To My Husband Misunderstanding the Park Ranger

At a nearby nature park, my husband and son have gone to feed the birds. Chickadees fly off nearby pine trees and take a seed from Whit’s hand. Keith watches both Whit and the birds. Whit. The birds. His hand. The bird on his hand. He hopes Whit remembers this.

Keith grew up by the ocean in Half Moon Bay and then on the country roads of southern Michigan. Deer hunting as a kid, the best part was sitting still in the woods, waiting and watching. The rustle of something far off and the sound of it moving closer: deer? racoon? wild turkey?

He never killed one, always missed. The few times he had a shot, he got so scared his arms shook, throwing his aim off. 

When we drive, wherever we drive, he sees them, far off in a small grove. He can count them before I find them. He comes back from a run on the trail, all excited, “I saw three deer!” As a child he played "deer," running through the cornfields behind his house. I think if I tell him I want to paint our house deer brown, he would marry me all over again.

At the park, after the bird feeding, he hears a ranger talking about needing volunteers for deer maintenance and thinks, “Finally!” He imagines walking out with buckets of water for them on dry summer days, maybe leaving corn cobs out in the winter. Maybe one will recognize him over time, approach him. He can’t touch it, but it doesn’t run. The deer will be as much a pet as a wild animal should be. He wants in.

So he asks the ranger and the ranger explains that twice a year they find volunteers who help with--he pauses as he sees Whit there--”herd control.” Slowly, slowly Keith realizes what “maintenance” means, what “control” means. It is the complete and exact opposite of what they should mean. He feels sick and that he misunderstood and that somewhere, volunteers are applying to come into the park, shotguns at the ready. 

I want to live in his world. Where we feed animals from the palm our hands. Where we feel responsible. Where we hold ourselves still in hopes the beautiful appears. The world where that never grows old.

To Deer in the City

 I’m running down a street one neighborhood over and out of a clump of bushes near the sidewalk, a little brown head pokes out. A dog? Long nose, brown face. And then, a silent woosh of the branches and you step out. You’re young, maybe a few months old. You’re not wobbly anymore, but you lack the grace of a full grown deer. You don’t see me as you bolt across the street.

"Rothirsch Spießer Auge 2007-08-16 131" by BS Thurner Hof - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rothirsch_Spie%C3%9Fer_Auge_2007-08-16_131.jpg#/media/File:Rothirsch_Spie%C3%9Fer_Auge_2007-08-16_131.jpg

Another deer, an adult this time, breaks out and follows you. And another and another. All together, five deer running across the street and between the houses. A couple seem to see me and zig zag a bit, dart away faster. They follow you through 4 yards, past newly trimmed lawn edges and sculpted shrubs. Neat rows of impatiens. Tightly coiled hoses in the corner of the yard. SUV’s parked in the driveways. So civilized.

You lead them to the end of the street, where a large grove of new growth oak trees forms a fence for a shallow ravine. You break away down towards the water, meager and dark as it is. One by one, the others tuck themselves in behind you. I run past after you and even though I stop, I can’t see you anymore. I hear the traffic on Merriman, one street over.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zombieite/15256628308/

Though I was alone, I didn’t feel alone until you vanished. The way silence, broken by a bell or a boom, is stronger when the sound stops. A void, filled and then emptied, seems larger. I miss the wild in me.

To Weeds, Especially Creeping Charlie

If it were up to me, we would just admire your tiny beauty and let you be. But Chuck, across the street, has issues. One summer, he spent his afternoons sitting on the ground in his front yard, jeans and golf shirt, digging root after root out out from between the blades of grass. He would spend days in one spot until there was nothing but grass growing. You had been removed, like drunk uncles at Christmas who sprawl out on the couch and demand more Cheez-its. Chuck kicked you out.

Source: This photography was created by Artem Topchiy (user Art-top).

And I imagine it takes just one or two of your flowers to blow across the street to start the invasion all over again, and though he would never blame me out loud, he’ll mention it. Often. And Chuck has better things to do. The dog needs training. The roof is dirty. The fence is starting to lean, a clear 93 degree angle by now.

If someone had not told me that you were a weed, I would have never thought to get rid of you. Your equally horizontal and vertical growth, the smash of blue flowers against the circle green leaves, your rapid ease growth on any terrain. You are the perfect plant for a gardener like me. I can sit in my folding chair with my book and my iPad, writing all afternoon, tending to nothing but my own wordiness, pulling out the “very’s” and the “really’s.”

By John Liu [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

So we do it for the neighbors. Creeping Charlie for Chuck, the thistle for Steve, the dandelions for Wayne. We do our best the keep the wild within our borders so that neighbors continue to wave to us when we walk the dogs. We recognize our responsibility to the make the block look decent, keep our property values up. 

But I don’t really understand it. I make a wish. Blow.