Nature Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Elizabeth Ayres

Essays

Below are creative non-fiction pieces from the work-in-progress, American Dreamscape: Reflections from Chesapeake Bay Country, a collection of pithy, thought-provoking essays that are nature writing at its best. These reflections invite readers to find whatever matters most to them in the everyday wonders of the natural world.

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Catching the Light

Blue skies and brittle cold at Myrtle Point that day. Threading my way past twisted stalks of sea oats, with the stubble of marsh grass underfoot. The small surf cascading along the beach in falling dominos of sound. Mesmerized by the sparkling strokes of sun’s pen crosshatched on water’s crumpled surface. Dazed by a shimmering ribbon of wet sand curled along the shoreline. Glimmering motes of seedstuff in the air. Glinting insect wings. Flashing filaments of spidersilk anchored to the bushes, floating in the breeze, invisible except in this one shining moment, when, just so, they catch the light.

Then I saw them, freshly minted by the ebbing tide. I picked up one, then another: glistening pebbles like frosted glass. I couldn’t fathom why, but I had to have more, so I ran that day up and down the beach, rejecting anything solidly white, plucking up anything translucent, stuffing my coat pockets, hurrying home with my treasures, and it’s only as I write that understanding dawns: carbonic acid in the water has leeched away their salts. Once opaque, these stones have offered their very substance to the river. Now they are transparent bearers of the light.

But the days grow darker. Light is ebbing, like the tide. One of my stones is oval, another, round. Earth’s axis of rotation is 23.5B off vertical. As she treads her elliptical path around the sun, she points first her northern then her southern hemisphere toward it. Starting June 21st, the sun loses altitude in our noontime sky, and this inexorable progression of shortening days and lengthening nights climaxes on December 21st, the winter solstice, the “sun still” day, when our star halts its southbound journey and turns north once more so that light, like the tide, can flow forth again.

Ignorant of earth’s tilt and the science of rotation, our ancestors were frightened this time of year. What if the sun keeps going? What if it never comes back? Rituals evolved to catch it, hold it, convince it to return, celebrate when it did. Today we know the sun will reverse its pendulum swing without our help, yet, the Hanukkah Menorah, the Scandinavian Yule Log, the candles of the Christmas tree: all our festivals during this season are efforts to push back the cold and dark with warmth and light. One of my personal rituals is an evening drive through the countryside to look at all the houses. So bold, those sparkles and shimmers. So brave, those glimmers and glints. So defiant, all that shining, when night presses close around and threatens to snuff it out.

This Christmas morning it will be fifty years since my father died, so I know something about the dimming. As do we all. Earth rotates daily at 1,000 miles an hour, revolves yearly at 67,000 miles an hour. Amidst all this spinning and tilting the losses keep coming, the griefs pile up, and what are we in an ocean of trouble but small stones scraping in an ineluctable tide? Rejoice, I say, and rejoice again, because in this briny swash and backwash our opaque substance wears away, making us, with every day that passes, more translucent.

Einstein himself said light is a mystery. It is pure energy interfacing with matter at its electrical and magnetic levels. The sun is our primary light source, but the arena of interaction which scientists call electromagnetic radiation occurs in and around all objects, including you and me. What if we go one step further than Einstein, and use another word for light: love. Isn’t that pure energy? Doesn’t love interface with matter at, shall we say, the highest level? So rejoice, I say, and rejoice again, because the tiniest act of kindness is a radiant force, invisible except in the one shining moment when, just so, we catch the light.

Cardinals

A flick, a flash, a fizz. Dash of, startle of, zing of red. The cardinal. Color of my beating heart, pumping blood. Color of the flame that brightens my dark, cooks my food, warms my cold. Red. For good luck in China, purity in India, courage in Europe, joy in Russia, mourning in South Africa, success among the Cherokee, death for the Celts. Red. Stimulates brain waves, quickens respiration, raises blood pressure. Symbolizes danger, energy, passion, power, anger, desire. Used in brothels, on fire trucks, stop signs and as a bouquet to signify undying love.

