“Sometimes it takes a chainsaw to get the job done; note to self. You can wish for things to be different until the cows come home, but extraordinary times may require a more demonstrative approach. Doesn’t really matter if the saw was recently sharpened, or if the operator is expert. You work with what you have and the heart of it, is who shows up. To be in the woods with my kids again, well, what can I say. We used to build fairy houses and look for lost balls out there. Maybe poked around pools where frog’s eggs would suddenly amass in a sea of bubbles. One sings while she works, hauling brush with a generous dollop of joy. The other tackles new problems with enthusiasm and irrepressible good will. I can still drag a log, though I admit, it’s getting harder. That birch blow-down I pulled to the back pasture, was possibly an overreach. And while you may be poised to employ newspaper and matches, your own progeny are likely to show up with gasoline. That’s how the world turns. You laid them in cribs, now they are menu planning your five course dinner. They know a local goat cheese you haven’t tried. They arrive with extraordinary spouses and friends, to enlighten you with new perspectives, as if ordered from some harmonious universe where thieves and braggarts are quickly dispatched, serving soups and wines, asking little in return. In pandemic season, this goes a longer way than usual. Alone for weeks and ostracized by federal edict without but the occasional human entering my world, I drop to my knees to be apart of my own ongoing life, planting aging knees into the snow, to check the inflammation. Talk to me about your comedy of errors with the tractor and the chain. Tell me that you are discovering worlds opening into vast worlds of healing and knowledge. I want to know about the difficulties of running a public library as much as the difficulties running a chainsaw. Amazing humans, who work hard to contribute to society, as well as retreat from it to tend chickens, and maybe eventually, sheep. We’re all building something so much more than we know. But we can only do it a brick at a time, a shovel full, a board length, a difficult conversation had over here, to resolve an issue over there. Let’s keep low to the ground. That way, the only direction is up.”
