The terrible oxygen: Place Post No. 4

The fish come quickly, as pan fish usually do. A small, yellow jig, a 1 ounce weight and two wax worms: perch after perch after perch. This bait/lure combination works well in the shallow waters around Nebraska, and I as I pull up the small fillets with fins, I volley back and forth between feeling bad for the effective deception, and the self-reliance I am armed with. Within the first half hour of being set-up at the lake, I have at least five of the small, green and yellow fish.

Commonly known as the yellow perch, or simply "perch," Perca flavescens is about 12,000 years old. Found throughout the United States, this freshwater fish has a clean, delicate flavor unlike the rather muddy, gamey flavor of the catfish or even some Crappies. Of the fish we catch during the winter, Perch has got to be my favorite. Today, each of the little guys we catch ranges from 5-8," but it's not unheard of to catch 11-inchers in other, bigger lakes.

"Tasty little potato chips," dad says, smiling as I struggle to unhook the recent catch that's hooked itself through its nose. I pride myself on being able to bait my hooks, unhook my bounty, but when a fish gouges itself in the eyeball, or swallows the whole damn rigging, the self-assured part of me dies. Dad raised me to make sure I could do these things- bait my hooks and unhook my windfalls, but he didn't teach me how to combat the feelings of sorrow that sometimes break the water along with the goodies. As a child, I couldn't focus on fishing enough to even worry about those things, since I could hardly sit still long enough to wait for something to set my hook. As an adult, I have the patience to sit still and listen to the water burping under the ice around me, but with that patience comes the contemplation of my actions.


Nebraska's Sandhills lakes have a high alkalinity to them, and for many years of the 19th century, Walgren Lake was known as Alkali Lake. The water in this lake ranges from flame-blue to mossy green and bruised, but in the winter, the crispness of the clear, frozen water works its way into the flavor of the animals you're after. I'm looking forward to the homemade beer batter and finger-length fish-fries we'll have tonight for dinner, so I can justify my actions in that matter: at least I am working here to feed myself. If I needed to do this to survive, I have the know-how.

But the fact of the matter is that I don't need to fish to survive. I can eat all sorts of other things: grilled-cheese sandwiches, or soups or vegetables. I think through the list of all the other things I come up with-- chicken, turkey, even hamburger, and know that most of my diet consists of things that were once living but were killed for their food matter. If I ate only what I killed, I'd have to be a vegetarian. Even then, though, things would die... The great satisfaction of fishing comes, I guess, primarily in spending time with my family, and then in knowing that unlike those who simply purchase their fish-sticks in stores, I know the reality of an animal food cycle.

I rehook another wax worm, a small, steamed-onion-like larva, and drop the line through two feet of ice, and probably eight feet of water. Mom has already caught a couple of Bluegill, Lepomis machrochirus, and I wonder what other kind of fish are in store.

Bullheads, catfish, Northern Pike, Crappie, Bluegill, Perch, and even the occasional Walleye make themselves at home in Walgren, and for as long as I can remember, people come here to pull up a tasty combo pack of bite-sized fish dinners. The thing about fishing this lake is that you are here to make a meal, not a name for yourself. None of the fish in this water are not going to be worth mounting, but reaching the half-way mark in a five-gallon bucket guarantees a few tasty meals for a family.

The sun shines above us, wisps of cirrus clouds promise softly falling layers of frozen water later in the afternoon, and a whole morning passes. Mom has brought her little dog along with us-- a first for my family-- and he's bounding about our small circumference of drilled holes, lapping at the heaving water that sucks in and out of holes. He's hooked up to the gear sled, and his small lunges pull it a few inches every so often. He's kind of entertaining, but in his small, plaid coat, he's more of a plaything than a domesticated animal with wild tendencies. The anglers to the west and south of us sit hunched over their small, 2' poles, jigging and waiting, waiting and jigging. I feel like we're the group with the most action, and by 11 am, when I feel like I've had enough (we left the house at 7:30), we've got half a bucket of Perch and Bluegill, swimming sideways and slowly in their deathwater.

I catch a Pike too, " a little snake," as dad calls them, and because it had swallowed the hook and gouged its throat, when I release it, the fish is bleeding badly.