Small wonder, then, that this little crimson chit is a state bird seven times over. Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and West Virgina have all claimed the Cardinal as their own, and I must confess, I’ve been smitten, too. My lips just can’t help it, they need to stretch from ear to ear as soon as my eyes register his andante arrival on branch or feeder. I love the way he’s sharp all over: pointy crest, razor-edged whistle; quick, keen snaps of tail and head. Never still, this bird, never dull. Always a spark of bright and cheer.

In the 1800's, Cardinals were confined to the American southeast. Prized for their color and song, they were trapped and sold as cage birds to European markets, a lively trade that terminated with the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1918. As human settlement changed dense forests into bushes and parks, the bird’s range expanded, and now, wherever the annual precipitation tops 16 inches, he zips around on a feathered wavelength of 750 nanometers.

Cardinals are helpful. They eat weed seeds and harmful insects, including the voracious seventeen-year locust. Both sexes cooperate equally in child-rearing, not unusual in the avian world, but what is unique to the species is the way males and females share song phrases, stitching together their separate patches to make one melodious quilt. Not a bad model. Cooperation leads to peace, peace leads to joy, who knows where joy might lead.

I looked it up in the dictionary. It means “a vivid emotion of pleasure arising from a sense of well-being.” The root word is joie, jewel. A joyous spirit sparkles, a glad heart shines, a ruby-red bird flashes forth what’s hidden in the secret heart of the world. Season by season. A stun of scarlet on snow. A surprise of crimson on budding branch, in dense foliage. A fat feathered berry at harvest time. All year round.

So I have a plan. The cardinal will be my decimal point for happiness, my bookmark for gladness. Every time I smile to see one I’ll remember to rush right out and share a song with someone, or beat back some weeds, or vote for universal health care, or put an end to war, I don’t know, all it has to do is make someone feel a little better, a little safer, then, flick, flash, fizz, there’s a dash more joy in the world.

The Work We Do

Today they call it Flag Ponds Nature Park but yesterday – some 12 million years ago – it was an ocean where sharks hunted and whales met to give birth and yesterday – some fifty years ago – it was a Bay harbor where watermen fed their families by catching fish in pound_nets to sell in Baltimore and yesterday – just a week ago – it was a beach where a smattering of folk searched for fossils and yesterday – just 24 hours ago – two high tides brought new sand to the shore and tomorrow – maybe fifty years from now – today’s beach will have turned into forest and tomorrow – maybe 12 million years from now – today’s folk might have no language to describe what will be here, or perhaps they’ll call it ocean once again, or perhaps there will be nothing left but the silence from which it all emerged.

I think too much, I know that. While all those nice people combed the beach looking intently for black triangles fallen from the mouth of a Miocene-era shark, I sat morosely in my little chair just beyond the wrack line, staring at the debris the waves had ground, grated and pulverized into an homogeneous heap of white chips, black bits and gray smithereens. Somewhere in all that rubble a treasure could be found, but I could summon neither hope nor industry in the face of such an impossible task. I left.

On the path back to the parking lot, I stopped to read the signs. I especially loved the one about the edge effect. About the shifting boundaries between beach and dune, shrub and forest habitats. About the pioneer plants. The ones that can thrive in poor, sandy soil, reclaiming for land what belonged to the sea. Struggling with it, changing it, until other, less hardy vegetation can take root in the now fertile earth.

I noodled around at the Buoy Hotel, an old shanty left over from when the pound-net fishermen would camp out, February through November every year. Such hard labor. To cut and haul 50 foot poles from the forest. To hammer them into the harbor floor, 130 to support just one net. To trap the fish, scoop them into a boat, box them up for shipping. To mend the nets, keep the boats repaired, cook for themselves in cast iron skillets, make coffee in battered tin pots, drop into sleep on rough-hewn bunks under hand-made quilts, the day’s work sweetened by dreams of hearth and home.

