Second Nature

I sit on the bench and wonder how quickly an hour can pass in thoughts alone. I was misinformed that the residency’s field trip would entail a hike, so I brought only a sling bag full of hair ties, a protein bar, and my phone. No journal, no pen. I think of it as an exercise in slowing down, in being more like Mary Oliver—observing nature alone could be enough (in this case, it would have to be). Nebraska isn’t surprising at first; you have to look closely to find the beauty. It isn’t screaming at you like the mountains of Utah or the coastline of California.

My boyfriend visited me during the writing residency just two nights before. When I suggested a walk at sunset, he agreed until the path became overshadowed by large branches stretched out, leaves shifting up and down, waving tiny hellos. “I don’t want to get bit by a moonstar tick,” he stopped, “and I don’t have my hat.”

I had been walking that same path every night with my new friend Uma. We entered the trees without fear of getting bit by anything, admiring the family of deer, exchanging creative fears and our estranged friendships from years passed. It was on that path that I told her about getting engaged in the spring. It was on that path that she confessed hiding behind fiction.

Later, after my boyfriend and I gave up on a sunset walk so that we wouldn’t get bit by moonstar ticks and be allergic to meat for the rest of our lives, after we gave into the fear of nature rather than the beauty of it (it was Nebraska after all, what is there really to see), we flopped down onto the hotel bed, silly drunk. He laid with his shoulders resting against the headboard. I laid upside down, my hair hanging off the edge of the bed. “Why won’t you marry me?” I asked playfully. A smile, a you-know-better glance. “We have a plan, Claire.” He was right; we did have a plan and there were moonstar ticks hanging out in the trees.

My eyes fall to the large rock before me. A butterfly finds it as a safe landing spot, but continues to mimic flight, fluttering its frail wings yet going nowhere. I watch it carefully; its immobility taunts me. Is there something wrong with her?