Civilization

I felt more than heard the screeching brakes. Every cell in my body went into a fetal crouch as the voice in my head screamed (not for the first time that weekend) “You’re going to die. You’re going to be mashed flat by a Citroen taxi cab in the middle of Paris.”

I had arrived upon the point of messy death in a somewhat round-about manner. My traveling companion Jeff and I had arrived a few hours earlier on an Air France flight from Khartoum, Sudan, with a stop for refueling in Cairo, and had struggled with bureaucracy every foot of the way. As we went through what passed for airport security in Khartoum airport, one of the security people took exception to my Swiss army knife, and confiscated it. He handed me a hand-written note in Arabic with the instructions to give it to the pilot when we arrived in Paris. “Fine”, I thought—I understood that a knife, albeit one with a three-inch blade, could pose a risk, but what about the nine-millimeter pistol the fellow behind me turned over and was given back after the security person ensured that the clip was fully loaded?

At least the Air France A10 Air Bus was roomy and comfortable, unlike the Air Sudan 727 we had ridden from Port Sudan to the capitol. We made the mistake of leaving just before the start of Ramadan, the holy month when everyone travels to be with family or just someplace else. To say the flight was overbooked was a bad joke. It reminded me of seventh graders on a school bus. People were standing in the aisles. Carry-ons filled the rest of the floor space. No in-flight snacks here--the flight attendants had sold their own seats, and presumably all the bags of peanuts as well. The aircraft was easily carrying half-again as many passengers as rated. “Oh Christ,” I remember thinking as the overloaded jet charged down the runway, “We’re all going to die in a third-world country, and no one will even bother to look for us.” The 727 clawed its way into the air, delivering us to Khartoum and to a real airline.

As we followed the Nile north,I saw Lake Nasser and Abu Simel, a toy in the Sahara as we passed. We banked over Giza and everyone rushed to the left side of the aircraft to see the Pyramids. Luckily, the pilot compensated for the sudden weight shift and effected a smooth landing in Cairo for refueling.

Cairo to Paris was uneventful. We were fed real food from real plates with real tableware embossed with the Air France logo and we weren’t even first class. We passed over Naples and its attendant volcano, Vesuvius. From the air, the Bay of Naples is nearly circular. Sort of like photos of volcanic calderas. Gives you pause; you can almost hear the ticking. Once we were on the ground, I waited to leave the plane and handed the pilot the receipt for my knife. Surprise, he had no idea what it was. I guess the security guy in Khartoum needed a Swiss Army knife. I hope he cut himself.

Paris. City of Lights, center of civilization and Western culture, and a major reverse culture shock. After three months in the bush, electricity and traffic were somehow out of focus. No herds of camels in the streets, no loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer. We cruised the line of taxis outside the terminal building at Charles de Gaulle Airport looking for someone who spoke English. I had assumed that Jeff, who gave off a Humphrey Bogartesque world weary air, spoke French--Hell, he even smoked Galois cigarettes. “Not a word”, he said, leaving me to dredge up mostly forgotten high school lessons. “Parle-vous Ainglais?” I asked the first cabbie in line. He narrowed his eyes under his beret, shifted his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other, and said “Non”—unspoken was the tagline, “and I spit on you for asking, American pig-dog.” We dragged our duffel bags down the line and finally found a younger fellow who said “But of course”. I was ready to gag on clichés, but we loaded up and piled in. I told the cabbie we needed a cheap place for our one night layover in his wonderful city. He took us through the city, showing off the sights, Notre Dame, Sacre Cour, until we arrived at a small building within sight of the Arc de Triumph. “This is a pension run by my cousin” he told us. “He will take care of you.” Dog-tired we stumbled into the lobby and signed in. The cabby’s cousin directed us to a local bistro and off we went, searching for real French food and wine.

Our search led us down the Camps d’Elese and being American, we found an English bar. The Winston Churchill Pub promised distilled spirits and, most importantly, beer. We stopped for a round, and resumed our search for French food. The bartender, from Liverpool, told us of a bistro not far off that “had the best bleedin’ steak au poive in France, mate.”

We crossed a wide street, hurrying on the unfamiliar lights cycle, when I was stopped dead in my tracks. Walking toward me was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Forget that I had spent the past three months in the bush, forget that I was terminally jet lagged and completely bushed, and forget that I had just consumed two excellent Scotch wiskys on an empty stomach. She was lovely. Tall, blonde, short dress, with legs reaching all the way to the ground, she walked oblivious to the stares and sidelong glances from the people around her. Me, I was dumbstruck, gob smacked. I stood in the middle of the street and watched her pass, my cigarette falling from my mouth open in frank astonishment and ignorance of the changing stop light and the onrushing traffic.

