The Ear is a Vital Organ

There are some sounds that cannot be heard. Trees speak to each other, sending messages through fungal networks belowground. Tadpoles wriggle through the murky waters of a still pond. The mountains crumble beneath the weight of themselves. Most of us are too busy listening to sound to sense these subtle changes in the world. But those of us who live with silence, like my Aunt Sadie, whisper along to the symphony of nature. And when she speaks, everyone stops talking so that they can listen.

Many years ago, when Sadie was a young woman who still had her hearing, and I wasn’t yet an idea in my mother’s head, no one cared to listen. Everyone spoke as loudly as they wanted, secure in the belief that it was only us, only people, who mattered. They told themselves that this made them healthy and happy, but really, nobody anywhere had ever been so miserable. When I ask Aunt Sadie why people lived like this, she explains that nearly the whole world forgot that the ear is a vital organ, even when it no longer works the way it’s supposed to.

On days when I feel self-pity clawing at my gut, I wish that my own ears stopped working, or started working in the way that Aunt Sadie’s and Rebecca’s do. I know that my hearing is an asset when it comes time to hunt or greet strangers. I know that not everyone can be blessed. But I still envy Aunt Sadie, because I wish I could add my quiet voice to the forest. Instead, my whispers sound alien and harsh, all wrong, as though I am singing in a different key from the rest of the chorus. I have decided to speak only when absolutely necessary.

…

My mother tries to convince me to speak more often as we pick blueberries on the Northern face of Big Slide. We do this every three days, waking early to make the 10-mile hike out to the trailhead from our cabin. We walk in silence the whole way there, barefoot because it’s summer and because that way we can hear if someone’s coming. But once we summit and arrive at the great open rock face for which the mountain is named, my mother asks me why I have given up speaking.

“You have such a beautiful voice,” she says. “Why hide it from the world?”

“I don’t,” I sign back. “And I am training myself to hear. Like Aunt Sadie hears.”

She shakes her head. “Aunt Sadie doesn’t hear.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No,” she says, “you don’t know what I mean. Aunt Sadie herself will tell you that she doesn’t hear. Hasn’t heard since the bomb that took her husband.”

“But,” I argue, “she told me that the ear is a vital organ. I know hers don’t work anymore to alert her to sound, but she still hears the world. She still hears so much more than you or I ever will. She hears the garter snakes molting, the birch back peeling, the waterfalls crashing. She hears it all, somehow.”

My mother looks up at the dull gray sky, so close from this high up. Today it is cloudy, but the intensity of the sunlight, even with the clouds, feeds the hungry blueberries. They cluster in tight bunches spread across the rock face. We are not the only ones who graze here. These purplish pockets of sugar entice birds and squirrels, who will eventually deposit the seeds in digested form. And the blueberries will spread. The whole chain of communication from sunlight to blueberry to squirrel repeats itself year after year for no particular reason except that this is how the conversation has evolved.

My mother sighs. “I can’t speak for Sadie. Wouldn’t dare. But it seems to me that she might be implying that the ear is more than someone’s ability to hear.”

“No shit,” I sign.

“Watch it,” she says.

We drop the subject, concentrating instead on filling our two large wicker baskets with berries. By the time we return to camp, our backs are cricked, and our calloused fingers bear new cuts and scrapes. We give both baskets to Rebecca, who pours them into a pot over the fire with a small ration of granulated sugar.

“Where’s Sadie?” I sign to Rebecca, but she just shrugs.

I’m too tired to go looking for her, so instead I head for my room with a small candle. I try to draw, to commit the view from the top of Big Slide to paper, but the horizon doesn’t come out the way I want it to, so I tear it in half. Then I look at the pieces on the floor of my bedroom.

When my father and mother were young, people split the Earth itself in half, looking for precious stones. They unzipped the clouds with puffy white chem-trails. They diverted rivers, burned forests, dumped thousands of tons of plastic into the ocean. Is it any wonder then that the elements themselves turned on people? That tsunamis, earthquakes, wildfires, and hurricanes rose up to stem the flood of human intervention? The Earth is old and much stronger than anyone realized; it was not the one who needed saving.

My parents speak of a time when other people were inescapable. Wherever you went, you found them. When they talk about this, my parents assume the far-off reminiscent look of golden days gone by, but to me, it sounds awful. We see people from time to time, crossing near our camp or when we’re out scavenging, but sometimes a year or more will go by between these sightings, which is fine by me. After the “natural disasters” – a title that I have never understood – took away people’s access to food and shelter, violence spread across the world. Those who couldn’t live quietly without supermarkets and televisions and SUVs were killed, either by themselves or someone else.