Throw it down, it ain't gonna live," orders my dad. We don't eat E. lucius. Their meat isn't as mushy and muddy as the Catfish, so they're not that nasty, but its not as buttery-flavored as the Perch, or as solid. Boney and narrow, this long, skinny fish is hard to clean, but if it weren't dying, I'd through it back down the hole. Dad would let it lie on the ice to freeze. Bloody and mouthing and S.O.S. in the silent unease of a suffocating being, the Pike wriggles in my hand for a moment. I hold him up, eye the snout, and drop it to my feet. Mom's dog (whom I call The Weasel, for his long snout and beady eyes) lunges at the fish, paws it then wraps sharp teeth over the caudal (tail) fin, flipping it. I watch for a minute, then retreat, sitting back on my bucket and jigging my pole slowly. The Weasel growls and lunges, squeaks and bares teeth; the fish continues to die, slowly.

Once last summer, while fishing for salmon on Lake Oahe, I told dad that I didn't like the way he bled the fish in the water as we prepared to leave. I'd been having a hard time salmon fishing all summer, growing more and more aware of what began to feel like greed. Two years ago we caught 45 salmon-- more than the average man, maybe even bear (OK, not really bear, but you know..), and last summer we caught at least 40. Dad doesn't keep them all for himself, several of his elderly friends can no longer fish, so he smokes the fish and gives it to them, and twice a summer he holds a fish feed in town at the golf course. I see and respect the way he spreads out the enjoyment of these fish, but I wondered if it was necessary. Yet I felt helpless and wrong in my contributions to his hoard.

The Pike barely flips its fins now, and its mouth has stopped opening and closing. It would have died regardless, had I thrown it back in the water, but if I hadn't caught it at all, I wouldn't have been the cause of its demise. I think of Buddhist lovingkindness, how all being are supposed to be equal and all actions will come back to haunt us. I think of "The Fish," a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, in which her catch-and-release is both humble and full of victory.

While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen... I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,...
They shifted a little, but not to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light.

Eventually, the fish dies, his last breath a choking one, dry and raspy in the cold, winter air. Mom's dog loses interest in the inanimate fish, and I am even sorry for The Weasel. Not because he is no longer entertained--we sic-ed 'em on that poor fish to entertain us, didn't we?--but because he is a wild animal, trapped in a child-small coat, fettered by domestication and the power of bored humans.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to say "no" to dad for good, when he asks me to go fishing, but I do know that when he too, has cast his last hook and sucked in his last gasp of air, my days as predator on the ice and the water will be over. I tell myself that for now, it's OK to fish, I eat what I catch and I am intimate with the life cycles of these aquatic animals, but if it weren't for my family, fish sticks and white fleshed "potato chips" wouldn't even cross my mind or my stomach.

Way better than Cicadas

I've been meaning to post this link for a long time, but until I received my newest issue of the Atlantic, I keep forgetting about it. Last month an article ran about music being used to wipe out beetles plauging trees in Arizona. I'm pretty sure that this is a good thing, it just makes me feel like there's this underlying insinuation that the "heavier" music I enjoy is irritating enough to kill!

Coyote and the Lake: PromptPost No. 4

"A sleek gray-faced prairie wolf! his pointed black nose tucked in between is four feet drawn snugly together; his hand-some bushy tail wound over his nose and feet; a coyote fast asleep in the shadow of a bunch of grass!--this is what Iktomi spied."

So begins "Iktomi and the Coyote," one of several "Old Indian Legends" compiled by Sioux tribeswoman and historian, Zitkala-Sa. I first began reading her stories in grade school, and to this day, her tales live on in my mind as the zenith of regional folk legends whenever I think of Plains stories. Iktomi, the "spider fairy" is a trickster, one of many who live on in oral traditions. In this particular story, he has met his match, Coyote, who is also known throughout the Native American legends as the trickster who can out-trick anybody. The site that I've linked to Iktomi's name lists Coyote right after him, and I find it interesting that there are two different manifestations of craftiness and manipulation embodied in these individuals-- man vs. nature is a clear interpretation, but I wonder what others might exist. What has been lost in the oral traditions we no long know, or could never know, as a literate society fond of linear thinking and structured sentences?

