Braiding Sweetgrass

taking place beneath their tires. From inside the car, listening to
late-night radio, you just don’t know. But standing on the roadside,
you can hear the pop of the body, hear the moment when a
glistening being following magnetic trails toward love is reduced to
red pulp on the pavement. We try to work faster, but there are so
many, and we are so few.
A green Dodge pickup I recognize races by and we stand back
on the shoulder. It was one of my neighbors who has a dairy farm
just up the road, but he doesn’t even see us. I suspect his thoughts
are far away tonight, straining toward Baghdad. His son, Mitch, is
stationed in Iraq. Mitch is a nice kid, the kind who, with a friendly
wave, would always pull his slow tractor off to the roadside to let
cars pass safely. I suppose he’s driving a tank now. The fate of
salamanders crossing the road in his old hometown might seem
completely unconnected to the scene he faces.
Tonight, though, when the fog wraps us all in the same cold
blanket, the edges seem to blur. The carnage on this dark country
road and the broken bodies on the streets of Baghdad do seem
connected. Salamanders, children, young farmers in uniform—they
are not the enemy or the problem. We have not declared war on
these innocents, and yet they die just as surely as if we had. They
are all collateral damage. If it is oil that sends the sons to war, and
oil that fuels the engines that roar down this hollow, then we are all
complicit, soldiers, civilians, and salamanders connected in death
by our appetite for oil.
Cold and tired, we stop and pour out a cup of soup from the
thermos. Its steam rises to mingle with the fog. We sip quietly and
listen to the night. Suddenly I hear voices, but there are no houses
nearby. Up around the curve I catch the strobes of other flashlights.
I quickly shut off my light and close up the thermos. We back away