Awe, A-W-E

We walked up Native Tree Lane past large solar panels and stake-and-tubed seedlings that hopefully survived the winter. I peeked down the tubes at the seedlings, their brain-feet comfortable in the soil. I imagined my friend Jody—or someone who helped Jody—wedging the earth with a spade and delicately fitting the roots into the dirt. I hope our redbud, poplar, and wintergreen made it through the winter, I told my husband Brian. Last year, we also planted what looked like storm detritus into the earth. Twiggy potential dots our land, some of them having grown hand-shaped leaves last summer. Jody’s cabin within view, we sighed at the pastoral delight one must possess if they lived there. Wait ‘til you see the inside, I told him.

We walked into the cabin with hands full for Ostara, the Pagan celebration of spring’s beginning. Brian carried four bottles of my homemade white pine soda. I carried a packet of Common Milkweed seeds, some jams, and loaves of homemade bread that Brian had made earlier that day. A small clutch of us talked in the kitchen where dried gourds lined the ceiling above the smorgasbord. Intrigued by my white pine soda, Jody insisted on trying some immediately. I popped it open and we cheers’d in the moody light. The taste, light and fresh, dwelled on the tongue. We were immediately introduced to another couple, Greg and Cynthia. Cynthia looked familiar and I even told her so. I had likely seen her at an Audubon or conservation event, which was how I knew Jody.

At some point, Brian and I walk around the cabin taking in all its little delights. Birds nests rested on beams. Glass bottles full of feathers lined the ceiling in the living room. Large branches stood in pots, adorned with fairy lights. The stone and mortar of a fire place had little bones, fossils, and Jody’s children’s teeth embedded within it. With my friend Steve, we adorned tables with cloth and lanterns. At one point, Brian approached a hutch where a book had been lain. Brian tilts his head in interest as I approached. Oh, I know this book! I told him while picking it up. I held it up to Jody and told her my amusing anecdote about the book.

*

What are you looking for? I asked the woman and the bookseller as they were searching the same shelf I was perusing in the bookstore. Maybe a third pair of eyes will help. And honestly, it was awkward because I didn’t feel like being around people and they had been searching for over a minute—which is a long time!—for a specific book. Lover-of-books, I just wanted to wade my way through the shelves, unencumbered by people and being perceived. If I helped, maybe we’d find the book faster and I’d have the shelves to myself again. The woman looked at me and said Awe. A-w-e. I took the book cradled in my arms and held it out to her. I had it the whole time. The bookseller immediately left, not at all taken by the serendipitous moment between two strangers drawn to the same book. A meet-cute you could say. The lady, tall and lovely, talked to me about how much she loved the book and wanted to buy it for a friend. I handed her the book. Having literally around 1,000 books at home, many of them unread, and literally, several of them about awe, I didn’t need the book. We talked some more, about 10 minutes or so. I told her about similar authors such as David Abram, Robert Macfarlane, Sophie Strand, and Diane Ackerman. Before we parted, she gave me a little pin, symbolizing love. She called herself a love warrior.

*

Oh, that’s not my book, Jody said. I believe Cynthia is loaning it to me and might read some passages from it tonight. With that information, I made a mental note of the author’s name considering that the book might be more popular than I had initially thought. Brian and I continued exploring the house. We eventually found ourselves in a conversation about horseshoe crabs after I mentioned wanting to visit Delaware. Living fossils, they are a sight to see, and can be seen on the beaches of Delaware. I talked about how on a solo road trip I had stopped at Hyannis Beach in Massachusetts because I could no longer bear the southbound traffic. I ate half a small pizza and carried the rest in a to-go pizza box. The box eventually got soggy from repeatedly placing it down on wet sand in order to beachcomb. I eventually came across a dead horseshoe crab. In total awe, I stopped a family of vacationers and asked them to take my picture as I held up the living fossil in front of my torso. They obliged but did not care to touch or hold the horseshoe crab.

