It Was Better When I Was There

Last night, driving a back road home from checking on the fields we hay (the grass high and thick, lush from the frequent rain, more than ready for mowing if only things would dry out for a spell), I came upon a truck driving slow. In the bed, a male at some indistinguishable point on the spectrum between boy and man, his right hand clenched around the collar of a Holstein calf. The calf seemed calm enough and remarkably steady on his feet, and the young man/old boy looked to be enjoying himself, as one would under such circumstances: A warm evening, the scents and colors of the landscape emboldened by the recent showers, the joy inherent to riding in an open pickup truck bed, and surely on some level whether conscious or not, the companionship of the animal.


Then the young man/old boy turned his head, and the wind kicked his baseball cap into the air. It landed on the shoulder of the road, and I pulled over to retrieve it, and I could see him giving me a thumbs up with his non-calf-holding hand. Then I sped to catch the truck, which eventually pulled to the side of the road. “It’s a nice hat,” I said. “Would’ve been a shame to lose it.” He chuckled and thanked me, and they waved me past, which I was sort of sorry for, because soon the truck would be far behind me and what I’ve found is that life is mostly a series of moments in which nothing very much is happening, and so often the things that occupy our thoughts and fears and longings and even joys are not the things directly before us, but things that live in some unrealized future. And therefore do not live at all.


But on this evening, in this moment, on this little-traveled dirt road in Caledonia County, Vermont, something was happening. It’d be gone soon, swept into my rearview mirror and then my past, something I’ll remember for a while, but probably not for long. Which is ok, really: It was better when I was there.


Saturday Morning


Morning light in the barnyard

On Saturday morning I turned left instead of right out our driveway, and so rode past Dan’s house just as he was emerging on his way to the logging job he’s on. It was barely 6:00, and we talked a few minutes, then I rode on, and he got in his truck and went to work. I rolled fast down a steep hill past still-unmown hayfields and at the bottom turned to pedal alongside the mountain stream, where I soon came upon a doe and her spotted fawn standing in water. Drinking. Each of us surprising the other, the doe suddenly alert, tail twitching, long legs moving this way then that, prancing in place, but all the while her attention trained on me. As was mine on her. The fawn hadn’t seen me, and kept trying to nurse, and eventually latched on. I wanted to stay but now felt an intruder, so began to pedal again. Uphill now. In another mile or so I passed a house where two rabbits sat under the front bumper of a Ford Mustang, the rabbits fat and furry, the car sleek and black. Then over the bridge and past the small house of the man who lives alone with no car and a yard full of perennial plantings. I see him working outside often, but he does not invite conversation, and I know little about him other than what I have just written plus the fact that he seems to me somehow ageless and I’ve heard he walks 10 miles a day or more, but surely this is exaggeration. Another half-mile, and I’m through the narrow bend where the old roadside maples bear the scars of vehicles traveling too fast, too wide, and there are John’s big Devon oxen, still bedded down, those goddamn magnificent horns thrusting skyward. They watch me disinterestedly, even dismissively, almost as if they have no idea how fascinating I am. They’ll figure it out eventually.

Soon I arrived home. I dove into the pond, the water exactly as cold as I’d hoped it would be.


Maybe That’s OK

Rain in the night, and still more as day broke. A relief, really; it’s amazing how quickly the ground turned to thirst, cars tailing plumes of dust along the mountain road, the creek low and quiet. Sometimes in the early mornings I ride my bicycle to the top of the mountain and back. I like how the trees – maples, mostly – knit their leafed branches together over the road, forming a tunnel as the climb begins in earnest. I pedal into the tunnel just as the sun is rising, and suddenly everything is dim again, and there I am in the near-dark with my heart in my ears, the birds in morning song, the dry dirt crackling beneath the tires of my old bike.

I realize just now how often I write of early day, and I’m pretty sure why: I think there is something about the break of day that brings one closer to the inner workings of heart and mind, even if only to realize that the inner workings of heart and mind are as cluttered and fumbling as ever. Which I suppose is itself a certain clarity for the truth it speaks.

It is my habit to sit in silence for few minutes upon awakening, in the winter before the wood stove, in the summer perhaps the same, or outside atop one of the large stones that protrudes from the ground at the height of the knoll above our house. I don’t entirely understand the value of this habit; I tried for a while to understand, but have finally (and wisely, I think) given up on the expectation of it even having value. But I continue to do it anyway, mostly even when I don’t much want to, and I sense it is doing something for me, even if I don’t know what “it” is.

Then it occurs to me that maybe it’s nothing. And maybe that’s ok.