I wrote 36 pages of final papers in a frenzy, hauled my scattered possessions across campus, and then rocked gently westward on the Empire Builder. And now I'm here, where it smells like loam and green and homemade confections. I will reflect on this home-place soon, when it has had time to sink in.
Now, however, I want to write about the Cowling Arboretum. Adjacent to Carleton, the Arb consists of 880 acres of forest and restored prairie. I think it's safe to say that I owe a large portion of my sanity (such as it is) to my runs through its glorious trees and grasses. When I think of Carleton, I think of the Arb just as much as the library, or my dorm room.
I took a two week nature writing class last fall, and below I'm copying two short vignettes I wrote for that course, in honor of the Arboretum.
The Sound of Falling
On certain fall days the atmosphere itself seems to emit a crisp golden light—that’s when I venture into the Arboretum. I go out alone to watch seventeen million leaves sputter like dying embers in that patchwork forest. Leaves crackle as the earth meets my feet, and the snap in the air smells a little like freedom.
The river’s laughing at me now, because I said I was alone. “You silly girl,” the Cannon chides, “stop thinking and listen.” Did you know that, on some afternoons in late autumn, the trees have quiet conversations? I didn’t until I heeded the river and took off my hat for a change.
Once, as I was eavesdropping on whispered forest musings, a raccoon came trundling out of the underbrush all a-bustle. He froze when he saw me, and for an instant my eyes (sleepy) locked with his (bright, russet, and wild). But then his hunchback and gawky forelimbs struck me all at once, and, before I could control myself, my startled giggle sent him galumphing back into the forest.
You’re right, River—now I’m laughing too. Here the grasses are company, and if I’m lucky, I’ll see a flash of the red fox who’s watching. Even as winter’s snuff threatens, the Arb is ablaze, humming in perfect harmony with my footsteps. I just need to listen.
Postage Stamp Prairie
It’s a little swath of land, all but forgotten in the lee of yet another rolling hill. Tufted Asters innocently absorb sunlight, and various prairie grasses incline their stunted stalks, for the wind here is harsh and the earth is dry. You wouldn’t know it just by looking, but that frost-bitten compass plant points straight into the past, toward an epoch almost entirely trampled by cattle, cultivation, and an ever-growing expanse of cement. The students jogging by in their Nikes have no idea that the soil beneath their feet is a unique chemical amalgam, the product of millennia.
Walking along a narrow trail worn into that unadulterated earth, I can’t help but wonder why such an anachronism persists. Can’t this stubborn postage-stamp of prairie see that the times have changed? This land has been trodden and tired, farmed and forgotten, razed and refurbished. The apparition before me belongs with the giant ground sloth in the annals of history, long lost and frozen beneath the ground.
And yet it’s here, unmistakable and alive. Simply because this rocky hillside is desirable for no one else—not farmers, landscapers, or even cows—history claimed it a tombstone, a monument to what lived before there were words.
