If people think that nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy
(Kurt Vonnegut)
It is exactly a one joint trip from Boston to Belli Acres. The Acres, as it is fondly referred to, sits at the end of a dirt road just six miles south of the New Hampshire border in western Massachusetts. It consists of a small farmhouse on six acres and belongs to two very close friends. When I lived in Boston, I would periodically visit them to rid myself of urban grime and city clatter.Image may be NSFW.
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On one particular visit, my friends drove into town at dawn and left me a brewed pot of coffee, a blueberry scone and about a third of a joint from the night before. It was mid-morning, and I was in wake up mode: bare feet and half sealed eyes. The coffee and the joint came first; the blueberry scone would have to wait.
I sat on a stool at the kitchen counter that faced a large wood framed window overlooking the fields and gardens. The morning dew was gone, but had left the grass and other flora with a lustrous sheen as if from a recent shower. The head of a giant sunflower peered at me from the side of the window while a brood of hens pecked indiscriminately at the thick lawn. Several cumulus clouds floated by like marshmallow galleons. I could almost hear Vivaldi playing in the background.
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It was one of those moments I wanted to bottle for those days when the world seemed like a clogged bathroom sink. Two hits from the joint and a gulp of coffee put me in a place of pure peace and delight. However, as I took the first bite of the scone, I noticed some commotion in the foreground of the windowsill. A large spider about the size of a black olive was having it out with a large hornet only slightly smaller in size than the spider. The encounter was vicious. The hornet attacked from the air like a dive-bomber; the spider was raised up and tried to capture the hornet with its thorny legs.
Part of me was repelled by the violence while another was fixated on the action much like rubberneckers who ogle when passing an auto accident. I took another toke and thought that if I were a betting man I would place my money on the spider. But the hornet was relentless in its attacks. The hornet’s strategy was to sever the spider’s legs one at a time. It succeeded. The spider became legless and, therefore, powerless.Image may be NSFW.
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I dunked the scone in my coffee without moving my eyes from the ongoing theater. The spider lay defenseless on the sill: a large dark oval mass. The hornet then landed on the back of the spider as if to mate. However, instead of amour, the hornet patiently sucked whatever fluid the spider contained leaving a desiccated corpse. The hornet flew off erratically; its belly bloated with spider juice.
I had another hit though I didn’t need one. My attention remained riveted upon the motionless, prune-like remains of the spider. I lurched from my stool and resentfully removed the corpse from the sill with a white paper napkin. I intended to toss it into the large forsythia bush that shaded the south side of the porch, but a slight breeze blew it back towards me; it fell lifeless onto the red brick of the stoop at my feet.
With great impatience, I tried kicking it from the stoop into the flowerbeds that flanked the porch. Instead, the corpse stuck to the toes of my right foot. Instinctively, I hopped onto the lawn trying desperately to remove the corpse from my foot by briskly scrapping it on the recently mowed grass, however, death continued its relentless grasp. Finally, I plucked the grass-covered corpse with my fingers and tossed it away with all my might. I made a point not to notice where it landed.
Back inside, I washed my hands as would a surgeon, sat back on the stool and dipped the remains of my scone into lukewarm coffee. I was agitated. The brash victorious hornet disturbed me; the flaccid defeated spider sickened me. My buzz was crashing and the coffee was cold. I pouted like a child; my bottled moment was annihilated by an uncompromising dose of reality.Image may be NSFW.
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I wasn’t going to let this ruin my moment, so I took a handsome toke and, as I held my breath, I asked myself what would be my first step out of this potential mood pit. As I exhaled, the thought of brewing fresh coffee came to mind. I put a handful of beans into a hand grinder mounted on the wooden counter and turned the handle slowly. The oils from the beans gave off an exotic and spicy scent. While the coffee steeped in an old French press, I started to forget the images that intruded on my perfect moment.
The coffee steamed from my cup as I held it with both hands close to my lips.
Suddenly, vibrant flashes of gold caught my attention. It was a pair of yellow grosbeaks. They landed on the bird feeder adjacent to the sunflower: their lemon-yellow bodies were beautifully offset by the streaks of black and white on their wings. The chickens eagerly pecked on scattered seed underneath the feeder. The lumbering head of the sunflower nodded agreeably as a slight breeze drifted pass. I fired up what remained of the joint. The sound of approaching tires churning gravel on the driveway broke the silence. I could almost hear Vivaldi.