What the Young Squirrel Showed to Me

Walking uphill on our dirt road on Friday, I noticed a very large and long "pinecone" that had been run over -- still mostly attached together, but fringed and shattered along its edges. Ten minutes later, headed back down the hill, I found this very young squirrel digging into it, extracting the protein-rich seeds.

The little squirrel (a red one) stayed on task and let me get closer than most adult squirrels permit. But finally he/she grabbed the biggest chunk of the cone and bounded off into the scrub and woods next to the road.

The squirrel's attention to the cone pushed me to wonder more about it. I looked up the cone today -- and that's why I put the term "pinecone" into quotation marks, as these fibrous seed carriers come on spruces and even birches, not just pines. But it does seem from my Audubon Society Field Guide to be a cone from a white pine.

I was really surprised to see the "cones" on birch twigs in the book. All these years admiring birches, and I've never looked at them closely enough to see what carries their seeds! A few pages later are photos of acorns; why didn't I even stop to notice that different kinds of oaks present different shapes and colors of acorns? Guess I was always just pleased to be able to say "oak" and "acorn."

As I look at the neighboring town of Lyndonville with intent to frame a YA mystery there (probably in 1898), I'm finding the same surprise at what I've walked or driven past without questioning, noticing, or naming. Lyndonville suffered two devastating fires in the first part of the 1900s, wiping out one side of its main street, then the other. Yet there are structures that date to 1898 on most of the "town center" streets. And only recently, my husband Dave (who lived in that town for two decades and has a great collection of postcard images of it) and I realized how many portions of the massive railroad complex from, say, 1855 to 1950 linger in town, repurposed or quietly shuttered and overgrown.

Soon I'll choose names for the teen and the two older women who'll make up the main characters of this book-being-planned. While those details come together, I'll also look around the town for traces that remain of the people I'm envisioning. I've already seen evidence of their lives (the real ones, not my fictional versions) in Census documents and 1890s advertisements.  Crafting a good story from these "seeds" means paying attention to the names and existence of what's already there.

Thanks, Red Squirrel. You've got me asking questions and seeking answers. Way to go.

Time, Strawberries, and a Red Squirrel

I see it's been a few weeks since I've added a post here. Some seasons are like that: I visited my sons and in another state my sister, got the vegetable garden planted, hauled a hundred wheelbarrows of shredded bark to dress the flower gardens and the new hedge line, and more. But I'm back in gear.

Last weekend I stood in a nicely shaded oxen shed at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds with eight or nine other authors of Vermont fiction, chatting with people who came to enjoy the Vermont History Expo. On Saturday morning I hurriedly picked some strawberries from the garden to leave on the table for my husband, who gets up a bit later, if time allows. Sunday morning, though, I didn't have time. But Sunday evening when I got home, before I even unloaded the car, I went to water the hanging basket of petunias next to the strawberry bed. Oddly, right in the middle of the "meditation bench" there, I saw a red strawberry. Could I have dropped it there on Saturday? It didn't seem likely. I was so tired that I just shrugged and left it there, figuring I'd catch up with the strawberries on Monday morning (today).

When I got up today, I went to the top of our office stairs, as I always do, to sit out in the fresh air and be silent for a few moments, remembering what Life is for. The stairs lead down to the meditation bench and the berry bed. As I opened my eyes after my pause, a flash of movement on the bench caught my eye! I stayed perfectly still, and realized a bushy-tailed red squirrel was there. A moment later, the squirrel ran away from the bench, toward the other side of the yard -- with the strawberry neatly held in his or her mouth.

What should I believe? That the squirrel has been carefully pilfering from the garden, and accidentally left a berry behind one night, and came back to retrieve it? I am amazed!

Of course, we are already sharing the garden with the robins nesting under the steps, and the catbirds and wrens, and I know the crows come peck holes in the ripest berries. To add a squirrel family as well seems a bit of a strain on the breakfast harvest for my husband.

So, with regret, I fastened the nylon "bird net" over the berry bed just now.

But I don't want the squirrels to have hurt feelings. So every single "rejected" berry from today's picking -- the ones the crows tasted or the ants nibbled -- is now lined up just outside the netted garden, on the grass. Red squirrel, come back. We are in this together, your family and mine.

Oh yes, this is a true story. I must add that assurance, because when I talked with readers at the Vermont History Expo yesterday, we walked carefully along the borders of What Really Happened and how to craft fiction that reflects actual events, not the ones we wish had happened.

"To have peace, we must have justice. To have justice, we must have truth." These are the stories that matter.