I think about these things as I research Coyote, who is known to biologists under the Latin name of Canis latrans Say-- canis for dog, latrans for barking, and Say for Thomas Say, who, as a 19th century Plains explorer first described the "prairie wolf" in 1823. I think about Coyote's reputation, his craftiness and cunning. These are the things that keep him alive in the wild, that make him him, but these qualities are the same ones that have earned him a spot alongside prairie dogs and bean blight in the hearts of ranchers and farmers. Coyote is sent to the earth by the Creator to teach man how to live, say some old legends, yet his intellect is tainted by his nature of sneaking chickens out of the coop. He is an animal of multiple personalities and personas; this gives storytellers great range in using him as a character to explain and entertain.

Coyotes are omnivorous, eating everything from berries and grasses and bugs to cottontails and family animals. These sleek animals have been documented in much of North America, so it doesn't surprise me that each Native nation has its own version of a Coyote story. We too, the descendants of settlers who took over the Plains (pushing around both native man and animal) have our own coyote stories, our own ways of dealing with the animal.

Living 40 minutes away from Nebraska's Museum of the Fur Trade, established here because of the plenitude of pelts in the 19th century, I know all about the ways in which people around here try to get rid of coyotes. We've had some around lately, and dad's been toting his gun in the evenings, hoping to put an end to the howling animals before they have a snack of mom's lil' doggy.


In the story of Iktomi and the Coyote, Iktomi carries Coyote home, thinking he will cook him up. Coyote is not really dead, but enjoys being carried across the prairie by the man (in this story Iktomi is a man, not the spider/snareweaver). Coyote has manipulated Iktomi into doing the work of walking for him, but when he arrives as his teepee, Iktomi lights a large fire and chucks Coyote into it. Upon being burnt, Coyote flees, splashing ashes and flame on the warrior; his parting laughter is a reminder to Iktomi that animal is more wily than man.


don't know if it was reading about Coyote's antics as a child, watching the Road Runner kick his hide over and over with my dad, or seeing the living animal pop up on occasion around here, but the levels of Coyote Nature interest me. His metaphor is one of being both obnoxious and wild, yet smart and resilient. He is the clever man, the fool; the savage animal and the hero. I want to think there is some of him in all of us, if only we could see him and embrace that.

During my initial visit to Walgren Lake a coyote ran across the path in front of me, and since then I've been wanting to use Coyote in a story. I don't like making things up, so it's really hard for me to imagine making up a whole world for Coyote and peopling it, but here goes.

Coyote and Iktomi at The Lake


It was winter time in the North, where Coyote lived alone in his warm home. For many long days he had been wrapped up like a blanket, wet black nose tucked into layers of wiry, buckskin fur. His stomach spoke to him sometimes, and when it did so, he ventured from his small room and foraged among the lake reeds for buffalo berry stems and the nourishment of bitter, bitter rose hips and water. His stomach did not quiet at the taste of these small, shriveled husks, but the water dimmed the pangs of animal hunger like sun star did when it lay down in the sky at night.

Coyote was growing thin, like the Two-Legged he sometimes saw dangling strings of sinew through the thick skin that Winter had grown over the water. He knew it was sinew, made from the cords of muscle and hide that Elk clothed himself in, because he could smell it anytime the Two-Legged drew near. It smelled so good, so alive. Something that Coyote hadn’t felt since the Autumn and his fat harvests of rodents, pheasant and sick deer. Coyote was known among the Animals for his pounce, his hard jaw. He could stalk animals in silence, swooping like Raven. He wore his stealth in dusky, sand-colored fur, and the strength of his mouth also rivaled Raven’s, who was known for his unending chatter CawCawCaw. But because Coyote’s mouth was not used for constant noise, but to quietly secure his dinner, his strength was more valuable, his action more beautiful.

Spring was coming—Coyote could feel the excitement of knowing another and chasing young pups in the sun—but before the Sun Breeze returned, he needed to find a meal, something warm and living. This would restore his weight; he would be bigger than Dog and glossier than Ferret once again. Coyote knew how he would do this: he would call on the Two-Legged and ask for help from him. The Fur that One wore was not his fur naturally—Coyote saw Rabbit and Beaver and Deer every time he saw this One, but because the Two-Legged did not move with the swiftness nor possess the knowledge of these Animals, Coyote knew the Two-Legged must put these covers on. Could he offer his hide, in return for a meal?

