Chatham Nature Writing Blog: Place #4 Entry

Flat is a relative thing. Neither the world nor the sky could ever be flat, yet mankind has found a way to bulldoze sections into level fields while accepting that the best we can do is cut through the atmosphere in flat, even lines aboard airplanes.

MY YARD IS FLAT! I might have declared to Columbus centuries ago. I would have been wrong. Its general appearance resembles a flat surface, but one needs to get close to observe all the tiny hills and dips and imperceptible divots that mark the miniature pasture.

A mole in summertime will scuttle under the grass like a cat playing beneath a blanket. It lifts the sod with a ripple-run, a bump in motion. The effect is that one could peel back the top surface and expect to witness a web of roots, rocks and mud underneath. I tug at it out of curiosity, yet it yields only two stubby blades of separated grass. The surface holds. How does the mole find passage under there?

That memory rattles me as sharp winter clips the tops of those same blades. Small patches of green refuse to hibernate and now the flatness reveals its facade. A pale veil of snow not worth shoveling stretches unevenly across the surface; it’s a Kleenex pulled from a box, a fluttering bridal gown caught on video. The image is almost impossible to describe without uttering pithy things like cotton, blankets, sheets, pillows. Tiny tufts of snow mound together above the determined grass, and their white estuaries resemble the mousse a stylist puffs into her hand before spreading the oozy-goo across my graying, curly hair; sometimes my yard covered in snow looks like the wavy, inarticulate mop I brush daily.

When the snow melts there will be three distinct pools left after the initial seepage moves most of the water back to sea level. One near the house will round out in a semi-circle and slowly drain toward the foundation; the largest will form where the pool will go in late May and where now sits a feeble attempt at an ice skating rectangle we built on New Year’s Day (you can do a lot when you’re not hung-over); and another will remain stagnant beneath the kids’ playset where their feet have dragged and scraped beyond the warranty of durable grass seed. The rink that never was was never given a chance by a tepid, strange winter, though lack of construction skills did not help. The tiny slivers of snow-melted-to-origin-water will be the final proof that the yard isn’t as flat as it appears.

These puddles are testament to upheaval, to the minuscule dimensions of terrain around them that drain off quicker. It is as if three lakes for birds and squirrels and worms have been built upon a quarter acre of Earth. Those pools will sit for days, dry down or evaporate up and then the whole stretch will again seem to be level. The human eye is easily tricked.

Fifty years ago when this house was built the yard was surveyed, rendered tabletop-flat by a steamroller and left to settle. Through a half century it has held picnics, cook-outs, parties, and has been repeatedly pounded by the too hot days we think will never end, the too deep winters we can’t tolerate and the too wet rains we beg away; it has withstood limited surrender and now ripples in nature’s own imperfect, sauntering, uneven undulation.

Stumble though I will three months on with the clunky lawnmower as it catches upon dirt mounds, I cannot now come to terms with what the snowy patch is if it isn’t flat like a pancake or soft as a downy quilt or resting like a funeral pall. The yard is resilient and for now the snow doesn’t seem to mind how much it resembles a...