Spring planting had brought everyone back toward the vegetable garden.
The garden was fenced, largely because the local wildlife held strong views about vegetables. A small gate on the Conservatory side opened onto the direct path Phoebe normally used. On the far side was a wider service gate for Harold, carts, compost and anything else that needed more room. A proper service track reached it from the shed side of the grounds; from the Conservatory, however, getting there meant going the long way around.
Phoebe was carrying a bundle of supports toward the small gate when Harold arrived to begin the parts of his spring mowing route that spent most of winter being nobody's problem.
The route from the Conservatory to the small garden gate had never been much of a path in the formal sense. Harold kept the grass and low weeds short, feet and wheelbarrows did the rest, and everyone knew where it went.
Last summer had been different. Harold had been injured, and although the loaner had kept the important parts of the grounds under control, it had never quite learned Harold's smaller habits. By the time Harold returned, the vegetable garden was winding down for the year and nobody particularly cared that this strip had become a little untidy.
Then winter arrived. There was no reason to restore a path nobody needed.
Now spring was here.
Harold stopped.
Phoebe nearly walked past him before she noticed he wasn't moving.
“What?”
Harold was looking into the low growth beside the old path.
Something moved.
Phoebe put down the supports and crouched.
“Oh.”
There was a nest tucked into the new cover.
She looked up at Harold.
“Definitely not mowing that.”
“Brrp.”
“I'm going to assume that means you agree.”
Harold backed away.
Phoebe looked toward the Conservatory.
“Arthur?”
A moment later Arthur appeared at the door.
“Problem?”
Phoebe pointed toward the growth. “Nest. Right beside the path.”
Arthur came down to look. He crouched, saw enough, and stood again.
“All right. Service gate for now.”
“For now,” Phoebe said.
Arthur went back inside. Several minutes later he returned carrying a small wooden sign.
PATH CLOSED
NESTING
CK followed him out.
Arthur looked over his shoulder. “Why are you here?”
“You were carrying a sign.”
Arthur accepted this as sufficient explanation.
He fastened the sign to the small garden gate.
CK inspected it.
“Temporary?” CK asked.
“Obviously,” said Arthur.
CK looked at the sign.
Arthur sighed, took it down and added:
TEMPORARY
“Better?”
“More accurate,” said CK.
Fox ignored the gate entirely, slipped through the growth beside the fence and disappeared from view.
Nobody attempted to explain the sign to him.
For the next few weeks, everyone used the service gate.
At first people simply cut across the lawn from the Conservatory to reach the service gate rather than following the much longer service track around from the shed. It was longer than the old path, but hardly a crisis.
Then feet made a track.
Phoebe took a wheelbarrow over it.
The wheelbarrow made a wider track.
Then it rained.
Phoebe returned to the Conservatory with mud on her boots and a look Jules recognized.
“Don't,” she said.
“I haven't said anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was wondering whether the temporary route had become complicated.”
“It has become mud.”
“That sounds more specific.”
Arthur found two boards.
The boards helped.
Then one sank.
Jackal found some gravel.
Nobody knew where.
He applied it enthusiastically to the section that needed it least.
“It was dry there,” Phoebe said.
“It still is,” said Jackal.
Revision Red remained in the shed.
Meanwhile the old path was doing nothing at all.
This turned out to be productive.
The low weeds grew taller. Vines reached into them. Something flowered that Phoebe had not planted.
Pollinators found it.
Deer found something else.
Phoebe caught him eating beside the garden fence while looking through it at several things he would apparently have preferred.
“What are you eating?” she asked.
Deer looked up.
“I don't know.”
“Is it good?”
He took another mouthful.
“Yes.”
Phoebe left it alone.
By late spring, the original nest was empty.
Arthur removed the sign from the small gate.
“Good,” Phoebe said. “I am tired of pushing that wheelbarrow through mud.”
Harold approached the old path.
“Wait,” Phoebe called again.
Harold stopped.
Arthur looked at her.
Phoebe sighed. “Yes. I realize this is how the whole thing started.”
Arthur pointed toward the empty nest.
“They're gone.”
“They are.”
“So Harold can mow.”
Phoebe looked at the growth.
There were bees in the flowers now. A vine had worked its way through the brush. Farther down, something small disappeared underneath it.
Deer was eating again.
Phoebe walked several feet along the edge and stopped.
“There is another nest.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
“Where?”
“There.”
Everyone gathered.
There was, in fact, another nest.
Fox appeared from the other side of the growth.
“I had assumed you planted this,” he said.
“I didn't.”
Fox looked around.
“Then your management has improved considerably.”
Phoebe frowned. “By my not managing it?”
“Precisely.”
Arthur put the sign back on the small gate.
TEMPORARY remained underneath PATH CLOSED.
Summer came.
The route to the service gate became worse.
More people used it, which made it wider. Rain found the places feet and wheelbarrows had compressed. The boards multiplied. One developed a slight tilt that nobody noticed until Phoebe pushed a full wheelbarrow over it.
Phoebe noticed then.
Jackal added another board.
“That isn't the problem,” she said.
“It is now.”
Eventually everyone had used the improvised shortcut often enough that its edges needed mowing too. Harold tried.
He approached the muddy turn where the shortcut met the service gate.
“Brrp.”
Arthur frowned.
Harold backed up and tried from the other direction.
“Rrr-rrp.”
Fox, who had been lying beneath a shrub, opened one eye.
