Striped Skunk and Steam Plant (A Night-Wandering Tale)

.

Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis), California: photo by randomtruth, 11 August 2011

On most nights the only sign of human presence on the sprawling university campus during the deep nocturnal hours is that of roving police cruisers, maintaining a constant vigilance lest scattered elements of the common urban riffraff -- that ever-growing army without standards, the hungry and homeless -- be found seeking, on a muddy creek bank or beneath a rat-infested bush, a place to lay down, for a few hours, that heavy, heavy thing, a weary head.

A small sharp wind was kicking up, blowing dead plant matter about, after the manner described by the poet Shelley, who wrote in his Ode to the West Wind of leaves fleeing as before an enchanter.

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead

Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes

Heat is generated in the campus buildings by steam power. A massive building houses the steam plant. Through the terrorist-proof grated windows one can make out the enormous steam pipes, as impressive as the monster machinery at the Ford River Rouge Plant once venerated in the reverent mechanical-utopian images of Charles Sheeler.

Steam puffs issuing from subterranean vents waft forth constantly upon the air currents, blown this way and that, like ghosts with sheets disheveled, from an enchanter fleeing, their sheets flapping behind them.

Last night, the spiky little breeze was bringing forth great white billows of steam from the huge steamship-funnel-size vents of the steam plant. Passing through these clouds it was possible to view the world as a Gustave Doré illustration from Dante.

It took a moment to notice a small scrabbling sound from the drift of dead leaves littering the margin of the concrete path.

A skunk sifting through the vegetal rubble for something to eat. And indeed a very handsome Striped Skunk, Mephitis mephitis, a much maligned yet entirely innocuous and splendidly attired creature.

From six feet away, we exchanged glances. The following conversation ensued.

"Hello, Skunk."

"???"

Back to the sifting, impassively ignoring the intruder's untoward presence.

Any urban-venturing deer would have frozen warily in its tracks until the passage out of range of the trespasser in its space.

The skunk, though, as if better accustomed to the project of sorting out the dangers of the night, apparently sensed no danger.

And a very pretty skunk it was, so intent, so beautiful, so industrious, framed there as it was in the billowing white cloud blown over us both by the steam plant, there in the middle of the night of the world.

Museum director Lilly Tellefson at work in the Georgetown Power Plant Museum, Seattle: photo by Joe Mabel, 12 January 2008