THE SPIRIT OF THE STACK

 

THE SPIRIT OF THE STACK    - By Jennifer J. Clark

You are a rare, giant Pacific Northwest salamander. You live in a rotting log at the

very bottom of a pile of firewood. Your favorite foods are Jerusalem Crickets and

Harvestmen. Your name is Gretchen.

The stack of firewood that you live in is mostly covered by a lean-to and sits up off

the ground on pallets so that it is protected from the rain. The edge of the stack, however, is

just out of range of the lean-to and pallets, and is exposed to the mud below and the

elements above. The wood is soggy here, especially at the bottom of the pile, and rests

rotting in the mud. A log at the very bottom of the stack, hollow and half-buried in sludge, is

where you live.

This section of the wood pile is a haven for maggots, crickets, and slugs – your

staple foods. You are ravenously carnivorous. You eat centipedes, banana slug larvae,

banana slugs, redwood spiders, harvestmen, crickets, maggots, grubs, Jerusalem crickets,

smaller salamanders, worms, occasionally frogs, and very small snakes. Once you came

across a nest of a dozen woodrat babies, and that was a feast. As you wolfed their hairless,

wriggling bodies down one by one, you considered leaving two or three behind for the

mother, who was perched on a nearby log, squeaking at you. But even though you were

satiated, hunger was never far away, and eating all of the baby woodrats meant being full

for just a little longer. It seemed wise to eat them all, so that’s what you did.

From your corner of the woodpile, you can see a rhododendron bush that is

frequented by hummingbirds. You watch as a giant praying mantis explodes out from under

a leaf and grabs a newly-fledged hummer that is trying to wobble its way around a bloom.

Before the tiny bird can even react, the mantis sinks her mandibles into the hummer’s skull

through the eye sockets, killing it instantly. The mantis then begins to devour the bird, head-

first. It’s a sobering scene. You have spent the last two days observing the habits of the

mantis with the intent of ambushing her and eating her yourself. Now you are having

second thoughts.

Once in a while, you get to mate. The last time you mated, you laid a lovely bed of

eggs, but most of them were eaten by a noisy Steller’s Jay who shrieked with joy, over and

over, as she ate them. Before she could finish the entire egg bed, though, she got scared

away by something large and distant who sometimes visits the woodpile.

It is impossible for you to figure out what this being is. You have very good eyesight

in dark conditions and up close. It’s what makes you such a formidable predator. That, and

your excellent sense of smell. But this large entity only comes out in the daytime and is

always at a distance, so to you, she is more of a feeling or a presence. You can tell she is a

kind of salamander, though. She has a torso like a salamander, with four legs, and each of

the legs has five toes. But this presence walks upright on her back legs, and she uses her

front legs to manipulate and move things. Still, very much like a salamander. When she

saves your eggs from the Steller’s Jay, you are in awe that this glorious spirit has taken a

moment to spare your children, and you spontaneously thank the Spirit of the Stack.

When you first start living in the wood pile, everything is wet and muddy and gooey,

just the way you like it. But after a while, it gets warmer and warmer, and things start to dry

up. The rhododendron bush goes to seed, the days are unbearably long, and your

once[1]damp log grows alarmingly dry. Also, you almost never see the Spirit of the Stack during

these long, hot days. But you decide to pray to her for rain anyway. It makes sense

somehow. If she can scare a Stellar’s Jay, who can say what else she is capable of?

So you ask her for rain. And you ask. And you ask. Sometimes she comes out, and

she drops the shiny cellophane wrappers from packets of rolling papers near to your stack.

You gather these in one place and leave them for her, but it doesn’t seem as

if she has ever noticed your offerings. One day, the Spirit of the Stack comes out, and you

are ecstatic to see her. It has been a very long time. But then, she takes some food

and starts tossing it out to some gigantic ravens that have nested at

the top of a nearby redwood.

Ravens are your biggest enemy. Stellar’s Jays might eat your eggs, but ravens had

no problem whatsoever eating you, and you had to be on constant alert for their shadows

passing overhead, or even for an ambush as you emerge from the hollow in your log to hunt

for the day. You think, how could she? How could the Spirit of the Stack commune with

these evil, wretched, violent beings? Betrayed and confused, you stop praying to her.

Your section of the wood pile gets drier and drier, and you fear you might have to

relocate. Relocating usually means running some other creature out of its habitat, which you

don’t mind, but it also means learning the dangers of a new territory, which is very

frightening to you. If the ravens see you slithering about, they will mark where you decide to

hole up, and they will lurk outside your lair and snatch you up for breakfast before you even

know what hit you. You are terrified of what seems to be having to choose between too

many bad options, and you decide to pray once again to the Spirit of the stack to make it

rain.

It rains! It finally rains! And you are overjoyed that your prayers have been

answered. ‘She listened! She heard me!’ you think, and these thoughts of having a protector

fill your heart with joy.

The rain is wonderful. Everything becomes gooey and muddy again, and

mushrooms and fungi sprout up everywhere and you feast on their meaty flesh as you

would any delicious grub or spider, and everything seems as it should be. Except you notice

that the Spirit of the Stack is visiting the woodpile more frequently, and the pile is getting

smaller every day.

It’s confusing. You can’t tell what is going on. The Spirit of the Stack is doing

something, but you don’t know what. It looks as if, as the stack shrinks, she is moving logs

from out of the mud and rain so that they sit up on top of the pallets, under the lean-to. You

are struggling to figure out why the stack is shrinking. You have vague impressions of the

Spirit of the Stack taking logs away as she rearranges them, but you can’t be sure that is

what’s going on because you can’t see clearly enough. Inevitably, she comes to your log,

and she dislodges it out of the mud and goo, and stacks it up on the pallets, under the cover

of the lean-to. You hide in the hollow of the log as it’s moved, terrified. Once your home is

re-settled, you poke your head out to assess your new situation, careful to avoid a raven

ambush.

It is worse than you thought. The wood pile has grown alarmingly small. All of the

creatures that live in the wood pile are being forced into closer and closer proximity with

each other. At first, you think it’s fantastic because food is abundant and easy for you to

come by. But you also become easy prey for other hungry creatures to come by. And while you

find it delightful to eat little snakes, you are no match for a big snake, and the big snakes

that live under the pallets are becoming closer and closer neighbors to your log.

The day comes when there are only a few logs left on the pallets. You are certain

that the Spirit of the Stack is removing logs from the pile and taking them somewhere. You

hope that it’s somewhere good. Although it has been raining for weeks, now that your log

has been placed up on pallets under the lean-to, it has dried out almost completely, and you

will either have to relocate or die.

Or, you can place your faith in the Spirit of the Stack. You can hide deep in the

hollow of your log, and when she comes to grab it, she won’t even see you. She’ll just take

you wherever she has taken the other logs, and that’s where you will live. It will probably be

like living in the mud and rain. She has to be putting the logs somewhere. It makes sense to

think she is rearranging them somewhere else, exactly like they once were here. There will

be harvestmen to eat there and Jerusalem crickets, and maybe even woodrat babies. And

you are so excited because now you will be saved by the Spirit of the Stack, and no matter

what happened to disrupt your world before this, everything in this new place will be dark

and muddy again, just the way you like it. You have faith in the Spirit of the Stack that it will

be so, and that she will not allow it to be any other way.