Hedge Apple

He fell in love the first day he saw her.

She entranced him with her natural beauty.

She was only in a friends’ picture,

but from that moment on she was always in his dreams.

His friend told him that he knew her well;

he would introduce him to her this weekend.

For the next few days he planned his moves.

He had to know exactly what he was going to do.

Finally his dream would come true.

His friend was taking him to her place.

The drive seemed to take forever,

but he could feel her getting closer and closer.

Eventually the trip was over and the adventure began.

Her presence was absolutely breathtaking.

He spent the entire day with her.

She made him laugh, she made him cry.

He was having the best time in his life with her,

then something special happened.

They were having an emotional moment;

his hands were sweaty, his knees were shaking.

He knew he was unprepared and it could be disaster.

The outcome could be unwanted or it could be glorious.

It broke his heart, but he could not continue.

It would not have been right to go on.

He always imagined that his first time would be perfect and natural,

but something made him very cautious.

He knows he should use protection, even though it may get in the way

or lessen the intensity of reaching climax.

He has to be prepared emotionally and financially,

if something goes wrong, or if he doesn’t know when to quit.

He would like to hang on to her forever,

but he could never be strong enough; he has to let her go this time.

His friend tells him that it was a tough call,

but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

She wasn’t upset, it didn’t bother her at all.

She knew he’d be back again someday, just like all of the guys before him.

They keep coming back every weekend just to be with her.

Everyone thinks she’s really special,

even though hundreds of guys have caressed her.

You can see that the hands of time have had their way with her,

but she hasn’t worn out,

because she has a heart of stone, and no one will ever take it away.

Not even our hero will succeed in this task.

He may eventually have his way with her,

but he will never change the way she is.

Even if he takes her solo the next time they meet,

he hasn’t conquered her, only himself.

So, if by chance you get to meet her, remember to give her some respect,

or you may become just another rock climber

who let her slip through his hands.

And, she will be there waiting for another adventure to begin,

since she’s not going anywhere.

How can she?  Mountains are always grounded.

 Richard D. Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics who started teaching at HCC in 2004.  Professor Campbell has written stories and poems since grade school.  Over the years, he has  had several neat experiences that have molded him into what he is today.  Here is the short list: rock climbing, working for the family firewood business, spelunking, participating in decathlons, visiting Ireland, coaching sports, getting a negative score for his improv performance, ice climbing, marrying an English teacher, working as the Hagerstown Suns videographer, buying a new Saturn and driving it for 20 years, graduating from Bucknell University, playing semi-pro football, being the father of two boys, working for an engineering firm that improved the design of crash test dummies, being inducted into the National Darts Hall of Fame, and guarding the secret recipe at KFC.

I keep bees. For the most part beekeeping is relatively hands-off—the bees go about on their tiny day-to-day missions of glory and adventure, and I stand at a respectful distance and watch them. Occasionally, however, we have an adventure together. For instance, the other day I had to go measure them.

More specifically I had to measure the ratio of parasitic mites in my hive. Mites are small, flat, and red. They specialize in spreading diseases and will invariably wipe out an entire colony if the mite population gets too high. Of course, nobody wants mites around but when I first heard about doing a “mite check” I was a little skeptical. First, I had been made fully aware by a number of beekeepers that although preventative measures can be prescribed, there is little to be done in terms of long-term mite management. Second, the idea of literally measuring out half a cup (three hundred) bees, putting them in a jar of rubbing alcohol, and counting the number of mites that fall off the bees seemed rather bizarre honestly. But after listening to the conversations of several beekeepers on the subject, I came to understand that the idea behind a mite check is to have a scapegoat for when a colony fails. Naturally, I wanted a scapegoat too, so I grabbed my hive tool and zipped up my full-bodied bee suit. There is nothing especially attractive about beekeeping suits (although there is a growing beekeeping fashion market), however, as an amateur beekeeper I have been concentrating more on the fundamentals—such as securing a scapegoat—than on fashionable apparel. For this reason, I have an ordinary white beekeeping suit—only, it doesn’t look normal when I wear it. You see, my dad originally bought this suit so that it would fit both of us. The only problem with this is that my dad is 6’3”and I am only 5’7”, so whenever I wear it I look like an enormous deflated marshmallow. It’s pretty embarrassing, but fortunately the neighbors don’t live too close.

So, there I was, a giant deflated marshmallow walking out to my beehive, ready to measure some bees. I pried the lid off the hive and some of the bees flew up to inspect me, gaging whether or not the person ripping the roof off their home was a threat.

Now this was the delicate part, I needed three hundred bees to conduct the test, but I couldn’t just pluck them out of the hive one-by-one and expect them to stay put until I had half a cup.

Instead, I was going to capitalize on the element of surprise.

Making sure not to disturb them, I painstakingly withdrew a frame from the hive, it was heavy and covered with little furry bee bodies that milled about confusedly in the sudden sunlight.

And then I banged the frame down into a small shallow tub that I had brought along.

Now I had read that if you’re lucky the bees will all fall off at once into a complex, wriggling, disoriented mass, but if you’re unlucky you will stand there for a moment after you have half-heartedly banged the frame down and then, with your measuring cup hanging loosely in your hand, you will watch as individual bees claw over one another, shake back their antennae and flex their wings with a determined glint in every pair of eyes.

I was unlucky, probably because I had just violated one of my last innate instincts of survival—to not provoke stinging insects with irascible temperaments. Of course, I had on my deflated marshmallow suit for protection, but still, the audacity of what I had just done was rather overwhelming. Not because I had just made three hundred bees angry, but because I had a hive of twenty-five thousand bees. Twenty-five thousand bees which were now thronging around my head in a golden haze of righteous indignation with the unified purpose of wriggling into my deflated marshmallow suit and stinging me to death.

While I was calculating how many stings it would take to kill me, most of the bees had crawled out of the tub and were now in the air. Fortunately, my desire to survive was still strong—I wasn’t about to start over—so I grabbed the tub and half-poured half-scooped the bees into my measuring cup.

I had maybe an eighth of a cup.

I didn’t want my eighth of a cup to fly away so I held my gloved hand over the top of the measuring cup, this, however, proved to be a problem. As I was preparing to transfer the bees to the jar of rubbing alcohol, the bees had mostly transferred themselves to the palm of my hand. I did my best to brush them into the jar but at this point it didn’t matter anymore—the air was thick with bees, bees flying into the jar, bees flying out of the jar, bees pacing back and forth on my face mask, wrathfully waving their tiny bee-legs through the holes—I began to doubt whether or not I would ever survive.

*                *                *                *                *

I took me a half hour of walking around the yard before they left me alone. And then it took me another half hour of walking around the yard before I was convinced that they had left me alone. However, I did eventually get to examine the results of the test—once I was sufficiently certain that the buzzing I heard was only my imagination and I had finally ventured to get out of my deflated marshmallow suit and run into the house.

I was going to need that scapegoat—the mite level in my hive was above the acceptable threshold.

But here’s the great thing about beekeeping—the rules are always changing. I did some more research and learned that if I were to administer preventative measures soon and apply them regularly, in all probability my colony would survive—that is, as long it didn’t starve, or freeze, or get mauled by a bear.

I keep bees. Its relatively hands-off—the bees go about on their tiny day-to-day missions of glory and adventure, and I sit close by and watch them.

Johanna Bulley keeps bees in the state of Maryland but often finds herself in a different state while writing. She is an editor of Hedge Apple Magazine.