I’ve come to the realization that it is not nature that I have issue with. In fact, I love nature! Nature is wonderful. I could spend the entire day enjoying all that nature has to offer. No…I don’t dislike nature. It’s what LIVES in nature that I have a problem with!
Mike and I drove up to our property today to meet with the surveyor who was marking the property lines. Buying land is very involved. We had to wait for the property lines to be marked…so we could mark where we want the barn house to go…so we can apply for the septic and well permits, per our contingency. Essentially…no septic…no property. North Carolina has strict building codes. If you can’t get septic approval, you can’t build.
So there we were…out in the woods…marking the corners of the barn house with stakes and pink ribbon.
Mike was armed with a machete.
I was armed with my phone.
It’s a new phone. It has a camera, and a compass, and GPS navigation with satellite imaging. All necessary things when one is out in the middle of nature without a big weapon. But it’s not much protection against bears. Or snakes. Or spider webs.
Some of the things that live in nature.
I couldn’t see Mike. He was walking the property lines, taking pictures. He wouldn’t let me follow him because the property went down a steep hill, and he was certain I would fall down it. Probably wise advice, but I still didn’t like being left alone in the middle of the woods. While I waited, I took lots of pictures to post in the gallery, and I promise to do that tomorrow.
After taking pictures of every possible angle, I decided that I would try to catch up to Mike on the other side of the lot. That meant trekking through the woods.
There was a well travelled path that cuts through the property leading from the top to the bottom. It’s a nice gentle slope that even I could traverse. I traded my flip flops for my tacky red rubber “doo doo” boots, as I call them, and set off on my journey. I had gone less than fifty feet when I walked straight into an inhabited spider web.
I had to use a stick to get the giant spider off my arm, and I’m very proud of my composure as I did. I didn’t scream, or pee my pants, or anything of the sort. I remained perfectly calm despite having a big black spider tangled up in his own web, clinging to my bare arm. He could have been poisonous! He could have been deadly! But somehow I survived. It was very pioneer-like of me. But that was enough nature for one day. I retraced my steps back to the Land Rover where I waited for Mike to make his rounds on the two acres of mountain land that would be ours.
Back at the car, I ducked and weaved as a bee buzzed around me. It had been there all day...even the day before...showing up the minute I got out of the car. It looked suspiciously like a yellow jacket to me (a very nasty bunch, those yellow jackets) but according to the surveyor it was a friendly bee. He called it the news bee, bringing good luck wherever it went. I wasn’t interested in the news. I was interested in no bees flying around my head.
Mike thought it was a little creepy.
But that’s the country I suppose. People operate in a different pace—where bees are messengers, and spiders are weavers. I don’t know how we’ll fit in with that bunch…but I guess we’ll find out.
We’re pretty exhausted tonight. I don’t even know what we’ll do tomorrow. I guess we’ll find out about that too. Tomorrow is another day after all.
Until the next time…I’ll be scrubbing nature off my skin with a nice hot shower!