NOT A TRAIL. Old tram running out to somewhere nobody goes. A country characterized by shrubs. Walled by dog hobble, gallberry, sweet bay magnolia, wax myrtle. Thick and impassable. Until the shrubs converge. Catbrier sewing it all together with its thorn needles.
Six miles back to the highway. Fifteen miles to a store. Forty miles to a hospital. A thousand to my husband. This tram unmarked.
Early fall and everything full of berries. Candyweed on the moist ground. Tiny, soft woodland grass, one and a half inches high. Sundews like big chiggers, like red coins all over the ground. Their miniature traps sweetly cocked. Lavender flowers of smooth meadow beauty. So fragile the petals fall if you brush them.
Pileated woodpecker far off, calling. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Lands in a snag. Landscape of snags, standing dead, burned by some recent fire. Snag land. Landscape of shrubs. Eye-level landscape. On tiptoe I see above it. Forever.
Time of spiders. Hundreds, strung between shrubs. Head level. Old tattered webs, new webs, gilt webs. Which means no one my height has passed here in whenever.
Passage of animals. Stretches of mud, canvas of tracks. The black bear was walking on all fours. Place where an alligator dragged its tail. Slithering through a knee-high arch into the tram ditch alongside. Sharp three-pronged alligator tracks. Bobcat. Raccoon. Deer or hog, I can’t tell the difference in sphagnum.
Noise in dry leaves. I stop. Cottonmouth moccasin approaches. I slam my feet down so the earth trembles. Moccasin trembles. The boy Bo would pick it up, but not me. Snake flings six inches of upper body into the air. To look bigger. Looks big enough already.
Gallberry switch in front of my face to catch the webs. Stick in my hand, weaving through the grass in front of me. Announcing passage to snakes. Me walking with binoculars, backpack, pad and pencil. The gun in its holster against my ribs. Marking me. Embarrassing me. An imprinted fear. Two sticks. Spiders scurry up threads, seeing me coming. They are not without safety measures.
In and in and in. Sun lowering in western sky. Faster. To get to wherever I’m going. To where this land opens out. Noah’s Island. A couple of red-bellied woodpeckers.
More tracks. Bear scat. Not such a big pile. Not so fresh. Wet feet in a couple of places where the water converges.
Over an hour walking. Slow. Hard. One mile, two miles.
Finally a body of water. Like a pond. More trees. Crescent of pines in the distance. More water. What they mean by island is trees. So I find it. And the walking is easier again. Road veers right. Another kind of grass I do not know. More walking.
Suddenly a new sound. Not birds. A wonk, wonk, wonk I recognize. Baby alligators.
The danger of mother alligators. Good Lord, they’ll kill you if they think you’re after their babies. Take the gun out. Hold it ready. Creep to the edge of the water. Still two slash pines between the water and me. I don’t want to kill anything. Just see them. I’d run all day before I’d shoot.
Baby alligators like little spotted spoons. Stirring the water. Wonking in sheer terror. Hiding in flotsam and jetsam. Eight or nine of them. Maybe more. This is Noah’s Island. Place where alligators hatch and begin. But there’s more than two of everything, Noah.
Center of Pinhook. Everything Pinhook is, is here.
Another sign to turn is the big orange sun. Bottom of it level with the horizon.
Back the same way. Dusk now. Racing night. Time the crepuscular animals emerge. Will bears follow you? Alligators drag you under. The length of the tusks of wild boars. Apex of sun’s disk finally gone. Back and back and back.
Candyweed, meadow beauty, gallberry, titi, dog hobble. Sweet bay magnolia. Slash pine, pond pine. The same scurrying, scrambling spiders. Tracks and slides and scat. No snake where I saw it. The world turning to night. Down and down. Me running.
When I reach the road darkness falls.
I can breathe.