One year, nine months, two weeks, and six days. That’s how long it had been since I’d last walked in Hitchcock Woods – enjoying the absolute magic of it – the slopes and curves, the pathways and trails, the greens and browns, the damps and dries, the sights and sounds and scents, the authentic heaven-blessed earth-rich connection of it. more “It had been far too long.”
They say we all have one. A doppelgänger. Another person in the world who is our exact double. Someone who looks as much like us as an identical twin – a real split-egg, shared-birth, DNA copycat person, but without the family connection.
Our doppelgängers are believed to share a similar personality with us, too: same traits and temperament, same likes and dislikes, same strengths and vulnerabilities. All those things that make us go “wow!” or “ewww!” are uncannily the same as our doppelgängers. Sometimes, we even have the same birth dates.
There was a time when doppelgängers were dreaded, thought to bring bad luck. It was certainly a bad omen if you saw your own. The name itself (doppelgänger) is German and stands for “double walker.” In English the term is “dead ringer.” In ancient Egypt they were your “spirit doubles.” The Norse called them “ghost walkers,” and they preceded you, walking through your life just ahead of you, performing your actions just before you did. Often in literature they’re referred to as your “shadow self.” All of which do sound rather haunting, foreboding, dark and suggestive.
Today, however, science is proving doppelgängers to be very real. A trick of long-standing genetics and roll-the-dice coincidence: generations of DNA strands that align just right. (Of course, there is always the theory of time travel, which is popular with some folks, too.)
Personally, I rather like the idea of having a doppelgänger. I like to believe she is alive and well and living in Paris. Or in the old part of Vienna. Perhaps in a woodland in Scotland. Or near a lake in Switzerland. She is a writer. A lover of animals and nature. She’s living alone in her skylight apartment (or small cozy cottage) guarding her independence. She’s just my age. Unfortunately, she also has breaky bones, so she’s probably also gimpy from being blind-sided by dogs or a tumble over cats.
But what if she’s not safe in a cafe in Paris … or a cottage in Scotland or Switzerland? What if she’s living somewhere else? Somewhere war-torn or unjust and unkind, or filled with mudslides and fires or lack of food and bombs screaming all around her. And there are other hurting people screaming all around her. And she’s trying to survive, trying to walk to safety, afraid of losing her brave brown dog, struggling to carry her old black and white cat. Losing strength every day. Losing hope. And she’s frightened and in danger all the time. And she’s in pain. What if my doppelgänger is still under the rubble?
So here I am sitting in the warm Carolina sun. Safe on the steps of my own little cottage, tossing a ball for my own brave brown dog, with my old black and white cat asleep in the window. I sit in my comfort and privilege and think of my doppelgänger. Wherever she is. And so I think I must pray for her – and her dog and her cat.
I think about if I were in her place. Would I be able to survive? Would I just turn my face to the wall. Would I even call out for help. Would my fear and trembling overtake me.
I must pray for them all to be safe and unafraid and searched for and found. I must pray for her courage. For more courage than I might have in her place. I’ll pray that, even if I would give up, she still has the passion to climb out from under the weight of the chaos and collapse that closes in on her. I’ll pray she is fierce.
And I’ll pray that she knows I am praying for her. As I hope she is praying for me. 
They don’t have a single leader. They have community. They typically live separate lives, fiercely independent, terribly territorial, thriving in tight tribes of family only. But when there is a need, a common enemy or goal, they come together. They know their survival relies on this band of brotherhood, this singularity. With no one sacrificed or turned away or left behind. All benefit or all perish. They understand this.
They’re robins. more “Like birds on a wire.”
Just past Helen’s house (although Helen doesn’t live there anymore), scattered around the front yard of Sheldon’s house (although Sheldon doesn’t live there anymore, either), the trees are talking. They are a mix of prickly needled pines and vintage oaks and an assortment of others. And they reach out and rub their long barky arms together, and lean into each other’s spaces and stories, and they sound like old women laughing.
It doesn’t seem to matter in which direction the wind may be blowing, or even if there is no wind at all. They chat quite regularly and dearly. Although they do seem to speak more crisply in winter while they’re bare-branched and restless; their voices soften to whispers in spring and summer when they’re dressed in full regalia. more “Listen to the trees.”
For me, I suspect it began with Liam. Liam was my former foundling dog who left us too soon, too suddenly, too recently. But about a year before Liam departed, I took in a second foundling dog, Daphne. And, right from the start, Liam was ever so generous toward Daphne with all his time and talents. As well as with all that was given to him – his stuffies and chew toys, his bed, his Mom time, even his treats and food.
