both oceans

I am in a coffee shop, a proper one, tucked inside an old house in the historic section of a town that’s near my own. It’s a bit noisy to really dig too deeply, but digging into my own thoughts and imaginings isn’t my goal today. Today I am alone, and am here to conduct research on various online databases. I have gnawing hunger to research life in Elkmont when it was a resort village, before the national park system took over and before the synchronous fireflies were world-famous. There is, of course, a narrative floating around my ears like a butterfly and I don’t want to make the mistake I made during Men in Caves (research during/after, instead of before). I want to feel confident in my knowledge, and let the words and dialogue flow from the real place as much as it flows from my own head. The advantage to this new project is that I still live near to Elkmont. When I started Men in Caves we were a month from moving away from Alaska and the mine. Elkmont can be reached from my house, in less than an hour. I can go there and hike or camp with my family, soaking in the essence of the place.

 

We have had lots of rain in the past few days, which makes me very happy. I love storms, frightening as they can be sometimes. I love the way the wind blows the trees, carrying in fresh smells and cool air. I love the sound of rain on the roof, and love to watch puddles form in the yard. I love the way that birds sing after, loud and strong and full of praise for the rain.

 

On the drive here I was thinking about this city lodge in a large Anchorage park, where we took most of the photos for our picture book project. The lodge is quiet and warm, and perched on the top of a large hill that’s used for cross country skiing and sledding in the winter and frisbee golf in the summer. In August, these wonderful fairy tale sort of mushrooms explode from the mossy ground at the foot of the trees, flashing their poisonous colors of orange and red, spotted with white. Moose crash their antlers against the trunks of white birch, full, strong, and dangerous in their rut. The air smells of leaves and decay. When winter hits there is nothing subtle about it; snow falls in clumps and swirls and covers the hill quickly. Once there is enough packed on the ground, children descend on the hill with their sleds, their heads and hands covered in wool and their small bodies wrapped in snowsuits. The bright colors of the wool, fabric, and the gaudy reds and oranges of their plastic sleds, are some days the only colors besides the bright white on the ground and the pale baby blue of the sky above. When they sail down the hill the noise is magnificent, their happy shouts and the whoosh of the sleds makes the cold air crackle and fizz.

 

I’ve been lucky in my life so far. I’ve dipped my toes into both oceans, and have walked on many mountains. I’ve known the heat and the green of the south and the cold and the white of the north.

Elkmont

How delicious it must have felt to them, when they left their beautiful but oven-hot homes for the summer, and boarded the trains by the river. When they returned from the mountains in September, the morning air would have finally started to cool, and the evenings would smell again of apples and roses and clean things. The heat must have felt like a snarling sort of beast, with nothing to tame it with but small electric fans placed near open windows to churn a breeze. The children kept cool by sneaking chunks of ice from the icebox, moments after the iceman delivered the square block from his truck. They would chisel away great bits of ice with hammers pilfered from toolboxes, sucking on the cleanest pieces and placing the dripping remnants down the backs of one another’s shirts.

Their mothers would pack carefully for their summer away. In their large bedrooms, they would spread their entire summer wardrobe over their large beds, open the french doors wide (look at the white curtains flutter like butterflies, smell the almost erotic scent of the roses in the garden), and let the errant breezes float over the fabric to air the clothes out. They wouldn’t need so many clothes in their cabin on the river; just a few frocks in white cotton that weren’t ruined if drenched. In the city they had to keep their ankles covered and their hair in an upsweep. In the mountains their hair (still rich and honey blonde, no streaks of wiry grey yet) could tumble around their bare shoulders. Their children could run around in their loose underthings. Their husbands could roll up their pantlegs and fish for rainbow trout for hours, returning at sunset with sunburned foreheads and wicker creels full of the evening’s dinner.

When the families left, their large houses would be quiet except for scurrying of grey tomcats, left at home to catch any mice that might sneak in through the crawlspace or boldly scuttle to the cool downstairs from the hot attic.

The tomcats are fed and cared for by the families’ gardeners, who carries galvanized watering cans and pours out metallic and warm water over the cracked clay earth. They shoo away crows who’ve come to pick at the blueberries that the families left behind, and scare off the thin and tattered looking rabbits who dig up the lettuce. This is what they’re paid for, and they enjoy the hot toiling work and the quiet that the families have left behind. Their job is to keep the gardens and the homes from growing wild and feral, to keep the elements from destroying the quiet civilization that holds on so tenuously.

***

I have a small tomato plant, just a scraggly little one really, that’s yielded a few perfect and red fruits so far this summer. I’ve not been able to try a bite, due to my new dietary restrictions (tomatoes of course are full of acid, which is a no-no for my troublesome digestive system), but my husband said they tasted just lovely.*

There was one tomato this weekend, slowly ripening but still mainly green. We had a few days of intense heat and two weeks of no rain, so even with my diligent watering the plant was shriveling in its pot. On Sunday night, it finally rained, and as I was outside listening to thunder and moving some of the plants out from underneath the eaves of the house I noticed a caterpillar eating the tomato. He was as big as my index finger and the same shade of green as the tomato. I called Xander out to look, and he wanted to touch it. I wouldn’t let him because the caterpillar looked so busy eating. I didn’t want to spook him.

