Chapter 10.2 - Talking to the Land

It was cold but Claire decided to go out anyway, drawn by the mysterious mist which softened the contours of the naked trees and lingered close to the ground, pooling in low laying spots like water.

Here and there the oak moss had already started growing and it streaked lime green accents on the dark branches, making them look fuzzy and soft in the diffuse light of the morning.

Claire wrapped the shawl around her shoulders, shivering a little in the humid chill, fascinated by this eerie landscape which seemed to morph under her eyes, shifting surfaces and colors on what was supposed to be a static image. Nature was strangely quiet - no wind, no birds, no sounds of tiny critters shuffling the fallen leaves under their footsteps.

She started walking towards the oak tree and the mist swirled around her ankles, making waves like the surface of a pond. Without a thought she bent down and tried to feel this elusive surface, this cool breath of the earth that folded wet ribbons around her hand with the obedience of a beloved pet. 

Her surroundings looked like a newborn place outside of time, young and innocent and trying to feel its ties to the rest of existence.

She knew her strange kin was there, just like in her dream, even if she couldn’t see them. She knew that they were there watching her play with the mist like a child, and she felt self conscious all of a sudden as if she’d done something wrong. For a moment she saw herself from outside, with the bright colors of the shawl melting in the mist and a fine dusting of frost in her hair, and then her image receded into the water color surroundings and back into her self. 

“Claire,” Grandfather called from the porch, “breakfast!”

She turned to go back to the house and the mist followed her movement in a strange slow dance, hanging around her body like a loose garment whose long train trailed behind her over the barren leaves, occasionally dragging them in its wake. 

The smell of coffee welcomed her on the porch and she hurried past the mirrors, failing to notice that when she passed between them the contours of her reflections softened and melted, casting waves on the surface of the glass.

“Ugly weather,” Grandmother shivered, looking out the window into the mist.

“You don’t like fog?” Claire asked, too cheerful for the context.

“Who likes fog?” Grandmother replied surprised. “I can feel its chill down to the bone, eh!”

Claire didn’t respond, still covered in the hoar of the fog and feeling secretly comforted by its cool embrace. The smell of brioches reached out from the oven and changed the light in the room: everything had turned a shade warmer all of the sudden, smothered in butter and vanilla fragrance.

“Are they cheese or fruit?” Grandfather stretched his neck towards the oven, trying to guess by the aroma.

“Cheese,” Grandmother opened the oven door to check if the pastries were done. She turned down the heat and set the timer for five more minutes.

“I’ll have to tend to the garden soon, it looks like we’re going to have an early spring this year.” 

Grandfather scrutinized the weather outside with the knowing gaze of a seasoned skipper who tries to make out the moods of the sea. There were many ways to travel in this world, it occurred to Claire as she watched her grandfather being transported to spring and to a completely different emotional space which didn’t bear any resemblance to the unfocused view outside the window. In his mind the flowers were already blooming and shy seedlings emerged from their underground slumber, looking for supports. A singular focus centered his emotions into a smooth flow and he forgot all about the breakfast and the cool mist and went straight to planning next year’s harvest.

“Joseph,” Grandmother brought him back to the here and now. He shook away the reverie and asked.

“Are they done?”

The brioches emerged from the oven, golden brown, soft and dripping with melted cheese, sugar and vanilla from the places where their seams had burst open.

“When are people coming to till the soil?” he turned to Claire, biting into the delicious pastry, still hostage to his previous field of focus.

“Early February, just like last year,” Claire replied.

“You should talk to them, have them come sooner this year, it can’t hurt to have a longer growing season.”

“Sure, if you think so,” Claire didn’t contradict him. “You know, with all this advice you’re giving me people are going to start thinking I actually know what I’m doing,” she joked.

“I should hope so, I taught you long enough,” Grandfather countered. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started laying out the quadrants for the rotation of crops, parceling out squares and rectangles for each and every culture. The outcome looked like the lithograph of a strange language of symbols, the language Grandfather used to communicate with the earth; she could swear, cross her heart, that the earth understood it.

“You should try different tomato varieties this year, the ones we had last year were a little bland.” He thought for a bit and penciled down a long list of options while the rest of the brioche was getting cold on the plate beside him.

Meanwhile Claire kept looking out into the mist, thinking how strange life was, and how she had never envisioned herself as an artist or a keeper of the land, and how all the choices she had made earlier in life had absolutely nothing to do with the place she was in right now, a place which felt so natural to her soul she didn’t think to question it. She recalled her grandfather’s proclamation of free will and thought that if there was such a thing it must have been carefully hidden beneath the layers of rational thought, in a place where it made revelatory sense but one couldn’t for the life of them explain why.  

“Finish your brioche,” Grandmother nudged Grandfather and he finished his pastry without thinking about it, completely elsewhere.