Lessons Learned

I sat on a knoll concealed by trees and brushes on the edge of my deer woods one early fall morning. Straight ahead was an old farm road overgrown and brushy save for a small patch of open field, an acre, maybe two. To my left, a tree dropped its hedge apples which are said to be the perfect cure for ridding a home of spiders and which cattle munch in loud bursts. Just to my right the old pond was smooth, the banks containing it in covered with gnarled trees. Behind me, tens of acres of wide open grazing land cross-fenced and still green from last summer's showers.

Nothing much was stirring that morning and even my 360 degree check of the land every ten minutes or so detected little since the break of dawn. But finally, during one of those vision patrols, I spotted something moving. I slowly turned my head to see several deer making their way behind me and to my right, toward the pond. Three does and three fawns. I moved the rest of me just as slowly so I could better discover what was going on.

As I watched, the six of them stopped about three quarters of the way across that expanse of field. The three does gazed at each other and none were concerned with my presence, never looking my way at all so I was probably as invisible to them as an old fallen log or a harmless bush. The fawns stuck close to the older animals and looked anxious.

After a moment, maybe two, the largest doe began to walk in a circle, calmly and in a way that looked decidedly deliberate. The others - all of them - followed her. It wasn't a tight, follow-the-leader type circle but a circle nonetheless.

To my astonishment, the six of them made another circle, just a bit wider than the first and a third one with a slightly larger radius than the previous one. Then they stopped and gazed at each other again, this time even the fawns exchanging glances. The does looked back across the field toward the distant tree line. I thought I was beginning to understand what was happening and I continued to observe, still and quiet from my perch atop the knoll.

Another circle and another. A stop, one more circle and they all ran as fast as deer run off past the pond toward a spring-fed creek that divides one property from another and runs cold and clear all throughout the year.

Only a few minutes later, I saw them. Two beagles sniffing the ground, making haste toward where the deer had been, following the trail and looking up once in a while as if to get their bearings from landmarks and outcroppings.

When the two dogs made it to the confluence of circles, they ran smack into a wall of sensory confusion. They tried to pick up the direction the scent would take them but kept running into another deer path that seemingly went into a different direction. The dogs smelled and barked and kept their noses to the ground for a long time before one of them finally found the way out of that maze of confusion.

But by then, I am certain, those six deer were a mile or more away. And I would bet they did not cross the creek, not right away. I think they hit the water, followed it upstream for 60 or 70 yards and then emerged on the other side to further camouflage their scent. Wise creatures these deer.

I have thought about that day in the woods many times over the years. And I have assured myself that, although there was no language spoken, there was communication, although there were no blackboards or lecterns, there was teaching, and although there was nothing audible to my ears, there was most certainly laughter.

Christmas Lights

November is always a busy month with Thanksgiving preparations, holiday shopping, deer season and Christmas lights. This year I got lucky. It was 65 degrees with calm winds the weekend I put up the lights but there have been Novembers past when I worked in weather so cold I could not feel my fingers and times when it sleeted on me and once, after the lights were all in place, that a hailstorm arrived to pummel roofs, cars and Christmas lights with golf ball sized ice.

It's during those bad weather Novembers that I question why I put lights up at all. My kids are grown, one has her own home and my granddaughter, though interested in lights, is probably too young to appreciate them. Oh yes, and Januarys, that's when the lights all come back down again and when I can safely predict cold, blustery days for the task.

When I'm putting them up, I can always count on at least two trips to Wal-Mart to replace a strand of lights that did not make it through the harsh summer of my attic or to add another extension cord because one got used for something else during the off season. I long ago learned that it is far less trying on my patience to replace a $2.38 strand of lights than to repair the non-working culprits. I have even begun preparing during the current year for the next by buying lights at 50-75% off in after Christmas sales although I sometimes find that those, too, meet with a tragic demise in my attic prior to the start of the season.

