WILD RELIGION

I have lived on a heavily-treed one and one-third acre, near a mid-sized creek in SW Ohio for nearly thirty-five years. One of my passions has been creating diverse native habitats for all manner of flora and fauna so they can be fruitful and multiply. With help, a grassy slope along the road, one of the only places that gets full-time sun, is slowly being repurposed into a prairie for pollinators. The back quarter of the property is an area that can stay wet for most of the spring and early summer, so I’ve filled it with plants that “like to have their feet wet,” as they say in botanical circles. Throughout the property, grass has been reduced and replaced with natives that colonized when no longer mowed. It has also been enhanced with plantings of other native trees, shrubs and flowers. I’ve tried to create a sanctuary, a sacred place, where the trinity of animals, plants, and mycelium-laden soil can mutually thrive.

 

But within any sanctum or holy temple, offerings must be made to appease the high priests and priestesses, the saints, and gods of these Kingdoms. Sacrifices must be made. I took a vow to maintain this small, sacred community, to do it no harm, and to not throw off its balances by unnatural means. This requires continual acts of devotion which must be religiously performed in order to keep it all from falling into the Abyss of Utter Chaos…

 

Recently, I’ve been forced to perform one such act by adhering to a strict ritual of food offerings to Rocky - The Most Intelligent and Ambidextrous One. Because of this, seed and suet oblations must be given to the Winged Ones ONLY in the morning when Rocky is at rest or meditating. If I do not, he/she will zealously plunder the feeders. If the tastiest of table scrapes are not placed in the consecrated, but dirty, dog dish at the back of the property between 3-5:00 pm, all hell will be unleashed on my deck overnight. Decorative pots with expensive plants, carefully chosen and arranged for their beauty, will be pillaged. I will wake from my rest to find flowers and potting soil strewn across the boards, anointed with wet piles of shat. These afternoon offerings are against my better judgement. But I ask you, WWJD?

 

By the end of April, if I have not retrieved an item I need out of the storage cabinet, I must participate in an intensely prayerful baptism by fire, as I reach in ever so slowly to reclaim a planter hook or hand trowel. First, I stand to the side in reverence, then open the door with fear and trembling. I wait. For the High Holy Hive Makers have returned. Eventually, I sear my conscience by partaking in the blasphemous act of knocking down the paper cupola architecture. But they love this cloistered space and return over and over again to erect their Shrines of the Unborn.  (But Judas Priest, it’s my cabinet and I paid for it!)

Around that same time, as soon as the winter covers are removed from the deck furniture and Adirondack chairs, the vinyl vestments must be sprinkled with holy water, dried out, and locked in a vault. In that moment, I cannot waiver. I must not, saying, "I’m tired. I’ll haul out the big bins later." If I am double-minded or sloth-like about this annual ceremony, the covers will become hidden, inner sanctums for wrens, paper wasps, and mud daubers, potentially resulting in swollen fingers, moral dilemmas, and dark nights of the soul.

 

For two weeks in early summer, my kitchen is invaded by Black Ant Crusaders, looking for sweet spoils to bring back to their Queen. All cabinets and drawers must be fortified and any food sealed in, like the Arc of the Covenant. To poison them would certainly induce the Royal Wrath of the Queen, so I surrender to the Midnight Mass of Messiness by thoroughly cleaning the kitchen each night, when in reality I just want to go to bed. So, this year, I decided to try to placate the Formidable Formicidae by laying alms of rotting bananas and other fermented fruit on the railing. I think it’s keeping them out of my temple…and leaving them rather tipsy.

Finally, and most discouragingly, I humbly admit there is no way to appease the squirrels. For they are the gods, performing daily miracles. Dangling by one toe, seemingly weightless from branches, taking whatever they believe to be rightfully theirs. They miraculously squeeze into the smallest of openings for he smallest of portions. They create oak and walnut trees by burying the nuts at the precise divine depth. They will, within the hour, outwit me again and again with the wisdom of Solomon. They also require a most ardent tithe of birdseed, not ten percent, but ninety percent each week, more in winter.

 

And so, like any servant of the Greater Good, I perform these devotional acts with a mostly pure heart. Okay, yes, there are times when my speech is unholy and my behavior is anathema. But learning to live in communion with Nature is still mostly exciting and satisfying. In return, the Eternal Ecos blesses me with the sound of spring peepers, the smell of peonies, the iridescence of butterfly wings, the taste of fresh peaches, the feel of cool, flowing water, and the amusing folly of those acrobatic gods as they chase one another up and down trees.

 

The peace of Wild Things be with you. 

Amen.