My Own Private Gastropod

Several months ago Ken Burns' national parks documentary, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, aired on PBS. Regrettably, I missed it. I had intended to spend several evenings sipping decaffeinated tea while sitting on the couch, steeping myself in the documentary's historical photos and cinematography depicting natural landscapes. I knew it would be stunning. However, it seems that for a spell of several weeks, work and all of its ridiculousness had spilled into my evening hours. It consumed me. (My proper perspective had up and left for Puerto Vallarta). Ken Burns would have to wait until another day.

Luckily, Lydia bought me the documentary this past Christmas. I promptly watched the first episode. So John Muir, the documentary reminded me, once climbed a tree during a storm. He wanted to embrace the tree in its upper reaches in order to feel what the tree felt as the gale buffeted its branches and the icy and pelting rain stung its needles and bark. Did John Muir sense the tree's terror? Or was it resolute courage? Or joy? If so, did he absorb the joy? When he climbed down did he kiss the ancient bark and thank the tree?

John Muir, the first known Tree Whisperer.

On my own hikes through the Sierras I often find myself smelling trees and kissing them. They smell like vanilla, and the residue they leave on my lips tastes like wood. Yes, wood! Sometimes I bless the trees. That's what the birds do when they flit through the branches. And that's what bears do when the sharpen their claws on the bark. I'm sure St. Francis blessed trees as well. He is better known, though, for blessing animals. (Once I tried blessing Sara, our semi-rabid budgie, and I wound up requiring a tetanus shot).

St. Francis blessing the animals (The geese are tardy; nobody gave them the memo)

I suspect St. Francis blessed garden snails also. Garden snails have long captivated me. When growing up in Santa Cruz I would sit in our front yard on those August afternoons when the sky was a warm and liquid blue and everything would shimmer in the heat, and I couldn't tell where I started and where I ended. I would observe the garden snails meandering through the sloping fronds of the agapanthus bushes. The snails were so patient and so unbothered by the passing of time and the impending dusk. They understood that the moments which had passed and the moments to come were irrelevant.

On one of those afternoons I listened to my Walkman (the 70s equivalent of the iPod). My Walkman was playing Ravel's Bolero. The music starts with the gentle snare drum cadence. It persists through the entire piece, filling the empty spaces between all the other notes played successively by each instrument. The melody is lyrical and intoxicating. On that particular afternoon, while listening to Bolero, I held the earphones tightly against my ears and watched a garden snail make its way through some dry moss. During the 14 minutes and 38 seconds of the piece, I watched the snail cover the same distance as the length of my pinky. It's antennae-thingies waved in time to the music. Its shell rose and fell almost imperceptibly, like the breath in and the breath out of a sleeping child.

When the piece finished, I removed the earphones from my sweaty ears and thanked the snail for sharing its own private rapture with me. Then, using my thumb, I blessed its shell as gently as I could. It was the only sensible thing to do.