The Stick

It is in the forest where things happen. Where you get swallowed in the silence. 

The branch must have been severed during the storm. A limb snapped from its nook by a muscular wind, left to a new fate. In the meantime, it lay resting across the small footpath in the forest.

Measured with the eye, it fell short of the length of the staff Moses carried when God, in an early pyromaniac phase, manifested as a burning bush on Mount Horeb.

Ideally, the staff should be about two metres long. It must have a robust middle that will fit snugly in the palm and allow a full embrace between the thumb and the index finger. So comfortable that you forget you are carrying it.

The circumference of the upper length should match the middle, but ideally the lower part of the staff should taper off like the ferrule of an umbrella. This is so that it can be used to poke and prod shrubbery or even pierce the heart of a vampire if needs be.

It could theoretically, if turned around and gripped firmly at the thicker end, also be used to beat brambles that have spontaneously combusted. But in all fairness, Moses was probably caught off guard.

To say nothing of the disorientation a disembodied voice speaking through the tongues of flames might prompt in a near-deaf octogenarian.

The proportions and optics for anyone carrying a staff and wanting to be taken seriously, matter. There should be an elegance to the shape and presence of the staff. A thick pole is a burden. A wisp is of little use.

Moses’ staff, or his “rod of God”, was imbued with magic. It parted the Red Sea, turned into a snake and then back into a staff again. While it brought forth water from Meribah’s Split Rock, Moses allegedly “misheard” the original liminal instruction.

Apparently, the voice had actually instructed him to “speak” to the rock and not “strike” it. For this transgression Moses, an 80-year-old prophet and father of two with no access to modern hearing aids, was held up at the border post to the Promised Land, and declined entry.

“Thy rod and thy staff comfort me still,” the prophet reportedly spoke, to no one in particular. At least that was the testimony from one immigration officer at Moses’ unsuccessful citizenship challenge.

It’s all there in the Old Testament.

In my case, there had been no need of a staff. Or a walking stick. Or any other accoutrement so many who walk the forest paths carry.

No water bottles, no niche footwear.

Just two dogs, leashes and a roll of biodegradable poop bags.

And so the orphaned branch revealed itself.

It was not a particularly elegant or unusual branch.

It’s personality gave away nothing in particular.

What to do?

Leave it on the path? Shift it off into the undergrowth where it will, in time, surrender its molecules and atoms to necrophiliac, saprophagous feasts.

And so it was picked up.

And that is how the branch came to be a part of the pack.

Me, the dogs, Laika and Olive, and the living, breathing forest.

But this branch is no staff, no rod. It is a stick. A walking stick.

At home, a sharp knife that had belonged to my late father and for which there had been no apparent use until now, found a purpose.

It is an expensive knife, sturdy, professional-looking with a streamlined catch that releases the blade concealed in a groove in the steel handle. The blade easily sliced off the serrated bumps and shaved the thin bark.

A stick spa you could call the cleaning session during which the contours and small gnarls that now made up the essence of the stick revealed themselves anew.

Without its natural couture, the stick appeared naked and vulnerable, so the tail end of a roll of adhesive plaster was used to bind the naked middle section, garnished afterwards with white and red electrical tape. Later, when this peeled off, it was rebound in green, white and yellow.

Over time the stick has come to serve a variety of uses.

Firstly, it has come in handy dissuading Laika from attacking the leash. Laika is named after the first dog in space. There are days I do secretly fantasise that I could do the same to this Laika.

Laika and The Stick (Image courtesy of Marianne Thamm)