While reading Sally Mann's new memoir,
Hold Still, I learned a word of such beautiful precision: meuse. She writes, "When an animal, a rabbit, say, beds down in a protecting fencerow, the weight and warmth of his curled body leaves a mirroring mark upon the ground. The grasses often appear to have been woven into a birdlike nest and perhaps were indeed caught and pulled around by the delicate claws as he turned in a circle before into rest. This soft bowl in the grasses, this body-formed evidence of hare, has a name, an obsolete but beautiful word . . . Each of us leaves evidence on the earth that in various ways bears our form . . .
Since reading this I have been thinking of my father-in-law, Mike, and the day that we drove to southwestern Virginia then hiked up the mountain to the cabin where he had lived for 35 years. I stepped into the world of Muse--memory and inspiration--with his impressions and traces of life lived with fierce creativity, focus, and devotion. Poignant evidence.
I remembered the photos I took on that day--his birthday--two years ago July. It was days before Shadow, his beloved labrador had died, and she, with her sharp memory and enthusiasm prevailing over her ailing hind legs, beat us all to the top.
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