Listen to this story: If you’re in the car, or cooking, or just lazy… you can listen to me read this story for you, in the audio file below.
Last week I went out to the high desert for a few days to do some writing. Being so isolated, surrounded by boulders, Joshua trees and untouched scrub, one falls into a different rhythm. More attuned to the rising and going down of the sun. Ever alert to the behavior of the local wildlife, too, forever tossing up surprises.
On one of my first mornings there, a lizard was waiting for me in the kitchen at breakfast time. Perched in a sliver of sunshine cutting under the verandah and onto the cement floor, it stood stone-still, and looked at me as if I were intruding. I sent the kids a photograph. “That’s nice” came the reply. (Glad they were getting along fine without me.)
I tried to shoo the lizard out the door, and it scurried behind a counter. In an attempt to catch it, I soon found myself engaged in an entirely unnecessary spring cleaning, that began with a broom and ended with the disposal of a rug.
It was a strange experience to wake up each morning completely alone apart from the critters. With no kids to transport, feed or prepare for the day ahead. No partner to check in with. At first I took my sudden desire to deep clean as yet another crafty bit of guilt-free, writer’s procrastination. But I got plenty of pages done, thankfully. Later it occurred to me that the clean was more likely a result of restless cells, yearning to be put to task as they usually are, even before the day’s first calorie has been ingested.
Here I was free to set my schedule. To exercise or not in the morning. Head straight to the desk if it felt right, and stay there through dinnertime if I pleased. Some of my most productive patches came in these typically unavailable pockets of time. I was like a heifer, feasting on an untouched meadow.
Outside the landscape was almost as lush, too. Heavy winter rains, that have stretched into spring, engorged the landscape. There is an electricity in nature this time of year, and right now its currents are arcing. Old pathways were grown over, and plants I’ve never seen before have sprung up. Blooms bring the bugs, the bugs bring the small carnivores, and from there predatory birds and four-legged beasts I’d rather not encounter round-out the desert’s food chain. Even though an apex predator myself, I do my best to stay out of the mix in the wild. To let it be. But it's hard.
Bushes were thick with tiny flowers and bees buzzed in every branch. I got too close to one, causing an overprotective bee to set me in its sights. It came straight for my head. I ducked, waved my arms about and ran for the house. The bee followed me in one door and out another, seemingly within inches of my head the whole time, without ever stinging me, mercifully.
Back in the front door I went, the bee in hot pursuit, and out the backdoor. A useless hand waving all the while. I grabbed a can of bug spray from the shed to protect myself and ward off this most persistent pest. Nature was getting on top of me and I had resorted to chemical warfare. Firing at it in panic, rocking from front foot to back, as if taming a lion. I must have looked like a complete fool. Then it fled in wobbly flight, I took a deep breath and all was quiet again. Just like that.
The kitchen lizard eventually returned and I was able to shuffle it outside, unharmed. The ledger felt even, for the time being; one rescue, one kill. I had survived another day as a writer in the wild. Not exactly old Ernest on the plains of Kilimanjaro, but you do what you can.
On the last morning I sat down to crank out some final work, only to hear a mouse, scratching away in the attic space above me. My pulse rose, then my heart sank. Another one for the kill list. I think I’ll let an exterminator notch it up.