Speaking of Nature

Years ago, I wrote a small book of poems that took the reader along on my journey from anesthesia to recovery from coronary bypass surgery. I began with terror and ended with hope. I thought it would be a guide for others experiencing the process—and some have called it a perfect description—but it was not well received. Perhaps it was too visceral. I received the comment from several sources that I should stick to nature poetry. Years later, I wrote this essay in response.

Speaking of Nature

Shall I speak to you of nature? I shall, but I must give a warning. Kali, the nature goddess and patroness of Calcutta, personifies the destructive forces of nature. When the typhoon, the earthquake, or the tidal wave strike, she is somewhere close by, adorned with her necklace of human skulls. Some illustrations show Kali with her foot on her husband's chest, his heart in her upraised hand. 

She is indeed the bringer of enlightenment, but her wisdom has a price.


Aerial photographs of an area hit by a typhoon may reveal human bodies awash in an ocean. Some wave hands in the hope of summoning an unlikely rescue. 

Those destructive forces of nature are essential for new growth. When wolves returned to Yellowstone after a long absence, they happily set about killing elk. Trees browsed and in decline recovered, and the forest regained its health. The herds became more vigorous under the predators' watchful eyes.

With the healthy growth of trees, beavers returned and dammed the streams. Rivers slowed down, and marshes grew. Fish populations thrived. Small mammals flourished.

So, nature is not a safe country for discourse, but I have known its beauty and grandeur. I see the beauty of canyons and waterfalls, and I suspect you refer to this beauty when you say nature. I will speak of those things as well.

I recall the rhythmic pulse of waves breaking on the rocky shores of the Florida Keys and the sands of Cape Cod, Assateague, and Edisto. The rhythm is like the pulse of a mother's heart and the waves not far removed from the amniotic ocean where our lives begin.   

The clean smell of the receding tide reminds me of how fresh the world can be, and I forget   the smell of oil and industrial refuse, which persists in some harbors.

The playfulness of otters on the Tennessee River or seals near Cape Cod's shores or dolphins off the coast of Florida fill my memory. I once learned the importance of playfulness from a Right Whale Calf who waved flippers and flukes as I watched from the deck of a boat.

I forget from time to time, but it is a recurring memory. It gives me hope that these creatures continue to recover. The three I saw—mother, calf, and escort—amounted to one percent of the three hundred that made up the worldwide population.

I have read that their population has now grown to 450. Perhaps these magnificent creatures will someday reach the population of thousands they numbered before whaling days. Such hopes provide my reason for speaking of nature.
*** 
 
After writing this essay, I discovered that a much better-known author had published a piece with the same title in Orion Magazine. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay is a wonderful exploration of how the words we use influence our thoughts. And those of others. You can read it here:Orion Magazine | Speaking of Nature

See my article on bird migration here
https://appvoices.org/2021/02/26/counting-hawks    

Images in this issue: Great Blue Herons at Chickamauga Dam. 

Rayz Reviewz Volume 2 Number 17
Language Meets Landscape
Postcard from Hiwassee Island
If you come, come in winter. January is best. And bring warm clothing—the hills of southeast Tennessee have cold spells with occasional snow, ice, and frost. Bring a telescope, too, if you have one, or possibly a friend with a telescope.

Past, present, and future intersect in this place, and you will want to see the geography scarred by the passage of time. In the distance, Hiwassee Island is visible, right at the confluence of the Hiwassee and Tennessee Rivers. The island has a long archaeological history going back to the Mississippian Era and earlier.

The ancient people of these lands are believed to be the ancestors of the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes, traditional enemies of the Cherokee who departed before the Cherokee passed through. The US Government removed their descendants to Oklahoma, like the Cherokee Removal on the Trail of Tears.

Perhaps as many as two-thirds of those Cherokee travelers passed through here, removed by a growing nation whose ways they had emulated. They had printing presses, log cabins, a constitution, and treaties. They published The Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, now in its 186th year. Some owned slaves. Their assimilation did not save them.

Like the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, a series of walls at the Cherokee Removal Memorial bears these travelers' names. Replicas of implements common to Cherokee life are also part of the wall, and a small museum in a log structure holds displays that illustrate local wildlife and Cherokee culture.

When the state of Tennessee planted corn on the nearby Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge to attract Canada geese and goose hunters, they may not have foreseen the arrival of cranes, a bird sacred to some tribes. As many as 20,000 sandhill cranes now pass by each winter.

The refuge is a stopover, a staging area for the birds to rest before heading further south. On any given day, you may see as many as 5,000 sandhill cranes and even an endangered whooping crane or two. Only about 600 of the stately whooping cranes remain in the wild today. They are pure white, except for their black-tipped wings, and they stand over five feet tall.

On a foggy day, you may hear the rattling call of the sandhill cranes and imagine thousands passing through. The mystic call of a whooping crane may set you to imagining an ancient village on Hiwassee Island or a line of Cherokee people boarding boats for a long trip westward. The great Wisconsin naturalist Aldo Leopold said he could imagine the Pleistocene when he heard the call of cranes.

Lately, pelicans have begun overwintering here—the large white ones, not the smaller brown ones. I’ve seen as many as 300! They always passed close by en route to Yellowstone in the spring and the Gulf Coast in the fall, but warmer winters now encourage them to stay.
 
Wear boots, for the grandeur of the area is offset by muddy trails.

Notes

A slightly different version of "Postcard from Hiwassee Island" appeared in the online journal Cagibi: A Literary Space. They publish one short essay per issue in the Postcard section. It's a great read. They seem to be open to submissions from new writers. For guidelines, see cagibilit.com.

