Category: Stories

The summer day had reached sweltering temperatures, caused by a hot air mass that had blown over the Mediterranean from Africa and made its way to the Balkans. I mopped my brow while you took another swig of water. 

“We’re getting low,” you said. “We need to find a stream.”

“There should be one in the valley.”

We had passed through a nearly-deserted town in Serbia, then hiked through a forest and across a meadow, keeping off the roads to avoid any chance of discovery, while heading toward a valley that led to a path over the hills.

A sudden chill made us pause, wary of its source. At first we thought it was a cool breeze bringing welcome relief from the heat. But it was no breeze. The chill hugged the ground like part of the landscape, numbing our ankles and wrapping itself around our legs.

“Why is it so cold?” you asked. “We didn’t expect this.”

“Some of these wildflowers look like they’re wilting.” I reached down to feel the tops of the stalks. A frozen blade of grass snapped off in my fingers. “This isn’t right.”

We continued past the edge of the meadow and through a stand of oaks, beyond which was the lower end of the valley. As soon as we came out of the trees, we saw the problem.

Instead of a carpet of grass and flowers, the wide vale was covered by a massive field of snow more than a meter deep. It stretched the length of the valley — the way we were heading — and lay there contentedly ignoring the summer heat. Not one bead of sweat glistened on its edges, no water trickled from under its prostrate form. It breathed a sigh that made us rub our hands together and wish for heavy coats.

“This should be a lovely green valley with a stream running down the middle of it.” I was imagining an ideal bucolic scene — a few deer quietly grazing, dragonflies and bees humming and buzzing over the grass, birds flitting about, the fragrance of wildflowers carried on a mild breeze. “All we get is snow? Has it no respect for the seasons?”

“This is unacceptable,” you said. “It should have left months ago.”

Even snow patches that linger in shadows on the highest peaks had long since packed up and flowed downstream. Now here we were in late August being assailed by a chill that swept over the valley and nipped at our faces. 

“If we have to hike around it,” you said, “we won’t reach the path until after dark.” Our shoes weren’t fit for walking over so much snow, since we were dressed for summer.

“You think it’s being rebellious? Or maybe just lazy?”

“Let’s find out. I bet we can do something.” You always think we can do something. Unfortunately, you’re usually right.

We stepped up to the snowfield, which was facing downhill. Its front end — that is, its snout — came to a rounded edge about chest high. It formed a barrier that extended across the valley floor, to where trees huddled on the steep hills.

“Do you really have to cover the entire valley?” you asked it.

I put a foot up on the snowbank and leaned into it. “Look, who do you think you are to still be lounging about here?” I reached out and whacked it, to make sure I had its attention. “You should have been long gone by now.”

The snowfield shuffled a bit and made a groaning noise. It didn’t seem to like my tone, but too bad.

“It’s annoyed,” you said. 

“Well so am I.”

“Let’s try a different approach.”

You were about to say more, but a rumbling from up the valley caught our attention. The sound grew into a low roar and a wind ruffled our hair. Almost immediately we both realized what was happening.

“Avalanche!” 

We had nowhere to run. Any second now, a churning mass of snow and ice would come hurtling down and crush us. We weren’t prepared for this, not in the middle of summer. I didn’t think the snowfield would get so worked up as to try to kill us, and was almost sorry I had knocked it on the snout, but the beastly thing deserved it.

We barely had time to turn our backs and crouch down before we felt clumps of snow hitting our bodies. I took a quick look at you, thinking it might be for the last time. You seemed to be concentrating, like you were doing calculations in your head, and didn’t even bother glancing my way. 

Snow swept over us and whooshed past. I felt an icy sting on my neck and closed my eyes. Then, silence. The assault was over. 

You stood up and casually brushed the snow off. There was scarcely enough around our feet to make half a snowman. I was still a bit shaken, but followed your example.

“It wasn’t steep enough,” you said. That’s what you had been figuring out — it’s impossible to create much of an avalanche in such a shallow valley. 

