Kurt Ullrich guest column: Books and creatures left behind, but death remains

As I write this, a small herd of six deer is hanging out in a field in front of my house, a field I mowed yesterday. For an assortment of reasons, it has been a few years since the field has known a cutter, but this old man is back on his tractor, earbuds blasting tunes from the likes of the Eagles, Sade, and Todd Rundgren, singing in full voice, not concerned that someone might hear. My tractor’s diesel engine throbbed, cutter blades whirled, and brown field mice took cover, scampering through the grass, unused to the implements of a modern world.

Many of the creatures that walk the earth with me out here are, like mice, are uncomprehending when it comes to our world. On a recent late afternoon I was traveling a hard-surfaced two-lane near my place and up ahead I could see that something quite substantive was in the middle of my lane; a large, ancient-looking snapping turtle. I stopped in my lane of traffic, turned on emergency flashers, put on the leather gloves I keep under my seat for just such circumstances, lifted the big girl by her tail (this made her very unhappy), and carried her to a grassy area near a pond, which is likely where her journey began. I did a bit of research on the Iowa snapping turtle after my encounter and learned that she can live to be a hundred years old, but not if she continues to cross country roads.

Research once required access to reference books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. I have a small bookshelf containing reference books to which I used to refer often. Of the thousands of books I own, perhaps the most prized is one given to me by my mother when I graduated high school, Webster’s New World Dictionary, circa 1970. I think of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” whenever I see it. Joining Webster is a thesaurus, a "reader’s encyclopedia," a stylebook, two copies of Phil Stong’s 1932 novel “State Fair,” an original and a later re-issue, because one of my photos graces the cover, and another book for which I provided a cover photo, a legal reference book on habeas corpus. Now they all gather dust. Computers have successfully buried old reading companions.

While mowing I encountered an explanation for the gatherings of crows throughout the past winter; skeletal remains of a deer, a creature that, in death, helped sustain the lives of others. Death is a constant out here, something I think about all too often. A few days back a friend and I were dropping off a package at a rural home in a county south of here. The house was dark, so I left the package on a porch, a porch lined with chairs.

The sun was almost down and, as we began to drive off, my friend turned to me and asked a question, a wide-eyed, other-worldly query. One of the chairs, an old rocking chair, was rocking slightly in the afternoon breeze, and she said, quietly, “Do you see the one chair moving? Like someone’s sitting in it.”

I don’t frighten easily, but her words took me by surprise. On certain melancholy-induced days I see the same specter sitting in an old Adirondack chair in my woods, a vision and future against which, heeding the words of poet Dylan Thomas, I will rage, and rage again. The specter doesn’t seem to bein any particular hurry, content sitting quietly among the trees, or slowly rocking back and forth on an old porch, hoping I notice him, trusting that I’ll remember that he is never far away.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. His book "The Iowa State Fair" is available from the University of Iowa Press.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Books and creatures left behind, but death remains