“The only people you can trust,” my parents once told me, “are us and Sadie and Luke and Rebecca.” That was ten years ago though, and my parents have started trusting again. I will occasionally see my father laughing with other men in town as we are scavenging. Or my mother will invite a passing stranger to share our fire and our food for a night. The lesson, I suppose, is that you can’t trust everyone, but most people are harmless. 

I fall asleep waiting to hear Aunt Sadie’s heavy footsteps outside my door.

…

The next morning, I wake at dawn, ready to help gather firewood or water, whatever we need. Outside, by the smoldering firepit, the adults are arranged into a circle, discussing something.

“She’s done this before,” my father signs.

“Something feels different this time,” my mother responds.

“Different how?” Luke asks.

“She’s my sister. I know her better than you all do. And this is different. Something has happened to her. Otherwise, she would be back here, at home, where she belongs.”

I feel my mother’s worry creep underneath my skin. They haven’t yet realized that I am eavesdropping.

My parents have told me that when they were young, they felt certain that they would live to see the end of the world, by which, they meant the end of human beings. Even before the violence and the death, they were told that the Earth would give up sustaining them. Nobody worries about this anymore. The abundance around us is so evident, you can sense it, or at least Aunt Sadie could. As I listen to the adults talk about where she could be, I feel a panic not unlike what they must have felt when they were young. I feel like I will live to see the end of the world.

“We can check in town,” my father says. “Maybe she went scavenging.”

My mother shakes her head, but says nothing. Then she sees me framed in the doorway and her frown deepens.

“I’m coming with you,” I sign to my father. He only nods, knowing that it would be futile to argue.

I don’t go into town often, not because I’m not welcome, but because I have little interest. The shops and the cars and the consumer goods do not trigger the nostalgia my parents feel. I have never known a world with them. For this reason, I am terrible at scavenging. I prefer to spend time around camp and in the woods, where the knowledge that Rebecca and Sadie have poured into my head is readily accessible. But I would walk through the rubble of urban sprawl for years if it meant finding Aunt Sadie.

I lace up my boots. Barefoot is not an option in town, what with the broken glass and rusted metal. I fill my backpack with water, a bag of nuts and seeds, and a pocket knife.

My father and I set out, following a herd path for a mile or two, until it joins a two-lane highway. Walking on the concrete feels strange, as though my feet are being slapped with each footfall. I jog a bit to keep up with my father, whose stride is long, his eyes set straight ahead. We pass cars and trucks, abandoned along the road where they ran out of gas.

Eventually, we come to a metal bridge above a river. Turning my head downstream, I hear the roar of the river reduced to a swift burble. A young stand of alder sprouts from one of the banks. This is a new bank, created by gradual buildup of sediment brought by the rushing water. The skinny white trees will reinforce the ground, until another storm comes and redirects the river again. Tufts of elk fur still cling to the trunks and branches.

Sadie once told me how alder may as well be a feather bed to an elk. They love the feeling of the closely packed trees on their hides. While rubbing themselves, they graze on the shrubs and shoots sprouting in the underbrush and then they deposit manure, which fertilizes the soil. More nutrients, more trees. The river is the director of this pocket drama, determining who goes where and when.

“Keep up,” my father says. He is a good twenty paces ahead of me, halfway across the bridge.

The air itself changes on the other side. It tastes like moldy upholstery and smoke. The moisture and fragrant spruce and pine have been masked by the stench of humans. As we draw closer to town, the houses get closer together, until one buts right up next to another. It never ceases to amaze me that people used to live so close to each other.

On Main Street, we come across a man carrying several bags. He looks exhausted, but still raises a hand in greeting to my father. “Howdy, Jim. This your boy?”

 My father nods and places a hand on my shoulder. “We’re looking for Sadie. Have you seen her?”

The man shakes his head. “Sorry, can’t say I have. Been staying home most days though, what with the new baby.”

My father smiles. “How is she?”

“Beautiful,” the man says, beaming.

“And Portia?”

“Recovering well. I’ll tell her you asked after her. She’ll appreciate it.”

“You do that,” my father says.

As the two men continue talking about the man’s family and the summer rain and what it will mean for our respective gardens, I drift away, seething. I hate my father for not feeling the same urgency and panic that I feel. I don’t understand how he can carry on about the weather at a time like this.

In the broken window of a ransacked pharmacy, I see an untouched greeting card display. The side closest to me has birthday cards. One of them sticks out to me. It features a cartoon bear with the words “Have a Grrrrrrr-eat Birthday!”. My father gave me this card two years ago. He must have found it on this very rack.

I remember that birthday, the gooey sweetness of the nut bars my mother made, dipping into our precious flour supply. I remember the fire and the laughter. I remember smiling so much that my cheeks were sore, and I had to keep massaging them. Sadie hadn’t spoken a word all day, to me or anyone. My father, drunk on sugar and protein, ribbed her for it, asking whether she’d forgotten that it was my birthday. Sadie ignored him, turning to me instead.