Last November the weather was pretty cold and I had to escape to the house several times for warmth before finishing lacing up branches and wrapping tree trunks, setting out a lighted moose and three Christmas trees of lights that my dad made many years ago.

And January was cold and blustery, just in time for removing the lights and packing them for storage.

I was concentrating on light removal during that inclement weather when I heard a voice say, "Excuse me, sir?" I turned to find Betty, my neighbor from across the street. "I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your Christmas lights," Betty continued. "I keep my shades drawn most of the time but I looked outside every evening and admired those lights."

What a wonderful compliment. I thanked Betty and she headed back across the street to her home. Betty is over 80 and she has Alzheimer's. She doesn't recall my name anymore but she remembers my Christmas lights. And she found joy in them. This year, I remembered why I put those lights up. This year, they are for Betty and every time I see her shades part, I know she has admired those lights.

Shift in Thinking

Not long ago I read that scientists had discovered bacteria, I think it was, that thrived in an environment of benzene. They were trying to determine what new possibilities existed with such a life form, one that could tolerate chemicals so extreme that our conception of how things could live was challenged. And that led to theorizing that our search for life on other planets was misdirected. Perhaps organisms in space did not need oxygen and water to survive and might do quite well with compounds like methane gas or ammonia maybe.

Our paradigms are difficult binds to break. We tend to conceptualize everything based on what we already know or assume we know. That's to be expected I guess. How else would we frame things, at least to begin with, than in terms we understand and with which we feel comfortable? But paradigms build a box we have to escape before we can move forward.

Everyone has paradigms and everyone is boxed in by them, apparently even scientists. Interesting things can happen when we free ourselves and go beyond the limits we set for ourselves and that can happen at all levels. New inventions are almost by definition a paradigm shift. So are new theories, like how life might be supported in other worlds. But it doesn't have to happen at high levels. We can shift paradigms anywhere and come up with something completely new.

When I worked in manufacturing, I was tasked to head a group that would address our attendance policy because our absentee rate was unbearable. The normal thing to do would have been to write people up faster for fewer incidences as part of taking a tougher stance. The group and I wanted to try a different approach. We set aside what we thought we knew about attendance and looked at it from two new viewpoints and only two viewpoints: 1) what do we really want to accomplish and 2) who do we want responsible for accomplishing it?

That was it, our only two goals. With them we realized we wanted to keep the machines running and we didn't want to bully people into running them. So we shifted everyone's paradigms by announcing a plan that anyone could miss any amount of time they wanted whenever they wanted in any increment they wanted. The caveat? If a person missed, it was their responsibility to find a qualified replacement to take their spot.

Gone were the complaints about not being able to take time to watch kids in a school play, likewise gone were supervisors running ragged trying to keep equipment producing and gone were people saying they were not getting enough hours. Gone. Everyone was happy, and productive, and we stopped chasing after attendance offenders like traffic cops and our supervisors went about managing the business. So did everyone else.

All because we were willing to shift our paradigms, throw them out really, and start fresh as if we didn't know what we thought we knew.

Fighting Sleep

Have you watched children just before bedtime on a day when they have played hard and filled with fun? There's a sudden burst of energy in a last minute refusal to give up and go to sleep for the day, perhaps a bit uncertain whether the next day will bring as much delight as the one passing into history. They fight sleep as hard as they can and want so badly to stay awake and stretch the day out as long as possible. They play briefly with a toy and abandon it for another, laugh, jump and refuse the bonds of slumber. But finally, they can fight it no longer and they give in to the inevitable. They sleep.

I think trees are like that. They awaken in spring to buds and blossoms that stretch into leaves and spend the summers waving gently in breezes, finding joy in gentle rains and in the animals that favor their branches. It's as close to an extended play day as trees can get and they make it last as long as possible, fighting sleep the entire time. When fall comes, trees expend a last burst of energy, displaying brilliant colors and they try desperately to hold onto their leaves through autumn rains and winds. But finally, they can fight it no longer and must give in to the inevitability of winter. They sleep.