Iktomi watched the ducks fly overhead as he walked quiet across the lake. His eyes sparkled like the gemstones some Nations traded, but he knew better than to think of such folly. He was at the lake for dinner, not riches. And dinner he would have. His best tobacco had been burnt that morning—the great Water Snake would send his spirit to the surface and attach Crappie and Perch to the wishbone snare at the end of Iktomi’s sinew. He knew it would happen as he had envisioned, and as he squatted over yesterday’s opening in the water’s cold skin, he imagined how good the fish would be when steamed over young ash wood. Water wetted his lips now, and Iktomi barely noticed the way the Moon Breeze ruffled the delicate hairs of his winter furs. He had patched last season’s leggings and shoulder cloth with what was available, but he knew that lining them with Coyote would turn away the cold.
“HunHa!”

A small laugh, bitter like winter berries, escaped from Iktomi’s set mouth. Coyote. He would be lucky to catch such a one, in winter or summer Coyote was cunning; he would have to be desperate to turn himself in for a ransom of shelter or marrow bones.

Iktomi kept his sinew in the water all afternoon and evening, and before Grandmother showed her face in the west, he had lined up three rows of Crappie and one Walleye. The Finned ones said nothing; they knew the ways of the winter world above water.

As Grandmother’s face revealed itself above the horizon, Coyote stepped out of his home, arching the ruff of his collar and giving his jaw a good stretch with a yawn. His front arms slid forward as he kissed the ground, thanking Earth once again for his presence. First his right leg, then his left stretched out behind him as he warmed the muscles he used for pouncing. Coyote was proud of his abilities as an Animal, but it was his mind that he needed to stretch and exercise on this cold winter night. As he searched the horizon for movement—a feather, a tail, something—a shimmer of frost on the road caught his eye.

“Oh Grandmother,” he said, rounding his mouth as he spoke to the Moon, “your night jewels are beautiful, and I enjoy seeing the way they sparkle around you.”
Grandmother said nothing, because she didn’t need to.

Coyote started down the path across the water skin—he would see if the Two-Legged had left any fish behind from this morning. As he came closer to the spot where moccasins crouched in silence, he realized that the Two-Legged had not returned to his fire. Here was Coyote’s chance to ask for a meal, or sneak one, if necessary.

“Oh, brother Deer,” he said, hoping to trick the Two-Legged into thinking he was family. Coyote’s eyes were lowered, and his tail was pulled under tightly—if the Two Legged saw his submission, maybe he would share something with Coyote.
“I am cold and hungry on this Moon Night. You have much food and only one stomach. Your coat looks thin, but you are still alive. Will you share with me?”

Iktomi couldn’t believe his eyes. Was Coyote this close to him, this desperate in his hunger?
“Brother Coyote, It is I, Iktomi, not Deer, as you have imagined. My coat is thin, yes, you are right. I have much Fish here with me, and truly, one stomach. But if you give me your coat, I will trade you warmth for hunger.”

Coyote thought for a moment, his deception pulled out from under him. He could trade his coat for Iktomi’s fish, and return home to sleep off the rest of the Winter Moon with full belly. He would get a new coat in the summer, so this one didn’t matter. But Coyote was not sure he could trust Iktomi to give him the Fish before trading him the coat. He knew there had to be another way, and as he thought on it, Grandmother winked her eye at Coyote. And he knew how to get Iktomi.

“Here, then, follow me, Brother, down this path out of the shadows of the night.” Coyote led Iktomi off the Lake, toward the path where he first encountered Grandmother that night.
“You see, there is a sparkling rock magic on this road ahead, and I do not know what it is, but it gives off a great light. There I will remove my coat in the light.

Iktomi could not believe his luck. Not only would he get Coyote’s warm dressings tonight, but the Animal had no idea that the sparkling rock magic was only the light cast from stones glistening under the sky above.

As Coyote neared the path, the frost on the road sparkled like springtime in a mate’s eyes. If Iktomi saw this glow, Coyote was certain that the Two-Legged would become entranced with the magic, forgetting both the Fish and Coyote’s promise. Soon, Iktomi glanced the sparkling ahead of them, and he ran ahead, forgetting the delicious comfort of a meal in the greed of his desire for hard, magic rocks. He removed a small pouch and shoveled handfuls of Winter ground into the opening, smiling at the meals and the coats this richness would bring him.

Coyote snuck back toward the Lake, shrugging his coat around his ears and thanking Grandmother again for her guidance.

