I’ve never been a big fan of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”. Something about that 19th Century style or all that talk of bodies makes it a little too gaudy for me. But, there is a later work by Whitman that I am quite fond of called “Specimen Days and Collect”. It is a quirky collection of notes, sketches, and essays published in 1882 that provide an interesting glimpse into Walt Whitman’s world. It is considered the closest thing to an autobiography he ever gave us.
I pick it up occasionally, read a few passages, and am transported back to that old time and place when the world was slower and greener. The passage I ran across recently finds old Walt describing one of the places he gets away to: “One of my nooks is south of the barn, and here I am sitting now, on a log, still basking in the sun, shielded from the wind. Near me are the cattle feeding on corn stalks….The perpetual rustle of dry corn stalk, the low sough of the wind round the barn gables, the grunting of pigs, the distant whistle of a locomotive and occasional crowing of chanticleers, are the sounds”. I had to look up that word “chanticleer” and was delighted to find that it originates from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and means “the proud and fierce roosters who dominate the barnyard”.
Walt’s mention of “Nooks” got me to thinking. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “nook” dates to around 1300 and is used to describe a secluded or sheltered place. I can relate to Walt’s penchant for these little hideaways from which to look out on the world.
I have many nooks, myself. All of them, decorated green and leafy. My own pecan orchards provide a shady haven of peace when I’m not working in them. Within some orchards, there are certain corners of seclusion that offer a peace away from the world. In the southeast corner of the first orchard I planted nearly 20 years ago, the pecan trees join a brushy, wooded area where the bobwhite quail often gather and call in the late spring and summer. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, when work is done, I walk through the orchard rows to this spot and lean there against the bark of a pecan tree, swatting gnats under a shade of leaves rustled by the evening breeze. The swallows dive over the trees and between the orchard rows for insects. Other birds call and chatter—the quail, cardinals, chickadees, summer tanagers. As Wendell Berry says, “Best of any song is birdsong in the quiet, but first you must have the quiet.”
I’ve planted a wildflower patch down the full length of the entire West end of one orchard. In late spring and summer, it blooms with black-eyed Susans, Indian blanket, and Coreopsis, attracting a host of butterflies—Gulf Fritillaries, Skippers, Viceroys, and Swallowtails. I find myself drawn to this patch of flowers and the activities going on there, drawn into a whole world that exists outside human concerns. Butterflies see the world from the red spectrum through to ultraviolet light. It exists to them as a series of still photos from all angles—up, down, forward, behind, and to the sides, all at the same time— rather than as a movie scene unfolding, as it does for us. There’s something about that. Seeing life as a conglomeration of still frames. It allows butterflies to pick up movement very easily and avoid predators. They see light waves on flowers, directing them along their path to the nectar they seek like an ultravilolet runway. Sometimes it’s refreshing to acknowledge that others see the world differently than we do.
I have narrow, open lanes that I maintain through some of the wooded areas of the farm. They are corridors of solitude, havens of shade and patches of light and are among my favorite places to walk. You can see the shapes of deer bodies imprinted in the tall grass when the weeks pass too long between mowings. They bed here because it is a comfortable place that allows them to see trouble coming. It offers a quick and silent escape into the shadows of the timber and undergrowth nearby.
Sometimes when I see trouble coming or after I have felt it pass, I like to go to a place on the farm that I call “Big Tree Hill”. With its west side, our family’s farm borders an 8000 acre lake created in the 1930’s to provide hydroelectric power to the county. When it was created, hundreds of acres of river bottom land were flooded. Today, one of the points over-looking the lake has an enormous black walnut tree with a diameter of over 50” growing at the field edge. Its limbs, which are as big around as my torso, are adorned with resurrection fern that greens up with life after a rain. My grandfather once told me they used to run cables from this tree down to the river bottom and hook oxen to the cables to haul out timber for the sawmill. Where the bluff on which the walnut rests slopes down to the lake, there are found a number of large-girthed trees—a big spruce pine, water oaks, red oaks, all large around the middle and standing watch over the bluff. I like to sit among them and think about all that has occurred under the spread of those limbs. These old timers remind me that my problems don’t matter all that much in the big scheme of things. Life will go on.
Sometimes, we find little nooks of wonder that will later seem only to have existed in our own imaginations. A few years ago, I was turkey hunting with a friend of mine. We had set up inside a wooded edge with a turkey gobbling at us from across the field. The leaves of the trees had leafed out new and green in the late April morning. Dew dripped from them and glistened in the sunlight streaming through the canopy above us. As I sat with my back against a tree I noticed a small, pendulous nest composed of spider webbing, lichens, leaves, and grass in a forked red oak branch hanging at eye-level an arm’s length away. I never would have seen it had I not been sitting down. As I sat motionless, listening to that turkey gobble, a golden package of grace fluttered by me and landed in the nest. It was a white-eyed vireo. That round, pale eye and it’s bullseye of a pupil took no notice of me covered in camouflage. It simply settled into its nest and waited along with me for the turkey to come in. A magical moment that I’ll likely not experience again.
At the farm, when a rain comes up, I often retreat to the cover of the shed under which my tractors and equipment are stored. The shed is open on all sides and is made of a steel skeleton with a metal roof. It’s a wonderful place to watch the rain fall and listen to the sound of drops hitting the roof. In spots, the water may drip or stream from the roof’s edge depending on how heavy the rain is falling. I can look out and watch the trees waving slowly with the wind’s breath as the wetness weighs down the leaves. The smell of the rain overwhelms you there as it falls, clean and new.
At home, there is my garden. It is planted at the SE corner of our yard. Taking up an area of maybe 900 square feet, it is bound on both sides by muscadine vines I planted before we even finished building our house. Overhanging one side there is a fig tree and at one end, there are a few blueberry bushes. In between the muscadine vines I grow peas, and tomatoes, eggplants and squash in summer in raised beds I made from old siding off some of the barns at the farm. My youngest daughter plants zinnias in the center of the garden to add a little color. Or at least she did before going off to college. On hot summer evenings, I like to turn on the sprinkler and watch the cardinals and brown thrashers gather for a bath and drink. The garden is a place to piddle and ponder. Even at night when my mind weighs heavy with life, I like to go out to the garden and breathe in its freshness and watch the moonlight dance off the foliage. Sometimes a mockingbird will stir and start up his nocturnal song as I unload my burdens to the stars.
Old Walt Whitman could be a little fancy with his words at times. I suppose there’s a place for that. There’s no doubt he was a fellow that loved places of peace and beauty where one could let go of cares, think about things bigger than himself, watch, learn, grieve, and marvel at the wonder of it all. I don’t have any chanticleers (a situation I hope to remedy at some point) but Walt and I share an appreciation for the nooks and crannies. Look around you. Nooks are everywhere. And it’s a good thing, too. All God’s creatures find themselves in need of a secluded and sheltered place from time to time.
Thoughts From The Orchard 