exquisite of beadwork and embroidery.
Try as I may, with angle and intent, repeated stabs and altered direction, the eye of the needle remains as elusive as my once unerring eyesight. And I am time and again prevailed upon by him to render thread and needle to his smiling, confident marriage cojoining the needle and thread.
There are three very young children whose impression of life and family is yet intact. Two little girls, resembling their mother, a brother who looks just like his father, doted upon and cherished as their parents had once, signing their marriage compact, agreed they loved and would cherish one another unto the near eternity of the future.
The neighbourhood is abuzz, not with rumour, but speculation, softly as though murmuring words of personal regret for yet another human tragedy. Those who infer the sad details share them, but they are wrong; it is he, the devoted husband and committed father, who has left.
Family assets to be sundered and re-distributed, the house has been speedily sold, the profit somewhat narrower than anticipated, for those who once loved, now loathe and full separation must be achieved. The oblivious children will be yet advised.
Swaths of sun-insouciant buttercups proudly bearing their gold standards, and squadrons of Dragonflies brilliantly bouncing sunrays off green, amber, blue and red, as they magically hover the summer-enchanted landscape.
The faint rattle of a grackle juxtaposed with the clarion-clear notes of robins' joyous calls. In this atmosphere of seasonal pleasures boasting nature's diversities there is temperance and glory to behold aplenty.
There, jewelweed beginning its journey to summer's bloom, and there, alights a splendid yellow Admiral to briefly rest its magnificent wings.
The crows, silently watchful, contest the squirrels anxiously alert; rivals for access to nuts doled daily within the precincts of the vast urban wood.
A chipmunk, cleverly aware, bypasses both, industriously filling his capacious little pouch: to the swift go the spoils.
Just a spare moment - the urge becomes irresistible; how to set it aside? Simply not possible. The garden sits innocent of guile, simply there, presenting itself. It is my critical eye that observes all those little tasks that beg the attentive, perfectionist (me?) gardener's task-responsive bustle.
To be done: shrub trimming, tree cut-backs, perennial divisions, insecticide concocting-and-spraying, dead-heading, weed-pulling, coddling and watering; staking and replacing. Only then, when all is in impeccable order, every plant in its seasonal session of bloom and display, can the exacting gardener rest her attentiveness to excruciating, minuscule detail.
On the other hand, perhaps not, for none of those tasks has a defined beginning or an end but for the imposed interregnum of winter cessation: It is well to remember that the garden we champion strives to emulate nature not the self-obsessed nature of the self-flagellating gardener.
The gardener who, to assure the pleasure of aiding, not compelling, encouraging, not demanding, will inevitably discover the sweet solution to compulsion. The garden's rewards in sumptuous exuberant loveliness, its ultimate award.
The hot, steamy day of clear skies and fierce sun streaming the landscape has vanished. Darkness has descended, the sky obscured by brutish, threatening skies, unleashing torrents of rain. The arrival of thunderous applause at this scene-stealer, the darkness lit by sharp daggers of light and more thunderous appeals for clouds to release hail upon the hapless gardens.
We are in the eye of the storm, a dense black eye emitting of its own monumental impulses, sullen and angry as the morose elements capture the world in a fierce embrace of heat, humidity, sturmunddrang. The drama concedes of no surcease until its miserable will is wilfully done.
The swaying trees, shifting through the message of the power elite, the cowering, fearful caught out under the dense cloak of nature's fury, quiver under the assault of her ferocious symmetry. Nature and her volatile elements sulk and abrade the anxious nerves of her creatures for awhile, then bored with their own powerful conceits, the darkness, the thunder and lightning, the volumes of rain and frozen spittle, the wind and the sound shuffle off centre stage, exeunt right.
A truly amiable, good-natured day has transpired, the sky openly conspiring with the sun to admit no more than gentle skeins of lacy-white clouds brief intermission of the radiant orb. Heat permeates and sizzles the atmosphere, as a lazy breeze rattles the forest leaves.
