The Last Word On Nothing

I’ve spent a lot more time in a car than I used to, since the pandemic started. Because of not wanting to be in spaces where other people are exhaling. On Sunday, I spent a few half-hour stretches in a car. And I noticed a number of things, and I’m here to tell you about them now.

I took the picture above on Sunday, but I was standing on my two feet, nowhere near a car, and isn’t it pretty?

Black vulture

As the car went up a wide suburban road, two vultures were flying low. So low that I could tell, for once, that they were not both the same kind of vulture. I know that there are both turkey vultures and black vultures around here, in the air and on the ground, eating dead things. But most of the vultures are turkey vultures, so mostly I assume that’s what I’m seeing.

Most of the time, they’re too high up to see the color of their heads – they’re just a black V shape in the sky. This time I could see that the undersides of their wings had different light-and-dark patterns, and then one turned in a way that I could see its black head.

The delight of seeing something I sort of knew, for real, in the field! And by field” I mean in the sky, over the six-lane road.

Black walnuts

A few hours later I was driving along the Beltway that encircles Washington, D.C., and spotted a cluster of green balls on the shoulder.

Just outside the window of my apartment is a catalpa tree, and several feet to the left of that is a black walnut. It’s a wonderful, tall, sturdy tree, with pretty leaves that catch the light. My tree book tells me “all parts [of the tree] have distinctive odor” but I’ve never gone out there to sniff the tree. I’d be trespassing in the backyard of the abandoned apartment building next door.

I just recently realized that the bonk! rolllllll sound I’ve been hearing in the fall for years now was black walnuts falling on the roof. This time next year the tree and the empty apartment building will be gone, replaced by something new. When I saw those walnuts by the side of the interstate, I remembered that there are other walnut trees out there, living their little lives and throwing their round, green fruits down on the ground, even if nobody appreciates them.

Dead mammal

As I left one interstate for another, on another ramp, I saw a furry ball by the side of the road, up against the concrete barrier, huddled, soft.

Roadkill is one of the many ways that cars are the worst. That animal was just going about its business, maybe trying to get to some fresh walnuts. Then someone who was afraid to take Metro drove by, and the animal dragged itself to the side of the road, met a concrete barrier, curled up, and died. I’ve driven by roadkill countless times before – cars: the worst – but this one actually made me feel sad. It looked like a raccoon to me, although all I saw was its beautiful fur and its curled-up back.

Maybe since then a vulture has stopped by, and ensured that it did not die in vain.

That was my Sunday: In a car, noticing the bits of the natural world that hang on, surrounding us, overhead and at the margins of our concrete, growing and dying while we drive by.

Photo: Helen Fields