We turned back to address the snowfield. “Nice try,” I said.

You put a hand on my arm. “Let’s see what it has to say.”

“Okay, what’s the deal?” I could have worded that more politely, but was still angry at it for the avalanche attempt and for just being there. “Why are you still covering up this valley when everyone else of your kind melted away in the spring?”

“It’s just that by staying here you upset the natural cycles, so we’d like to understand why.” You have a nicer way of putting things.

More grumbling and shuffling, after which the snowfield insisted that it believed in the right to equal opportunity, twenty days paid vacation, and a decent pension. 

Okay, we agreed, we couldn’t argue with that in principle, but one has to respect the ways of nature and the laws of physics. It was going against the cultural norms — and how could it stand this heat?

Very well, thank you, because what if it wanted to be a glacier?

No, we replied, that requires special skills and decades of training. “Besides,” I added, “glaciers are out of fashion these days.”

Iceberg, then.

Again, no. “You’re a long way from the North Sea.” 

But speaking of seas, we said, it could flow down to the Black Sea by way of the Danube — I hummed a bit of that waltz by Strauss — and spend a little time at the seaside, but only as water, since massive frozen entities are disallowed on the beach, along with dogs and motorized vehicles.

No, it replied, the beaches are open to any form of natural being, dogs excluded, and if a snowfield chose to set up a blanket and folding chair and enjoy a bit of sun and sea, why, that was no one’s business.

What if, I hypothesized, some vendor on the beach noticed the snowfield and decided to offer shaved ice and slushy drinks to his customers? How would it feel about being scooped up by the cupful, drenched in sticky, artificially-flavored syrup, and licked into oblivion by slobbering children?

That sent shivers up its spine. I had made my point.

“I bet it’s afraid of melting,” you said in my ear. “It thinks it will die.”

You leaned toward the snow and lowered your voice, as if about to reveal a great secret. “Let me tell how you will live forever,” you began, then launched into The Mysterious Wonders of The Hydrologic Cycle, as you called it — a title chosen to hook the curious listener.

You spoke of rivers and streams, oceans and lakes, mists and fog, ice and snow. You made a sweeping arc with your hand as you described how water, graced with energy from the sun, is taken up in the rapture of evaporation, purified by heat to leave behind earthly contamination, transcendent in atmospheric glory, swirling in a realm high above the mountain tops, then re-embodied in flawless raindrops and unique snowflakes, returning gently to the land to continue the never-ending flow from earth to sky and back again, everlasting, never dying, only changing in form, solid to liquid to vapor, taking on an infinite number of shapes as it journeys through the endless cycle of water-life.

You pointed at the sky. “See those puffy white clouds up there? That could be you, freely floating, seeing the world, making new friends. The sooner you flow down to the sea, the sooner you’ll be up there, maybe riding the jet stream, mixing with high society.”

After listening to you, I was ready to melt and flow down the river myself. Who can resist being part of something as grand and awe-inspiring as the water cycle?

The snowfield was quiet, apparently deep in thought. Then we saw its surface glisten with drops in the afternoon sun. A trickle of snowmelt began to run from under its front edge and into the dry streambed. You nodded, satisfied.

“Well,” I said, “at least we can fill our water bottles now.”

We came to an opening in the trees, a sun-bright glade in partial bloom. You went on ahead to greet the flowers, I paused at the forest edge to muse — not on nature’s wonders or the beauty before us, but on something you had said as we walked under the shadow of trees.

You asked if all the time we spent would lead to anything of substance. That’s not how you put it — you remarked on how we don’t make things — but that was the gist of your question.

All the answers I could muster sounded too simple, so I remained silent a while and listened to the woods instead, pausing as you crossed the glade. Then I followed you into the sunlight to say: “You raised a good point.”

“Oh? Look at this foxglove. I’ve never seen colors like this.”

