“Back on the patio job today. A little colder, so working protocols shift, to less comfort but it isn’t bad. Crouching over marble slabs, pulling them up to re-level and set against a new metal edge: check-mate. I’m happy with the results. The view from my office is a bit distracting. The last of the bright hill colors are at peak brilliance, subtle but desperate, about to fall, dreamlike, decidedly resigned, meteoric, cascading into winter’s well worn ritual of loss & removal. Last week, working here, we watched para-gliders float above us, an unexpected circus act emanating from the east side of the mountain, probably Warren. The thermals are in seasonal flux; & today’s deep chill brings a more vacant, silent sky. Puffy cumulous, no traffic, no acrobatics. I know I’m not alone as I scramble to get things wrapped up, closed up, buttoned up, and secured. I feel it acutely, the frantic rushing undercurrent, of October’s frosty mornings. The ecstatic failure of it, the realization of what hasn’t been accomplished. All human, all visceral, and cold and sinking. A vital thrust, to live, to survive. That’s what we do here, to shock ourselves, out of slumber, or laziness. Out of romance, out of fear. Because to be fully operative at this juncture, means stopping the tape of fantastical nirvana. It means waking up into the cold and dark and pulling forth, the light and the warmth from within. No more idle rides past the donkey fields, or the lama pastures of dilettante farmers. No more picture perfect barns on antiseptic LL Bean properties, no, just how will I pay for this and that, now that the snow has shut down a portion of my income. Not that there isn’t comic relief. Winding down at night, with a beer, thinking I’m alone for the night, I notice something like flashlights, aimlessly, perhaps drunkenly, wandering my yard. I open one door, then the next, to try & make contact. Eventually, two figures materialize, into view. “We were wondering about the outhouse”, one says. “Uh, okay, sorry about that. What’s the problem?” I respond. “Is it on the left, the little house, on the left?”. They are clearly unnerved. I guess I’d assumed an outhouse would speak for itself. Not create controversy. I am wrong. We wrangle over the definition of an outhouse, for a good five minutes. If I didn’t make this clear already, these are guests, staying at my yurt. They are extremely civil. But clearly, befuddled by the rustic facilities. “Uh, did you go up the path past the yurt ... I really think you should look there”, I say. I hadn’t realized, truth be told, that a smoke house, might be mistaken, for an outhouse. It just hadn’t entered my mind, so obviously: my bad. I’ve never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed. I suddenly, miraculously, see the root of their confusion. “Oh” I say. “I’m so sorry. Go south off the deck. There’s a wood chip path”. I recall, involuntarily, how hard I’d worked to bring wood chips to that path, last summer. Driving almost an hour to load my Chevy with the refuse of arborists, at a local nursery. Then driving home, clunking up the rough, nearly vertical farm road to the yurt, pulling my pickup as close as I could to it, then bucketing yards of material, to make a dry path to the outhouse. “Take a look for it, why don’t you” I say. The flash lights recede ... and I never heard another peep from those guests on the back forty. This is why I love being so vulnerable, to every Tom, Dick and Harry. If you know what I mean...and being a vegetarian now nigh 40 years, I’m sort of tickled to have inherited a smokehouse I’ll likely never use.”
