not really sure. Nor can I state with unwavering trust that I believe in the power of prayer. Yet if I do not recognize the moments from time that appear to me in the meadow as just that—as grace-filled prayers—well, the alternative is disconcerting at the very least. If faith equals certainty, I am undoubtedly uneasy, for I cannot grasp how I might ever prove how meaningfully I have experienced memory amidst a hillside of wild blueberries.
Still, I cannot imagine myself saying, “I do not believe.”
Borderlands
The summer fields are painted ochre and saffron. The goldenrod seem to know instinctively just when to stretch their willowy limbs and unfurl their blazing petals all on their own. Black-eyed Susans accompany the golden spires in some places, while in others oxeye daisies keep watch. The embers of fireweed glimmer here and there and the sweet globes of milkweed flowers are luring insects small and large to their fragrant world. The wild blueberries are coming in, ripening not from cultivation or savvy hybridization, but from something in the summer air: birdsong, perhaps. At least that’s what I think as I squat in the lower field picking the tiny indigo bubbles from the low-growing plants.
I walk upright to this wild place. My nifty opposable thumbs make berry picking a snap. But other than my harvesting presence I am not a factor in this meadowland; I have neither planted nor tended these bushes. The berries I drop into the basket exist entirely due to the bees that pollinated the waxy white flowers earlier in the spring. I am an outsider here, a visitor in this miraculous, blue world. I neither speak the blueberry tongue nor know the lapis language of bee and flower. An entire insect world clicks and whirs invisibly in the grasses that weave in and out of this blue treasure trove. The morning chorus of birds slides elemental over the spruce trees. I imagine in the sweet gibberish of their song a joyful hymn offered at the resurrection of daylight, but who knows, maybe their melodious notes are merely orders, something as simple and mundane as today’s to-do list?
The other night I awoke to eerie, wild words that left me feeling unsettled and disoriented. So foreign to me was their language that I could not even assure myself, “Only a fox barking, or the screech of owl.” What creature should speak such syllables to the stars? I wondered. Haunting sounds, they bounced off the shouldering slopes of the mountain and into the valley all through the night as the world I thought I knew grew less and less familiar. In the morning, I could find no evidence remaining with which to piece together the nocturnal drama that had unfolded. Dew sparkled brightly off the tips of the meadow grass. The air seemed fresh and innocent, and breathed not a whisper of whatever had transpired in the night. I found myself wondering how many worlds I may have slept through in my life, how many worlds remain invisible to me.
I often find proof of other worlds along the path to the berries: a lifeless vole, its fur wet and licked into an unnatural direction. Or, nearest to the blueberry meadow, another sign: an imprint in the moist earth where midnight hooves sank deep into the mud. Once, a seemingly intact butterfly, its stilled wings stopped mid-beat. What world had it fallen from, I wondered, and what had it risked? What about the snake that skids across the path from one grassy galaxy to the next? Or the watchful world of the deer who grazes by the hedgerow and, when it spots you, bounds away clumsily, with an odd gait? Or the milkweed universe with its flower planets and insect moons, its caterpillar stars that spin and burn until they turn themselves inside out in a supernova of orange wings that flash and flicker all across the great sweep of the meadow?
So many worlds.
Even amongst my own species I find there are places I simply do not know. Yesterday, at the soup kitchen, I sat with a man my own age for whom hunger was his homeland, a place I’ve never even visited. Another ambassador at the table believed he was a prophet, that he was Saint Paul. His sentences contained familiar words, but I could make no sense of them. All I could do was wonder at his world, offer him another bowl of soup, and feel grateful I do not know the dialect of empty stomach or hear the fiery tongues of hallucination.
The more I pull myself from slumber, the more I realize that the world I know is really a world I think I know, that there are boundless realms bouncing against each other continuously. We might get a glimpse into another world when its orbit intersects ours. And who knows how long such meteors might have been traveling to reach us? Ancient photons of distant stars travel millions of years—and through galaxies—before their glimmering light alights upon our cheeks. This celestial phenomenon occurs every moment of the day, whether we are wide-awake or fast asleep. If we’re lucky, we might catch the tinsel and flicker of the morning star and feel like something more than the sun rises with the dawn: a chance to see and do things in a new way.
This morning, hiking back with my cache of wild berries, I came around the corner in the path at the same time as a red fox traveling in the opposite direction. Perhaps it too had berry picking in mind, but seeing me, skidded to a stop. For a brief moment we both froze, the borders of our worlds overlapping in the margin. Having come face-to-face so unexpectedly, neither one of us knew quite what to do. Then the elegant creature retreated to a granite outcropping where it sat looking out over the meadow. The tips of his tawny fur glinted in the morning sunlight, creating a glowing halo effect around his shimmering body. If I had known any russet words of fox I would have spoken them, whispered into his whispery ears, “You are a magnificently beautiful being.” But all I could do was wonder at his world as I stood still as stone in the amber glow of foxlight. Indeed, though for the moment my world revolved around his, the fox’s fiery red planet spun quietly back out into space as he heard something rustle in the bracken.
His black stockinged paws stepped once, twice into the tall ferns, and he was gone.
Making Hay
Only a few days ago the wind rippled over the tops of the grasses, the wispy globes of dandelion and the buttercups, painting great sweeping patterns in the field. But now a more structured design emerges. The stems and leaves and flowers lie in concentric rows that follow the contours of the land, revealing the curvaceous earth from which they sprang. It’s the first cut of the season, and everywhere you go this week you can hear the hum and whir of tractors bouncing through hay fields. One day the machines pull the wide-mouthed cutting blade behind their tall wheels; the giant twirling prongs of the hay rake dance behind them the next. The bailers and trucks, with their rickety wooden side rails, follow in turn. If all goes well, that is to say if it does not rain, this tender, sweet first crop of meadow grass will be put up in barns and sheds by week’s end.
Like so much of the land here in the northeastern corner of Vermont, our fields are cut by the farmer down the road. Today, one of the hired hands has come by to ted and rake what was freshly mown yesterday. When he sees me he stops the tractor and stills the spinning spokes of the rake, climbs down from the tattered seat, and comes over to say hello. As we shake hands, I feel what must be nearly sixty years of farmwork in the thick skin of his palm. His name, Butch, is embroidered above the pocket of his blue work shirt. They’re almost a week late getting out into the fields, he tells me, what with all the rain the last few weeks. But, it’ll make for a good crop. He’s got to get going though, the other boys will be coming by with the harvester and the truck around noon and it’ll take him three times around the field for every one of theirs, don’t you know. I want to say, “Reckon so,” but I don’t. A twinkle starts in Butch’s eye and he actually says, “Gotta make hay while the sun shines.” It’s funny because it’s corny, and it’s true. Then he’s running back to the tractor, scrambling up the tall back wheels and into the bouncy seat like a seventeen-year-old farmboy.
It’s too tricky for the big machines to get through the wet swale between the upper and lower meadow, so I keep an opening in this bottom field and a walking path to it cut with a little push mower. In the summer there are wild blueberries ripe for the picking, but year-round it is simply a beautiful, secluded place to walk to. This afternoon, while cutting the grass there, I nicked a low branch of a spruce tree and its spicy smell filled the hot air. I felt like Proust with his fragrant petites madeleines as a memory from my childhood washed over me. Somewhere in my brain the smell of spruce became that of Vicks VapoRub and I could suddenly feel my mother’s hand over my heart rubbing the greasy menthol into my chest. I felt unexpectedly taken care of and immensely loved.