Decaying and Becoming

I took myself out to the Pond, to ask about its history, not so much the human history, of who walked this land in the time before my memory, but the place history — the history of water and soil — here. I walked the path to the other side, picking up and breaking fallen branches as I went. I found a few rocks that my husband might like, for the stone walls he has built and tended for many years.

As I puttered, I heard the words, “Life, death, life, death, life.” These are the same words I heard a month ago, as the leaves were falling into their next existence as soil, taking flight, flying on the breeze. This is the story of the Pond. “Life, death, life, death, life.”

I sat on my bench, and imagined myself decaying into the soil. I realized I was, in very real ways, already doing that, as my septic system decomposes and seeps, as it should, into the Earth, becoming part of the ecosystem. I become part of soil, as does any other animal in this place.

I felt into the changes we humans have made here. I remember what the pond was like when I was small, when I skated with my father. I remember a quiet corner of ice behind a row of alders, a safe place to skate and play, while hockey games claimed the main portion of the pond.

I remember how, over time, the pond filled with cattails, until there was only a muddy place in the middle, and how the cows would press through to get a drink in summer pasturing. I remember the bulldozer pushing it clear, and how awful the landscape looked for a season, until life renewed and greened. In recent years, my husband wades to pull cattails, praying for the help of Muskrat in this task, and chatting with Bittern. Bittern pretends to BE a cattail. If you stand still and weave your long neck back and forth like the reeds, no one can see you, don’t you know?

What was it like before my earliest memory? What did my Daddy do here as a boy? Did my grandfather make a rink? What boys skated here eighty years ago?

I belong here. I have grown in this soil, and contributed to this soil, for 66 years. I am born of the soil under my father’s finger nails. I spoke aloud, introducing myself as “Alice of this Land.” And the breeze immediately picked up, caressing my cheek, as the Spirit of the Place replied, “We know you. We know you.”

I belong to this place. I belong to this land. The land does not belong to me. I sat for some time, decaying into the soil, becoming. Decaying and Becoming. Feeling into the history of the Pond. Feeling the lives and deaths of frogs and ducklings, the dragonflies, the geese. Not human history, but the more than human history, and my part in the soil, my father’s breath in my nostrils, and the breath of the muskrat and groundhog.

I belong. I am part of this soil.

I puttered some more on my way back. I heard my sister’s voice as she walked past on the road, “Are you walking or wilding?” “Wilding,” I replied. It was a good day to be wild. One of many. I am part of this place. And the breeze kisses my face.