Jody encouraged Brian and me to go upstairs to one of the bedrooms where we’d see two horseshoe crabs. An invitation to see a part of the cabin I haven’t explored yet? Okay! Brian and I went up the steps and walked straight into a bedroom. Switching on the light, there were the two dead horseshoe crabs, perfectly preserved, scuttling sideways up the wall.

Eventually, Brian and I approached the altar to which we were all encouraged to contribute. I put my packet of Common Milkweed seeds on the table next to seed packets, chicken eggs, and other relics of spring, including an assortment of pins. I picked up a pin. That woman from the bookstore gave me this same exact pin, I told Brian. Cynthia then approached us. I pointed toward the book and began telling her my small world, huh? anecdote about the book she brought with her. Cynthia listened, amused, and stopped me.

Sarah, that was me.

Did you see that coming, reader? I sure didn’t because I’m just plain silly, have a terrible memory, and don’t remember faces that well, obviously. I can say, though, that both of us were in awe.

Dinner was served. The conversation, an unintended game of association, went from tornadoes to cow-patty hail to birding to insect frass to cicadas to a drowning victim turning out to be a sex doll to finding condoms in streams to how condoms were used to make falcon hoods (which Jody had on display on a mantle in the same room), to salamanders. At the mention of salamanders, Cynthia brought out a jar containing a dried, preserved Jefferson salamander. She had found the salamander dead, likely having gotten stuck under a glaze of ice. We passed the brittle body around the table, running our fingers along the knife’s edge ridge of their back.

Jody then provided slips of paper and a pen to write down grievances we have in our lives. Something to which we’d like to let go. I struggled with this, knowing that difficult things are necessary. I whispered these feelings to Jody over the candlelight. She agreed with me. Hard things are necessary. I wrote down anxiety, knowing that a little bit of it is okay but a lot of it does feel unnecessary and even ridiculous. The past few months, I suppose I have been especially struggling with this considering the amount of people who have been telling me that I am not giving myself enough credit. Like many humans—especially women—I self-deprecate, laughing at my struggles, not understanding why people would want to spend time with me. I looked over at the man who chose to spend his life with me. I looked at what he wrote on his slip but I already knew what he had written.

Towards the end, we formed a circle around the wood stove and Cynthia read from the book of awe. She talked about the merits of walking. Serendipitously, I went next, sharing a poem I had written that morning about a walk that Brian and I had taken the day previous:

With cochlear croak, the spring peepers,
glossy-slick in the vernal pools, sing their I’m ready song.
Chroniclers of snowmelt, we can hear
the harbingers of spring from a quarter-mile away.
Rising from the canals and caves of winter,
we walk together on River Road and marvel
at the mergansers riding the small rapids downstream.

Hours away from aurora, we close our eyes
when the bend in the road guides us to the sun’s
garden of light that blooms like crocus or colt’s foot
on our faces. We stop and marvel at skunk cabbage,
hooded and rising from their prayers of soil.

Let us be skunk cabbage, robed in red with our sisters.
Let us be spring peepers singing multiplicities.
Let us be river rocks guiding the bright breasts of fish and fowl.
Let us be symphony, whirlwind, and egg tooth
piercing the membrane, quietly cracking speckled shells.

Before we bade farewell, Jody gifted me with cords of wood from a birch tree that had gone down in a recent storm. Referring to my white pine soda, she encouraged me to make birch beer from them. I told her I’d do my best. Brian and I walked down the dark lane, cords of wood cradled in my arm, spring spinning out of its winding sheet of sleep.

As I write this, the birch beer concoction is cooling on the stove. My small, white dog’s head is resting on my big toe. The sun is shining and water-logged pieces of birch tree are cooling in my sink. My other dog rests nearby, freshly healed from minor surgery. He is well-overdue for a walk in the woods. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to follow him into the springtime’s sun and see where our a-w-e takes us.