Patch of Life

 I once dated this girl who was furiously into journaling. With a dedicated set of pens and drawings in the margin to mimic medieval texts. Dragons hand painted into the margins and embellished flourishes on the starting letter in a paragraph. Stuff like that. And I glanced as it once, something I promised I never would but she had left it open on the nightstand of the hotel and I reached for the light, and saw her describe the place, the island, as a place "she had never seen be so green." This was meant to be a compliment on the tropical fecundity. 

That stuck with me even after all this time. The best way to describe something so alive it was just green. I have never seen a space that met that criteria until staring into the roadway berm of a trailhead in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. There, beyond the six inches or so of mowed grass, were spiraling goldenrods and exploding New England asters. Thick mats with tall stalks and lance leaves that tumble over one another.  I am sure this was just disturbed backfill two weeks ago. Hit by an errant mower or the digging for a new pathway.  Each bloom stood out from a wall of green in varying dips of emerald and then lime. What made the scene was all the movement. The honeybees overloaded on dust and then the bumble bees spurred at the leg with their pollen. Threatening hunter wasps bounding each curling stem. And dusty gall flies slicing open the stems to get to the stalks inside and lay their eggs. Everywhere these is movement and color but it is too fast and too small to be taken singularly. Instead its a mass, hypnotic and humming.  There is noise in this scene as the quaking aspen stand behind all this catches the wind and shutters that paper trembling sounds. Its the end of August and this stand is the deep and final sign of all summer against the creeping fall. Finally, there is the weather which is at the inflection point right before a strong thunderstorm. The wind cools from behind so the center of your chest is last to lose the sun's warmth and everything seems to hurry. Race to get inside, to scrape a final bit of pollen, to reach the trail shelter and shelter. The patch moves in circles while also in straight lines as  things shoot to get secure and put an end to the moment.