We need rain. There have been a couple of passing showers,
enough to soften the cracking grass a bit and to plump the leaves just
slightly, but not nearly enough to satisfy or invigorate. The neighbor’s
flowering dogwood has all but folded in on itself, pointed leaves with deep
parallel veins now rolled together like little papery cones, all silver
underside. The lilac that bakes in full sun beside the raspberries is limp and
rattling – its velvet triangle leaves have little protection, with no thick
cuticle like the oaks. The jewelweed, some of which already have their mottled
orange flowers that look like gnome caps, is tired and far from its vigorous,
succulent self. Our corn, too, is stunted – two feet tall and already tassled
out. The peppers seem to hold up alright, and the maples.
But there are those hearty ones too who are showing their
stress. Roadside sumac, their peaked fruit still ripening, are starting to burn
scarlet, and an oak sapling in our yard has ruddy tips. What is a showy and
blazing and beautiful decline in September and October seems like an SOS now
(we see neon everywhere, now, but it seems to me without chemicals sumac and
sunset must be the brightest colors anywhere). But interesting, to me, is how
this early, spotted shift allows me to try on the next season. A month ago it
would have seemed unthinkable, exhausting even, to think about lush green
maples wearing their crimsons and golds. But now I’ve progressed enough,
perhaps, to settle into it – to see scarlet and let my mind wander to spice, to
squash, to crunching leaves. I stoke my figurative beard and think, ‘yes, interesting.’
It is at these times of dry weather especially that I think
about the underneath of trees. That they have a mirror image, or nearly,
anchoring them in their vast swaying greatness. I wonder where the water table
is, and whose toes are still wet, whose roots have enough energy to reach a bit
further, whose roots hairs are clinging by toes to their roots, reaching and
sipping. It is the old ones, usually, who reach the greatest depths. The ones
with great height have big ropey taproots, and I wonder what it must be like
for ones whole enormous, old body to live in such extremes. Imagine, your hands
one hundred feet in the sky, parallel to hawks, fingers catching hot sun, great
stormy wind. And your toes in topsoil, mineral soil, and down down to cold
bedrock, sweet pure groundwater. All manner of creatures burrowing, laying,
digging, digesting, transforming. When I sip cold water it starts at my tongue
and cools my chest; the enormous elm would feel just the opposite.
It reassures me, the big old ones who’ve tapped so firmly in
the ground beneath them. I root for the saplings, too, though they will have to
earn their stripes. At least when they are stressed, and thirsty, and tired,
their blushing is brilliant and beautiful. But we do need rain.
