Underground
We have a most dedicated team of moles with whom we share the land, making us wonder when our house and porch and outbuildings will fall into the open maw of some inevitable sinkhole that they’ll show on the 6 o’clock news from an overhead drone’s perspective.
It’s why all our boots land well above the ankle and knee-high wellies are the footwear of choice in the rainy spring and autumn seasons. Few things are more strangely satisfying than sinking your foot into a grassy narrow speed bump and watching the slurry squirt out from the other end of the tunnel you just collapsed with your weight.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing these industrious land mates of ours above ground, their grey fur the very definition of velvety, their eyes tightly closed against the bright light they know little about. Even rarer is watching them at work just centimeters below the surface, a patch of grass and soil moving almost imperceptibly and the cats frozen in anticipation, their paws gingerly patting the trembling ground. Once I witnessed Bumper (one of our freebie rescue tuxedo kittens) attempting to pluck a critter from its nest by extending the full length of his leg into the hole; he was in up to his little armpit while the rest of his body coiled and twitched in pure feline predator mode. He came up empty-handed (pawed?) but the entertainment value of his effort lingered well past the lunch hour. I admire and envy his tenacity.
All of which tugs at my curiosity (often in tension with my deep respect to let other living beings get about their business without any help or interference from me) as I imagine what goes on beneath our feet or careful watch on a daily, even hourly basis. As a child, I stood fascinated for as long as my parents would allow in the agricultural building at the state fair, watching a glass-enclosed slice of beehive and its occupants crawling and buzzing over one another, their agenda not quite clear to my five-year old mind. It looked like chaos but it didn’t matter. The need for understanding was set aside for the full immersion experience of wonder and awe as only a child can enjoy. I sighed, looking over my shoulder as we moved on to the kitchen gadget demonstrations in the next fairgrounds building.
Every day I face and embrace the limits of my knowledge and understanding, which bedevils the heck out of my curiosity. To the exclusion of my grown-up responsibilities, I want to sit on a fallen black walnut’s massive trunk from sunup to sundown and just watch as the forest unfolds its day before me. You know, notice things that I can’t see from my cubicle on the 21st floor on Wednesdays and Thursdays. There’s a place on one of the field paths where groves of young sycamore saplings join their slender branches over my head. On some of the drier morning walks, I drop my walking sticks and lie down, my spine adjusting to the exposed roots hiding beneath last year’s leaves. What a different view that is…noticing how the sparrows hop along the smooth bark and tilt their heads toward me, assessing the danger I might present. In full summer, I get to see what the underside of those leaves look like without straining my neck muscles, tracing their veins with my gaze until something nudges me to get moving before I’m late for work. More sighing as I stand up and finish the sacred and treasured beginning of my day, wincing wistfully for all I will leave behind.
We get glimpses, don’t we, of the myriad other lives going on alongside our own, drama and simplicity playing out simultaneously just beyond our vision. And then we keep moving, taken up with the details of the plans we made, the deadlines we’ll miss by an inch and what’s for dinner. A coworker’s answer to “how are you?” slides off us on the way to a rare in-person meeting and we have no idea what else she’s walking into for the remainder of her day. Hard battles and cherished joys alike, there’s a thrumming below the surface of our existence that we’ll never see, roots and still waters that run deep and out of sight. Curiosity gives way to respectful trust, the fertile soil of human kindness and somehow, the whole human enterprise chugs forward, no matter what the headlines say. I sometimes wonder if the glue holding us all together comes from the prayers of monks in their monasteries and folks who pick up the trash they see on the sidewalk, even though they’ve got a bus to catch in three minutes, and all the other unseen acts of generosity that never make it above the fold. On this side of the sod, I pray for an awake and alert spirit to catch the slightest movement toward peace, no matter how faint, and the decency to pause, to participate and join the effort.
Beneath the surface…maybe that’s where our hope for survival lies.
