Mist Will Lift

A coworker who sits next to me at my office tested positive for the Covid-19 thingamajig, so I was required to be tested at a local hospital. It was interesting to note what a ghost town the hospital was. I was expecting squads of harried nurses and doctors to be running up and down the hallways, calling out orders and wheeling lifeless bodies on gurneys and asking for assistance. But the place was all but abandoned.

A girl young enough to be my granddaughter performed my test, which, while not especially painful, was markedly unpleasant. She asked me if I was okay when she removed the fourteen foot swab from my nose. I said yes. I also remarked on how small her wrist appeared to my watering eyes, and how it had felt so much larger as it slipped into my nostril. Masked as she was, I couldn’t tell if she smiled, but her eyes didn’t smile, so I think my attempt at a jest can be tallied with the Covid-19 deaths.

I received my test results this morning — negative — but will be working from home today and  all of next week. The owners are bringing in a team of professionals to deep clean everything, since three other staff members have tested positive in the past few days.

I have enjoyed the leisurely pace of this odd week, and have spent much time walking with Jinx on the roads and in the fields and woods. This morning the world was particularly gorgeous, coated with a heavy mist that muffled all sound and reduced visibility to a few yards. The spotted menace ran ahead of me as always, but kept circling back. Perhaps he was worried that I would get lost in the fog.

One thing I appreciate about animals is how present they are in the here & now. Jinx enjoys every moment as it occurs, fully focused on its joys, its mysteries, its stimuli, its peace, its terror, its cravings, its satisfactions. I cannot peer inside his mind, but I doubt that he ever zips along the ground, nose to the grass as he follows a rabbit’s scent, while fretting if there’s water in his dish back at the house, or grumpy over the fact that his collar is red instead of digital camouflage, or over his master’s confiscating the treasures he brings home. He is too occupied with the singular joys or challenges of the moment. I believe he understands that the past no longer exists, and the future (if he can understand the concept, and no scientist really knows Jinx cannot) does not exist. Perhaps this makes Jinx a fan of Kris Kristofferson. “Yesterday is dead and gone/ And tomorrow’s out of sight…”

The moisture in the air illuminated the many spider’s webs hanging in the muted morning light, slung from fences and branches and weeds, each strand glistening with the dew-jewels with which they were decked. I never pass a spider’s web without marveling at the sheer feat of engineering and the hard, disciplined work it took last night to weave it. And usually when I see the webs, they are already damaged or abandoned. But do the spiders fret about “wasting” their efforts or their time? No. No. Because time has no importance to them. They feel the urgency to mate and to eat and to rest, but these things are truly important to their eight-legged selves. Mere concepts like time or past or future are meaningless. Can spiders laugh? Would they laugh at me if they could discern how much of my life has been spent either ruing some past experience or gnashing my teeth over some imagined future one? Perhaps they can, and perhaps they would. One thing is settled in my mind: no work of mine will ever approach the grandeur of a simple dewy web waving in the mountain breeze like a royal standard. I have never put all of myself into any work I have ever done. The spider knows that she does so every single evening.

At one point in this morning’s ramble, I stopped and picked up a stone from the road. It was shaped like the state of California, and was gray and slick. I rubbed my thumb over its surface and said some words to it, and I thought of Christ saying that such stones might supplant men if voices of praise were lacking. I placed the stone back in the road and arose, knees popping like thorns under the pot, wondering if stones have ever or will ever cry out? Odd duck that I am, I happen to believe that stones — and all the natural world, even the soil itself — are alive and even aware. With this certainty in my chest, I moved away from the stone and stared up at a massive oak that has stood here twice as long as I have breathed on this earth, and I just knew it sensed me and my good will towards it.

A commenter on this blog once called me an “Ellie Mae” because of my affinity for animals. I prefer rather to think of myself as a Fodder-Wing (extra credit to those who get the reference without looking it up), a fellow, perhaps addled in the head, to whom animals are drawn for some unknown reason. My wife and family and friends have often commented on this, the way in which animals, even belligerent ones or naturally skittish ones, will come to me as if sensing my delight in them. And now, putting these words down, I like to think that my aura of good will extends to the trees and plants as well. I hope I am never locked away where I cannot see and smell and hear and touch and taste the natural world and its creatures. The very thought feels like grief.

I opened the gate and Jinx trotted ahead of me up the hill into the graveyard, nosing around the etched stones with their names and dash-delineated dates, standing like the sentinels of memory, and I thought again of how wrong Faulkner was — the past not only really is past…it no longer exists. It will never circle around and come back beside us. The sun will rise and the mist will lift and dogs will grow old and the blue chicory will fade and decay, but those things will happen in their own present moments, and praise God for the present moment.

My pace was very slow as Jinx and I strolled back to the house. I was very taken with the growing things around me, the unknown plant with brown stem that looks as if coffee grounds were clinging to its head (is this simply a gone-to-seed version of something formerly green?), the nutsedge, the lamb’s quarter, the riot of plantain, each single plant producing something like 40,000 seeds, seeds which can lay dormant but alive in the soil for decades before finally sprouting, and the beautiful chicory, beloved by the goldfinches which swoop and call all around me in their fields of joy.

My wife and I watched a documentary yesterday called The Gardener. It examined the life of a wealthy man in Quebec who dedicated over 70 years of his life to the creation of one of the most magnificent gardens I’ve ever heard of. In the film, the man, a Mr. Cabot, talked about his personal philosophy and his love of the soil and the plants and the play of light on things. He used a certain word frequently in his observations. “We improved that acre over there….” “We used flowers from the Himalayas to improve this patch here…”

Improved. That’s how I feel on this August day, with life in my body and calm thoughts in my head

I am improved.

~ S.K. Orr