APRIL 30, 2024 – I looked forward to writing today’s post. Having junked out on news reports about current events—everything from the war on Gaza to the college campus protests to the Hush Money Trial to what planet Bill Barr is on—I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.
To take advantage of a narrow opening in the weather, late yesterday I’d hatched a plan to zoom up to the lake first thing this morning to deal with our dock and boatlift installation. On the three-hour drive I’d mentally edit the screed I was bursting to post. After the sun set on the dock/boatlift project, I’d fix supper (i.e. microwave yesterday’s leftover Thai takeout), transfer to the laptop screen what was in my head and hit the “post” button. Piece of cake. The total number of minds changed would be zero, but I’d feel so great pretending that by shouting from a soapbox I could actually sell some soap.
The sun had barely cleared the eastern horizon before my plan was amended. Law work beckoned, and I did not escape city life until the approach of noon. Upon arriving at the Red Cabin at 2:30 in the afternoon, I realized I’d devoted exactly zero time to thinking about today’s post. Moreover, I spent the next hour attending to the same work that had delayed my departure this morning. Finally at four I got down to business—that is, the business of non-business: the dock and boatlift.
What I’d failed to take into account, however, was that the annual 72-hour plague of the fighter gnats had descended on this neck of the woods a full month ahead of schedule. Trillions of them filled the air, and the size of their swarms qualified as science fiction, especially given the jet engine sound of their “crowd buzz.” In full disguise to prevent whole squadrons from entering my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, I donned the waders and tackled my principal objective: taking soundings along our shoreline to identify where the (exceptionally low) lake level is deep enough to accommodate our boatlift and pontoon.
The process took considerable effort thanks to the giant swarms of giant gnats. Nature at its best.[1] An adjunct task was to pile up shoreline stones to form supports for one end of the dock. Each five- and ten-pound stone I turned over was covered with squirming leeches. Nature at is most beautiful.[2]
At six-thirty I decided to switch tasks and start pulling the nearly 700 bud caps I’d stapled to the leaders of white pine in my trädgård to protect the young trees from browsing deer over the winter. As I approached the entrance, however, I noticed the painted sign, BJÖRNHOLM TRÄDGÅRD, that was normally suspended from a crosspiece between two sturdy oaks was hanging at a distressed angled. Upon closer inspection I saw the destruction that nature had unleashed on itself: the carcass of another large oak had crashed against the one of the two trees that had served as a signpost, uprooting it and laying it flat against the woodland floor. The sign itself was undamaged, but its natural framework, the pleasing gateway to the “tree garden,” was now smashed to smithereens.
Most of the pine seedlings and saplings are positioned to add aggressive growth this year—weather and a changing climate permitting. Yet as I hiked through the garden, pulling the paper bud caps off and shoving them into a large bag, I encountered downed branches from surrounding arbors, several of which had fallen on the young pine. Fortunately, none of the latter was seriously damaged, but I realized how fragile life is and how random, ubiquitous, and omnipresent are the threats to it.
I thought about the gnats, the leeches, the uprooted trees—the “downsides” of nature essential to its “upsides.” I also thought about my place in nature and pondered: Which is more unnatural—my strivings in the name of human constructs (law and business) or my repulsion for gnats and leeches and violent weather that crushes trees?
Or perhaps what’s most unnatural by the gauge of nature is my arrogance to think I could make and mount a sign that would hang for 100 years, yet it succumbed after merely three. Which takes me back to current events and the opinions they spawned and that I felt so compelled to express. Perhaps I’ll revert tomorrow when I have to return to civilization or some later day after I’ve re-adapted to the old bazaar of human interaction, but on this day, gnats and leeches, small and primitive, reminded me that as the sun rises, shines and sets, those lowly creatures and the rest of nature, not I and the rest of humanity are in charge.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