Cattails: Place Post No. 3

I picked up a plants guide at the library the other day, so my recent lake trip was informed by this info booklet. Hoping to use it more as the shore thaws and the days grow longer. Looking at plants and then the guide feels kind of like going on a biology scavenger hunt.

Typha latifolia, or "the Common Cattail"catches my eye as I walk along the edges of the lake. These velour-like fuzz rods feel like memory foam when you squeeze them, and even if they can be bad for their environments (because they choke out the plants that provide food for ducks and other animals), the multiple benefits they offer are good. Used by blackbirds as nesting sites, the leaves of this plant also protect reptiles such as snakes or salamanders (not so good for the birds!). Native Americans have used the plant for both medicinal and textile purposes. And besides all this, there's just something fun about this weed: I think of this perennial monocot ( plant that lasts at least 3 seasons; has only one seed-leaf) as the aquatic version of the dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), because their fluffy seeds fur the air when they are released. Like dandelions, this plant is edible, and although I've never eaten one myself, I remember a friend who tried to do so deciding that the shoots would perhaps be better than the fuzz itself (long story). Maybe this spring I'll have to experiment with the tender green shoots myself.

With the strong winds and warm sun we've had lately, I'm pretty sure the water will be eating away at the ice soon, even if it is very slowly. March will bring another hard freeze and a big snow dump or two, but it's almost easy to think about spring coming.

Breakdown: Prompt Post No. 3

Growing up in the country, one has a sense of life and death at all times, in all places. Thick snows blanket the winter wheat sprouting and growing below; warm wind and sun thaw these crusts, and spring comes. A calf is born in the snowstorm; its mother's dead, bloated body is hauled away by the rendering truck the next day. Kids out here don't learn about life and death from the purchase and flush of a goldfish sparkle.

And even when we don't yet know it, we are a part of the cycle.

I showed swine and poultry and beef throughout my years in 4-H: Starsky and Hutch, the pigs who ran away and frolicked under the pivot in the corn field gave way to Caesar and Calpurnia who gave way to a new set of speakers for my Jeep. Fauntleroy and Napoleon, the proud green-plumed Araucana roosters won me purple-plumed ribbons and spots in the paper and prize monies. That what these animals stood for then, in my adolescence. And Burgermeister (who funded my senior-year wardrobe and took the place of Hamburgler)...they all helped me know not death, but its place in the cycle of work and reward and creation. Here, on the unforgiving grass plains that break men with as much regularity as men break the earth, here the cycle of being is always around us.

I am thinking about loss and decay today, as I drive to the lake. The readings for my nature writing class have all focused on death and loss this week, and I am struck by how unique departure is as it graces or destroys us, as different as the sunset or the patterns in the melted mud-caked snow. The Nebraska Glaciation period cut and carved the gullies behind my house and yard then ended; the natives, the buffalo, even the people who lived here before me are all gone now. One with the earth. One essay in particular regarding death has stuck with me, not for its beauty, but because of the author's innocence.

In Apologia, author Barry Lopez performs the last rites for several road-killed animals on a drive across the country. While in Nebraska, pulling a dead badger off the road, he feels himself the recipient of a stranger's blessing.

"A car drifts toward us over the prairie, coming on in the other land, a 1962 Chevrolet station wagon. The driver slows to pass...an arm and the gesture of his thick left hand...opens in a kind of shrug, hangs briefly in limp sadness, then extends itself in supplication."

"Limp sadness?" I read this essay a week ago, shaking my head at its naivete, its misunderstanding of life and death and this Nebraskan gesture. Roadkill is not a thing of contemplation when both sides of the road are littered from day to day with the bodies of dead animals. It doesn't invite the holy, nor does it teach us a lesson other than be mindful. We are few and far between the humanly-populated sites of Nebraska; we wave with a hand out the window when we see you.

I am a skeptic, too used to roadside death to care about Lopez' badger, but I do wonder, do I not feel reverence for these deaths because they are so common, or because of how they've happened? Has growing up with an understanding and acceptance of death removed me from it, instead of making me humble?

Turning to the lake road and passing the old potato shed, I decide to stop and take pictures. It's been at least two decades since people grew and harvested potatoes in my community, but there's still talk of the industry in the state. This old building sits about four miles from my home, and I can't believe the state of things as I pull into the gravel lot around it. What was once a proud, two-story building and landmark next to our turnoff is now a pile of rotted wood and humming aluminum.

