Encounters L: Extraordinarily Ordinary

CREATIVE NONFICTION

by Susan Johnson

          What I encounter says more about me than what’s encountered.
          An older guy approaches as I sit reading on a bench and begins stretching, bending his knees. “I know I don’t look it,” he says, “but I’m seventy-five.” Actually you do look it, I want to say. But no need. He probably thinks he looks fifty and fit; when I curl up in my sleeping bag I feel like I’m twelve. I know I don’t look it. But then who wants to look like they’re twelve?
          Watching college basketball most of the male coaches are skinny guys in quarter zips with gelled hair. But one guy looks old-school, like he smokes cigars, is more or less cigar-shaped. “He could be a truck driver,” I say. “Or a cop,” you say. Neck fat, fake tough-guy stare, slapping his hands, rallying the troops. A TV sergeant and oh, how his team responds. Yes sir.
          “Water’s high,” a guy tells me as we walk by the river. “Yes, it is,” I say, “it’s been raining up north.” Nothing like keeping it obvious when talking with strangers. “They’re hunting over there,” he says. “Geese,” I say. “Better than humans,” he says, straightening his baseball cap. Right. And that concludes our conversation for the day.
          Cold rainy day. I’m the only one out. Then a bike goes by. “Morning,” I shout. So good to know I’m not the only crazy one. Feet soaked through even though I’ve got an umbrella. Nothing much moving in the woods. The next day it continues to rain and I’m out again. Staying in will only make me crazier. So focused am I on the puddles in the path ahead I don’t at first see the three deer standing among new green shoots. We pause to take each other in. The rain lets up. The moment stretches open. It’s like we’re synchronized: the mud, the fresh manure spread on the field, the skies beginning to lighten. The deer with their deep brown eyes. A sharp-shinned hawk flashes through—dark, light all in balance.
          There’s one spot on my walk where I twist to see the view behind where two fields brush against each other, corn and timothy, a combination critters can’t resist. Sure enough there’s a red-tail swooping up into a white pine, twigs in its talons. Nesting. So now I’ll watch for that, and listen as the chicks squawk for food.
          Plastic in my brain. What’s it doing there? I know how it got there—it’s in my blood, my food, everything I eat wrapped in plastic. And if it’s not in plastic, apples say, I put them in plastic so they won’t roll away. But what’s the effect? Blocking pathways so synapses no longer click? A recipe for decay.
          I read a recipe for “light” coconut cake that calls for a pound of butter in the frosting, a half-pound of butter in the cake, plus a cup of full-fat coconut milk stirred into the batter. I wonder what rates a “heavy” cake. Adding layers of whipped cream?
          “Is it OK if I bring in ice cream?” I ask the two librarians on duty, as I stop to pick up my holds. “What flavors?” one asks, as if that makes a difference of not mixing food and books, messy melting food. “Mocha chip and bourbon pecan,” I say as the other librarian checks out my books. Sweet. I leave with both hands full after visiting my two favorite purveyors in town.
          A little girl in the grocery helps her mom by picking up a jug of OJ. Her little muscles strain. After handing it over she rushes toward the cotton-candy-flavored Peeps. Now these she can lift no problem. I’m not sure they count as food but that’s not what this is about. When I was little shopping with Mom was about seeing all that was out there on the shelves, the possible but not necessarily probable.
          I remember in grad school stressing over a twelve-page paper on a one-page Wallace Stevens poem. My calculus was if I don’t write the paper, I won’t pass the class, then I won’t get my degree and I’ll end up living in a trailer overrun with kids. Those were the two options. Succeed in school or poverty and kids. I was poor at the time so that wasn’t an issue, but kids would have been an issue. A sign of defeat, of giving in to convention. I got an A on the paper and moved on. Now it’s one of my favorite poems. The Man on the Dump. The the.
          Someone’s put a little homemade ladder down to the river. I’m guessing it’s a boat launch for a muddy river vessel so they can sneak up on ducks, under the cover of straw, like one of the three pigs. Except they’re the predators, they who made these boot prints leading to the river to a boat to kill ducks.
          The FBI are back at the house by the river. It’s the third day in a row. Unmarked black SUVs in the driveway, at the marina, both sides of the road. Well, what is it? Today hazmat trucks. We’re a quiet town, which is the perfect place to hide I guess if you want to be stealthy, selling deadly chemicals on the dark web. Plutonium it turns out. They post a pic of a chubby white guy with bad facial hair. Oh, him.
          A student comes to class wearing a name tag but with a different name. She works at the hotel on campus where there’s a basket of name tags. Everyone reaches in to pick one for their shift. Doesn’t matter the name. It’s to identify yourself as a worker for that shift. How wonderful. I’d love that. Today I’m Alistair, Jeska, Ingeborg. Then I’ll punch out and return to some other self.
          I hear a car slowing down and brace as it pulls beside me. It’s an older woman in a big four-door Buick. “Out for a constitutional or would you like a ride?” she asks. “Just walking,” I say. It’s not that she’s from a different generation, but a different era it seems like, when people kept plastic napkin holders on their kitchen table, matching salt and peppers in the shape of smiling mushrooms. Where did she come from? One of the farmhouses hidden by overgrown yews backed by a tumbling garage full of empty milk bottles where she spent the morning cutting eyes out of potatoes? And now out for a dose of fresh air.
          The neighbor’s cat comes running when I call. Oh Rosie! I dig my fingers deep into her fur, behind her ears, a rub of belly. I wouldn’t have said I was lonely before, but boy the rush of warmth, of connection, is nothing but a delight. 