You stood by a tall leafy stalk topped with a drooping cluster of flowers, tubular and flared at the ends, light orange outside and lavender inside, though lacking the typical pattern of dots in their throats.

“They’re shaped like hearts,” you said.

“Not like trumpets? I see a horn section here.”

You ran a finger along one of the soft flowers. “It would be a quiet orchestra — only bees could hear it.”

“Perhaps only bees deserve to hear it, as a reward for their hard work.” 

“Because with all their flying about they manage to make honey.” Another hint of your concern.

“We have planted trees,” I said.

“But we didn’t make them. Or even grow them from seeds.”

“We had a garden once…” No longer. We were too often traveling — chasing rumors, encountering danger, flying about — so we let the ordered rows fall into disarray as nature reclaimed the tiny plot.

I leaned down and sniffed the flowers, to no effect. “We do things, and see things. We saved a whole mountain once. People hire us to go places.”

“And in all our adventures… what?” You plucked a leaf and spun it in your fingers. “We’re not creating or building anything, or making pieces of art… or baskets… figurines… toys…”

This notion arises in you at times, caused I suspect by a tidal pull when the moon moves into its nesting phase, aligned in some planetary beam, stirring an instinct I’ll never feel. I knew better than to offer solutions — we could take more pictures, collect souvenirs, write a book — that wasn’t the point.

“Even this plant can be made into medicine,” you said. “All we can do is tell friends about our travels, and they say ‘that’s nice, wish I could do that’.” You waved a hand in dismissal.

“Our friends who stay home because they have jobs and hobbies and kids in school…”

“They have something.”

“Yeah, safety. We’ve been attacked, abducted, and nearly killed more than once.”

“I admit, we have some good times.” You cupped a delicate flower in your hand. “But what do we have to show for it all? Nothing we can hold.”

You were right. Even the least-skilled artisan produces tangible objects that can be admired or cradled or put on a shelf to be dusted. Yet in time everything breaks, or wears out, or gets weathered down to sand and washes away to the sea. I tried to remind you of this.

“Still,” you said, “somebody made them and they existed, for however long.”

“We’ve talked of building a cabin.” That had potential.

“We’d never be there. No…” The moon slipped from the planet’s alignment and ticked into its next wavering phase. You shrugged off the waning effect. “Maybe someday.”

Our adventures and travels would have to suffice, for a while longer.

I didn’t mind. The thing about any experience is, it’s forever etched in the timeline of the universe, an entry in the Book of Existence. It will always have been. Even if we have nothing of substance to show for the hours we spend, tonight we can look back to the morning and say: We have lived this day. Often, that’s enough.

We both regarded the silent foxglove, enjoying a moment of watching the bees.

We thought the border guard was going to give us trouble. We had no visas, no letters of introduction, and certainly no official permission to enter the country. So as we walked up to the gate you said we should just nod and smile like we were on an afternoon stroll. It didn’t matter — the guard barely looked up from his book as he waved us through.

That’s how we snuck into Mrzdernistan — a tiny, unregistered country tucked unobtrusively among some forbidding mountain ranges east of Uzbekistan.

Hardly anyone knows it exists, because the citizens didn’t brazenly declare independence or hold a noisy revolution. They just elbowed their way in between a couple of countries in Central Asia and quietly set up shop — in a place where meddling Westerners can’t even pronounce the names — jotted down a constitution, elected a few folks to run the government, and went about their lives. Things are still pretty casual there, though I was sorry they don’t stamp passports so we could prove we had visited beautiful Mrzdernistan.

We had come to investigate reports about a type of tree that was either a new species or didn’t know how deciduous trees were supposed to behave. Instead of turning their leaves pretty colors in the fall and dropping them on the ground a few at a time, these trees lost all their leaves at once in the middle of summer, without warning. 

And by “lost,” the eyewitnesses meant the leaves simply vanished. One minute they’re on the tree, the next, the branches are bare with not a leaf to be found anywhere.

“Well,” I said, “that would be convenient in the suburbs — no leaves to rake.”

