The Treaty

Wisdom from the woodshed.

This morning, as I pulled on my boots, the dim light of dawn washed the coastal mountains in shades of pink and revealed an arctic mist blowing along the surface of the sea. A crystalline painting hung with icicles, breathtakingly cold, yet incredibly beautiful. Several deer lying about in the snow didn’t bother rising as I trudged past them. They know they never get their apples until after I’ve had my coffee, so they just lounged there like yard statues, ruminating the last of our frozen roses and following me with their dark, wet eyes. They remained so as I passed them again with an armload of firewood and wasps. 

These uninvited yellowjackets overwinter in my woodshed, seeking out crevices in which to sleep until spring wakes them to their work. Once stacked beside the fire, they begin to warm and stir and eventually crawl out to fly around the house and terrorize my wife. Each of them is a fertilized queen and represents a potential new colony of wasps. And although wasps are my sworn enemy come summer, to kill them now in their confusion, with their Praetorian Guards still in the womb, seems to me like a violation of the natural laws that govern the rules of war. So, rather than savagely swatting them, a kind of comical conflict designed to capture them ensues.

The awakened wasps alternately flee and attack, dive bombers that disappear, sometimes for hours, only to reappear when I least expect them, usually as a dangerous buzzing about my head, or worse, my wife’s. These masked menaces sometimes lie in wait, too. One mysteriously greeted me from the airtight jar that holds our coffee grounds. Another from under the covers when I turned down the bed. Reinforcements lodged deeper in my wood stack are always warming up for battle. To avoid unfair advantage, I inspect each piece before I cast it into the fire. My winged enemy is wily and fast and wonderfully armed, but I do have a technological advantage in the form of a Dyson cordless vacuum.

Trial and error have taught me that just the right timing of the vacuum trigger sucks them into the canister without harming them. But I have to get them quickly before the chase warms them to the realization that I’m the one responsible for interrupting their royal slumber. They move from groggy to aggressive with alarming rapidity. Once her majesty is safely collected, it’s a rush to get on boots and gloves and a cold walk past the deer again to release her into the special pile of wood I leave undisturbed for just these regal pests. At no point does she show me any gratitude. In fact, in just a few months she’ll have woven a whole kingdom from which she’ll command a thousand of her offspring out to assault me as I work in the yard. But by then the treaty will have expired.

I’m not sure there is any wisdom to be learned from this folly that I repeat every winter. Maybe a reminder that spring will come again, here and everywhere, and that hope should never be abandoned even after so many false starts. Perhaps I’m meant to learn that even enemies should be treated with kindness and compassion when they are vulnerable or in need. Or it could serve simply to prevent boredom by introducing an element of danger on these dark winter days and nights spent beside the fire. If I had time I’d sort it all out, no doubt, but my coffee is gone and there are apples to slice and deer to feed before I can sit down to my real work and get some writing done. I know there will be interruptions, but the fire is warm, the wood is stacked, and the vacuum cleaner waits, charging beside my desk. 

An audio recording of this essay can be found here:

Audio: The Treaty