(Sunset view from camp)
Gordy the Ant: a story for children.
Gordy was a young ant living under a small oak tree in a patch of dirt in Zion Canyon. He lived a pretty dull life running around in circles and carrying stuff 10 times his body weight, until one day a group of campers moved into his patch of dirt, and someone pitched a big fat orange tent on top of his home. It was a girl with hair tinted the color of the red canyon rock, and he fell in love the instant he saw her bending over to unzip the screen flap door.
As the days passed, Gordy heard that some ants had ventured into the girl’s tent, but had never returned. What he didn’t know was that these bitty ants had been murdered. But that’s what they deserved for crawling around on her bare legs while she was trying to sleep.
The ant rescue party also never returned, and Gordy could only surmise that they’d found the tent’s interior so much more wonderful than their mundane dirt mound, than the mundane existence of running around in frantic circles, that they had decided to stay.
But Gordy dared only watch from a distance, feeling too small and insignificant to come near the girl in her orange tent.
Then after the seventh night, there was a great thunder storm, and the whole canyon shook with the reverberations. The sky was a continual show of lights, red, pink, orange, yellow. Gordy had never witnessed anything like it in his short life. Unlike the other ants, who remained underground, he ventured under her tent’s rainfly and watched the muted colors play on her sleeping face. It wasn’t much time before she was awake and sitting up on her elbows, listening. He watched as her face became awe-struck, then giddy, then suddenly frightened, as the sound and sights came together and lightning struck closer and closer. With a sharp intake of breath, she unzipped the tent door and ran out. He rushed down from the tent only to see her headlamp flicker, then disappear inside a parked van outside.
She returned to her tent an hour or two later, and she and Gurdy fell fast asleep as the sound of rain and thunder was replaced by the sound of birds and bats. But the next morning, the girl’s tent was gone. Gordy panicked. She was packing everything into the van! Where was she going? Gordy made a big decision that moment. He hated ant life here in the canyon, and he was going to run away. Without saying goodbye to his parents, he skittered across the dirt ground to the van, jumped in (somehow, ants find a way) and hitchiked with the campers on their 6 hour road trip back home.
Eventually he found her sandaled feet, and began the ascent up her pant leg, then to the summit of her shirt. She was mouthing along to the words of the music on her ipod, a slight smile on her face. He couldn’t control his urgings any longer. He began to shout “Here I am! Notice me!”
And she did. The girl looked down and saw the ant, shouting his fervent love from her shoulder.
And she flicked him off, sending him sailing.
The End.
Man that was dumb. Haha. Sorry I’ve just been thinking a bit about what goes through the minds of those damn insects. I’m trying to embrace them, or at least ignore them, and not murder the ones who (dare) come into my tent. After all, what right do I have to end a life (at least on purpose, god knows how many living creatures I’ve squashed unknowingly). Maybe they’ve got families, or at least semi-important life ambitions. Bugs that stay the hell away from me, and also cute lizards and toads, are so much easier to love.
So last week I emailed the Conservation Corps director to see if I could keep working at this job in the fall. But after this last job in Zion, I’m not so sure anymore. There were four of us on this crew, sweating it out on the trails pounding rock for hours and hours, and the crew leader is awesome, one of the most awesome people I currently know. Very laid back, cheerful, and hard working. Also has nice dred locks. And the two guys we were working with, I like as people. But as co-workers, holy hanna. They acted like the gifted kids in school who wouldn’t do the homework if it didn’t “inspire” them. No motivation, no work. Just a lot of half-assing.
Plus, I’m just kind of tired of this job in general. Haha.
(Near the trail we worked on: the Watchman tower)
Meh anyway. I also finished reading “Into the Wild” and by the end really found myself relating to this Chris McCandles kid. I like the idea of losing myself by becoming a primitive beast, then discovering myself again.
From the book: (quoted from Dr. Zhivago, actually)
“Oh, how one wished sometimes to escape from the meaningless dulness of human eloquence, from all thos sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature…”
“And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness… “
This is the passage Chris McCandles read and highlighted before he died (from poisoned potato seeds! So tragic!)
I almost died in that thunder storm, by gum. How fragile we are!
