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Beneath the Leaf My grandfather was one of those scientists who loved to get his hands dirty. By the time I was five, he was taking me out with him on his long walks into the woods. "Little girl,'" Paw Paw would say, calling me by a name that I would let no other man ever use again, "these woods are one big laboratory. I could spend days out here, if only your Maw Maw would let me. But you know, she won't, and you know, she's going to have us wash our hands on the way into the house." He'd sigh, and I'd nod my head. My fingers would already be caked in the black muck of the frog pond by then. I took great joy in not cleaning my fingernails at that age, particularly when Paw Paw once told me of all the little things living in the soil beneath our feet. His greatest joy, other than joking with Maw Maw, was to find an old pile of leaves and slowly lift them, one by one, excavating his way to the bottom, to the soil, to the place where, as he often me, "life exists outside of sight." Dogtrax posted on 2018-04-21 at 13:04 Central Time. - link to this story -

We would sit under a tree and do our forest archeology, one leaf at a time. We would find spiders and caterpillars, green sprouts barely poking through the ground, and tiny little mushrooms. After we turned the final leaf we would slowly dig uncovering earthworms, acorns getting ready to become trees, pebbles and half rotted twigs, and bugs, bugs, bugs. I loved bugs back then and when I was with Paw Paw I had no fear. He would warn me about the millipedes and the scorpions, brushing them aside with a stick being careful not to harm them. We loved them too, but from a distance. Sometimes we'd find edible mushrooms and we'd put them in a bag and carry them back to Maw Maw. I think those mushrooms are the only thing she looked forward to from the woods. She had no truck with spiders or worms or dirty hands. Like Paw Paw said she made us wash up when we got home. hairylarry 2018-04-23 at 01:51 Central Time.

The other night, tucking Sally into bed, I remembered something from those days in the woods with my grandfather. I remembered this one particular log. Every walk, he would visit that log. It was hidden, out of sight of human eyes, and I would watch with wonder as he carefully inspected every inch of the log, before slowly turning it over to reveal the underneath. Paw Paw treated that log like an expensive artifact. He worked with gentle hands, peering in close. I'd lean over his shoulder as he kneeled on the ground. "See?" he's tell me, pointing. "A whole world." Bugs of every shape and sizes would scatter from the light, burrowing down into holes and under more leaves. My grandfather would then slowly roll the log back, the roof on the house of the world once more intact. I'd tell this to Sally, and my little five-year-old daughter, the makings of the newspaper reporter she would some day become, would ask, "Is the log still there?" I wonder. Dogtrax 2018-04-23 at 10:17 Central Time.

He carefully turned over the stone. Red dirt coated the palms of his hands. He yelled excitedly ‘Come and look, I found a fossil!’ I bent over, my shadow changing the rock from red to brown. I could see the outline of the bug vertebrae. Clearly etched into the rock. Looking at the rounded edges I could see the ancient tree fossil speak to me. I took his small fingers and traced the lines of the log. Now we scouted for more pieces of the puzzle. Each ripple, wave and line had more significance as we wandered the land that would have been a seabed thousands of years ago. We took turns in making up stories about those bugs, there names, diet and how intelligent they might have been. As the sun shone, our mind expanded into the past. wentale 2018-04-23 at 10:38 Central Time.

I still have that fossil. When I showed it to my daughter, Sally, I told her the story of how Paw Paw found it. I told her how we imagined the life of the insect, what it ate, how smart it was, when it lived in the past. Sally got right on the internet and found the fossil on wikipedia. She said, "It's a Allorapisma, a lacewing moth, from the Eocene era.", and she showed me a picture. It did look a lot like the fossil I had in my hand. "Do you think there's more?" I said. "Let's go out to the old homeplace and explore the woods. Maybe we can find Paw Paw's log. Maybe we can find some more fossils." Sally said "It says here there are only two of these fossils." "Well now there are three." I replied. "And who knows what else?" hairylarry 2018-04-23 at 13:48 Central Time.

So the next day we got up early and headed out to the woods. We had garden trowels, paint brushes, a hammer, and a bucket. And Sally brought her digital camera. The woods were different but the hills were the same and I led Sally directly to the place where Paw Paw and I used to sit on his log. It was gone, probably rotted, but there was another one just about 10 yards away and we sat down to catch our breath. "Let's start where Paw Paw's log used to be.", said Sally. So I walked over and got my bearings. "I remember that big old tree with the funny knot. And I remember that rise, there. I'm sure this is where the log used to be." I reached down and slowly lifted the leaves. We watched for bugs and Sally took closeup pictures. We got down to dirt and worms and we looked carefully at every rock but we didn't see any fossils. Then Sally pulled a big round rock out, about the size of a softball, the same color as the fossil. She carried it over to the log and hit it with the hammer. hairylarry 2018-06-04 at 20:49 Central Time.

"Beneath the Leaf" started by Dogtrax. All stories are licensed Creative Commons-Attribution. You can attribute the writers like this. These writers contributed to "Beneath the Leaf" on Collab - Dogtrax, hairylarry, wentale