For several months this gray orb of wood pulp and wasp spit hung perilously over a quiet Minneapolis street. High overhead, I must have passed under it for weeks before noticing. Then one February afternoon, this simple thing was gone, vanished from the Earth–either run over by the brutal weight of a car or taken home as a quirky keepsake by some nature-loving resident of the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood where I deliver mail.

I immediately recalled the fierce Arctic wind I had endured the day before. I suppose the nest might have blown all the way to Hennepin Avenue and beyond. It could not have weighed much, tenuously attached to the slenderest of twigs. It’s a miracle of engineering that it persisted in its fragility for so long. As a reader, you might be wondering if it is safe to bring such an object inside in winter. Might the dormant wasps thaw and escape into your home from the hive? The answer is no. Enclosed hives like this one–roughly the size of a volleyball–are constructed by bald-faced hornets. They abandon their large nests in the fall, and only the fertilized queen survives the winter to begin afresh in the spring. She sleeps now, cloistered in some attic or hollow tree trunk. Unless a spider eats her, she will be a busy bitch indeed come April.

As a writer, I observe, reflect and describe. Often, my humble aim is to preserve and share beauty. All the simple, pretty things in life are impermanent. Yesterday’s wasp nest will composte into the soil that nourishes tomorrow’s tree. Walt Whitman wrote far more eloquently about this cycle in Leaves of Grass. He had a better beard than me as well, but he is dead and I am alive, so I am not jealous. Last fall, I watched immigrant children shoot Nerf bullets harmlessly at the nest. Their antics made me laugh. Before long they may be gone as well.