          I love learning a league is roughly three miles, what a person might walk in an hour. I walk a seventeen-minute mile if it’s flat and open. Close enough. I wonder about the circumstances that led to using time to measure length—rather than length. Because it was time that mattered, walking to a neighbor’s farm when there was no phone. Who cares about the actual number of feet.
          At the summit a guy congratulates me: “You made it!” As if there were any doubt. As if I don’t hike daily. Then he asks what town that is below. I’m tempted to lie, payback for his patronizing comment. Oh that’s Worcester. That’s Pittsfield. Both of which are hundreds of leagues away.
          A couple asks me how I am. “Cold and wet,” I say. “What’s that?” they ask. “Cold and wet. You asked how I am.” The guy thinks this is hilarious. “Cold and wet,” he snorts. I’ve been out in this chilly rain for almost two hours; I don’t find it amusing at all.
          Last week it was snowing. Now the cherry trees are out at the end of my street, as are our azaleas. Pop pop. Tree swallows swoop and shimmer. Fox babies tumble. We did it.
          A guy lies on his back in the trail. Another guy runs over. “Do you have medical training?” “No,” I say. “We’ve called 911,” the first guy says. Standing and watching doesn’t help but I feel strange leaving them behind. You have to get out. Nothing makes me feel as healthy as a hike in the woods. Yes, it’s risky, but everything is.
          In a novel a woman enters a convent during Covid. I think she just wants to disappear, like we all yearn to do at times. It’s how I feel every time I step into the woods. It isn’t escaping but entering this wonderful world of needles bending light, that bends me into place. This extraordinarily ordinary space canopied by leaves.

