Thoughts at dusk

Out on the front porch with Astrid. It’s nearing 9, finally getting dark, and the peepers are going to town over around the pond. We had a quick rain shower a moment ago and I went out to finish battening down the hatches and get all the birds snugged into their coops and shelters and boxes. On my way back to the house I looked up the hill and was treated to an exquisite light in the sky as the grey clouds scudded across the silhouetted tree line. It was as if the earth were breathing out light and the sky was reflecting it back. Everything shimmered. There’s no place I’ve ever lived that makes me smile like this place does.

Dusk helps. There’s always been something magical for me about that time of day since I was a little kid. And in late spring and summer the magic time seems to stretch on forever. I can never tell what time it is, there is no time. Reading journal entries from 30 years ago on my bike ride I remember so well how all the frustrations of the day, whether they’d been real or imagined, would evaporate at the end of day. Everything that seemed so important wasn’t and that that was truly important took its place naturally, effortlessly, things like gratitude, peace, a job well done, simply being present for the close of a day. The exhaustion from the physical effort helped the Jericho walls of resistance tumble down and just enjoy life. This was (and is) a good lesson for someone who has been programmed to add a little suffering, much like a spice, to most every endeavor, to distrust anything that comes easy, to suffer for one’s art or it isn’t worth it. Bizarre that I may have chosen that for my life. To learn what, I wonder? Besides the obvious. Ah well, it’s on it’s way out, this way of thinking and living and I’m on for the ride.

Speaking of ride - 30 years ago tonight on my cross-country bicycle ride I was at my cousin Tim’s in Indianapolis after having spent several days in Fort Wayne. I’d had a tearful goodbye with my mother in the morning and then a surprisingly exhausting day pedaling south in the Hoosier humidity. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake, after all, wasn’t it just going to be flat farmland? Wrong. Off the bike for several days switched me back into thinking of traveling in car miles rather than bicycle miles and I had to reacclimate to the slower pace.

What’s been going on here in the present in Vermont you may well ask? Besides gorgeous days, green bursting out, big blows bringing down branches and electrical wires? Our garden is planted – brussel sprouts; sugar snap peas; various varieties of lettuce, spinach, arugala, and chard; radishes and turnips (our neighbor Royce has urged us to plant plenty of radishes to lure the pests away from the other crops. I think our biggest pests this year may be moles for I see their holes all over our fields and Sofia has brought in a couple babies of late); acorn squash; tomatoes; bush beans; beets; red and green cabbage. Our sweet potatoes were decimated by the 2 nights of frost that hit last week. Also our regular potatoes don’t seem to be germinating. In the up hill garden Richard has planted corn and pumpkins (many varieties) and butternut squash. I find myself talking to my grandpa when I plant the garden. Oddly enough, it’s not with my farmer grandpa that I converse, but to my railroad engineer grandpa, Papaw, who prided himself on his tomato plants and beans, even when he was at his retirement home. I let him know that I’m probably not planting them as perfectly as he did or would, probably not going to take as good of care of them, probably let nature take it’s natural course more then he would allow, but if he could spare some good energy for these plants and watch over them a little, then I’d be obliged.

Our geese keep filling out. And their voices keep changing, like adolescents going through puberty, their soprano squeaks can suddenly descend into an alto honk. They are feathering out into a pleasant grey white, both of them growing quite big below. But they carry it well, they seem happy with their lot, they’re cute. And sometimes they’ll cuddle with me. But you really have to sneak up on them slowly and trick them, otherwise they’ll dash away in a scream of terror. Such dramatics. And the sound their padded feet make on the gravel – slap, slap, slap, slap/flap-flap-flap-flap – just cracks me up. They look like mad Japanese Shinto priests running late for whatever services Shintos have, an Asian version of Maria late for mass from having been up in the mountains singing. (In their case, it would be out in the meadow munching. No, wait, they’re not geese anymore, they’re Shinto priests. Oh forget it.)

The Canadian geese family are co-habiting quite nicely, spending the days going back and forth from the pond and its surrounding shoreline to our orchard and front lawn, well, everywhere really. No dramatics, no hissing, just blissful co-existence. Parents and offspring eating away then promenading off somewhere else in orderly fashion.

Life goes on here. Morning walks, chores, writing, looking for jobs, creating jobs. Looking forward to visitors coming to visit. Taking in the days as fully as possible, being glad for them, sharing them with one another, getting focused on the things we want to change here, alter, nurture.

There are times I don’t know what we’re doing here in Vermont, but I could phrase that idea or question around life itself really – What are we doing here? - and get lost in the question. Richard and I spend ample time posing the question to one another, asking ourselves whether its working, whether we’re removing ourselves too much from the world, whether we’re actively pursuing what we feel we’re supposed to be contributing to the world. There’s a lot of thought given the topic, the difference being now, most of the time, it’s not fraught thought. It’s not “there’s a big problem, we made a mistake” thought. No. Vermont has taught us a new way. Maybe it’s objectivity. Maybe when set against the backdrop of where we live - the expanse of nature and all we’re experiencing here - any problem, perceived or otherwise, doesn’t have a chance. It vanishes – presto chango – as if it were dusk. And there’s no problem. Maybe there never was, never has been.

We chose to come here. And I love that the choice was a little bit crazy, a little bit instinctive, that it was about both of us wanting adventure and change in our lives and choosing to dive in the deep end together. And look what we’re experiencing, the people we’re meeting, the poultry we’re raising. If we have to ponder “where are we going?” how great that we get to do it here and how great that we’ve been graced with the means to do it. And how great to imagine what’s coming next.

Well, this turned into a pep talk. Have a great day.