The Ravine Leisha Douglas Child of mud, salamander and crawfish, my safe place was a damp cut where a thin stream ferried fertilizer to Lake Michigan. To avoid the Lafrandre brothers and their daily plots for torture, I sprinted and dodged across an acre of lawn through a small orchard of fruit trees into shadows of spruce along the ravine’s lip. I flung myself over the edge sometimes sliding or falling on loose humus and scree until I reached perpetual twilight and the deep bottom. I dug up rocks stained with leaf mold and lichen expected treasure not worms although worms it was, time after time. I once carried home a wounded black duck— arms raw from its bites. I built it a garbage can nest of leaves and sticks, nursed it to health. In a rare moment of complicity, Dad and I snuck into someone’s private pond, cheered as the duck paddled away.
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