I wonder what would happen if we just left the world to the wolves? If we stopped culling the smaller living things off of our plants and land, and learned only to pick off the tiniest bits of meat and fruit to survive. If we became like vultures, scavenging and swooping up what’s freely available to us. What would happen if we entered the woods like bears, picking off berries and bathing in waterfalls?

There are too many of us. Something bigger would eventually come along and pick us off one by one, trying to protect their valuable crop.

*He did not say just lovely, he probably said “good”, but I am in the writer in the house so I can literally put words in his mouth. 

She stayed in the creek

(This is part two of this story.)

She stayed in the creek until her toes were coated with silt and her fingertips were wrinkled and grey. Her mouth, still covered in red lipstick, was just at the water’s silver-grey surface, and she blew out little puffs of air to make a motorboat sound. She had grown slightly bored, restless, and cold. Her body had been submerged for long enough that all her previous thoughts of escape were carried away in the creek’s gentle current. Super-saturated, she was ready to exit the cool cocoon of the water and walk home.

She waded to the shore, her cotton nightgown heavy around her middle, and climbed up the muddy bank and up to the damp grass. The fabric of her nightgown bunched and wrinkled around her body in rippling waves, ice-cold and stuck against her breasts and thighs, and she was grateful that her walk home was short.

When she reached the cabin she was shivering and pushed the door open slowly so as not to wake him. The cabin was quiet to her after the noisiness of the forest at night; the rushing creek and the roaring cicadas were replaced with the rustle of the fire and the rhythm of her husband’s soft snores.

She peeled off her wet nightgown and laid it out on the stone hearth to warm and dry beneath the fire, and crawled underneath the down comforter and quilt that her husband was sleeping beneath. His body was warm and hers was still so cold, so she wrapped her arms around his body and buried her face next to his neck. He stirred and rolled over to face her, but in his sleep-drunk state he didn’t ask why her hair was wet or where she had been. He only kissed her deeply, his and his eyes when they opened were glazed over in a dream. They made love quickly, his heat melting the ice of her skin, and she felt small and magical, like a river dryad, a fairy, the Lady of the Lake. Her kisses were filled with a passion she rarely felt in the daytime.

In the morning he rose before her and saw bits of wet leaves on the sheets and the still damp nightgown in a heap on the hearth. He started to shake her shoulder to wake her up, and ask where she had gone in the night or if it had rained. He thought better of it.  The morning sun was streaming through the cabin’s only window, and it bathed her face and brown hair in its butter-yellow light. Let her sleep, he thought, before putting the kettle on the fire for their coffee.

more about the fireflies

There was something else I wanted to say, before I forgot all about it and my brain filed it away To be opened & remembered on a rainy afternoon in May, 2020.

I wanted to remind myself of how they flew. How they flashed. How at first, only the common fireflies were out, the ones we see in our yard all summer. The ones that flash indiscriminately in neon green. The ones that smell like grass and humidity and ozone. They came out first, and danced for only a little bit. Some boys whose families had spread out by the riverbank tried to catch them, which bothered Xander quite a bit. The rangers said not to catch them. Can we swim after the fireflies are done?

Soon it grew darker, and quieter, and the fireflies that we knew went away. We wondered if the person who used his flash scared them off, if that was the end, if we had hiked all the way from our campsite to sit in a beautiful clearing in what used to the be front yard of a 1915 mountain resort cabin…and if that was the end.

Of course it wasn’t the end. A blue one came out first, and flashed and held his eerie blue light on for five seconds without pulsing. He was soon joined by a green one, then a gold one, then they showed up by the fives, tens, dozens, twenties. Xander said, It’s like a play, that’s all. The not rare ones like the ones at our house come out first and now the rare ones come out to do their show.

And then more happened, all pretty, all magical. The hundred or so people all grew quiet, even the loud kids who were trying to catch the first fireflies became still and awed. Babies who had been crying, red-faced and mad stopped fussing all together. The stars dimmed a little to let the fireflies shine brighter. We were sitting in a small copse of trees, and the moonlight pierced the tree canopy above. Fireflies danced in and out of our little thatch of moonlight.

But I have to go now. I’ll tell you more about it later.

back from the fireflies

We’re back.

The trip was short and full of dancing glitter stars. I had a private double-rainbow moment while the fireflies flashed and flew and glowed all around us. Xander said it was just like a play. Funny how quiet hundreds of people can get in a matter of minutes…

I’ll talk some about it tonight, or tomorrow. Gary got some really trippy photos, too.

Camping was definitely the way to do it. Our campsite was tucked away from everyone else and I heard owls in the middle of the night. Tennessee camping is just so perfect; all dark and cool and quiet. I wouldn’t do it any other way…