Both Liam and Daphne were fed morning and night in an area adjacent to the kitchen, just a few feet apart from each other. Invariably, Liam would finish first, and then wander back into the kitchen or outside through the doggy door. When Daphne finished, she would invariably follow in his footsteps. But not before she checked out Liam’s bowl, too – gleaning for bits of leftovers and left-behinds.
more “For absent friends: A philosophy from a very wise dog.”
You can see it. Hear it. Feel it. Taste it in the air. It’s Autumn. It’s October. It’s the time for pulling the windows down and the covers up. It’s the time for bedding small plants and tiny creatures under blankets of warm colors of fallen leaves. A time for shaking out thick socks and long sweaters.
October is also about harvesting: from harvest moons and harvest festivals to picking apples and tree nuts, pumpkins and winter squash, sweet potatoes and sweet grapes for wine. And, for me, October is the time for harvesting books.
October is the time I harvest and gather and glean stacks of books for winter consumption. I pile them on tables and chairs and on the floor beside my bed. They’re right there alongside the pinecones and cider and fuzzy slippers.
Mostly, I harvest “comfort books”: usually the ones with old, yellowing pages, often those that I may have already read a few times before. These are the books that shield me from modern fears and complications, chaos and harsh words. (I agree with the Portuguese poet who wrote that “literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”) My comfort books open French doors and leaded-glass windows into imaginary places with kinder lives and softer edges, where the dog never dies.
But I am also the aunt who always gives books for Christmas. So I start harvesting my “gift books” in October, too. I love to uncover books with strange titles and unexpected stories. I like books about how to do odd things. How to fold fancy napkins or bake la-dee-da cakes. How to dance. I try to find stories that make the reader think new thoughts or understand ancient wisdom or feel other peoples’ feelings. And there are “read-aloud” books (not just for children). And there are the histories of places and things. I love books that are meant to be shared and passed along, sometimes with tiny notes written in faded pencil in the margins.
Part of the joy of harvesting books goes beyond the stories themselves, of course. It’s the feel of the book in our hands or our laps, the pages against our fingers, the smell of the paper and ink, the feel of the words in our heads and our mouths, even the sound of the words that describe books and their makeup and aging – like gilt and foxing and fore-edges and deckle edges and obverse and quarto and yapped.
It’s been said (by best selling British author, Mark Haddon) that “reading is a conversation”; because all books speak to us, but some books – the best books – listen to us as well. They hear our questions. They meet us where we are in our lives. They reflect us and reinvent us. They restore us. Harvesting books means finding the ones that are ripe for the picking right when we reach out to them. They keep the very best fruits just for us, just when we need them. They satisfy our hungers and fill our pockets with ideas and experiences and knowledge and journeys to take along with us wherever we go in life. Perhaps especially in the bleak times of winter. Perhaps that’s why October is the best month for harvesting them.
More than 300 years ago, a French wild child, who wrote under 178 different names – most notably, “Voltaire” – believed whole heartedly in the value and pure joy of books. It was he who said: “Let us read, let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
I suspect that, by declaring this as our season of harvesting books, we might enjoy the dance with them all the way into the first fruits of spring.
A feisty lone dandelion repeatedly visits me every year through the space between two bricks on my front porch: top step, far left. A wild little violet does a similar annual pop-up-and-peek-in at my back door. In fact, an entire line of wild violets joins hands along a crack in the cement that stretches across my driveway like children skipping to a birthday party.
So I know that nature finds a way – to power through and survive, to connect with us and make us smile in awe, to delight and surprise and encourage us, in even the most unexpected places, under the most improbable circumstances. And yet, a magnolia tree in my own backyard has just captivated me beyond expectation, as if for the first time.
Hurricane Helene started it all. She brought down a large, old-growth magnolia tree that had stood guard for decades on the far northeast corner of my property. The storm left this beautiful giant flailing its roots like a twirly skirt lifted and splayed skyward, scattering other plants and patio bricks like confetti in its wake. The tree’s head came to rest on the roof of the house. And so, a crew of men came and cut the magnolia into bits and pieces and carried them all away. All except for the upturned root stump – which was left as a playhouse for the dogs. The workers also left a large, separate, severed section of the trunk, lying prone on the ground, next to the dogs’ tree-root hideout. Disconnected and unattached, this hefty log is about five feet long and two feet across. Dog Daphne has been enjoying it as an added climbing perch and lookout. And I simply assumed that, in time, both of these leftovers would cover themselves in moss and ivy and vines and such, and decompose back into the ground, returning to the earth as nature’s nutrients.
