Month: August 2021

Riding my bicycle up a long climb I pass a man riding in the same direction. He’s older than me, wearing an orange tee shirt and a white helmet, and he has a holstered pistol on one hip. I say hi and he says hi back, friendly enough but neither of us trying too hard. I keep pedalling, not looking anywhere but where I’m going, deciding not to be unsettled by the presence of that gun, which is now behind me and out of sight, though not quite out of mind. It helps that I’ve seen the man riding before, at least a handful of times. I’ve noticed the pistol before. It’s not like he’s trying to conceal it. I might be more unsettled if he were concealing it, like most people who carry around here. But of course if he were concealing it, I wouldn’t know about it, and therefore wouldn’t know to be unsettled, even if maybe I should be. Funny how life works. It’s not usually what we know that gets us.

There’s not much left of summer. It’s going the way every season goes: Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, then picking up speed until you’re waking in the dead dark and thinking you better get the hearth for the wood stove finished so you can get the damn stove hooked back up real soon. Besides, you’re sick of tripping over the stove which is sitting in the middle of the floor next to the big laundry rack you’re also sick of tripping over, but which is pretty much a permanent fixture at this point, so you’ve come to accept it. Or so you claim. Still, it’s going to be a nice hearth, big slate tiles set flush with the floor boards so there’s no more stubbing toes on the grubby old bricks that were always supposed to be a temporary solution. And here you are only six years later making good on that promise.

The pond is still warm. The last of the blueberries are so sweet and a little soft. The cows are on their final rotation of pasture. I watch them graze in the fading light, it seems to me as if they’re forever eating, eating, eating, fattening themselves for the winter that in their bones they must surely know is coming fast.

Driving up the mountain road, I trail a red Ford pickup hauling an old John Deere mower. Both the truck and the mower have seen better days by far, but the colors of them – the truck deep red, the mower that unmistakeable John Deere green – are bright and cheerful. The truck’s tailgate is lowered to accommodate the mower, which I can see is held loosely place by a rusty chain strung from bed rail to bed rail. None of those fancy ratchet straps I’m so fond of, the ones that always end up in knotted piles on the floor of my truck. The Ford rattles over the washboards, and the mower wags back and forth. An empty bottle shoots off the lip of the lowered tailgate, bounces into the road, and miraculously doesn’t break. I have the passing thought that I should stop to retrieve it, but I don’t. I’m not in the mood to deal with someone else’s trash.

Going over the top of the mountain, I see that the leaves are beginning to change, and for the first time this summer, I have the sense that another season is imminent, and I’m suddenly awash in all the things I still need to do. Finish the new hearth for the woodstove. Finish siding the barn. Replace the rotting boards on the paddock fence. Change the hydraulic fluid in the tractor. And on it goes, seemingly without end, a list I already know will have to be reconsidered, reprioritized, reordered, the tasks that address heat and the containment of livestock moved higher, above those relating to cosmetics and convenience.

And so as I follow the truck and mower through the curves on the west side of the mountain, that is exactly what I’m doing – reconsidering, reordering, reprioritizing – until by the time we hit the flats, I’ve got the list pared down to nearly nothing, a trifling weekend or two’s worth of work (if that), and I’m already getting all sorts of ideas about what I’m going to do with my free time.

I’ve shared this one before, I think. But it’s always worth another listen.