Summer, like time, continues to pass

“Whoa! He’s more than four feet long! I’ve never seen one that big!” Those were the words of my mild-mannered neighbor Jerry, who was standing in my garage with me, looking at a western rat snake, what we in Iowa often call a blacksnake. As a couple of friends told me when I described the scene, “Snakes freak me out.” Yep. Me too.

Allegedly rat snakes are docile and are no threat to humans, but I don’t care. Later I found out they spend a lot of time in trees. In trees! It’s bad enough seeing a snake slither across the ground, but now I have to worry about them dropping from trees? If there is a downside to this garden of Eden where I live, this may be it. Anyway, my hero Jerry used a broken hoe to pick up the monster and drop it into a large, pink Tupperware storage container in the garage, one which once contained legal papers belonging to my wife. As I put the lid on the container I could feel and hear the snake thrashing around inside. If I ever have another heart attack it’s going to be at a time like that moment.

My snake wasn’t the size of Voldemort’s Nagini, but psychologically it sure seemed like it. Jerry took the snake to the far side of my property and let it go. Oddly, there is a small amount of PTSD that goes along with encountering wild creatures showing up where you’d rather they not. Now, every time I walk into my garage I look fearfully for a snake, on the ground, and in the rafters.

Also, a week or so ago another neighbor showed me a photo he had taken of three baby American badgers, which he thought came from my land. Oh great, in addition to snakes I’ve also got what many consider to be one of our nastiest wild creatures, and a carnivore at that.

On a sweeter note, open areas in my hollow are filled with wild bergamot, what we call bee balm, wildflowers with lovely lavender flowers. Their appearance tells me that summer is already on the wane, that time continues to pass and there is not a darn thing I can do about it. Makes me think of the lyrics of a terrific song written by Don Henley forty years ago, a song called “The Boys of Summer,” one in which Henley sings, “I can feel it in the air/The summer’s out of reach.” I’ve never been a big fan of summer, except as a kid, when it meant I didn’t have to sit in a classroom. I could hop on my bike, ride out to the country away from town, away from people, away from rules and expectations, and spend hours sitting on hillsides, nothing substantive happening in my head.

Speaking of time passing; a few weeks ago I sat for a television interview and a couple of days ago I watched it. Big mistake. Entertaining a certain amount of vanity, I try to look presentable and I make every effort to sound brighter than I am. Seeing oneself on television dispels all of it. Who is the mumbling old guy? Nice clothes, but what’s with the stupid hair? Doesn’t he know this isn’t 1974? The mumbling old guy is me, a person who maybe fails to see himself as others do but who fully understands his own mortality, an old guy who understands that the flowers of the bee balm plant will eventually dry up and that summer will come to an end. It always does.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald recently published a 60-page magazine of Kurt’s columns. The magazine can be purchased here