What I didn’t expect was the “magic” bit. It’s been slightly more than a year now, and that one segment of entirely separate decomposing trunk is actually beginning to grow into a tree again. More specifically, it has mothered at least four new baby trees out of its broken self – with no roots of its own, no existing branches, no external prompting. (Magic.)
Perhaps it is no small coincidence that a magnolia plant symbolizes perseverance, known by even ancient cultures as elegant endurance. It’s older than dinosaurs (and outlived them). It has survived ice ages, volcanoes, catastrophic collisions with space debris, and continental drifts. It invented a way of pollination for itself that pre-dates bees and butterflies. It can be eaten by animals and humans alike. It provides healing for ailments like anxiety and insomnia, arthritis and upset tummies, trouble breathing and troubled skin. And it thrives all over the globe. With such a fulsome backstory, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this one act of unexpected current-day resilience.
But it does remind me of how important it can be right now to sometimes turn our thoughts and avert our souls away from the everyday mangling of humanity and nature that is going on in our current world affairs. How necessary it can be to look for the magic still happening all around us – there for the seeking, just waiting to be noticed. Especially that magic that proves the opportunities for perseverance and exemplifies endurance. After all, it doesn’t require us to care less. It simply allows us to see more dandelions and to count more wild violets and to open our imaginations to “be more magnolia.” A reminder to celebrate the possibilities – with renewed wonder and revived hope, a rebirth of gratitude. Not unlike the wisdom and magic of my old, regrowing, magnolia tree.
Her voice was soft and low and thick with all the charm of a South Carolina accent as she whispered the words in my ear: “It just doesn’t pay to act ugly in Aiken.” And I was glad it was being said to me and not about me.
It was back within the first few months after I had moved to Aiken – more than 20 years ago now. Back when Aiken was more small town culture and close-knit living. Back when its manners were carefully groomed and dutifully passed from one generation to the next and kept its feet wiped on every front door mat.
“Not acting ugly in Aiken” meant not honking our car horns – except to say “hey” as we drove past a friend; it meant not raising our voices in anger – except maybe during a football game. It meant holding open doors and giving up places in line, and asking after the welfare of “your mama and them” at home, and saying ma’am and sir regardless of age or social standing.
“It just doesn’t pay to act ugly in Aiken” also meant that if you did so, it was surely going to come back to haunt you at some point in time, and you would get your comeuppance in some form or manner – most likely sitting next to you in church or wherever you got your hair cut or perhaps in the checkout line at the grocery store.
This particular whispered observation that day had to do with a misstep that had been made by some folks in a rather prominent relationship, and it had all come out in public in a particularly “ugly” way. And my confidante was pointing out the folly of it all in this most colorful expression – perhaps meant to be a cautionary tale to newly transplanted northerners. I believed her.
But I wish I had remembered those wise words just a few weeks ago. I had perceived myself to be kinder than that. I thought I had incorporated the best of southern good manners into my own daily practices and precepts. I didn’t think of myself or my behavior as being “ugly.” Until it was. more “It just doesn’t pay to act ugly.”
Young dog Daphne was nosing around the base of a large old maple tree. She pressed her muzzle snugly to the ground and took something into her mouth. It crunched. She kept crunching and swallowing as fast as she could, as she watched me scurry over to her, impotently telling her to “drop it, drop it” (knowing full well she was not going to drop it; she was, after all, being young Daphne, doing young Daphne things).
I had missed seeing what it was that was now well inside her tummy. But then a thin, transparent wing floated down from the edge of her lips. A cicada wing. It could have been worse. But I scolded her a bit all the same. Perhaps for disobeying me. Perhaps for the act itself – eating a fellow living being, a harmless beauty. Or perhaps it was for taking away one of the singular signs of summer just as it is closing up for the season.
more “The blessings and balance of August.”
I heard her before I saw her. It was a slow, rhythmic, metallic, squeak coming up behind me. I was stumping along with my cane last Sunday morning (same old nagging hip and knee), making my way from a street parking space to my church door. It wasn’t far, but I’m slow.
The squeak got closer, so I thumped over to the side of the walkway, and she pulled up beside me.
The squeak was a wonky wheel on a shopping cart that had obviously seen better days. It was being pushed along by a rather tall, perhaps middle-aged, woman – who had probably enjoyed better days herself.
After we had exchanged greetings and observations about the weather (hot and a bit more humid, we agreed), and after her obligatory request about what spare change I might have taking up space in my pockets or lying loose in my purse, and after I had found some and had pressed it into her hand as discreetly as I could, I noticed what was piled into the basket of her cart. Plants. A bunch of them. All dead or dying or looking just pitiful. more “Shopping carts, dead plants, and Good Samaritans.”