“Are you ready for your present?” she asked aloud. Sadie’s voice is a harmony of rough stone and smooth water. When she speaks, she directs, as powerful as a river. The adults quieted down so that they could listen.

“Your present is a story. A lesson. It’s the story of a birthday.

“Many, many years ago, all the world gathered for a birthday party. Everyone was so excited and nervous. Squirrel kept chittering from his treetop. River babbled incessantly to a silent moose. The pine trees shivered in anticipation, casting their prickly needles to the ground. They were all waiting for the guest of honor, a small hairless ape that they decided to call human.

“Human, it was known, would be born with a different kind of brain. There was much discussion about what this brain would do, but nobody knew for sure. Despite the discussion, which at times grew heated, the whole world agreed that they would treat the human as an equal.

“When the baby emerged from the womb of the world, tiny and pained, into the cold air, it arrived crying. This was not uncommon. Soft, gentle moss grew up around it. But the moss did not comfort human, who grabbed and tore and only screamed louder. Moss retreated and wolf moved in to swaddle the child with its soft fur. Human, though, threw its arms around wolf’s neck, squeezing tighter and tighter and not even redwood, with all its power, could pry them loose. Thinking that human might just need a distraction, trout swam around it, flashing beautiful pinks, greens, and silvers. But human was not amused. Instead, it took a huge bite out of trout’s back.

“Everything in the world tried to get this new creature to calm down, and everything failed, even the wind and the waves. The baby only grew more hysterical. And as they stood by watching the contagious pain and suffering of human, they wondered why it couldn’t just calm down so that they could end the birthday. Because it had been going on for far too long. And even the mountains had grown tired of it.”

For two years, I have tried not to cry or yell. I tread carefully so as not to crush snails or beetles underfoot. I do not want to take up space like human did on its birthday. But, standing here on the cracked asphalt in front of the pharmacy, I can feel a selfishness creeping up my throat. I let out a sob as I remember Aunt Sadie, the wiry wisps of her graying hair and the way they felt on my cheek when I hugged her. By the time my father finds me, my face is streaked with tears. He comforts me and we poke around a few more darkened buildings before heading home empty-handed.

…

A week goes by with no sign of Aunt Sadie. Then another. My mother cries herself to sleep every night. My father’s and my feeble attempts to comfort her accomplish nothing. She has been hollowed out by the pain and worry.

“This is normal,” Rebecca signs to me over breakfast one day. “We have to let her grieve.” My mother’s grief is jagged. She will sob for hours and then her mouth will twist into a violent scream, sending the birds – crows, mostly – flapping away. I cringe, ashamed of my mother for disrupting the world with her screams.

As summer turns towards fall, the rains begin in earnest. The damp earth is softer underfoot and the whole forest smells of decomposing leaf litter. Luke and Rebecca ask if I’d like to join them on the annual chanterelle hunt. I leap at the opportunity. Anything to get away from my mother for a few hours.

 Rebecca and Luke were Sadie’s friends in the city before they all moved here with my parents. Luke is stocky and strong, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. He maintains the house, turns dead trees into firewood, and still finds time to build snares and traps for small game. Rebecca is the opposite. Like Sadie, her contributions are mostly to our collective knowledge and understanding of the world. Born unable to hear, she doesn’t speak to communicate, but when she signs, we give her the same quiet reverence we give to Sadie.

 We find a small cache of the delicious mushrooms. As Luke kneels to harvest, Rebecca turns to me. “How are you?”

“Are you asking rhetorically or do you actually want to know?” I ask.

 Instead of answering, she kneels beside a spruce tree. Surrounding the tree is a ring of small white mushrooms that have recently sprouted through the needles and dirt. “Fairy ring,” she signs.

I nod. “Sadie told me how they sprout from threads of a single fungus, interwoven with the roots of a tree.”

“Did she also tell you what they mean?” she asks, fixing me in her pale green eyes.

“What do you mean, what they mean?” I ask.

“People used to believe that you could get trapped in them. That they would turn you invisible if you stepped inside.”

“The tree’s still there,” Luke observes, joining us.

“Only people could be cursed in this way,” Rebecca explains. “Unable to communicate with everyone you left behind. It’s tragic sure, but I never saw it as a curse. If our absence is felt, is it still an absence?”

…

After a month, I decide that I am going out to look for Aunt Sadie by myself. Nobody seems to notice me coming and going; Luke and Rebecca are too busy providing for us and my parents are too deep in their grief, too certain that she’s gone for good. Somebody needs to figure out what happened to her.