Back at the Visitor Center, I studied display cases filled with sand dollars, coral, leaf imprints, crocodile teeth, dolphin ear bones, sting ray dental plates, whale vertebrae, bones, petrified wood and Piscataway Indian fishing weights. Jumbled together without the neat labels, those precious artifacts would collapse into an homogenous heap of white chips, black bits and gray smithereens. I confess, it frightened me. If all my yesterdays are waves that grind and grate and pulverize. If this present moment is the wrack line. How will I ever know what to cherish, what to dismiss, what to keep, what to toss aside?

Labor Day is upon us. It’s supposed to be a tribute to the social and economic achievement of American workers. You know. The highest standard of living, the biggest gross national product, the best form of government, ours is a country of superlatives, okay, but 37 million Americans live below the poverty level, 47 million lack health insurance. It seems to me we’re living in an era of shifting boundaries, with some new, some pioneer behaviors called for if we’re to avoid the fate of those men who worked at the Buoy Hotel. Today, in a tree-framed pond, you can see the derelict pilings that yesterday had been their pier, before the sand bar took over, before the encroaching thrusts of spurge and thistle. The edge effect put an end to their labor, but ours is just beginning: a birthing of new possibilities this day so that dreams of hearth and home can endure unto tomorrow.

The Gift

The grass on the path is still wet with dew, still fondled by the pure and virgin morning, still shimmering in its pristine, inviolate genesis. I walk amidst a profusion of butterflies, ripening berries and fat white mushrooms, under trees that loom like legendary beasts. The thick air throbs with the desiccated hum of locusts, crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas, a pandemonium pulse that inflates to crescendo then deflates to silence for mysterious reasons known only to itself.

I push aside a thick, leafy curtain to emerge onto the naked apron of sand. Is that applause? Or is it harpsichord notes of light flashing on water’s keyboard? I’m not sure, but I’m urged forward, to where the waves stack up in silken tiers on the shore, a tender and refulgent caress my skin yearns for, so I slip out of my sandals and into the river’s spectral green realm.

Stiff, awkward grasses become pliant and graceful. Minnows dart around my feet, tickling my toes. Emboldened, I wade deeper. Every step sends out concentric sunbright circles from the stone of me dropped into this moment, this moment, this moment, until I stand motionless in the fragile breeze.

I imagine I am some long-legged bird, some shore-hugging creature unsuited to the open blue water where the albatross flies or the whales sing, no, I prefer my amphibian walk, neither of the land nor of the sea but of both. Like the great blue heron I am a solitary predator, hunting alone. Unlike the heron, I might not recognize nourishment when it appears, a thought that propels me to continue my aqueous amble parallel to the beach, looking for I know not what.

Could it be the feel of mud so silky soft underfoot? The surprise when a startled crab scuttles away? Maybe it’s the way the water swirls warm then cold then warm again that beckons me on. I can’t name the object of my quest, yet, as I reach the narrow channel into a tidal pool I am excited, expectant. It might be just there, just around that curve, where the tide hurries inward, where floating leaves rush by on their secret and urgent mission, that I might come face to face with something hitherto submerged, hidden, undiscovered.

My friend’s daughter will soon be married. Lela and Joel will push aside the thick curtain of childhood to emerge together onto life’s naked stage, and I’ve found here the perfect wedding gift. I’ll send them the wisdom of the great blue heron, a creature that is gregarious during nesting season, but solitary and territorial during the rest of the year. They’ll remember to keep their marriage an amphibian journey, never losing themselves completely in each other or in their children but always holding onto the submerged and undiscovered mystery that propels us, for reasons known only to ourselves, to seek expectantly for we know not what. I’m delivering their present just now, in person, arriving to surprise them on my great blue wings.

Butterfly Q & A

And when she asked me, “What name should I give to these flowers? Yellow and white? Sun and moon? Ivory and molten gold?” I replied, “That’s silly. It’s just honeysuckle.”

And when she asked me, “What name should I give to this scent? A perfume? An intoxication? Perfect bliss?” I replied, “That’s silly. It’s just honeysuckle.”