Encounters XLIX: These Woods

CREATIVE NONFICTION

by Susan Johnson

          We visit a lighthouse where there’s fog but no horn. “We don’t bother anymore,” says the attendant, “the boats call for it if they want, but most don’t.” I think back to my months on an island and the twenty-one straight days of fog I woke to, the horn constantly bellowing. It sounded like a child endlessly calling out: over here, over here. And I had no answer, no way to make it stop.
          Eastern most lighthouse, says the sign. “This is the eastern most picnic table,” you say. “This is the eastern most chain-link fence,” I say, “and here’s the eastern most outhouse.” “Outhouse” is also the last name of a fellow lost at sea. I wonder if it once meant something besides toilet; if it meant outer most house, something you’d be proud of, living on the edge.
          Here’s another empty storefront though it’s been five years since Covid. This was a popular café selling award-winning breakfast sandwiches—but not customer-winning I guess. And this place sold cheap fast-fashion, presumably not cheap or fast enough. Beguiling enough. I try to consume as little as I can so I guess I abetted each shop’s demise, but all these vacancies make me sad. Can we have some art to fill these voids?
          Here she comes, backward-walking tour guide woman, who knows the number of volumes in the library, number of majors, opportunities in the arts. The parents of future students aren’t listening. They’re checking out the coffee shop. And me? I’m not listening either; I’m part of the background scenery, just trying to continue on my way.
          Weeks after returning from the coast I still see it, along with the seal that followed me as I walked on the beach. It was searching for fish escaped from weirs, though I like to think it was me that was the attraction, that we were companions as I turned to face the ocean. The many faces of the ocean that play out in my mind’s eye.
          I can’t see her but I sure can hear her as I exit my car at the trailhead. The deep guttural hoot, repeated after a pause. Barred owl. Maybe Bard owl? Her bark-colored plumage at work concealing her in these woods, giving them depth beyond centuries of leaf litter. The sound echoes inside me, each interstitial space.
          Every time I hike this stretch of woods I think of Louise Glück’s poems: austere, bleak, edgy. Striking, like these sunrays slicing through hemlock igniting the ledge above, where I once saw a porcupine taking its time. Its sweet old time. Each time I return to her words, I return to these woods. All clutter is cleared, leaving clean lines of thought, like tree trunks intent on rising. 
          Bears are waking up so when I see four furry black legs ahead, I halt to suss it out. A dog. Heh buddy. I never want to stop paying attention to the land around me because that land is sure paying attention to me. How many eyes are sussing me out as I roll on by right now, peering through bush and sapling?
          “A bear walked right into our campsite,” a couple comes down the road to tell me. “I was rolling a cigarette,” the man says. This is my favorite detail. I imagine the bear sniffing the hand-rolled tobacco. They’re omnivores, but does that include nicotine? The last time I was here, a bear chewed the top off my water bottle. Had it developed a taste for seltzer? What have we done to these animals, coming into their living rooms like Goldilocks bearing tobacco and plastic, thinking we can just walk away, that our trash will go “away.”
          After the couple leave, I look up and there’s the bear, nosing the edge of the field above my tent, around the big old apple tree whose fruit is just starting to ripen. Minutes before a doe and fawn were browsing there. It’s like I have my own nature show unfolding, without the stupid background music. No commentary needed; I settle back and take it in.
          On my morning walk a white-faced cow sees me watching her and strides over to the wire fence separating us to investigate. “What do you want?” she seems to say, as if I’ve stumbled into the wrong neighborhood, crossed some line. I’m not sure how to read her. Is it curiosity? And what does she make of the smell of burgers grilling next door? Any idea there’s more awaiting her than her next mouthful of grass?
          A woman walks toward me with a goofy smile. I know she’s going to tell me she sees me walking. Like seeing your teacher outside of school. “I admire your walking in all weather,” she says. “Thank you,” I say. I wonder what it’s like for the truly famous when they’re out in public. But then they probably aren’t out much, don’t go grocery shopping or for a morning stroll.
          Two older women—I’m sixty-five and they’re like twice that—stand by a grape display and chow down. One after another, red green purple, plop into their mouths. They chat, as if at home, not stealing from a store. The produce manager looks on and says nothing. Would he intervene if they began eating plums? That cut pineapple looks good. How about those muffins? Is it their age or something about grapes that seems too incidental? They’ve eaten at least half a pound.
          I feel younger than they are because I just completed a two-and-a-half-hour hike, climbed two peaks, down and up several valleys, ledges, look-offs. Those women may be only ten years older than I am, but nah, I’m half their age, buying broccoli to consume at home.
          At home I watch as neighbors drill five hundred feet to insert tubing for geothermal heat. It’s not as disruptive as it sounds. I wonder what it’s like down that far. What’s it smell like? Taste like? Are there colors, sounds, dark-dwelling microbes thriving on silica? And if so, what do they make of this intrusion, someone boring down to tap into their heat. Down where it’s warm year-round meaning continuous motion. That’s what we’re after, that constant action, molecules colliding underground.
          A man I often see walking asks if I’ve checked the trail behind the boathouse. I tell him I did once and there wasn’t much to see. He tells me there’s a path down to the river now, so I check it out and it’s lovely. This trail I’ve walked by for months and neglected, assuming I knew where it went and that it wasn’t worthwhile. Which makes me wonder what else I’m neglecting. For instance, my own back yard.

