A Half-Built Garden

by Ruthanna Emrys

I got the impression that asking awkward questions was not so much an assigned task as a natural calling.

We returned the frog to its ordinary life and went on through the low-lying edges of the neighborhood. Raven squealed at gusts of wind and Rhamnetin squealed back. We nibbled on early dandelions and said hello to dogs (that did not say hello back) and checked drains and trenches and rain gardens. Everything smelled wet and ready to bloom, and talking with Rhamnetin felt easy and hard all at once. I put an arm around Carol’s waist. That touch, something I could take for granted and still be grateful for, was a slim but much-needed anchor.

They say German has a long word for everything, but among the dandelion networks, plains-ache is the yearning for an evolutionary ecology you’ve never lived in yourself, the body’s bone-deep knowledge of things that would make it not healthiest but happiest, that would feel right and quiet the anxiety-monkey behind your civilized forebrain. Walking for hours till you can feel it from spine to sole, a picnic with people you’ve known your whole life, a fresh-picked berry, a midday nap—a tiny taste of what your brain thinks it’s good for. Sometimes those things are actively bad for us, like waiting for the big ape to yell about the latest emergency, but even that can feel like a surge of home as overwhelming as the smell of baking bread.

You could go pretty far from your home ecology and still be okay, if you understood what lay at your core.