Three Essays

THREE ESSAYS by Wilma Dykeman WHO OWNS THIS PLACE WHO OWNS this place where I live. Oh, I have legal title to it. My name is duly recorded on a deed duly registered in the processes of human commerce and law. But this is only one kind of possession. Perhaps it is the least important possession. Consider the other inhabitants on my acres. There are the cardinals that winter here, appear at my feeding station, build nests in the spring, dart with flashes of scarlet brilliance through the greenery of summer or the white snows of winter. They are worried by no boundary lines designating ownership. There are the mocking birds that seek out the highest limbs from which to pour forth their liquid dazzling variety of songs and calls, and the plump mourning doves that run along the ground or wing on short flights from one low tree limb to another. There are the robins that enliven my lawn with their neat, attentive presence, and the starlings that roar in periodically—scrounging and greedy. They await no invitation to visit or inhabit this place that must be designated "ours." There are the insects that inhabit every inch of surface here, even though I encounter them only occasionally. They whirl out of the grasses as I walk across the yard, they zoom out of bushes along the driveway, and they throng in the garden—vegetables or flowers— 10 I try to cultivate. Their numbers awe me. (I understand the scientific theory that this may be called the age of the insects.) Their variety interests me. (They range from the pure destructiveness of the Japanese beetles to the sophisticated society and usefulness of the bees.) Their noises fill the day—and night. (Is there a sound more ripe with the essence of late summer than the cries of the katy-dids in the early velvet darkness?) There are the small animals that lurk in hidden shadows and know my routes of passage and my routines of work better than I know theirs. Occasionally at night my headlights catch the darting form of a sprightly rabbit. Once, quite a while ago, a possum sought refuge under shrubs a distance behind our house. One rainy evening late in the spring I smelled a skunk; it must have been prowling over alien territory for it never reappeared. Even in the middle of town, woods and the bluff that leads to the river in front of my ?. / f\ f %, \ house provide habitat for these little creatures—and for the squirrels that are my favorites. Bushy tails flipping to and fro, alert to every sound and movement, they inhabit totally: Saving their winter's food from oaks and hickories and Chinese chestnuts; storing their loot in the ground, in nooks and crannies ; exploring crevices and holes as well as sources of food. There is all the variety of life that owns the giant oak and elm and maple in my yard. These trees are veritable apartment houses of inhabitants ranging from borers beneath their covers of bark to the shy owl that visits late at night and utters its mysterious cry. The psychologist, William James, once said, "The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature." I enjoy "my" acres. But I also remember that Thoreau observed, "The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it." And I know that use makes several owners of this place. A LETTER Have you ever written—or even read—a letter to a tree? This is a letter to the elm tree that stands at the corner of my house. Old Friend: After the big wet snow that surprised our town and county recently I walked outside to become part of a strange new world in which every familiar thing was transformed with beauty and the smallest leaf and twig was highlighted with a coating of unblemished white. As I explored I discovered that one of your large limbs, my favorite one, was cracked under the weight of the snow. The limb, which always appeared to me as a giant arm bending toward the ground in a graceful embrace before it thrusts upward, had not...