“The market is full of wise men — all talking nonsense.”
— Diogenes the Cynic
“Yggdrasil suffers agony more than men know... Nidhogg tears it below.”
— Poetic Edda, Grímnismál
Several years later, my son's interest in volcanoes rekindled. So we planned a hike up to Lassen Peak. We arrived at the trailhead mid-morning. I clicked off the radio — yes, it was NPR, back before its funding landed on the chopping block — and tried to tune out the early rumblings of Trump’s first impeachment.
We all poured out of our vehicles: my younger brother and my older brother, my wife and my daughter, my son and me. We had invited a friend of my wife’s and met her waiting in the parking lot. She was an avid hiker, a Korean, like my wife, and in her early 50s, like my older brother, who also happened to be single. It was a crisp fall morning, full of plots and possibilities. It was a set-up, really — neither of the intended parties had agreed to mate. They turned out to be captive pandas.
So, ready to go hike, and making short on small-talk, our Korean friend put on her sunglasses, her gloves, her backpack, and grabbed her trekking poles. Without a blink, she turned her eyes upward, to the peak. And my older brother? Well, he turned his eyes downward, to his niece and nephew, who had somehow transformed themselves into squirrels, and were treating their two uncles like trees. Jumping between them, the kids took turns playing the part of Ratatoskr, the squirrel of Norse Mythology. Legend has it, he ran up and down the Yggdrasil tree that grows out of the world’s navel.
Ratatoskr, the trickster squirrel — a kind of mythic pundit — dashes between the world-tree’s top and bottom, stirring chaos. He carries insults between the wise eagle perched above and Nidhogg, the great serpent gnawing at Yggdrasil’s roots.
Nidhogg, “the malice-striker,” hoards the corpses of the wicked — murderers, oath-breakers, adulterers, activist judges, J6 Committee members, star witnesses, immigrants (always the scapegoat) — and gnaws at the tree’s roots to bring down that smug eagle above. Like a true patriot.
Jumping now to the ground, my little squirrels spotted the perennial ski hill at the edge of the parking lot left over from last season’s snow. One little Ratatoskr got an idea, and set a snowball to sail. It met its fate against an uncle’s face — my younger brother’s. The little squirrel pointed to the other uncle: “He threw a snowball at you!”
In return, my younger brother stuffed handfuls of melting snow down the backs of their little shirts.
Ahead, the trailhead waited — and a guide who held an imaginary map we hadn't yet learned to read.
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