Epiphany at the sewage pump

“On a pleasant spring day, all men’s sins are forgiven.” Henry Thoreau

Let me start by saying that I am ambivalent about the word “blessed.” In these charged times, when everything seems to stand for something else, it feels a bit weaponized, a bit smug and aggressively spiritual. I use it with care.

I’m less ambivalent about the experience of blessing, because it happens to me from time to time. It happened this morning, an hour or so after sunrise on a dazzling bluebird day. I was taking the dog for her morning walk. We were just poking along because Nellie is nursing a twisted knee, and I nudged her into the vacant lot at the end of our street that’s occupied by the neighborhood sewage pump.

Despite its sludgy function, this vacant lot is not an unpleasant place to hang out. The gross stuff happens 20 feet below ground, its only visible evidence some electrical boxes and an odorless, innocuous manhole cover nestled in the grass. The lot is ringed by shoulder-high brush, tall pines, spreading maples, and cherry trees. It has suffered many landscaping indignities over the years, not limited to being dug up for a sewage pumping station.

Still, it’s cared for. The meadow grass is cut regularly by the sewage people; the short gravel drive is kept clear. But because it’s not a garden or someone’s lawn; or maybe because of its icky function, most people pass this place by when they amble down the street. This invisibility makes it a perfect spot to let a dog nose around and take care of business.

This morning, flooded by lake light and a perfect breeze, the spot drew me and the dog in for a sojourn. The grass soaked my sneakers as I left the path. I paused while the pup sniffed a bouquet of wild scents that only dogs can smell, probably seasoned with a hint of sludge. Below our feet, mysterious forces were silently and humbly going about their job of cleansing and renewing.

I waited for Nellie to explore and dispatch. Then, high in the maples, I noticed something different: the songs of some unfamiliar birds: a couple of warblers and a yellowthroat back from South America, blending their voices with those of the usual neighborhood suspects. Fresh voices drifting down through the sunlit grove, just strange enough for a moment of grace.

It was a moment that shifted me from the quotidian to something else, something elevated. A gift. I’ll say it: a blessing. The kind that’s not a reflex someone hands you when you sneeze; or an update of “Have a nice day.” No, this was a simple, wordless, honest-to-god gift of grace from above. That’s something I’ll take, without reservation of any kind.

And then it was gone. The dog pooped. I scooped. We went back to our lives.