“Why hasn’t anyone looked into this yet?” you asked.

“No research budget. Apparently the only scientist in the country is a retired geologist.”

You were thoughtful. “So they won’t be developing nuclear weapons anytime soon.” One less country to worry about on that front, for now.

Another bit of folklore — the trees shed their leaves on the second new moon after the summer solstice, so we arrived in mid-August, hoping to observe the phenomenon and see where the leaves went to hide.

The only car available for rent was a beige Yugo from last century. A bit cramped, the seat coverings were different colors, and the dashboard rattled like it was about to fall off, but the adorable little thing ran okay — it only took an hour to drive the ten kilometers to the woods and find the stand of trees we were looking for.

We pulled off the dirt road and onto a grassy meadow, but a trickling stream that ran along a deep ditch prevented us from going very far. We grabbed our equipment — a magnifying glass and a few containers for collecting samples — and started to walk toward the trees.

“Those look like beeches,” I said.

They had smooth, gray bark and bright-green leaves. Some of the trees were over thirty meters tall, rounded in shape with wide-spreading limbs, probably a couple hundred years old. Excellent shade trees, I thought — until all the leaves drop off, as they were expected to do at any moment now. The grove exuded a vaguely pungent odor, like the musky smell of termite mounds, but it wasn’t too bad.

We stopped at the largest tree, which stood in the meadow apart from the rest. It seemed healthy and strong, the bark was in good condition, and the crown was full of shiny leaves that sighed in the breeze.

“This would be a nice place for a picnic.” That was my scientific observation.

“It’s not a beech,” you said. “The leaves don’t alternate their pattern along the stems. See? In fact, they don’t seem to have any pattern at all.” 

What self-respecting tree has randomly-spaced leaves? I reached up to the lowest branch and plucked off a few, collecting samples we could look at later. Then I snipped off a twig with about a dozen leaves on it and stuck it in a plastic bag. You searched the ground for evidence of fallen foliage but couldn’t find any.

“Ow!” I said. “What was—? Hey.”

One of the leaves was on my arm, and it had bit me! The end of its dark green stem had dug right into my skin so it appeared to be growing out of my arm. After the initial pinprick bite it didn’t hurt, so I grabbed the magnifying glass for a closer examination. You stood there watching.

The stem was actually the long, thin body of an insect and the leaf was its wings. The insect’s head and six legs formed a cluster at the tip of the stem, or body. It had stuck its nose in my skin and grabbed tight with its feet. I handed you the glass for a look.

“How did we not know this?” you asked.

I gently pulled the bug off my arm and placed it with the others. We both looked up into the branches at what must have been hundreds of thousands of leaf-like insects attached to the tree, with not one real leaf among them. We walked around and checked the other trees. Same thing.

Everyone’s seen pictures of stick bugs and other cool-looking insects that imitate plants to keep from being eaten by birds. But we’d never seen anything like this. It wasn’t just a few bugs camouflaged as leaves, but a grove of trees full of millions of insects that grow as leaves attached to the bark.

“They’re not leaf-bugs, they’re bug-leaves,” I suggested, trying to decide if that was a profound distinction or just a dumb way of saying the same thing.

You put one of the insects under the magnifying glass and crushed its wings between your fingers until they oozed green paste. “These have chlorophyll in them, I think. And the veins aren’t just decoration — they really are veins, like a leaf has.”

I leaned over for a sniff and got a noseful of a sour, acrid smell. “But it’s still a bug.” I refrained from putting it to my tongue, thinking it would probably taste like the exact opposite of fresh mint. Sensory analysis should only be taken so far.

The sun was dropping behind the high mountains, along with the new moon. We watched the last rays disappear before getting back to our investigation, figuring we still had a couple more hours of light left.

“What’s that noise?” I asked. The trees were starting to hum.

“They’re all flapping,” you said, pointing at some of the insects on the lower branches. 

“You don’t think they’re getting ready to—”

“Back to the car, now!” We grabbed our stuff and ran across the meadow.

