Fear!

This is a post I wrote seven years ago, about a beautiful place where we used to live.

We've started on our fall to-do list, and one of the major projects that had sifted its way to the top of the list was our pond. The cattails had migrated out into the center of the pond, threatening a silent take over of the open water. The surrounding grasses had towered and toppled, shrinking the perimeter by about 5 feet, all the way around the circumference. Our pond was disappearing back into the wilderness.

The pond returning to its wild state

We opened the outflow valve and gave it a couple of days for the water to drain onto the pasture, and then we were ready to go. It was pretty mucky work. I started about 30 minutes before Dambara returned home, and had pulled up about 20 cattails before he got there. In the process, I had managed to smear muck across my teeshirt and all up and down my work pants. My gloves were coated, and my boots weighed about 10 pounds each. Muck was in my hair, and I was wearing randomly applied, muck war-paint.

Dambara strolled up to the pond, all dressed up in his town clothes, best leather shoes, crisp white shirt and assessed the situation. He grinned and said, "I'll go change and give you a hand." I grinned back and said, "Actually, I'm finding that it's a surprisingly tidy job. I don't think you'll need to change."

"Ha, ha, ha," said my wise husband, and he turned around to go change.

The shape of the pond starts to emerge

So we worked together a couple of hours, and then went back the next day for another round. We made good progress.

We perched on the bank, carefully choosing solid footing so as not to slide the muddy soil down into the pond, deteriorating the structure of the bank. Neither of us wanted to wade out into the muck, though. I had made a brief excursion, sank about 6 inches into the black goo, then gingerly squelched back to safety.

So from our sloped perches, we reached out as far as we could, sweeping the next cattail into grasping range, and pulled, with occasional success. But we certainly weren't getting them all. We knew that if we just let them go, next year they'd march out even further, taunting us from the safety of deep water, quickly engulfing the entire pond.

Why were we so tentative about venturing out into the water? Why didn't we just tromp out there and dig them up? Two reasons: Dambara is a very tidy person. He remained a crisp, clean contrast to my muck-smeared facade, even though he was working just as hard and being just as efficient as me. But he wasn't predisposed to wade, possibly disappear, into the seemingly bottomless muck.

And me? Me, I'm afraid of water.

I can swim. I love to jump into pools. I camp along streams and walk along wave-tossed beaches. But murky, uncharted, mysterious bodies of water? They are foreboding and threatening. A tail-twitching panther starts pacing around inside my ribcage, snarling, and I have to back off.

And so we called it a day and tromped back to our safe, dry, cozy house, took showers, and made dinner. Ahhh.....

The next day, I was on my own. Dambara was out of town and would actually be gone for the next six weeks. I had to either get those cattails out by myself, or leave them for next fall when we could drain the pond again. Not much choice, really. I reluctantly threaded my way back up to the pond, gravel rake in hand. Maybe I could snare the roots with this long tool and pull the cattails, one by one, over to the bank. I squished my way around the perimeter, inching my way to the defiant cattails, boots sinking, the muck grabbing my heels, threatening to swallow me whole.

Clasping overhanging grasses, I was able to keep upright all the way to the far side of the pond, where the cliff face plunged directly into the water, making further progress impossible. Impossible for me, at least. I faced the center of the pond and the jeering cattails and reached out with my gravel rake.

It worked like a charm! The cattails were rooted in the muck, so with only a jiggle or two of the rake, the roots pulled easily out of the water. I reached, jiggled, and pulled about 20 cattails over to the bank, then grasping them stoically to my once again muck-smeared chest, hauled them out of the pond onto the top of the bank. Ha! With fresh determination I squelched my way back to tackle the next batch, concentrically further out of reach.

I reached . . . . and could just barely snag the far away root. I jiggled the rake. It barely moved. I reached a little further and jiggled. I could not loosen it. And my back was starting to hurt, dramatically cantilevered as I was. Not enough jiggling and not firm enough of a stance for effective pulling. Sigh. This would be so much easier if I would just step out there and stand right over each remaining cattail.

And so I did.

The panther inside my ribcage had curled up and gone to sleep. Squelching along the bank and jiggling all those roots had helped some deep part of me realize that this wasn't so threatening after all. The pond wasn't bottomless. Not even the muck was bottomless. I had waded into my fear far enough to discover that the reality wasn't nearly as perilous as my imagination had led me to believe.

I figured that I could always retrieve my boot if the muck grabbed it too resolutely. The water was only twelve, eighteen inches deep. It would flood my boots, but what the heck. The water was surprisingly clean. Muddy, yes, but not decayed, rotting, odiferous goo. I realized that I probably wouldn't die.

I pulled one booted foot out of the muck along the bank, stepped out into the water, and let that foot sink. Water poured over the top of my boot, and then the sole hit solid ground. Huh. I pulled my other foot out of the bank's muck, lowered it, let the boot flood, then set it down, also on solid ground. Ha! The muck was only along the bank! The bottom of the pond was solid clay, and my boots sank maybe not at all. The panther in my ribcage started laughing and turned back into my heart.

I victoriously moved from cattail to cattail, used my rake to jiggle their roots, and easily pulled out every single one. There were criss-crossed runners, and it was easy to reach down and use both hands to jiggle and pull, feel which runner was under which, sort them out, and bring up every rootball. I threw the uprooted cattails up onto the bank, moved onto the next, even cleared out the roots we had precariously trimmed from the bank, and mounded the whole mucky mess up onto the bank.

I pulled up a couple of poorly placed reeds, scooped out encroaching grass roots, unearthed, or unmucked actually, an ancient, disintegrating, reel-to-reel tape, smoothed out a ragged outcropping, and then clambered back onto the grassy bank. My heart was singing, the cattails lay chastened, scattered along the bank, and our pond was ready to go for another three years.

Almost full after one rain storm

And my fear? Well, I know the panther will be there again, pacing, the next time I'm cornered, but I also know that when I finally figure out a way to step into the fear, the reality will be easier than remaining stuck in the muck of my imagination.

It's okay to be afraid. I simply have to avoid being afraid of being afraid. That's where the panther prowls, and where I'll be victorious the next time, and the time after that.