"Raccoon knows the secret ways in, even if humans have forgotten . . ."
September '23, Mast Year Almanac
Author’s Note:
I continue to experiment with the publication of this almanac. For the first month or two, I found it refreshing to have all month to put together 3 to 6 well-polished stories for a singular publication. But as the summer has wound on, and life outside of exploring and writing has claimed a seemingly unfair share of my attention, the monthly discipline has proven challenging to maintain.
So I’ll be trying a new format for the months of September, October, and perhaps beyond. I will be publishing one story every week on Tuesday. I hope that this provides three things that will benefit you, the reader.
1) I’m told that weekly regularity is easier for a reader to keep up with, that the big download once a month can get lost in a person’s busy life (as mentioned above, I know a bit about that, so I’m sympathetic)
2) The consistency will force a greater discipline for me, and result in a higher quality of work (I’m still not as happy as I could be with the quality of the August issue)
3) This format will present the opportunity for serialized stories. I’d like to play with longer stories and so releasing them 1-2 thousand words at a time over the course of multiple weeks could result in a more robust world building here on The Mast Year.
One way or another, I hope you find the new schedule to be good. If you have feedback, send it my way.
Thanks,
Charles
Lost Creek, Found Raccoon
Just before the road dead ends, it crosses over Lost Creek, though you’re not likely to notice as it does. If your eye is sharp or you have spent intentional time with the rural Valley and Ridge Country, you might infer the presence of the creek as the road drops steeply downhill at the farm’s entrance. You might expect the creek to be there, knowing that the bottom of any given draw in this region is bound to have at least some water at least some part of the year. But with the vegetation grown vigorous in the height of summer, there is no hint of blue water, or brown river bottom, or white rapids to be seen.
The bridge itself plays up the illusion. Seen from the underside, it is typical of the countless small, private creek crossings in the region: steel i-beam substructure, concrete slab over top, no railings. What little bit of shoulder exists is covered with grass, continuous with the ditches before and after the bridge. The honeysuckle and dogwood and boxelder re-sprouting from old stumps grow so tightly to the road and to the creek itself that you’d be more likely to assume that you’re driving through the gap in a hedge as opposed to driving fifteen feet above the water.
On a typical year, Lost Creek doesn’t run dry, even in the parching month of August when more ephemeral streams hide underground from the cruel sun. There are enough springs here, worming their way out from the surrounding hills, to keep the water flowing even into the long, hot weeks of no rain. Some of this persistence could also be blamed on the creek’s secretive nature. It has cut itself down, below the sight-lines of the surrounding corn fields. It hides itself behind a rampart of 9-foot-tall giant ragweed and enough greenbriar to make a doughboy recall the wire-strewn no man’s lands of WWI France.
But Raccoon knows the secret ways in, even if humans have forgotten. In one place, he has even laid claim to abandoned human infrastructure. Perhaps a 1/4 mile downstream, a few gentle turns out of sight of our bridge, I happened upon a mystery. But I didn’t find it first.
Resting just below the surface of the water, on the south bank of the creek, there is a ledge made of cut stone blocks. The way they’re set so close together and almost perfectly level evokes the sandstone or granite walls of old downtown buildings, except the gaps between are filled with dark shadows and murky water instead of grout.
Whoever set them there, however long ago, clearly isn’t using them anymore. There is no human-sized access in sight, and I waded hip deep down the middle of the stream to get here. But Raccoon has no problem getting here, and the cut stone ledge appears to be the perfect height for her to wade in and wash hands and food.
The rocks have accrued a thin film of sediment and algae so that the thin fingered footprints of the little washer-bears persist, even with the water flowing slowly over top of them. It’d make for an interesting experiment to study how long before such tracks are washed away. Am I looking at a track that was made just last night and is set to be washed away before Raccoon sets foot in here again this evening? Or is it a short-lived fossil, a sign that sometime after the most recent flood stage, the ledge was used as a food washing station?
Perhaps he was only checking out the site, and deemed the hyper-regularity of the human ledge unsuitable. There are other sets of footprints at other low points along the bank. Are they the tracks of one raccoon sampling her many options, or are they each the preferred spot of different individuals?
I wont find out today. Not while the owners of the footprints are asleep. So its back up the creek towards home for me, perhaps to plan an experiment to find out more . . .
Only a little damply yours,
Charles Batey