Sadie and I used to take walks together, always following the old trails that people cut into the forest floor, since partially overgrown, so that we could easily find our way back. I follow the main trail from our cabin for a few miles, eventually stumbling upon the old dam, which has broken. With no one to repair it, the water streams through the gaping holes in the wood. One day, it will collapse, and the lumber used to construct it will become part of the riverbank.

Above the small pond created by the dam, I see Tahawus, forever keeping watch over our lives. This is the name that the people who first lived here gave the mountain. The people who came after them called it Marcy, but we prefer Tahawus, “Cloudsplitter.” The peak grazes the sky. It is a silly thought, childish even, but I wonder whether I couldn’t spot Sadie from that great distance. Without another idea, I set off on the trail to the summit.

After a few hundred yards, my path is blocked by a fallen tree. I begin snapping off branches, recklessly, until I pause, sensing something on the underside of the limb in my hand. Slowly, I turn it over to reveal a nursery web spider nest, the webbing thick and matted, like a tarp partially covering the spiderlings. Dozens of them are tucked away behind the intricately woven silk. I have always wondered how spiders learn how to weave these delicate homes. It occurs to me now, looking into this web, that they spend their formative moments ensconced in an example. I see through their miniature eyes, looking up and studying the sprawling patterns of glittering white thread, so that one day, I will know too. And I do this until these shapes and patterns are all I see, all I know.

Keep your eyes moving and your ears open, Sadie once told me, and the world will reveal all its secrets to you.

My gaze shifts to my feet, where I see the shiny arc of a broken bear claw, stuck between two rocks. This one is tiny, less than an inch long, and must have belonged to a cub. I feel adrenaline prickle across the skin of my neck. I have been taught since my infancy that bears are mostly harmless unless you come between a child and its mother. The claw is clearly old, but I still can’t shake my fear.

I pause, standing in the middle of the trail, and scan the surrounding woods. I don’t hear or see anything that would indicate a bear. Just before moving on, my eye catches on something that should not be there – a scrap of purple cloth snagged on a tree limb. My breath catches as I recognize it, immediately, as a piece of Aunt Sadie’s favorite coat.

Suddenly, I can see it, the whole scene appearing before me. Sadie walks this trail to collect her thoughts and gather whatever she can. She comes across a bear cub, its claw broken where it caught between rocks. Maybe a bit of blood lays fresh on the ground. Sadie pauses. Perhaps she knows that this is it, that she has found herself in a dangerous situation without a way out. And then she takes her last deep breath, sucking in all the delicious air that this world generates, before the bear’s mother is upon her.

I walk over and retrieve the scrap of cloth. Sadie is back there somewhere, but I don’t dare look. Nor will we make any attempt to retrieve her body. She always said that however she died, she wanted to be dragged into the woods and left to be eaten and decompose like all the other dead things. There is something unspeakably beautiful to me in the fact that the world granted this wish.

…

Before hiking back to camp, I take the scrap of cloth up to the top of the mountain, thinking all the while about the bear and my anger. Anger can only be satisfying when it has a target. But try as I might, I cannot attach it to the bear. I understand her actions. They were justified. She killed my aunt to protect her child, just as my mother would kill a bear to protect me. But I need some outlet for my anger. It cannot stay inside of me, or I will slowly devour myself.

A light rain begins to fall. I remove my pack from my back and insert the scrap of cloth. I have to show it to my mother. I have to be the one who tells her what happened. But not yet.

The summit is bare, a mound of stone capping the mountain. A large pile of rocks, half-scattered, sits at the peak. I asked my father about these once and he told me that people used to bring rocks to top of the mountain because they considered it a tragedy that the mountain was crumbling. They thought that the rocks would become part of the mountain. They thought that they could save it.

Nothing can be saved. That is the simple truth that Sadie taught me. Everything is temporary – our lives, the rivers, the mountains. All will end, but the ends have meaning, insofar as they make room for beginnings. I take a deep breath, connecting with my anger as I wonder what strange beginning will come from its end.

I live to see the end of the world. Each moment that this Earth survives is also a moment of death. Life and death overlapping and releasing a scream like hot iron in water. I thank Aunt Sadie for showing me how to sense the world, all its end and its beginnings. Tears fall from my eyes, joining the raindrops, and all this water tumbles down the mountaintop where it will run into streams and rivers and eventually, the ocean, which beats against the sand and stone along its shores. The wind whips through the Big Leaf Maples, showering the ground with their helicopter seeds. I can feel them turning in swift circles as they fall. The whole world and everything in it comes together to form a song, loud as life and quiet as death. I open my mouth to howl my pain to the clouds overhead and for the first time, I am on key. The scream that I produce is pitchy and uneven, but it is honest. It belongs. And so do I.