Page 123 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2
P. 123
I do not understand, I said.
It’s all right, she told me. This name is your path. It will take you years to walk it.
I remembered the squirrels of my childhood from a long distance away. It was like looking through a
portal into a time warp. I saw myself young and pudgy, rolling in grasses, singing in trees, whispering
stories to the lovely little brown squirrels, with their bushy, enigmatic, delightful tails, their chattering
stories.
Too many blissful mountain experiences are followed by the jolt of returning to the killing fields of
America’s highways. I drove through the foothills and into the towns, my shoulder greatly improved, a
calm lightness in my heart. Barely out of the mountains I saw a bobcat lifeless at the side of a far lane. I
pulled off at the next exit, turned around, and stopped across from him. As it happened, as I got out of
the car there was a tattered roadkill squirrel directly at my feet.
The freeway in the mountain foothills was clear enough. I waited for a few barreling cars and trucks to
pass, then ran across the lanes to the bobcat. She was frozen on her back, thick with rigor mortis, claws
like daggers. Her teeth were bared. She’d attacked the monster that claimed her life, and died in that
moment. Her eyes were open and fierce. I used a paper towel to pull her to brown grasses and reeds at
the side of the freeway. I found myself humming one of Valerie’s prayer songs as I covered the
creature with wisps of grass. I covered and prayed for the tattered remnants of the squirrel. It was
right action and also a sad, strange, pitiful offering.
As I drove home I prayed for each dead creature I saw along the roads. There were far too many, and
the freeways too dangerous, to stop for each one. Most were squirrels, but there was also a deer, a
raccoon, a skunk. Seeing the violent end of their lives was a burden, and also a grace. Acknowledging
the death and sending a prayer each time meant that I was in prayer my entire journey home.
125
