Memories

Landscapes

Rae Spencer9 Comments

I once believed that I was not suited for any landscape outside of Tennessee. I was a green and rust girl, addicted to leaf-litter and streams, katydids and quail. How could I learn to love anything other than what I had known?

When I moved to eastern Virginia, I found everything too vast. Too much sky, too much ocean, too much horizon. The sand, pine straw, and salt marshes shifted unpredictably underfoot. There were no katydids. If there were quail, I couldn’t hear them for the gulls.

Virginia was blue and beige, flat and salty. It felt barren, a virtual moonscape compared to the ridges and hills of “home”. And I felt jaggedly out of place, a coarse river-stone rolled loose by some sudden flood and washed all the way down to the sea.

Fourteen years later, the coast has grown on me, and in me. I’m still a girl of green and rust, but no longer frightened by sky. The sand has polished me a bit. I’ve discovered that a little salt in the water does not equal poison. Best of all, there are green places here, too, where I can feel at home.

Squirrel in the Bird Feeder

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I photographed this little visitor in the first week of February last year. A full year has passed since then, a remarkable sequence of months that have been some of the most productive of my life, and the saddest. I suppose the same might be said of any twelve month span, as I tend to measure time by milestones of success and loss. But what if there is another way? What if I should learn to measure time as the distance between meals, as the difference between hunger and a handful of seed?

Chickadees and Downy Woodpeckers

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Early last year, while walking at First Landing State Park, I noticed a small flock of chickadees foraging alongside a pair of downy woodpeckers. The chickadees seemed like amateurs in such practiced company, but all of the birds appeared to enjoy success.

It was the first time I had seen chickadees exhibit this particular foraging technique, and the already beautiful day brightened. The euphoria of my new knowledge followed me home. It lingered for days, sending me back to the Park for another walk much sooner than I might otherwise have gone.

I was able to capture a few seconds with my camera, a fleeting glimpse that words alone would never convey. I find this difficult to admit, as I love words and am reluctant to acknowledge their limits. I find it even more difficult to accept that the moment can never be reproduced or shared in full. How unfair, that time and space conspire to render memory so singular and personal.

The Woods

Rae Spencer2 Comments

The woods of my youth grew complete with creek and wildlife. I knew every nest, den, and footprint. In summer briars, snakes, and mosquitoes swarmed into the woods. In winter they retreated, surrendering a fey, brittle place where I got lost for hours without ever getting lost. Escorted by a pack of dogs, sometimes by the bravest of our cats, I chased over and around and through the creek, straggling home at dusk muddy and matted with burrs.

In early spring lamprey came to spawn. I gloated over the lamprey, certain they lived nowhere else of consequence. Each March I knelt for hours beside the shallows where they dug their nests. I counted them and marveled at their spots and stripes. I cupped my hands under them and watched them wiggle free over my fingers.

I’m sure I did other things, had other habits and hobbies. But my memory is overgrown, buried in underbrush and fallen leaves, forever snarled in the woods. Should I return now, I don’t believe I’d find my woods. Only a few acres of trees and a little stream.

So where does my nostalgia lead? Not back into the woods. But spending time with these pictures feels like an invaluable luxury in my busy world of adult anxieties.

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I wrote this piece a few years ago. I’m reposting it now because these pictures have been calling to me. They are more than shadow and light, more than pixels. They rustle like leaves and smell like wet, happy dogs. (All four dogs are long passed and well grieved.) I can almost taste the crisp air from that misty day in 1992, a rare elixir of youth and solitude and happiness. Perhaps, despite my earlier claim, this nostalgia DOES lead back into the woods.

The Menagerie

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From my earliest memory I lived among packs, herds, and flocks. Not all of the pets belonged to me. Each was designated an “owner” within the family, for the sake of clarity…and blame. So that when my sister’s Husky chewed another plug off another cord, the destruction belonged to my sister. When one of my cats clawed another hole in another screen, or delivered kittens on Daddy’s coat, the trouble was mine. (Though Mother shielded us from the worst storms. I don’t believe Daddy ever knew about his coat.)

We chose some of our pets, others chose us. For the most part, once they set toe on our property, they stayed. Every nook and cranny, every shed and tree sheltered our teeming beasts. I can’t imagine a world not crowded with warm, funny companions. We fed and housed them, and in return they taught us to laugh and cry with their wonderful, infuriating habits. Despite the semantics of ownership, I now claim them all. I own a story for each of them. They are in everything I do.

                             

Over the last few weeks I have come to know Mother’s current cats, four rescued felines with wildly different personalities. They range from shy to bold…from chronically sleepy to intensely curious. I’m delighted to know them, to add their characters to The Menagerie’s story.