At Least They're Committed

“It said it might rain this afternoon,” I say with hope. “Let us pray, and we’ll just keep watering you regardless.”

Standing near the border of the land, I stare at the patch of spruce before me.

D comes up behind me with a bucket of water from emptying his cold plunge. “What?”

“Oh,” I turn and focus. “I was talking to the trees.”

“Ah,” he says. To my and the trees’ delight (I’m quite certain), he floods their base and walks back to the house for another pail-full.

Stepping from that spot, I move the sprinkler away from one small grove into the next, I twist the tap and it springs to life. “I’ll come back in 30 to move it again!” I assure the flora.

This land was lost once before in my lifetime, and I fully intend to be a factor in its rebirth. Thankfully, the house was left standing. But what of the trees? What of those horrific deaths by fire? When I think of it, when my mind pictures the orange and golden flames cresting the mountain top and sweeping toward the stream consuming the beautiful pines in its path, it makes me cry. It makes me want to scream because they couldn’t. If I can secure the perimeter with healthy trees and no dried weeds, that’s an important step in ensuring it won’t be lost again.

Let’s be clear, just because I talk to trees and animals, I’m not into personification — that is “the attribution of human nature or character to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure.” ~ Dictionary.com.

Correction: I don’t like literature or movies with talking animals and plants. Divine characters and attributes such as sin and the fates as intelligent beings are fine with me. Further correction, being as The Chronicles of Narnia is my favorite collection: I don’t like literature from this realm that gives animals human thoughts, feelings and traits.

Unless it’s crows, I suppose. They have a higher IQ and a more expansive language than anyone in our country’s administration at the moment.

Along those lines, I did appreciate Orwell’s Animal Farm — brilliant, troubling, prophetic as it turns out — but I can’t say I liked it. Pretty darn sure we weren’t supposed to; rather learn from it. Didn’t work. And I get that these written works are metaphors for the human condition. But spare me pathos of The Fox and the Hound, Charlotte’s Web, Watership Down, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, etc.

Of course, these are meant to provide insight into the real-life horrors experienced by the people they represent. And that’s a good point. Come to think of it, I don’t read or watch media that depicts long bouts of human loss and suffering and mistreatment — especially nonfiction — which is a central theme to many of these compositions. So yes, I get that these are meant as a parable of life using ‘simpler’ creatures to drive home the point.

I was a journalist for 30 years of my career. I’ve seen, heard and read all the horrors and learned all the lessons from them that I need for 10 lifetimes — Katrina, Sand Creek Diaries, 9-11. I don’t need to lay awake any more than I already do, praying and grieving for the human condition and especially for the children.

But I digress. The point is, you might ask, if I don’t like personification, why do I talk to the trees and the birds and the squirrels and the moose and the deer and the . . . ?

Do I think they listen? Do I think that my words have meaning to them? Yes! I believe the tone and tempo of my words permeates their bark and/or their brains. I know they know how deeply I care. The point is, I don’t expect (nor do I want) them to open their mouths (or branches) and respond.

I prefer the beauty of the trees, the sound of the stream, the call of the wind . . . OH, you little shit! “Stop stuffing your face you little fuck!” I hop out of my chair and bolt outside as a fat chipmunk scares away the red-headed sparrows and yellow-bellied finches to hoard the sunflower seeds in her overextended cheeks. “Leave some for someone else!”

Ah, these silly critters! I do so love them, but I’ll do the talking if you don’t mind.