Among Them
During a much-needed break in a work-from-home virtual meeting marathon, I sat eye-level with the mint patch next to the old potting shed and came to the edge of a good cry. Not quite ready to cross that line in that moment, but able at least to acknowledge the need for some kind of release, I eased myself to sit on the ground, barefoot and inhaling that lovely wild spearmint scent, a most welcome balm to soothe my weary spirit. I can cry later. I’m sure I will.
I go there often. Not the mint patch particularly, but the ground in general, and dear readers, she always—ALWAYS—delivers. I know there’s good science behind this, and that’s great. I also know that the herds of bison at Yellowstone roll around on the earth at fairly regular intervals, and it’s not, as a friend once speculated, to brush flies from their curly brown-haired hide or scratch one of those hard-to-reach-with-a-hoof itches. That hide, you should know, is three times thicker than cow hide (already 45mm thick), so near-impossible for them to feel even a horsefly’s bite. There must be other reasons to connect with the ground that way, and I leave that to greater observant spiritual minds than my own. It’s enough for me to know that they do this, and now I don’t feel so strange when the mood strikes me on the privacy of our own land.
For those few minutes on the grassy earth by the mint, though, I was treated to the afternoon agendas of everything going on below our feet and unnoticed most days. Even clocking in at barely 5’2”, I still tower above ant colonies, the elusive 4-leaf clover in a patch of normal ‘threes, spiders not even as big as the tiniest freckle on my left arm, and the barely-there silken strands they stretch from the tip of one grass blade to another, a thin and gossamer tightrope highway they traverse effortlessly every day of their eight-legged little lives.
Down on the ground, and the closer I get to the fragrant soil, the more I appreciate the privilege of where we live, how we live, and the web of life that supports everything else connected to it. I’m sure you knew (but apparently, I needed the reminder) that these little ones beneath us don’t need our help at all. Not for gathering food, laying their eggs, building their homes, moving out of harm’s way when the storms come. None of it. Makes me humble, truly, and also more inclined to walk a bit more carefully through their neighborhoods, and on top of their worlds, though I know I can’t step from the back door to the garden area without doing some damage. Never leaving the house isn’t an option either, so I’m counting on some sort of grace-filled amnesty for us two-leggeds (yet another reason to lose weight). Did you know that ants travel up to one hundred yards for food, and mostly at night? So, from the mint patch that would take them just about to the edge of the old cornfield and maybe in a couple more feet. I’ll get back to you on how they find food in the dark. I know nothing about an ant’s sense of smell. But they’re third-shifters. Finding that out left an impression. That middle-of-the-night trip of mine down the stairs and through the living room to the bathroom suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.
I’ve always had a thing for ants. I would lay flat on my stomach to watch them for minutes-into-hours when I was in my single-digits. They are so organized and efficient. And the way they briefly greeted each other in passing I found, well, civilized. What sort of all-important ant-essential information did they exchange in that split second? Simple food locator data, or the requisite “how’s it going Franklin?” rhetorical pleasantry that fills the hallways of human corporate offices (or used to, back in February)? I didn’t get that close, but being less than 10 years old, my imagination conjured up all manner of friendly Formicidae conversations (thank you Wikipedia for adding that gem to my vocabulary).
But down here in the splendor of our backyard’s grass, I’m meeting all sorts of other creations for the first time. They are colorful and curious, with yellow stripes and spindly legs whose knees look too fragile to be real. How can they amble up and over the leaves of a plantain leaf without making it move? How many eyes does that one have? How old is this one—three weeks? Two days? I push my curiosity to its limit like an urgent prayer sent upward in silent awe. I am taller and bigger than they are and still have so much to learn…
No matter what you believe or how you give yourself over to life’s liturgies, it seems more than fair—and deeply real—to draw the gently profound conclusion that a life lived on ones knees is one of the best classrooms available to our upright species. When we lower ourselves in a good and humble way (not the selling-out sort of posture too often associated with that phrase), entire worlds literally open up at our feet. When we drop the pretense of “highly evolved” and crawl on our bellies to be present among even the smallest of visible relatives, something in us can change for the better.
I hope, dear friends, you won’t wait until your next good almost-cry to let yourself down to the ground for a glimpse of the universe present in a mint patch.
