Frautschi Point
A Nature Story

"She needed the moon to rise, which would make the rope go slack, which would mean she could untie the knot, which would mean she could set her plan into action. Her perfect plan.
'Come on, moon,' she implored. Didn't it know she was in a hurry?' – Appelt, from Keeper






2.

Trace found a small twig from the grass pile at the edge of the beach and slipped it under the bottom of the kicking bee to see if it would grab. The bee pulled itself right side up and slowly began to walk itself along the twig like a tightrope walker. "Don't even think about it," she said kiddingly to Sam, who was mesmerized by something living and breathing right at their fingertips. "It looks like a little golden buffalo" he said. Trace lifted it up closer to their faces with her hand underneath in case it dropped. She didn't want the bee to stranded in the cold water again. "A buffalo! With wings? You are an odd one Sammy-O, that I will give ya." Sam took the twig from her and began examining with the eyes of an eight year old, which is to say a very fresh set eyes, eyes that have yet to name or calculate. "It's head is fluffy and shaped like a buffaloes. Its butt end kind of curves down too. I think they are little golden flying buffalos." He quickly pictured in his mind the simple pictures of the once great animal as found in textbooks, or the buffalo they saw just last summer so hot at the Vilas Soon. He imagined a giant set of wings on it. When hunters came after it, the buffalo would give a quick and funny wink and fly off and be safe somewhere over on the other side of the bluff or the prairie. Trace set the twig and bee down a few feet into the beach sand and watched it slowly gets its bearings, hopefully dry off, then fly away to an edible flower. It was at that very instant that she had her idea for how to make this nature center work. It would be the first and only of its kind...she hoped. BEE RESTORATION, she saw written on a sign. School classes would flock in to their little family nature center. Researchers from around the country would inquire. Field trips, new models for school hours, bee hives, honey for all!  She walked through the clearing toward the trail and then beyond where the old building sat and where her dad was ripping off patches of the roof at a time. "We were thinking that if our nature center became a bee restoration headquarters that a lot of people would come." The rehabilitation of the old building had reached the stage where the crow bar met the wood and it began to seem that the day when this would become the real thing, a real and true nature center, was looking farther off in the future. "I like it. I like it a lot," he said, prying off a piece of the front gutter that had been growing tree sprouts itself.  "Everybody secretly loves bees," he said. "First, the roof. Then the foundation. Then the interior. I hope I have the order right."