The Chickens are Here!

I just got an early morning call from Lorraine at the White River Junction Post Office that the chicks are here!  "We're open 24/7 here at the main office," Lorraine assures me with a sassy, no-nonsense snap.  "These chicks'll be delivered priority to Newbury tomorrow morning, but it'd be alot better for 'em if you came down and picked 'em up today; and look outside, it's a bright, sunshiny day, perfect day for a drive!"  It was hard to say "no" to Lorraine, but I took her number and said I'd sort out my day and get back to her.  Sort out my day?  Well, I do have a schedule of sorts -- work on taxes, write, a walk in the woods since I didn't get outside at all yesterday, the Hanover Chamber Orchestra at the Lebanon Opera House at 3 followed by a trip to the co-op in Hanover for supplies.  And since Hanover is close to White River it could all work out perfectly, so I picked up the phone to give Lorraine the good news.

"And who's this?!" Lorraine cut right to the chase.

'It's -- well, you called before for Richard Waterhouse and his chick order.'

"Oh, yeah, yeah!  I got 10 chick orders here, just wanted to keep 'em straight."

'I'm Dan Butler; I'm Richard's partner.'  I paused slightly, still expecting some response to the news that I'M GAY!!  There wasn't any reaction. 'I think I can come down and pick up the chicks, but it'll have to be later in the day, maybe around 7.'

"We're open 24/7 here, come anytime you want, someone'll be here."

'Good, good'

"It's Dan "what"?  What'd you say your last name was?"

'Butler'

"Oh! Like 'Rhett Butler!'  The two of you might be related."

'Hmm.  I might be related to a fictional character?'

"And a hell of a good one, why not?!" 

Lorraine gave me directions, told me the best entrance to come to to rouse some action from whomever might be working at the time.  She assured me that the chicks would be on the express ramp all ready for me to pick up whenever I showed up.  And then she thanked me for calling back, wished me a good day. 

In between Lorraine's initial call and then calling her back I went downstairs to check and see if everything was in place for their arrival.  I could feel Richard in all the care and preparation: the heat lamps perfectly poised, grain in the little feeder, cloth on the container floor to keep them warm.  I wondered why there wasn't newspaper like last year, but Richard must know what he's doing. There's a dollhouse feel to the whole affair, that and the preparing of a newborn's room.  It made me smile.  It's going to be fun having them here when he gets home from his trip; he'll be so surprised, a little bit of Christmas morning.  I went up to the garage and brought down a galvanized garbage can to store the feed in.  Felt like pitching in where I could.

I'm going out for a walk now and enjoy some of Lorraine's sunshiney day.  Did I put "walks" down as one of the reasons I'm living here?  If I didn't, they are.  They ground me, make me feel a little Henry David Thoreau-ish.  I'm reading "Walden" now, by the way, and for the first time.  This came at the gentle urging of my friend Brian and the writer EB White, both of whom are big Thoreau fans.  In EB's case the nudge came from an essay of his called "A Slight Sound at Evening" which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the printing of "Walden" which he wrote in 1954, the year of my birth.  Like EB, I can go back and forth on "Walden" - I get tired of his harangues against society, in particular - but I do feel a kinship to Thoreau, especially on these solitary days when Richard's away.  Thoreau's experiment to cut himself away from the bustle of society and choose instead to be more closely aligned with a natural pace so parallels my life right now.  It's stunning at times.  And when Thoreau connects to what he's experiencing, what he's learning, what he had intended, there's a poetry and presence in his words that speaks to me directly.  "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not my life ... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."  And here's another passage for you, more famous perhaps.  "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

I don't know if I've ever known the direction of my dreams or whether I have an imagined life that I endeavor to fulfill.  Of course there have been things I've wanted, that I've gone after, but all in all, I don't think I'm a good one when it comes to clearly identifying my dreams and goals ahead of time.  They seem to find me, and through the experiencing of them first hand then I realize that they're my dreams.  I've spent a long time questioning that natural process and many times labeling it deficient, telling myself that I SHOULD know my dreams, that something was WRONG if I didn't, that I'd better buck up and get with the program.  But I'm realizing that this is what my trip to the woods may be teaching me, that there is a way, MY way, my NATURAL way, not to be questioned, but to be nurtured and appreciated.  I don't have to harangue against the way other people live their lives, how they set and meet their dreams and goals.  That's their business.  But maybe rediscovering and accepting my unique way of living is my particular beat to a different drummer, maybe this is what keeps me from a life of quiet desperation.  So I allow it to find me, I take my hands off the controls, I open to it, I welcome it like an unexpected phone call on a Sunday morning or a shipment of baby chicks that need to warmed and cared for.