Shooting the Evening

As promised, if later than I had planned, due to technical problems, a whole new post.

I’ve always enjoyed spending quiet time just soaking in a good evening. Watching a brilliant sunset, picking out the first stars, listening to the sounds of frogs, crickets, cicadas calling. My perch usually takes the shape of porch swing but I once spent a fantastic evening at a picnic table in the Midwest that rivals the best of them.

We drove miles down a dirt road to a small patch of rolling farm country and pasture land in the middle of Kansas. It had been hot that day, over 100`F, and we had covered many, many miles on a trip headed West in a car with no air conditioning. We stopped not long before sunset, seeking refuge in the shade of a group of small trees near a picnic table. A light breeze drew across the hillside and shallow valley below and I thought perhaps we had stumbled on a small piece of Heaven.

We moved the picnic table into the shade and ate a bite while birds stalked tiny prey in the grass and flew in looping patterns over the grassy field a few hundred feet away. Backlit by the sinking sun, they snapped insects out of the air and sang their successes. The tall grass below them and the bugs they sought burned golden in the sunset light, gilded brightly against a dark line of trees bounding the far side of the field. The breeze was cool, the air dry, and we sat in perfect comfort watching the show.

Just up the road, an old windmill creaked and bumped through its slow and deliberate revolutions. Cattle grazed in the surrounding pasture. From time to time they bawled and lowed and wandered to the tank below the windmill for a drink of water, water delivered from somewhere underground to a quiet Kansas pasture by workings that had weathered there for more years than I and my traveling companion had been alive. Its steady sound was as natural as a creek gurgling over cobbles. I found it unspeakably comforting.

As evening drew the shades and the birds and bugs found their homes for the night, we sat reversed on the seats, our backs propped against the tabletop, and trained our eyes farther upward. Constellations materialized in the clear evening sky. Bugs called in a low chorus from the grass and trees. The windmill creaked reassuringly. And we stayed up until after midnight talking about the world, our lives, and counting shooting stars.

We left early the next morning, dawn still caught in the dewey grasses. We had miles to turn. But I left a piece of my heart on that hillside, and I took a piece of Kansas with me when we went.

It’s the reason I love to travel. It’s a cornerstone of the hope I hold for myself and this world. It’s something pure and simple and beautiful, and I saw it. I didn’t just look at it with open eyes, I saw it. And every time I see a place, a person, an object, I am forever changed … usually for the better.

Insect Affinity?

I’ve never minded bugs but was never exactly fond of them, either. If they were outside minding their own business we got along fine, but indoors they were fair game and I can’t imagine how many have expired under my command. But it seems that lately I’m becoming more and more tolerant of them. This is not true for ticks, chiggers, mosquitoes, eye-diving gnats, biting flies, and other annoying pests, which still receive the business ends of fly-swatters, newspapers, bug-zappers, and hands. I mean “regular” old bugs. Beetles and crickets and that sort.

When I recently ran across a millipede in the house, I scooped it up and released it outside instead of squashing it as I probably would have last year. Late one night I discovered a large beetle in the trash can (someone else threw him away, alive) and I simply could not leave him there to suffer under the dirty diapers, plastic wrappers, and empty cans that would inevitably follow. So I grimaced, dug him out of the garbage, and set him on his way outside. Only to find his twin (or mate?) crouching at the edge of my bed. So I took that one out, too, and wished them both well. I’ve shooed black wasps and dirt-dobbers to safety, plucked ants out of danger, scooped moths from sure death, and twice rescued the same large gray bug from an unhealthy curiosity of seats.

I don’t know why. They are just insects. They are one of the most successful breeding groups the Earth has ever seen, without the lure of soft fur and innocent eyes, without the loving minstrations of a human populace. Perhaps I like their blind determination. Maybe I sometimes feel like a bug myself, trying to avoid that great windshield of the unexpected. Maybe it began as a kid when I was careful to place the wooly bears and caterpillars I played with back in safe places after I finished playing. Perhaps it had something to do with a movie where a holy man would not knowingly injure so much as a worm – even when undertaking a construction project – because, he said, all life was important.

