Redcedar Blue Rain

The Upper Basin Chronicles

Chapter 23

Redcedar Blue Rain

A Sunday afternoon in New York City's Central Park absorbs thousands of people into the long rectangle of verdant space thick with gardens, lawns, a few wonderful buildings, playing fields, walks, and trees. Laura Paruzzi sat on a park bench reading Sandra Steingraber's, "Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood." She'd picked it up south of the park yesterday at the Gotham Book Mart on West 47th Street. The powerful story of a cancer survivor scientist's journey through pregnancy made Laura shake her head. She wondered if she herself was willing to travel that road. Perhaps. Certainly here also, knowledge, however disturbing, is still power, she thought.

Laura had completed her Green Map teacher's seminar. The diversity of teachers engaged in environmental mapping projects with students in urban areas around the world amazed her. She looked forward to a first project with her third graders back at Ding Darling Elementary in its rural surroundings.

Although the day was warm, the heavy shade of nearby trees made the hour bearable, restful. A slight breeze across the North Meadow stirred the mature eastern redcedar in front of her. This large specimen made a steady rain-like sound. Laura looked up to see a single blue cone fall through her line of sight. She squinted to see more. The rain sound continued. Was this girl dropping her cones already? Laura put down her book to study the tree. The clusters of blue, berry-like cones were dense at the extremes of the branches with their scaled, whorled leaves. Through scattered sunlight Laura could now tell that the robust 20 meter Juniperus virginiana was raining needles. The bronzed old growth pattered down within the big tree's drip line like continuous light rain. The sound faded and mixed with that of hacky-sack games, and a few cars and cabs on Central Park West.

A family of three black-capped chickadees flitted among the sturdy lower branches, hopping around the 60 centimeter diameter trunk, likely searching for the borers that feed on the tree. They talked and chatted in continual quiet conversation. Amid the rainfall sound of the falling needles, the pleasant bird songs made Laura close her eyes

She imagined herself sitting on a limestone outcrop above a gladed pool at the headwaters of the Wapsipinicon River in northeast Iowa. She could smell the redcedar around her, and the cool peppery scent of the deep forest. There, the understory of fiddlehead ferns, stinging nettles, and gooseberry, with saplings of shagbark hickory, sycamore, and black oak, is nearly impassable in high summer. Locusts and mosquitoes sang a steady, mesmerizing accompaniment.

The reflected green pool of the creek-sized river below her, dammed still by a deadfall log with only a bypassing gurgled flow, suddenly held the inverted image of the forelegs and lowering head of a saddled gray horse. The gray's neck bent to drink. Its nostrils and white whiskers sent concentric ripples across the still water. In her vision, Laura looked up to identify the rider.

Alexander Murphy stared back at her from astride the gray. She returned the frank look of his blue eyes with their bit of curious humor in wrinkles at the corners.

Laura raised a hand as if to wave. As she did so, a blue rain of redcedar berries began falling around them. The cedar blue rain dissolved the image in the gin-clear water, leaving only the call, "sit-sit, chick-a-dee-dee-dee" behind.

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Next week... "Did I Poison Myself?," Chapter 24.

The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 23 was written and edited by John Gabbert.

Resources:
Green Map System
Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood by Sandra Steingraber

Comments? Email feedback to The Upper Basin Chronicles, Chapter 23.

The characters presented here are purely fictional, and neither bear resemblance to persons living or dead, nor represent the views or opinions of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.