Snails Have Faces
from GRASS ROOTS by Paul Gruchow
Warm weather brings the pleasure of nature walks with children. I like the exuberance of children on such walks, the way they take small things seriously, their unjaded acceptance of the everyday world as a place still waiting to be discovered.
The world still is undiscovered, as a matter of fact, until you have found its secrets for yourself, but only children (and some artists) seem to understand this with any conviction. They don't delegate the work of discovery. They boldly assume it for themselves. When I go walking with children, thinking to show them a bit of the natural world, I usually end up learning something about my own understanding of it.
"Here," I say, "is catnip. Your pet cat or rabbit loves to munch on it, and so do I."
The children do not nod politely and pass on to the next object. They try catnip on their own tongues. "Eeuuw," one of them says. "It's bitter."
"It is, a little," I say. "Don't you like it?"
"Yuck, no!"
We approach a marsh. A red fox bolts. I am thrilled. Not often can you produce a red fox in the field for fifty chattering third-graders. They seem unimpressed. But after that the children see phantom foxes on every distant hillside. They have already learned the visual pattern of a fox running in a field and are determined to find it for themselves. It does not matter whether there are actually any foxes out there. One day, soon enough, there will be.
In the clear, shallow water at the edge of the pond the children are captivated, as I have always been, by the pond snails floating on the surface. They fish them up in their hands.
"Snails have faces, you know," I say.
We turn a snail on end, find its big flat foot and, forward of it,the eyestalks and tiny mouth edged with Lilliputian teeth. Children believe that a snail has eyes only when they have peered into them with their own, demanding, subconsciously, I suppose, the verification of experience. My statement--a snail has a face, you know--is received not as a fact but as an interesting proposition worth testing. I am granted, among a group of children, the authority to raise questions but not necessarily the right to proclaim truth.
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