“He says he can't maintain it.”
Everyone looked at Fox.
“What?” Fox asked.
Harold went, “Rrrp.”
Fox nodded.
“And apparently he has been saying so for some time.”
Arthur looked at Harold.
“You can understand him?”
Fox closed his eye again.
“Can't you?”
Harold backed away from the temporary route and headed toward the old one.
Arthur called after him. “You can't mow that either.”
Harold stopped.
“Brr?”
Fox sighed.
“He wants to know where you do want the path.”
Arthur looked toward the muddy route.
Then toward the growth.
Phoebe joined them.
“He has a point.”
Arthur looked betrayed.
“I have been saying the new path is dreadful for weeks.”
“You have been saying it is muddy.”
“It is also dreadful.”
Jules had followed them outside.
“What are we actually trying to keep?” he asked.
“The habitat,” Phoebe said.
“The path,” Arthur said.
Helen, coming through the service gate with a basket, stopped beside them.
“Those don't sound like opposite goals.”
Phoebe looked at Arthur.
Arthur looked back.
“Oh,” Phoebe said.
They went to look properly.
The old route was unquestionably better as a path.
It was shorter. Flatter. Harold could maintain it. Phoebe could move a loaded wheelbarrow over it without developing opinions about gravity.
But it was no longer the place they had closed in spring.
There were two nests now, one empty and one not. Flowering plants had moved in. Pollinators were everywhere. Deer had apparently established lunch service beside a fence specifically designed to prevent him from eating the lunch on the other side.
The temporary closure had changed what there was to reopen.
The temporary route had changed too. What had worked when a few people walked across the lawn in March had become something else after months of rain, wheelbarrows, boards, gravel and regular use.
Arthur looked at the old path.
“We could restore it.”
“Yes,” Phoebe said.
“You don't want to.”
“I want the path back.”
Arthur waited.
Phoebe looked at the flowering growth.
“I also don't want to mow all of that down.”
“That is difficult.”
“Thank you.”
Fox came through the brush.
Arthur stared at him.
“You know there are gates.”
“Yes.”
“And paths.”
“Yes.”
“Why don't you use them?”
Fox looked around.
“I am a fox.”
Arthur turned away.
Harold moved several feet down the old route.
Then he stopped.
He backed up.
Moved sideways.
Went forward again.
“Brr?”
Fox raised his head.
Nobody asked him to translate.
Phoebe watched Harold trace a broad curve around the thickest patch of growth before rejoining the old route near the small garden gate.
Then Harold came back.
Phoebe looked at the line he had made.
“Oh.”
Arthur walked it.
It wasn't the old path.
It wasn't the temporary one.
It was slightly longer than the old route and considerably shorter than the trip to the service gate. It left the nesting cover largely alone. The turn was broad enough for Harold.
Phoebe walked it next.
Then she fetched the wheelbarrow.
Arthur watched her push it around the curve and through the small gate.
“Well?”
“Annoyingly good.”
Harold went, “Brrp.”
Fox nodded.
“I believe that was satisfaction.”
Harold began mowing.
Nobody had voted.
The route to the service gate was allowed to recover.
Jackal collected the boards.
“Not the gravel,” Phoebe told him.
He looked disappointed.
“The gravel stays where it is.”
“It could be useful.”
“That is what worries me.”
By the end of the afternoon, there was a path again.
Not the one they had started with.
A better one for the conditions that existed now.
Arthur removed the old sign.
CK took it from him.
Arthur looked toward the growth.
“The original nest is empty.”
“Yes,” said CK.
“But the area isn't.”
“No.”
Arthur considered this.
“So what exactly are we preserving?”
Phoebe looked at the growth.
“I don't know yet. That's why I want someone to look.”
Arthur frowned.
“And next year?”
“We look again.”
Arthur did not appear entirely satisfied with a system that required the future to be inspected when it arrived.
He reached for another sign.
“DO NOT MOW?”
“No,” said Phoebe.
“PROTECTED AREA?”
“That sounds permanent.”
Arthur looked at her. “Would you like Harold to mow it next spring?”
“I'd like someone to look first.”
CK went inside.
He returned with another card.
SEASONAL HABITAT
CHECK BEFORE SPRING CUTTING
Arthur read it twice.
“It doesn't actually tell Harold what to do.”
“That's deliberate,” CK said.
“Then what is the point of the sign?”
“To tell whoever is standing here next spring why this patch was left alone.”
Arthur looked toward the growth.
“And if there isn't a nest?”
“Then they look at what is here before deciding.”
Arthur appeared to regard this as an alarming amount of discretion.
Fox sat beside the new curve.
“A dangerous precedent.”
Phoebe looked at him.
“You don't even use the path.”
“I nevertheless support clear government.”
“There is no government.”
Fox looked toward Arthur.
Arthur ignored him.
Jules was still looking at the sign.
“It keeps the reason visible.”
Phoebe turned toward him.
“That's enough saying.”
Jules looked at her.
“I said one thing.”
“I know how this starts.”
He went back to his pencil.
Harold made another pass around the curve.
The wheelbarrow went through without difficulty. Bees continued using the flowers, Deer continued eating whatever Deer had found, and the original nest remained empty.
The second one did not.
Nobody restored the old path, and nobody kept the temporary one either.
They had intended to solve a problem for a few weeks. Instead, the problem had changed the place where they were solving it.
Fortunately, someone had remembered to look before mowing.