He can read Latin for pleasure, but evidently Charlie can’t
drive. Did I mention this? Or, he can drive, but he really shouldn’t.
As I said, we’ve been going on a lot of field trips for
Messing Around Outdoors—obviously, we’ve got to get outdoors in order to mess
around—and most of them are either on campus or something we can bike to. I’ve
never been to any school where we biked to field trip locations, even if they were
fairly close by, but they do take avoiding using gas seriously here. Not that I’m complaining at all—biking around
the countryside in this gorgeous Fall weather so we can go take a walk in some
unusual woods or muck about in some little creek or wetland for an hour or two is
not at all a bad way to spend the day. I don’t know what they’d do if a student
couldn’t ride a bike, though. Take different field trips, I suppose.
But a few times we have traveled by vehicle. I forget if I’ve
explained this, but all the campus vans and cars run on veggie Diesel, which we
make on campus using fry oil donated from local restaurants, so we didn’t
actually have to use any gas at all. We piled into a fifteen passenger van and
Charlie drove. And he drove very badly. I don’t mean he was swerving all over
the road or did anything deliberately stupid, he just didn’t seem very good at
it. He keeps well under the speed limit, misses turns and has to go back, and
comes very close to running red lights, apparently because he didn’t notice
they were red. He will not talk to anyone else while driving, apparently
because he needs to concentrate, but he talks to himself, under his breath,
like he’s trying to talk himself through something. It’s terrifying.
I think the issue is that Charlie drives so rarely that he’s
forgotten how to do it.
He makes no attempt to hide the fact that he can’t drive
well—he doesn’t bother with excuses—but he also does not seem embarrassed by
it. He takes no apparent notice of the issue at all. And none of us are going
to say anything.
Anyway, Fall is proceeding the same way Spring did, in
little progressive fits and starts, so that every week or two I think yeah,
Fall is really here now! And then a week or two later I think the same thing
again. This past week, walking around campus, the sky has been this rich,
crystal blue that seems to come all the way down to the ground. The trees haven’t
seriously started to change yet, it’s not “foliage season,” but I’ve been
paying a lot of attention to trees lately, and I think they’ve gone a sort of
yellowish green now.
And speaking of paying attention to trees…I keep labeling them.
I’ve started bowing to them when I greet them to label them, a habit of showing
respect that I picked up in martial arts class this past summer. I don’t know,
it just feels right. Since Charlie’s been asking about specific trees I’ve been
paying even more attention, trying to remember everything I’ve noticed over the
summer about each tree, noticed without noticing, and reading up on each tree
and each thing I notice using the books from the library and the herbarium. I
don’t try to memorize any of this; I just sort of soak it up, so it will be
there, in the part of me that knows more than I do, when I need it. I had stopped
thinking about when this labeling project would end a long time ago.
So you can imagine my surprise when the tree-labeling project
ended today.
 |
| White Oak twig and leaf |
As I’ve explained, Charlie had been going around unlabeling
trees in the morning, leaving me to re-label them during the day, so he could
inspect my work in the evening. He maintained the fiction that I just hadn’t
finished labeling the trees on campus, but was controlling the duration of the project
by always unlabeling slightly more trees than I had time to re-label so I could
never catch up. I’d get angry about this sometimes, but there was no point in
that, because of course I was free to quit any time I want; Charlie can’t make
me do anything I don’t want to do, but if I want his help I need to accept the
help he decides to offer. So I just did it, labeling trees, over and over, each
one with its common, English name and it’s scientific name, spelled correctly,
in Latin.
Lately, I’d noticed that he was letting the margin shrink,
unlabeling fewer trees, letting me catch up. I didn’t think he’d actually let
me catch up, so I didn’t have any particular feelings about it. I didn’t see
the light at the end of the tunnel because after weeks of trying like mad to
solve this puzzle and failing I’d stopped looking for it. So the other day when
I actually labeled all the unlabeled trees I’d found I was mildly surprised,
but I figured Charlie would do something to take success out of my reach again.
And, sure enough, when I saw him around eleven that morning, he changed the
rules of the game again. He was reading his Latin Pooh book again, almost done
with it, and he barely looked up when I greeted him.
“I’m checking the trees early today—before class,” he told
me, in an offhand way, “so you might want to hurry up and make sure they’re
done.”
“Charlie, I think they are done,” I told him, without much
hope. That made him look up.
“You think?
Daniel, you can be wrong, but do not be less than confident.”
“Alright, they are done.
I labeled them all this morning.”
 |
| Pileated Woodpecker hole |
I sighed and got to it.
And the thing is, it took me less than an hour to get all
six because I knew which trees he meant. I didn’t have to search for them; I
just needed the time to walk across campus several times. I didn’t have time to
get lunch, I just grabbed an apple on the way to class, but I got them all done
and headed to class—Charlie’s class. I assumed he’d unlabeled more trees and
that he’d have more specific directions for me to follow to unlabeled trees
later. After class, he called me over.
“Did you do it?” he asked me.
“Yes, I did.”
“Alright. Good job.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Good job! I asked you to do something and you did it. Thank
you.”
I stood there stupidly. He was fussing with papers on his
desk, but when I didn’t leave he looked up at me.
“You’re done! Now go on, go get dinner. I know you’re
hungry.” Numbly, I went.
I know I should be happy. He must have been watching for me
to learn something, and now he’s judged that I’ve finally learned it. So I did
it. I’m pleased. I feel proud of myself. But that’s not all of it. I also feel…I
don’t know. Strange.
What am I going to do now that I don’t have to label trees?
[Next Post: Friday, September 13: Hunting]
No comments:
Post a Comment