The woods down the road from my house are a mess. I walk along in the August morning, before heat begins its torment, and I look up into the canopy of oak and elm; into the dense body of cedar and such,
and I see no order.
The upper branches twisted and knitted together, like clasping fingers of really old hands. Many are broken off from last February's deadly freeze, when the weight of ice was so great that branches, and sometimes whole trees, gave way and snapped off. I could hear the sound from inside my house, like artillery fire.
Whole sides of grandfather cedars calved off and lay down in a royal bow along the road, where they still lay dead. Now in summer's heat the trees are a mangle of their history, as if each one is trying to eek out it's own spot, tight with the others, like clasped hands.
They stand together in a tangled hug.
Underneath is an assortment of rocks and rubble, some honeycomed and ancient-looking; some recently broken from the heat, or the weight of a passing cow's hoof. Leaves, stiff and crumbly are taking their time turning to soil. Switch grass and blue stem lean over dry and tired.
I remember them green and vertical in the Spring....
And before that....In February I would walk here, bundled up and breathing frost. I squatted down to take pictures of this same grass blanketed in ice.
It's no wonder nature is a mess.
As I walked today, I thought about what the order should be...Oaks uniformly reaching to the sky; Cedar round, manicured, and as well defined as a topiary. Nature like nice movie, the Disney kind. But nope, not so.....A movie of this place would be more of a Tarantino, full of shocks and irony.
Regular order makes no sense in my Texas...what with crazy unexpected cold spells, rain freezing on anything it can grab....rain that in the summer refuses to come and then comes with wild winds....torrential and damning....
Plants that, if they could, would shiver at their lot.
And then with a heave, summer comes.
Heat.
Some ways of life beg for disorder; for things to stand together in a riot of meagerness; lean into each other......trees and briars and tiny plants too numerous to name; so dry that they are brittle as glass; so thirsty that only their roots hold moisture.
Yet I think it is really not an absence of order; its more like the math of things is bigger than we can easily see. You must step back and take the birdseye view, look down and see.....
Roots run deep in a labrynth of life beneath the still, dusty ground.
Entangled branches give shade and support.
Even fox scat shares moisture with insects and smaller creatures who feed on it.
Limbs broken off by last Winter's violent frost exposes pulp that seems to suit lichen very well.
Today, I saw a scrub jay tilting and gliding effortlessly between the dry broken branches. It was energetic and radient. Somehow this fellow is finding food and moisture and seems to be making a good living. Another mystery.
Disorderly order prevails....
Spiders will always keep a clean house.
Leaf cups will always grab the dew.
Life will live in whatever manner it can.
Most trees will live to see another Fall; another rain; another Winter. The dead ones will slowly collapse in the arms of their neighbors over dozens of years, and beetles will relish and make a meal of them.
Fox will adjust her pallet and fill up on grasshoppers instead of mice, who have learned to hide in the cool of cracks and crevasse
Grasshoppers will get fat because doing the job of cleaning up dry stems, full of protein. Blue stem won't mind because six inches in the dirt, their roots are keeping the lights on for the next wet season.
This is improvisational jazz, not a simple melody.
I try to understand and listen with my heart and look with my third eye. I remember that whatever rhythm moves the clock of nature in my Texas, it is probably more vast than we can imagine.
So I just listen, and I look.....and I am a witness...until time brings around a greener season....
To this bountiful and beautiful mess.