Cheers to Perusing

When I was old enough to ride my bike outside the confines of my immediate neighborhood, my usual summer destination was Edison Park which was a straight shot down Mulberry Street about five blocks from my home, a journey that took me past rows of closely packed houses on either side. Occasionally, I took a more scenic route down 167th Street past Concodria Cemetery and near a bank of businesses that included a bar, a bowling alley next to that and a few doors further down, DeLock's which was an old fashioned convenience store with nickel candy and where we could buy the Sunday morning newspaper on Saturday evenings which was an unbelievable concept for me when I was younger and thankfully not allowed to wander that far alone on bike or on foot.

Either route I took to Edison Park was interesting to me in its own right but never as interesting as the park itself or the building across the street from the park. In later years, I would deliver groceries to Mrs. Shein who was in her seventies, I think, and lived in a small townhouse across the street from the other end of the park. She always complained about the cost of her purchases but tipped me five dollars every week anyway and always asked for me to make the delivery when she called in her order to the grocer that employed me.

But Edison Park was a playground of enormous capacity to a preteen boy. There was a public pool, swings, slides, one of those small merry-go-rounds that is operated by someone outside the ride pushing it faster and faster and where I learned about centrifugal forces and how far you could fly if you let go. And the park had an open field with a depression that could be flooded and made into a skating rink in the winter months. There was also a cement column about three feet tall with thick walls and an iron pipe in the middle that continuously delivered the coldest water I ever sampled and without the need to operate a crank or a valve. It simply gurgled and flowed, eager to offer respite from the summer heat.

As wonderful a place as Edison Park was, what provided even more of a draw for me was the library across the street. It looked like a fancy home and inside the air was cool and refreshing even on the hottest most humid Chicago area summer afternoons. My house did not have air conditioning and the Edison Library was a stop to enjoy, to savor the breathing of refrigerated air.

I did visit the library for more than its coolness. I had learned about the treasures of books from excellent elementary school teachers and I loved books for their words, what I could learn from them, and even for how they felt in my hands, how they looked in neat, clean rows on library shelves. I was in awe of how the library smelled with its oak floors, pine racks and the mixture of aging paper and hardcover fabric that had absorbed the scent of hundreds who had been there before me along with the dust of the ages.

Most visits, I would spend perusing the volumes, stopping to sample an author, read a chapter, put it back and pick up another. Or simply scan the titles, touching each spine as if to reach out and make contact with a far away place, a distant land, a foreign concept. Each time I went, I would check out books and I learned how to field a baseball, took a trip under the sea, and discovered the stars. Long ago, I had found Hal and Roger Hunt and read about their adventures then I stumbled across many more stories in that series and I read them all.

I Google mapped my old neighborhood and I found Edison Park. It looks a little different today. The merry-go-round is gone but the pool pavilion looks new. Swings are there but different, same with the slides. I saw the berms that contained the skating rink but I have no idea whether the city still floods it in icy weather. And it looks like the library still stands, at least the way I remember the library but I admit I am only guessing because all I have to go by is the top of the roof from a satellite view. But something has never changed. I still peruse books. I still bask in their scent, enjoy touching their spines and admiring them in neatly arranged rows. I choose books to read based on how the first chapter appeals to me or by what amazing knowledge I might be left with from them. The habits I developed on all those trips to Edison Park and its adjacent library have never left me and I still go on magnificent adventures or teach myself new things from the words arranged just so in books.

Dreamscape

Dreams are fascinating to me. Even the strange and twisted ones. Where do they come from? Why do we have them? What do they mean? And why is it that sometimes we remember them so vividly when we first wake up only to lose their detail with each breath we take until they are completely wiped away. Yet there are others we recall almost exactly as we dreamed them, even years later.

Sometimes, I can slip into a dream state quickly, almost immediately after I close my eyes. A short nap on the couch or falling asleep again after waking up on a Saturday morning can often produce dreams the moment my eyes shut.

