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April 10, 2005
Swapping swamped for swamp
Fatigue. Lack of concentration. Low self-esteem, morale. Continuing inability to work except in small bursts. I feel old and incapable.
Many positive remedies available, but perhaps best of all is to hike to the big willow tree on the edge of the swamp behind our pastures. The swamp is about the size of our property, something on the order of 4-5 acres. Sometime early in our tenure at this place—probably 15 years ago—I discovered the tree. It's an ancient willow as willows go (though I don't know much about their actual lifespan). It has 4-5 major trunks, only one of which is upright. The others are splayed out horizontally over the swamp. A frisky, agile person could venture quite a ways over the water by crawling out on one of those limbs. Instead, I sit in the crook of the willow. The big upright trunk, more than 3 feet in radius, serves as a fine chair back to lean upon. In the crook of the willow is old moss and leaves—quite soft, if a bit damp. I sit and let the sun and silence wash over me.
The silence of swamp noise. Today the swamp was full of peepers. (We first heard them last night—a little late this year. Folks in Earlville are laughing that the peepers are late because they're having to swim back upstream from Pennsylvania, where the floods washed them.) Today the peepers were singing, the grackles chuckling, and the redwings shrieking the boundaries of their territory. The sky reflected in the dark-bottomed water was an implausible blue, and the moss covering the horizontal willow trunks that stretch out over the water was a bright spring green. A beaver meandered by, indifferent to or ignorant of my presence.
To return home, I again cross the winter-battered cornfields, the dry husks and stalks rustling and crunching underfoot. The snowmobilers have cleared a wide path across the cornfields; it's good that in occasional small ways they are useful rather than reprehensible.
As I cross the old canal bed, I notice snowdrops in the underbrush. They're near a spot where an ambitious groundhog a few years ago excavated an old brick canal building that had apparently burned, probably a century and a half ago: charred bricks and bottles were dug out in the name of groundhog habitation. Could these snowdrops have been there since then? How else would they have gotten there? When they were planted, it would have been on the bank of the canal, very close to the brick building. No later than the 1850s. On close inspection, I find them quite different from the snowdrops I'm familiar with: they have a little fluted cup like a daffodil.
I return to working at my computer not healed but at least soothed. Everybody should have a big old willow on the edge of a quiet swamp, a place where nobody else but the muskrats go.
Posted by senioritis at April 10, 2005 08:22 PM
Comments
being the ambitious gardener that I am (green tomatoes, anyone?) I thought at first that snowdrops were literally, um, drops of snow. Hi. I have a phd.
I love this post because it's beautifully written and it includes the word "muskrats."
Posted by: aerobil at April 10, 2005 10:20 PM
If only I could have figured out how to use another of my favorite words, such as swindled. At Colgate I had a colleague who would use that word from time to time, and it was clear that she really enjoyed the way it slid off her tongue. Muskrats? Yeah, you're right. That's on the list, too. And for anyone who's wondering about Amy's gardening reference: I once served her fried green tomatoes, and she asked me, in all sincerity, how one grew green tomatoes.
Posted by: senioritis at April 11, 2005 07:05 AM
Very soothing just to read this. Seems to be much need for solace in the blogosphere these days. Nice to know one isn't alone. Thanks!
Posted by: Donna Strickland at April 11, 2005 09:12 AM
Out here in agriville, USA, even I could probably manage to grow tomatoes, green OR red.
Posted by: aerobil at April 11, 2005 09:36 AM
Thanks for the comment on my blog about the scilla. I had actually planted lots last fall and they came up a couple weeks ago....a different kind, though. Glad to have learned about a new genera I wasn't really aware of, despite the planting....since I just had to do research on the thing after seeing your comment.
Love your thoughts about your swamp. Spent my first 20 or so years upstate (Ontario, Wayne County) and though it's been 40 years I still think of those swampy areas in spring. Peepers. Muskrats. Wonderful.
Posted by: Liz Donovan at April 15, 2005 11:50 AM