By the time we had tumbled inside the car, a cloud of green was rising from the trees. I took the passenger side and made sure our samples were safe. You cranked the engine and sent the vehicle bouncing over the grass and onto the dirt road. When I glanced back, half of the big tree was already stripped bare of its insect foliage.

“I guess we were here at the right time,” I said.

“They must have been triggered by the sun setting with the new moon.”

A few seconds later we were engulfed by the swarm. We thought it would fly right by us, but the insects had other ideas. The swarm veered around and flew at us in a fierce frontal attack. The windshield quickly became a gooey mess of bugs as we raced through them.

“I can’t see the road!” you said. 

“You’re doing fine.” I couldn’t see anything either, but since you were driving I figured encouragement was the best strategy.

You flicked on the windshield wipers, which dragged themselves halfheartedly across the glass, but managed to clear a space we could see through. The hood was covered with the little biters, and I could hear them chomping on the roof. 

“They’re eating the metal, I think.” We had to get out of the swarm before it chewed its way through the car.

“We’ll head for the sycamores,” you said, “if we can find them.”

We had passed a grove of sycamore trees on our way in and hoped they might lend us some shelter and help keep the insects away. We didn’t know if they’d be friendly to foreigners — if they were on the side of the bug-leaves, we were doomed.

“Stuck in a swarm of insects again,” I said, recalling a previous adventure. “How does this keep happening?”

“Those turned out to be drones. But yes, this does seem familiar.” 

I looked out the side window at the green storm following us. “At least we know why all the leaves disappear now.” 

You pointed ahead. “The sycamores. Grab our stuff, we’re going to have to run for it.” You swerved the car off the road and slammed to a stop next to the stand of trees. They were in full leaf, and many had wide trunks and sturdy branches. If nothing else, we could climb up to the higher boughs to seek protection from the swarm.

I filled my arms with everything we had brought, then at the last minute I remembered to grab the rental agreement from the glove box. We flung the doors open, leapt out of the car, and made a dash for the trees, batting our way through the insects that surrounded the car.

They ignored us. Now that the car was stationary, the bugs attacked it with renewed fury. It disappeared under a cloud of fluttering wings.

We watched helplessly from the safety of the trees while the ravenous insects ate holes in the body and tore into the frame. As they munched away at the car, their wings took on a dark gray color, then turned a rusty red.

“This must be part of their life cycle,” you said. “Eating metal.”

“I guess that’s how they get their iron — to grow into strong adults. A well-balanced breakfast cereal would also do the trick.”

In minutes the swarm had reduced the car to glass, upholstery and plastic, of which there was a surprising amount. An SUV would have provided a lot more nourishment, we agreed. Or maybe a 1950s Cadillac, if they had a taste for earlier vintages. The red-winged bugs had all flown off, sated. The green ones crawled over the remains looking for scraps, then left as well. The swarm was gone, the grove was quiet.

“They’ve completely destroyed the car,” I said.

“It’s a Yugo. No big loss.”

We enjoyed a pleasant walk back to town that evening, and mused on the enigma of the bugs.

We decided there’s a symbiotic relationship, where the insects provide the trees with food — using the chlorophyll in their wings for photosynthesis — and the trees provide the bugs with a place to stay and raise the kids, until swarming time. The adults probably lay eggs in the bark, then after those hatch the larvae attach themselves to the tree and grow into the leaf-like insects.

“Apparently,” you said, “the trees don’t produce any leaves on their own.”

“The lazy things.”

The next day we told the guy at the car rental place what had happened. We had to reimburse him, since we hadn’t taken out insect-damage insurance, but the car was only worth a few hundred dollars. We paid cash, American. He liked that.

We also stopped by the Mrzdernistan government offices and suggested how they could get rid of their scrap metal — by leaving it out on that meadow once a year about this time. The officials were skeptical at first, but they tried it the following year. It’s been their most effective recycling program ever.