JOY ALONG THE WAY: VISIT WITH A PHI BETA KAPPA MOLE

What does J.K. Rowling, William Hardwood and Louis L'Amour have in common? Well, they are writers of fiction: bestseller fiction. J.K. Rowling has had as many as four of her Harry Potter books on the bestseller list at one time and for a long time. L'Amour, in his day, was on that bestseller list many, many times. Hardwood probably was too. Not only in the U.S. but his native England.

I've been thinking so much here lately about what is going on down amongst the tree roots where the annual flow of the sap starts upward that I have concluded these authors and Lewis Carroll too, also have in common the fact they all wrote about civilizations that go on below us. Hardwood's famous book, "Duncton Wood," is a tale of moles living below us. These moles have human names and are anthropomorphihzed insofar that they, like us, struggle between good and evil, liberty and enslavement. Integrity, grace and the power of the spirit are well delineated in this land of the moles.

Louis L'Amour hints of a civilization going on below us sometime, somewhere in his beloved West. At some undefined time he suggests some humans slipped through a hole in the earth's crust to another level below where they stayed to become a civilization of their own.

As I said, thoughts of these writers come to mind as I've been thinking of what is gong on down among the tree roots and little streams of water wandering around, looking for an opening through which they could flow. Blind as the moles down there, I'd like to find a big tree root and lay my ear against it to determine what I might hear. Could I hear the sap start its upward flow with no visible pump below it, no suction machine above? Would the earth tremble just a little to realize that a new season is, once again, starting?

In imagination I go down there and feel the earth trembling. The noise of it is faint at first, then, coming near me, grows louder and suddenly a white mole bumps into me. He doesn't wear a weskit with a watch in a pocket a la Carroll's White Rabbit. He apparently has had one of his tiny ears pierced and from it dangles a Phi Beta Kappa key.

"Oh, pardon me," Mole excuses as he bumps into me. "I don't see very well. Who are you?"

"I'm Imagination."

He repeats my name as if to imprint it on his mind. "Image A. Nation. Are you very large?"

"Oh, yes, I'm very large and I can go and come anywhere I want to, at any time I want to."

"Why did you come down here?"

"To see if I can hear the sap beginning to rise up."

"And did you?"

"No, I don't hear very well down here."

"You are in luck. I don't see very well, but my hearing is acute. I'll listen for you."

Mole lays his ear against the root I'm holding and says, "Oh, yes. This is what you up there call a sugar maple. They're always the first in which the sap rises at a certain time of the year. Don't you know that?" he demands, lifting a furry eye covering to stare at me with a little beady eye.

The very idea of a mole looking at me so very critically makes me give a cock-and-bull answer. "Well, I've read that when the weather gets warm, the roots begin to sweat and since the sweat can't get through the surrounding bark, it just goes up."

"Balderdash," sniffs Mole. He shakes his head and the Phi Beta Kappa key makes an extra hole in the soil as if to make a place for more enlightenment to enter in. "It is when the Earth turns on its axis enough for the sun to warm the soil down here to a certain degree," Mole explains professorially.

Somewhat cowed, I change the subject. "Where did you get that thing in your ear?

"Oh, one day I was just clawing my way to make a new tunnel and the thing got stuck in my ear and somehow fastened."

He seemed so modest, I tried him further. "Who makes the world to turn and the sun to shine?"

Again Mole looks at me with an unbelievable expression. He bowed his head and clasped his claws together. "It is someone on a higher level."

"Us? I'm on a higher level and I haven't seen anyone going around in the spring, hitting the trees and ordering, "Start your sap."

"Oh, you're not on the highest level." Again the beady stare.

"We're not?"

"Not by a long shot. Someone on the highest level said, 'Let there be a tree and let there be sap in the tree that rises at my appointed time," or something like that. As I said, living down here I don't see very well but in the peace and quiet I have time to think."

"Thank you, Mole. I must be going now to get back into my own body."

"But you haven't heard the sap yet," Mole protested.

Again I laid my ear against the root. "Yes, yes, I, Imagination, hear it. It moves fast and slow, fast and slow."

"All at its appointed time," mole nodded and disappeared down the tunnel he had under construction when he bumped into me.

"Fare well, Image A. Nation," he called back over his shoulder.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.