There is the rustle of robins peering in vain along forest trails, veering from one verge to another, choosing to run, not fly, until resigned, they flap to tree branches above and sweetly express anticipation of heat- relieving showers to reveal for their delectation creatures of the soil.
Yellow admirals in search of elusive partners roam the airspace, dreaming of elemental binary relations, however brief and brilliantly obsessive the instinct of survival and pleasure endowing all nature's organisms. Bees and dragonflies zip and freestyle their own existential and brief priorities.
Sunny buttercups, milkweed, Solomon's seal and pink-perfect fleabane stipple the landscape's understory in a tangle of cowvetch and ferns, under flowering dogwood and honeysuckle. There for a quick study in ephemeral beauty, the miniature perfection of blue-eyed grass, already withering under the sun's glare.
The garden exquisitely times its surprises in a stage-managed expertise no less astonishing for its seasonal predictability. The drab but graceful spirea suddenly presents as an immaculately-worked bridal veil, its sweeping branches swooning with the sweet weight of its multitudinous blossoms of brief perfection. The rose bushes and climbing roses, rhododendrons and clematis vines, have thrust into succession their plump and shapely buds with rising expectations of days to come in their proudly exuberant displays of sun-kissed, dew-flushed blossoms beloved of bees and hummingbirds.
The blossoming lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley perfume the garden with the gorgeous fragrance of all earthly delights. The showiest, most petal-and-colour-delightful of all garden treasures erupt in a blaze of gentrified glory, as the perfect, rounded and layered buds of tree peonies burst open in a display of form, layered texture and breathless loveliness few other garden treasures can contest; the ultimate gift of perfection from nature's storehouse and an obedient garden, to its privileged host.
The elemental forces of nature in their various manifestations from fearfully dread to divinely inspired present for us daily monumental challenges and equally impressive joys. Several miles distance and less can separate a wickedly deadly windstorm whose vortex sweeps clean in its destructive force, and a gentle breeze, lifting the wings of butterflies. It becomes chance and fortune much more than circumstance that happens to blow an ill wind or a teasing one. Just as well we live our lives unaware that we take our diurnal chances.
There are those days, and they are ample, and amply gratifying, when the elements relent sufficiently to call an armistice in incessant raging winds and fierce rainstorms, to produce days of fulsome sun, drying breezes and the reassurance that nature shares pleasantries at least as frequently as she enacts scenes of distress.
This is one of those days, when a furiously angry sky has been replaced by the kindness of baby-blue and whipped cream. The breeze merely riffles newly- greened foliage. Dragonflies whip about nipping airborne pests, wings flickering, bodies bejewelled in iridescent reds, greens, blues and golds. The forest understory is beaming with blooming dogwood, pink and white honeysuckle and hawthorn.
Down in the ravine, the call of a wild turkey anomalously negotiating unfamiliar territory. A hawk, circling above, whistles, riding the tumbling wind, its predator's eye fastened on the accelerated exit of its alerted prey. The bright carmine of a cardinal, then another, flashes from tree to tree, their trills as priceless as the overwhelming fragrance drifting the landscape toward perfection.
He feels unfairly put-upon, that much is abundantly clear. Not for him, the frenzied antics of his canine peers attempting to communicate their urgent desire to gambol about free and careless in the urban woods. His wish is to forever loll in the sun, recumbent and satiated with the sloth of comfortable stillness.
Grudgingly, helplessly, he permits the ritual of collar and harness, leash attached, to set out on his daily, oh so unappreciated stroll in the woods. Once upon a time that was a vigorous jaunt; now, no amount of tugs on the leash, verbal urgings at first quietly, hopeful, mounting to exasperated orders impels him to pick up his pace.
His human companion tells him he'll never get anywhere at that rate, and despairs she will not, either. She tells him he has begun to behave like a tired old tubby, but he is unmoved - literally. You're only twelve, she pleads; look at your sister go! She's almost nineteen ... he cares not a whit. For if he thinks of himself at all, it is as an inchworm.
