“I knocked on the first camper, unsure of myself and waited, looking at my boots. No response. A stream running through the forested, make-shift yard filled the silence of early evening, ambient, & mysterious. Who would live here? Oh, yeah, I pretty much do, a stone’s throw down the road. But these guys are really roughing it. I, at least, have a house. Above, looming in mist, Moose Mountain and the “Grand Canyon”: a jagged passage of cliff, picturesque from a distance, traversed, by Brian on a recent survey of his clan’s back boundary, still a no-man’s-land to the rest of us. I move on to the next camper, knocking, tentatively, as I see no cars, no vehicles of any type. I wait. Suddenly, the camper door flies open. Two black cats slink out the opening, and disappear into the brush. Her smile is welcoming. “Hello!”, she says. “I”m here, watching random YouTube videos. I don’t have my pants on”. This is typical, for rural living. But I’m only here to repossess my battery powered lawn mower and weed whacker. The sky is showing signs of thunderclouds in a massive build up, moving rapidly overland, sketched against our wild terrain or in collaboration to deliver a pure dose of something untainted. I get it. I’ve always got how some things need to get out of hand, in order to self correct. It’s not a formula for the faint of heart, but it’s a formula or operational code that some of us ride in on. A sort of civilian “Special Ops” or verdant beret. We don’t scare easy, though it takes years, no, decades of practice to realize, we’re meant to survive it and surpass it. Victimization is just a passing phase of misunderstanding. So she walked me back to my place, with a helping hand, returning the grass cutters to the wood shed, with neighborly conversation, to boot. How many blessings can there be? That arise from nothing, and could turn on a dime to be missed opportunities. You wonder, how tricky is this life. How awfully, artfully, designed it is, to trip up the most innocent among us. “The meek shall inherit the earth”? Not first or with any obvious claim to any prize. So get used to that; I have. The shy, the handicapped, the introverted, the mind-blown, the traumatized, who by default express an extreme sport called unbounded creativity, the quiet toilers in corners of beauty that few witness, ever. It’s an approach that demands you honor each square foot of soil in your care as if your life was a public garden. Mine is. I feel that. Despite the fact that I spend hours in isolation, pondering the complexities. Who to let in. Who to turn out. Who to ignore. All done in love. Logan showed up unexpectedly, to pick up his tools, just as Karl arrived with a bottle of wine. I believe I’ll remember every rock that got moved on this land, tho in reality, who does. Much work goes unsung, possibly remarked upon later, with brief comments towards who might have did it. I use bad grammar intentionally. That’s how gigantic rocks are moved into place, or sunk beneath miles of mud. No one there to poeticize or eulogize, the passing of a remarkable moment of decision making or creative aplomb. With dirt, with rocks. With words, with machines, with love. And all of the above.”