Yesterday a large moth landed in my hair. One thing that bothers me a lot is something messing about in my hair. But instead of being annoyed and trying to immediately flip him out, I just let him walk around. I was enjoying the morning coolness on the front porch, in no hurry to really start the day, and I decided to let him take his time as long as he “behaved.” For a while he barely moved and I thought perhaps he’d flown away without my knowing. But then, no, I felt him shift and suddenly he was crawling down the side of my face. Again I had the urge to brush him away but resisted. His feet tickled. His wings were soft. And he meant no harm. So I left him be, perching on my cheek for a few moments before trundling down my neck (he tickled so that I had to laugh just a little). He walked halfway down the front of my shirt then paused, and I was better able to inspect him.

I can’t say he was a beautiful moth, not in the way that some are colorful and patterned to rival butterflies, but he had lovely little bands on his legs and a dark mottling that was itself quite intricate with little dabs of white and orange. He was pretty. And he seemed to be a bit lost, or perhaps was just out exploring a bit in the early morning. At any rate, he wasn’t bothering me so I made no attempt to bother him. He soon fluttered away, having rested up or spotted a cozy-looking tree or finished exploring the unfamiliar geography of the front porch’s latest addition. I bade him well and was glad I hadn’t simply brushed him off. It was an interesting and pleasant experience.

Perhaps I am just beginning to look a bit closer at the world around us, of which insects are an integral part. In the grand picture, I am hardly more than a bug myself, so maybe this is a sort of newfound empathy for small things in a large, confusing, and often hostile world. I don’t know. But I like it. And I think that this search for beauty unexpected is revealing a surprising amount of beauty everywhere … even, perhaps, in me.

Armchair Swimmers

I have returned from my trip, which took longer than I expected and was much harder to re-settle from than I’d anticipated.

My first full day back, I didn’t even bother to unpack. I grabbed a couple folding chairs, a good friend, and headed for the creek. The weatherman had called for clouds all day but they were gone by ten o’clock so we waded into the creek in full sunshine and set up our chairs where the water ran wide and shallow. I jostled a position upstream of a large rock I planned to use as a footrest for my feet and my friend dug a hole for his. We lounged, surrounded by gurgling brightness, and talked for hours about anything we could think of.

Sports, religion, politics, the economy, the future… I love good conversations with good friends. They keep me sane.

We finally retired in the afternoon, grabbed a bite of picnic lunch sitting under great pine trees, and discovered we were sunburned. Apparently neither of us were as tanned as we would have liked to believe. We spent the rest of the day in the shade, edging along gravel bars to follow the shadows. At times neither of us would talk for an hour or more.

Sometimes silence is perfect conversation, too. And it is wholly necessary for my well-being, the more the better.

There is no silence, of course. The air was full of sound from the creek and birdsong and wind in the trees and insects busily buzzing at their errands. But I consider that music, and also an essential.

As the day drew its shades we headed home, a good day gone all too quickly. But more lie ahead. That is the important thing.

The Bee

Yesterday was gorgeous here. It felt like late spring, a good three months early. Since it was so nice out, I spent part of the beautiful day in a swing, basking in the dazzling sunshine in just my shirt sleeves. The swing is free-standing, upholstered in canvas, and seats three people but I swung there to and fro alone. Or nearly. A loving cat (Bandy) came to visit, jumping into the seat and sharing my cozy cove of sun-lit swing. After an hour or so another visitor came along.

I can’t say he was a stranger – we’d met a couple hours before at a picnic lunch just across the yard – but he had only been passing through then. This time he sat a spell. On my hand. A little bee, as nice as you please, lit on my wrist and preened unhurriedly in the warm afternoon. I moved slowly, he made no threat to sting, and we spent a lovely half-hour together.

He was so very beautiful. For many long moments I studied the downy hairs on his thorax, the neat black and yellow stripes on his abdomen, his minute antennae and large dark eyes. I found myself fairly smitten. He tickled the fine hairs on my arm and hand as he ambled around, exploring the strange scape, searching for the perfect angle of sun. We had a lovely little conversation while the cat looked on in sleepy apathy. What wonderful neighbors, I thought.

But he had only stopped to visit and eventually bade us farewell. With a tiny shirring of wings he lifted off and buzzed away, headed vaguely west in the bright slant of afternoon.

I only hope I am so lucky as to enjoy more such days in the weeks and months and years to come.