Month: May 2020

The weather has shifted, and early mornings carry the softness of the emerging season. It’s still cool when I awake, still dark-ish, and I make coffee on the wood stove, then milk, this morning in just a tee shirt, the new sun almost hot on my back. By 7:00 I can hear a chainsaw in the the woods down the road. Then a second. It doesn’t bother me so much. I don’t mind chainsaws. They’re loud, but I guess they make sense to me.

We don’t go out much (well: no one does), and I miss those inconsequential meetings of circumstance, the ones that used to happen when I ran to Willey’s for a box of screws, a tank of gas, and one of those 50-cent orange creamsicle bars the boys and I are so fond of. I’m not so good at the intentional socializing these times demand, though I’m working on it. And though in many ways I appreciate this new, slowed-down version of my life, I can’t quite comprehend it yet. It’s like the tempo’s all wrong, and I haven’t quite figured out how to play with the band.

Yesterday, I took my first swim in the pond, barely a week after the last snow. The water was cold, but not as cold as I’d expected. I walked barefoot back through the orchard, dripping onto the newly-lush grass, which is getting noticeably taller every day. I’ll let the cows onto it soon, and they’ll eat it down in no time. God. How quickly everything can change. And how quick we are to forget.

Really enjoying this one from Drive-By Truckers. Sounds like summer to me. 

In the morning there is a dusting of snow and more falling, albeit so lightly I have to look carefully to see it in the air. I halter Pip to the stem of a young birch and milk in the pasture, my right knee pressed into the soft ground, the small flakes melting into the heat of her flank. I can hear the mountain stream running strong with the melt that’s still flowing out of the high woods. I can hear the steer, Saul, rummaging through the pile of hay I’ve heaped before him. I can hear the twin streams of milk hitting the bottom of the pail, and the change in tone as the milk accumulates. My nose is cold and I press it into Pip’s side for warmth. It’s the simplest of pleasures, the tiniest of comforts. But for now, it’ll do.