The Fogs Of August

My mother and grandmother taught me to count the number of foggy mornings during the month of August. The number, they told me gravely, would correspond to the number of snows in the coming winter. I’ve tracked the August fogs more closely since we purchased our little farm here, and while never exact, the ratio of fogs to snows is fairly close. So far this month, we have had nine fogs out of twelve mornings. Last winter was quite mild, and the old-timers in these parts are already beginning to murmur about how “we’re due for a bad, bad winter.” We shall see.

I recently re-watched one of my favorite movies, Kes, about a lonely English boy who finds escape from his bleak life in a deep friendship with a kestrel he finds and trains.  For me, the film is affecting not just because of the human-loves-animal theme, but also because the character of the boy reminds me so strongly and painfully of myself when I was that age, the nonstop bruisings and batterings handed out every day from people and organizations and groups I was told I owed trust and loyalty. The sense of wary, guarded hope and resigned sorrow colors the movie as surely as the green countryside. The final scene, where the boy is digging a grave for his bird (killed by his sadistic and brutish older brother) makes me weep every time.

Jinx talked me into mowing the other half of the yard, and I managed to do so without destroying any structures. While mowing along the north fence line, a flash of color drew my attention, something yellow in the grass. When I got closer, I saw that it was a swallowtail butterfly. No, it was a pair of swallowtails, mating next to one of their beloved milkweed plants. They moved slightly as I passed them, giving them enough of a berth so as not to startle them. I kept an eye on the pair as I continued working, and they stayed put the entire time I was running the mower.

When I was finished, I put away the mower and then came to sit in the shade near where the swallowtails were. I watched them in their essential act, loving their beauty and their single-mindedness and their purity and their service. I wondered if they whisper to each other like lovers while they create another generation of their kind. Whether they are aware of the particular moment of time that is the culmination of all they have been since they emerged from a tiny green egg on the underside of a willow leaf. Whether they long to stroke each other’s faces or to touch their heads together or intertwine their legs in that silent shout to all creation that two are joined here into one, and there is true magic and power in this moment. Who is to say they do not…the scoffing scientists? The literal-minded Christians who dismiss the small creatures as “only animals?” I have seen my own animals communicate with each other with a clear and obvious telepathy, and I have seen it often enough to know that the small living things are not hampered by a lack of English or any other human language. I sat and let the breeze cool the sweat on my back and I imagined the pair of butterflies whispering to each other not just about love and life and offspring, but about the odd ogre sitting near them, puzzling and voyeuristic and enormous. I wondered about where each of them were when they came out of that chrysalis and where they will spend their final days. The male will live only another six to eight weeks after mating, which means that he will close his little eyes for the final time in mid-October at the latest, before the cold settles down on these mountains. The female will live long enough to lay her eggs, not much longer than the male, and then she, too, will die and pass from the eyes of this dangerous world.

I sat with them for perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then I went and did a few more chores. When I returned, the swallowtails were gone, and my yard was diminished by their absence. The word “blessed” is overused, but I will declare that I feel blessed to have sat in the grass with the pair of painted beauties for that short period. The news headlines and the tawdry dramas and the aspirations of covetous men are all dashed to pieces with a single stroke of a butterfly’s wing, because the butterfly is doing exactly what it was born to do, and doing it without avarice or mean intent. I am not a noble man, but I draw nobility from watching the living things all around me each day. I absorb it. And as Scrooge’s nephew said of Christmastime, I do believe it has done me good.

The butterflies are busy on the farm today, and the hummingbirds are active, and the birds are about their business, and later, when the sun falls out of sight, the larger beasts will emerge from the tree lines and feed on the delicate shoots of the meadows. Some of these creatures will leave me when the days shorten and the mercury dips and the shadows lengthen; some of them will stay, but will be less active. But I carry them with me after having seen them just once. I believe the two butterflies mated in my presence because they loved each other in their own fashion. And I believe I love them for extending their line for another year, and especially for their fragile presence in my small section of the merciless green world.

~ S.K. Orr