““They’re old people”, he said, then fell silent. “How old?” I countered. “Oh, in their 70s ...” he replied. “So ... “ I postulated, “not that old.” I admit I’m not the best judge of time. This is how it feels, as one gingerly rolls past 40,50, then 60. It’s more about who is able to do what, and what you are being hired to do, that old people can’t do, in any particular scenario. I felt reassured as I looked at their yard, an old farmyard summer home, entrenched in fog, still wallowing under the remnants of a spring dumping of two feet of snow.”No problem,” I said. “We can do this”. I could easily grasp the scope of the garden, the stumps of hydrangeas cut back last fall, early shoots of daylily, rose barbs, the eager daffodils, pushing up against the house, despite a late freeze. We did the cursory walk around the buildings. For me, unbeknownst to this able property manager, the location meant a lot. The road itself was named “Wing Farm” and from that I knew, we were looking at some history. The barns alone, told a long form story, that I could not help but admire. Built into a rocky slope, their graceful structures told of time, and effort and a magnanimous understanding of topography. Nothing any professional engineer was involved with, but something that would have required an enormous amount of common sense, and tedious attention to detail. In the mist, which hung heavy due to melting conditions, it was impossible to see the views. But I could feel them. Not far below, a raging mountain river met its confluent point, into valley waters. The trees, old and enormous, had not been disturbed, as their job to hold steep embankments in place, for centuries, was obvious. This is where I would rather spend my time, I thought, than any modern spec home, where bulldozers clawed and blasting made any inhospitable place, workable. There is a violence to that, that takes many decades to heal. For the last of the landscape gardeners still employed, it is an honor to tend to homes from another time, beyond time. He threw out some names: Flo, or Glo, or Lily, or Matty. The inheritors of a family home, who still cared for it in old school ways, though they could not be in residence for more than a few weeks, in the summer. This type of job, is a gold mine to me. Free reign, within respectful bounds, to keep the grounds ensconced in whatever motivation first imposed its aesthetic onto the land. He dropped me off at my truck, after the site visit, and I drove, once again, towards home. Between there, and here, I was looking for another point of reflection, not ready to return to my mundane duties. Looking right and left, gauging snow amounts as I rose to the height of the gap, then descended, my eye stayed tuned. So much change, is what we revel in, this time of year, be it good, or bad. I pulled off at the Robert Frost Wayside Trail: I admit, never stopped at before, due to my commuting in haste, to and fro past it, for so many years. No one was there, on this ugly day. Dank, cold enough to warrant down jackets, gray in tone, and wet. I believe Frost spoke of an “alder swamp”, and this was the first thing I encountered. Following the trail map, I met his poems, at intervals. The introductory ones, a few, short, terse, easy to grasp sentences. Then, deeper in, the classics. The road not taken. Stopping on a snowy evening. Refusal. Each new strike of words in the woods, nearly made me weep. I had to pause on a side trail, a deer trail, in order to get my bearings. This is just a scrappy, shitty place for anything, I thought. But I know better than to evaluate, as if I’m some kind of god. I felt my feet slow down on the path, and my head turn up. This cathedral of hemlock might have been less mighty back then, but he planted a forest. He wrote on a shoe string, and shot from his hip with such unfettered eloquence. Okay, Frost. Okay, okay. I’m going to be hinged to you, for a long, long time.”
