“It’s that time of year, when the part of the wood pile that’s bone dry takes its special place in the burning regimen. It will get colder now, as rules of thumb begin to blur. “Half your wood, and half your hay...” No, that’s not it. Too early. “The fire is winter’s fruit...”. Ah. That might fit. Here we are, picking our way through the year’s wreckage, marking ourselves “safe”. Some didn’t make it. Some friendships didn’t make it. Some lived without nets, or at least kept their critical thinking alive, some weren’t afraid to embrace exile. Others quaked and cracked, or conversely, swelled with pride and forced others to do what they were doing. None of it really felt good, did it. I was lucky to be employed by dirt, and as antidotes go, its not a bad one. The last days we worked before the snow, we were cataloging plants. The field grass had partied all summer, and it was hard to decide: kneel and hack with a trowel or stand and thrust with a shovel. If all of life’s decisions could have been so easy, this year, with days regulated like an animal’s, to nature’s constant flux. I felt immense relief just to feel the wind tousling my hair, feel the warmth of the sun, then the chill as the sun moved behind the trees. The comedy of throwing on coats, then peeling them off; of rinsing hands in nearly frozen water, late fall, or forgetting to wear hats, in midsummer heat. Not always having the best lunch, or any lunch. Bringing water in old, glass juice jars. Peeing out back, past the limb dump, in tractor tire ruts. How I miss those precious breaks, crouching incognito amidst my favorite things: grass, forest dales, the sky. Even the rush at twilight, to trim one last flower, or rescue a forgotten bucket. It all whirls in my mind, like skittering leaves swept up instead of down. What a torn pants person, I’ve become but really, I do hate shopping for clothes. I’d rather be a wolf: circling out, doubling back, mute as sunrise begins to color the sky. Happy, unhappy I don’t know and I can’t care anymore. You just have to live for who you are. For some don’t realize until it’s too late, how gradually they’ve surrendered their life & spirit to death, by a thousand cuts. And it didn’t begin today, or last month, or last year. It began with the first blow that shattered their trust, so very long ago.”
