Story by T.L. SIMPSON
A JOURNAL of our RURAL & NATURAL HERITAGE
Up on Caterpillar Hill SEVERAL WEEKS BEFORE a Minnesota police officer kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, I walked up Caterpillar Hill with my 5-year-old son. The Coronavirus outbreak had just begun and none of us had any idea what was just on the horizon. My son, J.T., walked up the hill, the sun sinking below the treetops, honeysuckle smell in the air, and it was easy to imagine it was any one of the springs of my childhood. Hundreds of tent caterpillars ambled across the pavement, and my son tasked himself with collecting them, stuffing them into a wire bug catcher he’d gotten for his birthday. “I’m going to name this one Timmy. And this one? I’ll name him Timmy Two. Tim36
ABOUT the RIVER VALLEY ~
JULY 2020
my Three. Timmy Four.” All the way up to Timmy Sixteen. When I accidentally stepped on one, it’s tiny body popping under my shoe, he hung his head and almost cried. “I was about to name that one Timmy Seventeen.” Coronavirus was looming somewhere on the east coast. It was getting bad, but we didn’t know that soon over 100,000 of us would be dead. *** “Can you get the coronavirus from your parents?” J.T. asked me one morning. I’d fallen asleep on the couch, and he’d crawled across my body to put his head on my chest. “Yes,” I said. “Oh.” He looked crestfallen. “Can parents get it from their kids?”
“Yes.” Later, he sneezed in my vicinity and worried he’d just given me COVID-19. How can I explain, I wondered. How can I explain the weird world we’ve come to live in and how it works? How can I explain when I don’t even understand it myself? *** Another morning, I found him packing a bag. I watched him load piles of books in one pocket, his favorite stuffed animal in another. Through one of the loops meant for a water bottle, he stuffed a foam sword. Through another, he hung an umbrella. “I’m going on an adventure,” he announced. “Way up on Caterpillar Hill. Pack your bag, Daddy. Let’s go.” It was perfect weather, so we walked around the block. It’d rained a few hours
