Basic Terrain
“The slopes are slick, due to unexpected rain, calculations for the week gone wrong, now snow in the forecast. No need to start work too early, or skip breakfast. The Barnard General Store is empty, I feel glad as I slip into the back to get my danish and get out in a flash. We used to linger here, but now things are solemn. Conviviality gone, scuffed wood floorboards quietly patient, awaiting some future season, I am silently reverential of what used to be normal. The sugar is something I’ve missed. Working outdoors as temperatures drop, the occasional blast of comfort-by-sweet is not a guilty pleasure. It’s a badge I wear like the dirt on my pants, or my disheveled hair. We have to get a job done, not easily, at this time of year. Summer people gone, or almost, we are here as an army, to tie up loose ends. Thinking back to the biography I once read, of Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson’s life in Vermont, I don’t forget how it fueled a very significant fantasy trajectory of mine. And now old-ish myself, I realize I’ve walked a thousand steps since then, and far exceeded my goal. The azaleas I’ve adopted, now shimmering with a luminescent red, I would never have known. The hydrangea, their confusing mixed signals, the hybrids and old strains in baffling indifference to each other, lying firmly in my care. In rubber boots, I walk carefully down the garden’s rock steps, not wanting to slip as I make the shortest path to my four wheeled Kubota with dump body. It’s a love affair involving others who maintain equipment, giving me the freedom to move more quickly, more easily and not use tarps. Visits to the far flung compost pile give rhythm to my day. I love all my short drives. Every graceful hummock around the pond on my way, every maneuver rounding culverts or newly planted grass, I treasure as if they were trusted friends. For they are. I feel my own self worth according to what I know of the land, as it rises beneath me, to support my effort. I hear the birds call, and see a few of them sit, appraising my work. This applies also to the house-keeper and the stone mason, when in casual conversation they mention the gardens. It’s a small society of everyday laborers in a small corner of the universe. Familiar by similarity of task, we carry and spill, dredge the basic terrain for best practices, and bring honor to humble successes. I feel such love for the curvatures and awkward stress spots that await me. Whether to put it in 2 wheel or 4, take out leaf litter full of mouse nests & chewed apples, push back wild asters encroaching on formal areas, or not ... this is my platter of choice, in the drizzle, making more ponderous a decidedly soggy day. I am always, it seems, standing speechless on the precipice of a very ungainly reality.”