Encounters LV: The Importance of Obscurity

CREATIVE NONFICTION

by Susan Johnson

          The last time I hiked this mountain I ignored the No Trespassing signs and sat on the chairlift platform to enjoy the view, the summertime view, green, lush and full of clover. Today the chairlift’s running and the place is packed with tourists riding to the summit, chowing down on paninis and fries. It makes me feel out of sorts as if I don’t belong with my hiking boots and backpack. I find a side trail and a rock to sit on away from the crowd but it’s hard to relax and take in the vista, towns and lakes stretched below full of people I came here to get away from.
          The two guys hiking ahead decide to stop for a snack. They sit on a rock and one turns to the other and asks, “So how are annuities taxed?” Say what? It’s a glorious blue-sky day, a slight breeze keeps the bugs at bay, and I have clear views to three states in all directions. Yes, I often think about retirement, but not here buddy. Not now.
          A trail crew emerges from the woods ahead toting picks, shovels, rope, and heavy packs. I want to thank them for the work they do maintaining the many trails up this mountain. Instead I listen. “I hauled four huge rocks today,” one says, like these we’re stepping on now, crowbarred into stairs. “I ate too much,” says another. Ha. That’s the reality of this work, sustaining yourself to keep going but not to weigh you down. Because you have to keep going.
          “Any scary trees?” a park ranger asks me. “Scary trees? I didn’t know trees could be scary,” I say. “Any broken, blocking the trail?” “Oh, leaners,” I say; “No not today.” Once a sodden tree snapped off a limb right behind me, and that could have hit me had the timing been different. Still I don’t consider trees scary, just something to pay attention to, like I try to pay attention to everything around me in the woods.
          A kitten begins following me on a bike trail so I stop and dismount. “Is it yours?” I ask a guy walking. “No, it just started following me,” he says. Then a jogger comes along and the kitten runs after her. It’s thin but not emaciated. What should we do? Is it lost? Abandoned? Playing a game of tag? It turns back to the fellow walking who picks it up. No idea how this ends but at least it’s not alone, this kitten in the wilderness, exploring, wanting—like most of us—adventure and a home. 
          The sheriff is right out of central casting—a big burly guy with what looks like a burl growing out of his forehead. It’s quite a show. We stop our bikes to watch him pull over an SUV. “You’re blocking the intersection,” he says to the clueless driver who doesn’t quite get that the sheriff’s talking to him. “Move your car out of the intersection,” the cop repeats. I bet it happens every day. All day. I’m so grateful to be on a bike, not pedaling right now but pushing it around parked cars, over to the waterfront even as the sheriff still wrangles with SUV man, explaining that you can’t tie up traffic just because you’re rich, on vacation, and rich.
          A friend is trying to figure out why we went on vacation. “Was it your anniversary?” “No.” “A birthday?” “We went because it’s fun,” I say. Riding bikes, canoeing, ice cream. It was fun.
          It feels a little crazy being out in this rain but I couldn’t sit any longer, and look there’s two great blue herons I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, staring straight at me, seemingly through me. And now what’s this? A small duckling waddling, out alone. No nest nearby. Pinfeathers so it can’t yet fly. Where ya off to buddy? It seems so confident on its webbed feet but truly it’s a target, easy prey.
          At a convenience store, the guy in front of me can’t get enough lottery tickets, paid for in cash from a wallet that’s left an imprint in his jeans. He calls out the numbers and the clerk is happy to oblige. That’s where his money comes from, not the discounted wine. Where the lottery buyer’s money comes from is anyone’s guess. He’s hoping to make money but that’s not going to happen. Not going to happen.
          A guy leaves his boat motor idling while he gets his truck, then leaves his truck motor idling while he lines up his boat. Got enough fumes there bud? I turn my back but can’t help breathing in the multiple exhausts. Finally we launch, paddling our motor-free canoe under a tree where an osprey lifts, joined by a second overhead where it’s quiet and clear. Phew.
          The pond is calm, a slight breeze, but no waves or sharp wind, still a kayaker has managed to flip her craft. Another kayaker pushes the boat to shore while the woman swims. Tries to swim. There’s maybe one foot of water and five feet of muck. Has she no tow rope? She’s too angry to answer. We watch for a bit but she seems safe. Now we scan for hidden stumps, anything that might rock us.
          The muskrat doesn’t see us so continues swimming toward the canoe, a leafed-out branch in its mouth. We stop paddling then it stops swimming, flips over, disappears. We stare at the water hoping to see it surface, but no dice. End of show.
          Back home vines have taken over the lilac and forsythia. I grab my clippers and go out and cut shit. I’m brutal, lopping off anything that snags or pokes me in the eye. As the world warms the diversity of plant growth decreases but the number of vines increases, choking everything. I pull and cull, mostly bittersweet. But it isn’t bittersweet, just sweet clearing my yard, like ridding a sentence of unnecessary words.
          A lone cloud catches at a mountaintop, stops to tip its cup. So do summer storms spot and drench the land. I remember swimming in a Maine lake as a kid, clear hot sunny day, then bam, hail and weren’t we running for it. Running for towels and books, running for porches, running out of the storm, to get ourselves in.
          A woman approaches me on a trail, asks if I have bug spray. I hate to use it, poison for me, for the planet. But sometimes, well it’s the only way I can stand being out. “Yes, I do,” I tell her and hand over the spray which she uses to generously douse her arms and legs. “Thank you,” she says, as if finally able to breathe again. When I meet her at the summit she thanks me again—for the use of a nasty chemical that allows us to keep bugs out of our eyes. They always go for your eyes.
          In 1851 Thoreau recognized how the dam in Billerica changed the flow of the river making it shallower therefore warmer therefore fewer shad spawning. Before factories and chemical spills were ruining everything, we were already altering the lay of the land, with few taking note. But he took note.
          “Two turtles,” I say pointing at a rock in the sun. That’s our wildlife for today.
          After my morning walk, I read Woolf and Thoreau back to back. Both cite the importance of obscurity. She because it allows women to do what means most to them without drawing the attention of fascist flag-waving. He so he can pursue his own studies, roaming the land to observe what flowers are in bloom. Both want to write what concerns them rather than play to, and be scrutinized by, the crowd. And I want to read their concerns, sitting alone here with my coffee.