To read some of my freelance journalism, check out my articles in Hellbender Press, a Foundation for Global Sustainability publication (sustainably.org).

I composed the following poem in October 2013 at the Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville. While I attended the Southern Festival of Books, I stayed at the conference center and walked their labyrinth several times. I combined the poem with one of my photographs and published the work as an 11x17 broadside with design by Terrance Chouinard of the Wing and the Wheel press and printing by Wonder Press of Chattanooga.
 
Walking the Labyrinth
 
The path of the soul is not linear.
It spirals like the turns of this maze,
outlined with bricks on sides.
Like time, it circles back
passes by starting points.
 
I turn left one hundred eighty degrees,
not exactly the way I came, this path
to the center, where there is no Minotaur.
My dragons are all in my heart,
slain or otherwise.
 
The first wall outlines a square
which no paths cross.
Is this square sacred ground,
reserved for shaman, priestess,
and holy man?
 
If I stepped inside, where
no tracks appear, would I
transport to another place or time,
reappear burned to ash                                                      
by sacred geometry?
 
A friend asked a transit driver
in Nashville's less sacred geometry,
Is this my stop? Her simple reply:
"Either sit back down or get off the bus."
​

A Chattanooga Lookout
 
The Lookouts got their first shot at fame;
A New York Yankees Exhibition game.
 
They signed Jackie Mitchell, a publicity stunt,
but she pitched like a pro, not some sorry runt.
 
The starter gave up a hit and a double.
They sent Jackie in to heal this trouble.
 
She struck out Babe Ruth, third up to bat.
She struck out Lou Gehrig; imagine that.
 
Lazzeri, she walked, put a third man on base.
The manager pulled her just to save face.
 
The commissioner said that she had to go.
Should women play baseball? He just said no.
 
But Jackie achieved House of David fame.
That barnstorming team won many a game.
 
The men all wore beards and long hair to boot.
She donned a fake beard, thought it was a hoot.
 
She wasn’t afraid of a publicity stunt,
but she pitched like a pro, not some sorry runt.

Previously Published, but I only gave up first rights.
Hellbender – North America’s largest Salamander. They dine on fish, crayfish and aquatic insects.
 
She curls among the tumbled rocks,
and waits for a crayfish dinner.
If she doesn’t find a crawdad soon,
tomorrow she will be thinner.
 
She will happily eat a frog or fish,
for she’s an agile swimmer.
But the crawdad is a favorite dish,
it causes her eye to glimmer.
 
Beneath the rocks she laid her eggs.
There must have been a hundred or more.
At parenting she is the dregs.
She ate a few just to even the score.
 
Her mate saw this act and chased her away
If eating eggs, she just couldn’t stay.
He guarded those eggs till they hatched one day.
Then he swam away much slimmer.
 
Ray Zimmerman, Chattanooga, TN znaturalist@gmail.com
 

RayzReviewz: Volume 2 Number 14
​
A week ago, I spotted a regal moth beside the trail. Life had fled, and the orange-brown wings with white spots were stilled.  Movement in the abdomen made me think perhaps it yet lived, but no, there was a hole where the rearmost part of the abdomen had been.

A yellow jacket emerged from the abdomen. Others surrounded the head. They were far too busy scavenging the carcass, gorging themselves on moth flesh, to notice me, let alone unleash their painful stings.
I recently experienced the sting of a yellow jacket, not my first time, when my landlord evicted a nest of them from a landscaping tie near my apartment. He had set fire to their wooden home just after dark, and I discovered the small conflagration when I smelled smoke.
Thinking it best not to leave the fire unattended, I remained close by.  Intent on fire safety, I forgot about the yellow jackets being drawn to light, and one immediately investigated my headlamp. I recovered from a sting on my eyebrow that night and part of the following day. Thankful for an ice pack in my refrigerator, I rediscovered how ice prevents swelling.
Fortunately, I avoided the stingers on this day, though I am certain they would not hesitate to repel me, the intruder if I disturbed these yellowjackets. They were not shy about completing their task and went about stripping flesh like vultures on a dead cow.
I thought of Annie Dillard and her description of a moth that got too close to a candle and became a second wick. The story appears in her book Holy the Firm. She chose to think of the moth as female and said that she did not know if the moth had completed her work, laid her eggs.
I, too, know little of the life of the moth that lay beside the trail to Glen Falls. I know that the regal moth is a close relative of the lime green luna moth and a member of the genus Saturniidae. As such, the adult moth has no functional mouthparts. Adult luna moths, regal moths, and other saturniid moths live on stored reserves.
Books of natural history tell me that after a winter as a subterranean pupa, the regal moth emerges to grow wings and find a mate. The males then die, but the females must lay eggs before dying. The adult moths live a few days at most, and reproduction is their sole purpose.
The moth spent its first summer as a “hickory horn devil,” one of North America’s largest caterpillars. The spines on the head supply the horn in its name. If you have never seen one, do a web search. Photographs abound.
After a few months of feeding on hickory, walnut, or pecan leaves, it descended to the ground and found soft earth. It burrowed in to spend the winter.
It is easy to see the beauty in the regal moth. Can you see beauty in the caterpillar? What of the yellow jackets who feasted on the moth turning flesh into flesh? What of the yellow jacket that stung me? If Christ is present in all things, there must be a divine hand at work in each of these, moth, caterpillar, and yellowjacket as well.