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  The day was unusually warm for the end of October, nearly seventy degrees with a hint of a breeze. It had just rained and a light mist permeated the air, blanketing me with the aura of early Spring. It was a nice day for yard work and I decided to transplant some ferns from the woods behind my parent's house to the natural area at the edge of the road.
The ferns were strong and healthy, wild plants with bold leaves that sliced through the air as if serrating their place in the world by force. The contrast to the surrounding foliage would be nice.
It was warm enough to wear shorts. So I did.
I lugged a shovel and wheelbarrow out to the edge of the woods. A creek ran just below the steep hill that harbored a colony of the ferns I sought. They were peaceful there, sprouting out of loam so thick and rich you could smell the nutrients.
Thick mulch created over hundreds of years covered the slanted creek embankment. Fallen leaves, dead insects, bird droppings, disintegrated trees and wayward sticks. Once upon a time, the Indians hunted here and flayed buffalo, laying their quarters upon the creek's edge.
Hence the name, Stinking Quarters Creek.
But now the only aroma there was an earthy, pungent fragrance that bespoke of the creek's entire history, not just one facet. Through floods and droughts, the creek had persevered. Once a refuge of death, but always a source of life.
The roots in the ground were heavy, some thick and impossible, others easily sheared by the dull shovel. A minute or two of digging around a broad fern and it became my captive. I dropped it off in the wheelbarrow at the top of the hill and decided I couldn't desecrate the hill again. The creek needed the ferns as much as they needed it. It was a symbiotic relationship and who was I to separate them?
I knew of other ferns surreptitiously growing in another part of the woods. A section not quite as majestic. A section I planned on plundering for the plethora of large rocks; I wanted to make the natural area very natural.
This time, because the terrain was relatively flat, I pushed and prodded the wheelbarrow out through the undergrowth. The drought this past year had helped to clear the weak plants so it was less dense than the creek's bank. Immediately beyond the cover of the outer foliage, I spotted a perfect fern.
It wasn't as broad and outspoken as the other I'd appropriated, but it would do just fine. The ground there was easier to dig in but directly below the plant was a rock I had to navigate around. Another minute later and once again, I lifted a fern with my shovel.
Triumph.
I carried it in front of me, stepping over a fallen log and ducking under a low branch. I had just squeezed between two small trees when a briar bush reached out and attacked me violently on the leg.
I thought I was careful. I knew this part of the woods harbored the pointy plants and as you trudged by them, they somehow scented you and reached for your bare skin. Sometimes they would wrap around the fabric of your clothes and hold you while others ambushed your exposed appendages.
In a split second, I remembered having checked for briars. And I was retreating to the wheelbarrow the same way as before. There were no briars along my chosen path.
 While the needle-like points dug deeper into the back of my knee, I carefully laid the fern down into the wheelbarrow with his cousin.
It was at that point, that very second, that I realized I'd walked five feet with the same briar burrowing under my skin. Logic dictated that the briar should have torn my skin open already. But it didn't. A quick search through my memory recovered a small fly that had flown into my vision as I lifted the fern.
When I saw it, I swatted at it, missing, because my attention was focused the plant's root system. I deduced that a horse fly, still active late in the season, was thirsty for blood and actively stinging my leg. I swatted at it.
As I did, another stung the front of the same leg, in the middle of my calf. On the bone.
I looked down and a familiar yellow and black design met my gaze. His body writhed as his stinger punctured my skin, sending waves of pain and heat. I felt as if someone had jammed a huge needle into my leg with the force of a carnival strongman.
This little insect, the symbol of high school football teams around the nation, the logo of a product designed keep you awake for long drives; this minute child of Mother Nature, was packing the punch of a thousand such needles.
Without hesitation, I swatted with my gloved hands and yelped and ran for my life, the wheelbarrow and shovel and ferns abandoned for a later time. Without any memory of how I got there, I stood in the middle of the yard, panting and jerking my head around, searching for friends of my new enemy.
That now-familiar yellow and black design once again flashed before me. He was perched on my chest, stinger raised, writhing and preparing to attack through my t-shirt. I swatted and ran again, this time heading for the relative safety of the basement.
I ripped my shirt off along the way and windmilled it all around my body. I stopped just inside the door, breathing heavy and wondering just out of shape I'd become in the last few months. I twisted and turned and ran my hands over my half-naked body.
My sweat mingled with the aroma of the woods and I smelled like summer work.
In the end, I was stung twice by yellow jackets, not more than 6 inches apart on the same leg. I guzzled some Benadryl and leeched the pain away with a combination of tobacco and spit. The pasty mixture was held in place by a large swath of masking tape and worked as a local anesthetic. The throbbing pain lessened to a tolerable level.
My dad, ever the protector, retrieved the wheelbarrow and it's contents while I recuperated. And eventually, as the sun set behind the woods, I relocated the ferns to their new home, masking tape band-aid and all. Their new home was in red clay and would be difficult for the ferns to thrive in. They were used to a thick, rich, black mixture of nutrients supplied by the creek. They would have to deal.
The day, which had began with so much promise and good intention, did not turn out as planned. But despite the obstacles deposited before me, I completed my task. I transplanted wild ferns in a vain attempt to domesticate them.
That is the role of man, I believe. To domesticate the wild. To bend it to our version of civilization. For the definition of wild is: that which does not agree with our wishes. Mother Nature fought me this time, sending out her legion of striped protectors to defend her natural beauty.
I forgive her. She didn't know I simply wanted to share her beauty with the rest of the world. |
Ross Cavins