That happened to me once when deer hunting. After waking up at 4am, getting to the woods before dawn and seeing nothing at all that chilly November morning, the lack of substantial sleep the night before finally seized hold of me. I closed my eyes briefly, seconds really, but sounds got distant, the world went gray and I could feel myself drifting off. Just so you know, I was not up in a tree stand where this would have presented a great danger of falling. I was sitting on the ground on a hillside with my back propped up against a small tree.

As I said, my eyes were closed for just a few seconds, fifteen or twenty at the most. When I popped them open again, I had the very real and distinct impression I was in Germany. It was World War II and I had been assigned a forward position as a sniper sent to distract and confuse the enemy while our own thin troop levels could organize as best they could for a full assault. The 30-30 in my lap looked like a bolt-action M-1 and my insulated Walls coveralls looked like military fatigues. I could clearly make out the sound of several enemy troops working through the brush in front of me and my heart raced as if my job assignment was about to be fulfilled.

Keep in mind, I was fully awake as I saw and heard these things and had only moments before not slept, just felt myself drifting toward sleep. It was a struggle to convince myself I was in Carthage, Missouri and not in some battlefield in Germany. As I traversed time and my mind returned to the hunting day at hand, I could still hear the troops moving in the woods although they seemed further away and my drab green uniform was beginning to tan again.

You might think I'd say that the sound of marching troops was nothing more than an approaching deer which would be a nice, although predictable, twist in this story. But the deer were not moving and Damion, who was with me that morning, made no reaction that would indicate he had seen or heard anything. Squirrels had not yet descended trees in search of food and the raccoons had long before left their nighttime tree perches and wandered off.

I can't say what it was that made me have that experience. I had not watched any war movies anytime immediately or even distantly prior, nor had I been influenced by noises or sights around me at the time. It was more like two different time periods somehow intersected briefly on that hillside, and apparently only on my side of the hill as Damion never said he felt anything similar unless, of course, he isn't saying.

Perhaps this was an experience from a previous life, which would mean I would have to believe in reincarnation and while I admit that could happen, I am not certain I am convinced it does. If it was a throwback to a previous life, I had been sent to conduct a dangerous mission without a high probability of a successful outcome for me, which makes the dream a bit more like a nightmare.

Then again, it may have simply been a firing of synapses in my brain triggered by an overactive writer's imagination and a fully engaged subconscious mixed with some very sleepy eyes.

You choose the ending to this story.

Hitchin' a Ride

I make it a point never to pick up hitchhikers. It's just my policy and it always has been. Most are nice enough and probably mean no harm but there's always a danger that something could go wrong and I could end up badly hurt or worse. A couple of days ago, I violated my own policy and the thing is, I didn't even mean to do it, the hitchhiker crept in so quietly, so subtly I had no idea she was even with me until it was too late.

Of all places, it happened right there in my backyard, by the butterfly bush. The plant gets overgrown during the summer and gives new definition to the term "bushy." I brushed against it while mowing because there was no place else for me to go. The forsythias on the other side pretty well pushed me toward the butterfly bush, which I noticed was very aptly named as scores of the little creatures were taking in the last sips of summer.

I took some time to watch the butterflies who, earlier in the season, made a scene by landing on my ball cap and shoulders anytime I approached them while they savored the blooms. Sort of a butterfly thank you for planting the bush.

When I got to the storage building to put my mower up, my peripheral vision detected something bright green on my shoulder. At the same time I moved my head to see what it was, it moved its head to see what I was. I had picked up a praying mantis that was now staring me directly in the eye. When I moved my head, it moved its head and we danced like that for a minute or two before I remembered the mower that needed to be stowed and the rest of the chores on my list that day.

I released the mantis onto a honeysuckle planted next to the storage building and watched as it climbed those branches on the hunt for a snack. I guess in the future I will need to make a few exceptions to my "no hitchhikers" edict.

Photo courtesy of Sydnee R. Crain.