But she would neither be silenced nor dismissed. “What hunger does this nectar satisfy?” she probed, and I remembered. A little girl in plaid shorts and pigtails. A small fist clutching a broken branch: leaves like the emerald tongues of panting fairy dogs. Flowers white as ivory moons, yellow as melting sunshine. Burying my nose in blossoms. In a whirling, swirling, reeling, spinning universe of sweet, of good, of happy. Besotted with it. Addled with it. Then the wondrous anticipation of a further, an attainable, an ineluctable joy: one pinch on a pale green stopper. The triumphal tug. The ambrosial droplet.

“What hunger does this nectar satisfy?” she repeated, and I thought hard. It wasn’t that the pleasure was forbidden – my father had showed me how, after all. Once. Twice. Then he forgot. Moved on to what he thought was more important business, the weighty worries of his grownup world. But I foraged at the edge of the woods, tippling honeysuckle, a task vastly superior to any my father might accomplish. Even then I knew what really mattered, with a conviction as sure and delicious as the liquor I imbibed.

Carl Linnaeus gave honeysuckle its botanical genus, lonicera. Carl Linnaeus also called the butterfly the imago, Latin for “image” or “likeness.” It's not the stubborn, taciturn egg nor the voracious caterpillar nor the shrewd and secretive pupa hidden in its silky cocoon that defines what the adult of the species can aspire to, no. It’s a high-flying, free-wheeling, winged beauty that is the image and likeness of the creature’s mature form.

Now she wants to move on to another subject, demanding to know what holiday we Americans celebrate in the month of July. When I say, “Independence Day,” she asks, “What does this mean?” I glibly respond, “Freedom,” thinking she’ll be satisfied, but no, she is repeating her earlier question, “What hunger does this nectar satisfy?”

I’m stumped. I’ve never thought of freedom as a food, but then, I’ve been grown up for so long I’ve forgotten what the adult of the human species should aspire to. I’ve mistaken stubborn, voracious and shrewd for mature, disregarding the high-flying, free-wheeling beauty in whose image and likeness we were made. It’s a whirling, swirling universe of sweet, of good, of happy, after all, and I’m wondering if what we’ve been calling the American dream all this time is just a silky, too-tight cocoon?

Only a question. Maybe I’ll ask her about it, if she ever comes back. I hope she hasn’t decided she has more important things to do, because if she laughs and says, “That’s silly,” I’ll be really upset.

Baking for the Holidays

“Lay me down like a stone, raise me up like bread.” As prayers go, this one’s a champ, don’t you think? I picked it up from a character in Tolstoy’s War and Peace some thirty years ago. Still murmur it at night before drifting off into sleep, that dark oven that bakes us new again each morning.

Yes, and it’s October already. Time to prepare for winter’s dark oven. Time to befriend the night. From my deck I see her stride towards me, earlier each evening: arms outstretched, palms held open in surrender and supplication. From my deck I listen to her song: the stars and the crickets, a soprano of vast distances, an alto of all that is near and dear, yes, it is good to get to know this woman, darkness, for isn’t she our mother? It seems so, at dusk, when lengthening shadows hurry to the solace of her breast. Or at dawn, when all things reluctantly depart the refuge of her silhouette.

Out in space, the sky is always black, for there’s no atmosphere, no dust or gas molecules to absorb or reflect light’s waves. Out in space, it’s always silent, for there’s no medium through which sound’s waves can travel. Out in space, it’s almost always cold, the objects that could conduct or radiate heat so few, so far between. Out in space is where our earth is planted, who could forget it, with cold dark silent winter coming on?

Yesterday I woke up earlier than the sun. From my deck I watched night’s beloved, inmost mystery become tangible in the day’s affairs. As an incoming tide of light submerged the stars like pebbles on a beach, all the known and familiar configurations emerged: bird calls and traffic and a laughing child, the comforting evidence of routine and rational thought. Yet when I went to the store, it was magic and unreason that overflowed the aisles in festoons of orange and black.

We call it Halloween, but for the ancient Celts it was Samhain, “summer’s end.” Their New Year began with winter on November 1st, so October 31st was their New Year’s Eve, a moment outside of time when the natural order of the universe dissolved back into primordial chaos before righting itself again. The dead could walk the earth that night, their strange and otherworldly soprano blending with our close, familiar alto.