I looked down to see a chrome bumper inches from my knees. It must have actually touched the fabric of my jeans before rocking back to rest. A steady stream of what must have been, judging from the volume and passion involved, the most vile of Gallic curses penetrated into my shell-shocked brain. The cabbie was leaning out the driver-side window, shaking a fist and shouting. Flecks of saliva were floating in the street lights. I looked down again and at his purple face distorted with rage. I shrugged. “Hey,” I yelled back, “I’m American.” Almost instantly the invective stopped. The driver gave a small smile as if to say “oh, American, you’re supposed to be stupid No problem, mon ami.” I hurried across the street and rejoined Jeff who had missed the whole drama while watching the girl recede down the crowed sidewalk.

We spent the entire rest of the night wandering around Paris, savoring its sights, sounds, smells and music. We walked by the floodlit Arc d’Triumph, the Eiffel Tower white lights up its entire length. We strolled wide boulevards; still packed at 3AM, and lurked down dark side streets where we were told to move on by armed guards (“just keep walking”). When we at last got back to our pension, stumbling from Absinthe and exhaustion, it was only to gather our stuff and head for the airport and home.

Jeff left the company soon after. At his farewell lunch, he told me “I’m sure both of us had a list of fifty other people we would rather have been there with, but it was fun.” “Yeah”, I replied, “we’ll always have Paris.”

Observations

We hit meteorological spring earlier this week. Today the thermometer topped out at 51º but snow hides in hollows and on north facing slopes. Squirrels are starting their courtship chases spiraling around tree trunks. Crows still hold to their winter conclaves, festooning bare branches like macabre ornaments on the Adams family’s Christmas tree.


In my front yard, two snow drops and a lone brave crocus have pushed their way through the damp soil to proclaim the glaciers’ retreat. It’s as if the pendulum of the seasons is poised at the top of the upswing, in that moment when time stops, before the earth draws breath and real spring can start.

This is crunch time for most animals. The bounties of autumn are exhausted and the promise of spring stays just that. The Jamestown settlers called late winter/early spring the “starving time”, raiding Indian food caches and resorting to cannibalism for survival. New England Pilgrims suffered appalling losses before spring supply ships could arrive.

My backyard feeders are depleting at twice their usual rate. The skeleton crew of year-round birds is beginning to prepare for breeding and the species that winter here are trying to put on weight for the long trip north. I am seeing juncos for the first time this year and goldfinches have shown up as well. Goldfinches are becoming more yellow by the day as their drab winter plumage wears away. Males are calling, setting up territories and then trying to defend them against all comers. House finches, gather in rows at the feeder, the males glowing red with breeding passions. Social birds, house finches do not establish territories—females go with the reddest males.







We have had five species of woodpeckers coming to our feeders. They hang around at the suet cage, waiting their turn to gorge on the calorie-rich fat. Four wait—they all give way when the local pair of pileateds deigns to make an appearance. To their lordship’s credit, they usually work the backyard trees, leaving my humble offerings to the peasants. A pileated can bang its way through a moderate sized branch in a few minutes using its barbed harpoon-like tongue to lap up insects from their wood tunnels.











The silver maple in the corner of my yard is in flower, pumping out pollen to the breeze, and the red maple nearby is nearly ready to go. Elms downtown are yellowing windows and puddles with copious pollen. The catkins on the river birch at the end of the street are swelling and will be streaming pollen by the end of the week.

Yellow perch are spawning in tidal creeks, long ribbons of eggs tangling on submerged branches. Shad roe from the Carolinas in the grocery store, the gentleman manning the fish counter patiently answering the same questions he’s heard a hundred times already in the last week. “Sauté them with bacon and don’t overcook.” The fish are protected in the Chesapeake and no local roe is available when the Potomac shad make their spawning runs. Shad season has been pushed forward in the mid-Atlantic.

Skunk cabbage is poking out of wet places, luring early flying flies to the flowers with their perfumes of rotting meat. Skunk cabbage can generate metabolic heat, melting their way through snow and ice, providing a warm place for pollinators to rest and lay eggs. It’s all sham, though. The heat fades with the flowers and the larval flies starve in the depths of the flower. The dime-sized harbinger of spring at least provides nectar for the solitary bees who visit its flower clusters, arranged like parabolic reflectors and tracking the sun through the day. Most of the spring wildflowers due in the next month have the same general shape and behavior.

Spring is peeking in the windows, getting its foot in the door. Each species, plant and animal, runs on its own calendar. For some, it is still the dead of winter, for others, it’s time to get going. Most, however, are hitting the snooze button and turning over for a quick last doze.