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Today is Rudy Mancke Day. At the Cottonwood Trail festival this evening, where children were painting at easels set up along the creek, making origami boats, and taking kayak rides, Rudy led a nature walk that lasted for hours. "Rudy sees everything," says John. "I've walked that trail dozens of times and never seen what he sees." "Plus he's like the Pied Piper," he said. When I found him it looked like the rapture. A tremendous group had gathered around, as if newly risen from the creek, listening to Rudy rhapsodize about pokeweed, from which his Spartanburg grandmother made poke salet in early spring, cooking it "in two waters." The first water can't be consumed since it removes the poisonous qualities of the pokeweed. In spring she also made sassafras tea, which was actually good. I was thinking there are two waters of Lawson's Fork -- that which was and that which will be -- and for the present the two are combined, but the final water will be the one that won't poison you. I stayed with Rudy a half hour, before I was called back to the festival, and learned more about the biota of the creek than in the previous four days total. Rudy pointed out ash-leafed maple, with its lime-green Chinese lantern blooms hanging over the trail; hackberry, also called sugarberry, the host food plant for the larval stage of hackberry butterflies; and cottonwood, which quakes in the wind because its petioles have flattened sides that catch wind. I wish you all could have been there. There is something holy about learning the secrets of one's place. And yet Rudy, who is a walking encyclopedia of natural history, was quick to say he didn't know much. "There are great mysteries," he said. Over and over, he kept reminding us that we are made of atoms, as is the red-tailed hawk that dried its feathers overhead on the transmission tower while we followed Rudy, as is the toad that a child delivered to him, which became the basis for a lecture - no, a sermon - on toads. That they breathe through a diaphragm in the throat. That water-holding bladders inside their bodies allow them to leave wetlands for periods of time. That if a toad could deliver its venom, it would be worse than a rattlesnake's bite. |
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Every parcel of life is made of the same kind of atoms, mixed differently. "I'm crookneck squash rearranged," he said. "I'm chickens recyled." A rabbit can change into a hawk, a slug into a northern red-bellied snake. "Death is a part of life because the system doesn't work without it," he said. There was something gigantic about Rudy's talk. It was not simply an identification walk through the woods, but a reminder that life is full of amazing stories on a molecular, biological and ecological level. This is when I love science. I kiss the feet of the scientists, including the one I've been lucky enough to work with all week, because they are the ones who figure out astounding things like this: the life of a mayfly lasts one day. That a ladybug is not a bug at all but a beetle, the ladybird beetle, and beetles are the most common insect, and insects make up 78 percent of all animal species. How would we know without David that marbled salamanders deposit spermatophores as readily for other males as they do females? That is fascinating, engaging stuff that makes suicide ridiculous - why would anyone want to kill himself when the world is full of marvels? There was more about Rudy's talk. It was full of wisdoms, including his belief that companionship is as vital a human need as shelter. But food is first. Our basic drive is the search for food. He was reminded of a haunting photograph of a Sarajevo woman running to get a small container of potable water while snipers were shooting at her. "Human beings don't write poetry, don't go to plays, unless they have food provided to them." Constantly he reminded us that we are animals, connected to other animals, to plants, and to the processes of the earth. There were elderberries, bagworm cocoons, jewelweed, poison ivy, more pokeweed (check last year's stems - they are hollow. Rudy tore one open to find a click beetle sheltered inside.) In between the identifications, Rudy imparted his colorful thumbnail ecology lessons, including the one pertaining to exotic and native vegetation (having come across privet.) Every plant should be everywhere in the world unless one of three things happens:
1. the plant couldn't get to a place
2. after it got there it couldn't survive
3. it got there but over time got modified I never spoke a word to Rudy personally, but I heard enough of what he said, realizing that his information came from a place of curiosity and passion, and seeing that his motivations were good, that I have decided that today is Rudy Mancke Day. Tomorrow may be Rudy Mancke Day as well. |
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Today the scientist and I have had no disagreements. Today was a sweet rainy day in which we paddled a one-man canoe down the creek, just a short distance, from the baseball field to the power lines, maybe a thirty-minute float with the water so high from the rain. I say we but truthfully only David paddled, because we only had one paddle and there wasn't room for two anyway. The problem was that it was a very tippy canoe, and I was afraid - terrified, actually - that we would wind up the way David did the first day, at the put-out, when one of his boots got caught beneath the thwart as he was trying to disembark. He had about $10,000 worth of camera gear in the boat and somehow got stuck trying to get up on the bank. Next to the bank the water was deep and the bank was covered with poison ivy, and being the big, sturdy, self-sufficient, independent scientist that he is, David was too proud to call for help. He was busy grabbing at the bank, trying to keep the boat stable and unhook his boot, but the more he grabbed, the more the boat tipped, and the more water poured into the boat. He was trying with one hand to rescue the camera equipment, get it up on the bank, and with the other holding on to land. He wasn't bothering about his foot, which was inextricably bound beneath the thwart and twisted in what looked to be a very painful bowline knot. I was pulling my kayak up on land when I looked around and noticed David's predicament, and scurried back to help him. We saved everything, including a major doctor bill - and David got to maintain his reputation for disaster every time he enters a boat. |
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Thankfully, ecstatically, this day nothing, but to do my part in preventing ending up swimming in winter clothes, I sat still as a stone statue in the bottom of the boat, hardly daring even write. Ever since the first day, however, my belief in the scientist has grown, and nothing untoward happened and there was no adventure. We were very calm and at peace. We were quiet, listening to the fat drops of creek lifting to meet the drops of rain and the red-shouldered hawk crying in the dripping trees. Waaaaa, waaaa, waaaaaa. A great blue heron lifted stiffly from its meditation and struggled up the creek. A kingfisher trilled, trilled again, teasing us with song but never the blue hammer of its body. Everywhere cardinals sang. We have started to take the creek seriously, like a person who has been berated and is down-trodden, but who finally finds a friend who keeps saying to him, or to her, How beautiful you are. How smart you are. What a wonderful gift you are to my life, and to the world. And finally that person starts to believe it. If the creek had a spirit, it would be one getting used to understanding its own beauty, its own value. With the creek starting to believe its glory, how could we be fighting? |
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