It is late and I step out into the night and head for the tree. I move across the darkness of the lawn, navigating mostly by the slope of the ground, and then freeze about twenty feet from where I guess the bottom of the ladder to be. I have walked into a wall no less impenetrable for not being solid. The air is dense with the overpowering reek of skunk. “The rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril,” I believe Shakespeare wrote somewhere, about something; and that doesn’t even come close. I take a few steps forward and the stench seems to increase exponentially. This is fresh; and ground zero is somewhere nearby. I remember the burnt-rubber chemical-weapon smell left on the dogs when a skunk hit them at close range a year ago, and hesitate. Can a skunk spray twice in quick succession? If it’s lurking just inside the darkness of the woods, still irritable at whatever disturbed or attacked it, is it spent, or ready for another round? It doesn’t seem like the time for theoretical inquiry. I turn and book it back to the house.
A notable day, then. In nearly three and a half years of climbing the tree, with the sole exception of three days when I forgot, and climbed it 25 times the following days, I have never missed a day (unless of course we were out of town). That is, nothing has ever prevented me from climbing the tree. Not a fever, or a broken toe, or a busy day, or a tree sheeted in ice. Not getting home from a trip at 2 am, nor leaving for one at 4 am. Nothing has stopped me from climbing. Until now.
At the porch I stop and bow to the darkness and the formidable power of the Mephitis mephitis nigra; then turn and enter the brilliance of the house.
