Dillard learns that nature is dangerous during Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. There's beauty in nature--waterfalls and cocoons and exaltations of larks. There's also pain and death--rattlesnakes and floods and thunderstorms. Dillard wasn't expecting to find so much peril in all the wonder.
Tonight, my son and I discovered a wasp nest. Actually, it was more like a wasp condominium complex clinging to a shed in my parents' backyard. Fat angry tenants buzzing in and out. We stood and watched the show from a distance.
I kept telling my son, "Not too close, not too close." I explained to him that wasps were sort of like rattlesnakes. "There's venom in their stingers," I said. My son nodded and took a step back.
The shed is made of corrugated metal. It's been standing on the same patch of cement since I was a kid. The wasps kept charging in and out of the nest. I wanted to show my son something amazing. Something he wouldn't forget. I pulled him away from the shed.
"Watch this," I said.
I walked forward, got within a couple feet of the nest. I reached up, made a fist, slammed it against the metal wall of the shed several times, and ran.
The wasps boiled out of the nest in an fevered cloud. I could hear them buzzing like an overheated vacuum cleaner. My son watched with eyes as big as fists. They flooded and swarmed around their gray paper hideout. It wasn't a beautiful sight, but it was impressive. Like a forest fire or a sleeping grizzly. There was the danger and wonder.
Eventually, one of the wasps came diving toward us, and my son screamed like a girl and ran like hell. I wasn't far behind him. When I was a kid, I fell into a nest of yellow jackets. Got stung over twenty times. I remember feeling like I was on fire.
Before my son fell asleep tonight, I said to him, "Stay away from those wasps, okay?" He nodded and patted my cheek. I watched him drift into deep, sleeping breaths.
Saint Marty knows that nature can be beautiful and dangerous. Saint Marty's son knows it, too. There are rainbows and wasps everywhere.
Hmmm, have you ever thought that part of what happens in life is an angel somewhere slamming his hand against your life, just to see what you do?
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