I walk across the wreckage of a ceiling littering the floor, and feel a piece of my childhood drift away. How many years did I drive past this building to the lake? Or to school? What was steady and permanent is now nothing. As much as anything, this too, is life. But inanimate and quiet when it stood, why does this testament to human ingenuity move me more than the absence of life decaying along the road?

I return home after my time at the lake, restless in mind and body. Sometimes a walk in the canyon will diffuse this frantic energy. I take my camera and my feelings to the open spaces around me. The snow has melted after the warm days, and I know the trail to the spring won't be too muddy. This trail begins at the edge of our yard and wanders through barbwire, beyond the boundaries of fencing, and down a valley before ending at the spring sunk low in the side of a hill. Faint oatmeal colored sand leads the way passed junked out cars, broken piles of feed bunk rubble and today, the long-gone body of a coyote.

Terry Tempest Williams writes that "Artifacts are alive," that "They remind us what it is to be human--that it is our nature to survive, to create words of beauty, to be resourceful, to be attentive to the world we live in." I pass first the human artifacts, the reckless tracings of modern society, and I wonder, really? Is abandoning our buildings and our vehicles to the earth really paying any kind of attention to anything? Is this any worse than abandoning each other? The First Nations left us arrowhead and oral stories; in their footprints we have deposited rusted metal and biohazard warnings.

I nudge the teeth out of the jaw bone gently, thumbing the deep cleft of the canines with my finger. This animal knew life and death in the wild, more naturally than the modern people who came before me, and certainly more fully than me. I enjoy the readings and the essays and the contemplation of life and death and nature, but until we go there ourselves...we can't pretend to know it or understand it. Not really.

A sharp wind is howling across the old riverbed, dry now in its wanderings. I kneel, rake bare fingers through the pebbles, and hope for something wonderful. I used to come out here and hunt for fossils when I was little, sending promising specimens to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I wanted to find a dinosaur, a valuable creature.. something. I can't remember now the "value" of my childhood finds, but each of the letters came back to back to me from someone who was most likely a grad student, sighing again over the newest odd fossilized thing from the 6 year-old in northwest Nebraska. No dinosaurs, no mammoths. Nothing "special." Even in my childhood innocence I had already labeled the values of death's lessons. There is nothing to hold my attention in the pebbles my fingers turn up (the shell of a land snail), so I snap some pictures and stand up.

I feel each step crumble slightly under solid pressure-- the soil here is crumbly and breaks down before blowing away for ever. Over the dried cake-batter yellow sand of the butte ahead is what I came for. The spot of land my brother once wanted to inhabit and build a house upon.

The last time we were out here, dad stood among the scrubby cedar shrubs and eyed the ground with menace, as if he distrusted the very land holding him up.

"Why anyone would want to live clear out here," he says, shaking his head at whatever it was he was imagining. I don't remind him that that just a quarter of a mile away is the house he lives in...also "clear our here" by anybody else's standards. My brother had only been situated to his new surroundings for a few weeks then, his body barely left alone in the ground. I knew it wasn't the emptiness of the land that really rankled my dad, but rather the distance that had grown between the two men. I don't know that dad would have done anything to have him back, neighbors, buddies, as it had been once before, but with something like that is better no knowing.

I come out here, to this sandy spot on a lonely hill when I need reminded that death is really its own kind of power. The quiet dip and bend of dried-out grasses or the remains of small bodies around me offers a kind of raw solace that can't be found in human comfort. I come out here to feel death in a way that roadkill and obituaries can't seem to manage.

He visited me once, in a dream, and we made our peace then, in that shimmer of a moment. We weren't close in life, my brother and I, but I come here now to visit him and his memory, instead of the place outside town that holds his body. I come here because it is my only way to get to him. And sometimes, it's the only way I know to get away from me. I come out here to know things I can't know with book smarts or language or by walking in the traditions of other ways. There is intimacy in death, and in this land, and if, as Dictionary.com tells us "intimate," as an adjective, means "relating to or indicative of one's deepest nature: intimate prayers,"

then I might not pause for thecoontail or the bits of deer on blacktop, but I know where to kneel when I feel compelled to pray.

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