“Lay me down like a stone, raise me up like bread.” As prayers go, this one’s perfect for the season. First comes Halloween, that riotous, phantasmagoric celebration of everything we fear and can’t understand. That should soften us up a bit. Next comes cozy Thanksgiving. No need to fret the constant plunge through cold dark silent space, because Thanksgiving’s warm and loving hands will knead us.

Finally, winter’s long sleep. May we go in as dough, spirit and flesh. Come out next spring, body and soul newly risen. And if anybody asks, please say you picked up that prayer from me.

The Zone

When I walk the beach – and I walk the beach every day, now that summer’s here – when I tramp or traipse or amble or ramble along the shore. And the breaking waves are a white lace flounce edging the sand. And the breaking waves are a salty pulse coursing steady in the sand. Earth’s heartbeat and my own wed together on the sand. In the splashing water I’m walking, looking down.

They call it the swash zone. Uprush meets backwash, inflow meets rundown, water’s mantra of longing meets her sigh of satisfaction. Here is where dizzy collides with giddy, intoxication confronts delirium, I can lose myself in the place that’s neither in nor out but in and out at the same moment and hence, just beyond the reach of space and time.

Here is where you find them, on the pristine, virgin sand: old logs and wet shells being ground to slivers and glints. Flutes of driftwood, holes bored out by tiny creatures, and by time. Castles don’t last long here, nor can footprints endure. And if you stop. If you halt your forward motion. If, standing straight as an arrow, you try to remain still as a rock, the sand will melt from under, mound up over, your feet. You’ll sink deep, deeper, you’ll begin to think you’re rooted, that you belong here, but the tether is misleading and the mooring false. Your real home is constant motion. Now you must go on.

All a-swell the light has been, these past weeks. Every morning, an earlier dawn. Every evening, a later dusk. Every day, a waxing radiance, an almost unbearable fullness, like a woman in her ninth month. But today, at precisely 18:06 Greenwich Mean Time (that’s 2:06 in the afternoon for us Bay Country folk), the sun will be tethered straight as an arrow, still as a rock, directly above the outermost boundary of the tropics, the parallel of latitude which is 23.5 degrees north of the equator.

This day is our longest, this night our shortest. By tomorrow, our star’s moorings will already have loosened. The sun will be one tick further south, our day one tock shorter. We’re living in the swash zone now. The uprushing, inflowing, breaking wave of light has collided with light’s backwash. Summer has just given birth.

Once upon a time, they lit bonfires on Midsummer’s Eve. They danced and drank and sang, as if to match the sky’s delirium with their own intoxication. Magic ruled, and midsummer night dreams. Children twined flowers around the horns of bulls. Young girls scryed for future husbands. Lovers leapt through flames then bedded in the bushes. Healers plucked their most potent herbs. The people prayed and partied for what the people wanted: health and wealth and fertile fields, fecund beasts, plenty of kids.

That was then. Now we’re living in the swash zone. The backwash of our past desires has collided with the uprushing, inflowing, breaking wave of our future needs. Humanity tramps and traipses, ambles and rambles along a giddy edge, a dizzy brink. We cannot stop, we cannot halt our forward motion, we must move on down the pristine, virgin shore. Where every passing day casts up new questions. Grinds old answers down to slivers and glints.

Last week, as I left the beach, I passed a woman carrying her toddler back to the parking lot. “She’s afraid of sand,” the tired mother said to me, and I thought, aren’t we all? I mean, who doesn’t want to run from a place where the selvage is unraveling?

Yet here it is, the summer solstice. And here we are, brothers and sisters birthed together in a new-born season, ready to pray and party for what we’re ready to want. Can you hear it? This wave is washing in a world-wide sigh of satisfaction, swashing out that last wave of collective longing. How’s that for a hazy crazy maybe midsummer night’s dream?

"The Zone" first appeared in Bay Weekly on June 21, 2007.