Up before dawn today, and out onto the frozen ground as soon as I could get my boots and coat on. I went up to the woodlot for my morning prayers, face lifted to the shy sun, gloved hands held up in the stillness. My voice must have carried down the hill, because in a while, I heard movement. At first I thought it was a clutch of doves I'd noticed on the climb to the fenceline. But in a moment, something nudged my elbow. Domino and Shorty, insistent on a snack I didn't have with me. As soon as they realized that I had nothing edible with me, they moved on with faintly disgusted sneers in their equine teeth.
When I came down, I did so through the south pasture, where the horse and donkey spend most of their time. I marvelled - not for the first time - at how closely and uniformly they have cropped the pasture down. It looks as if a John Deere has been mowing it.
I returned to the house for a cup of coffee. As I drank it, I stood and watched the cemetary's glow grow under the reaching sun's rays. The urge to walk was still on me, so I drained my cup, put my Carhartt back on, and took my stick on down the road.
When I got near the cemetary, I looked up at the high hill behind it, the one on which the bulls usually graze. Not a sign of a black bovine. On impulse, I decided to trespass and climb it...if I could get past the electric fence.
My walking stick proved a valuable ally. I laid it across the low fence and pushed down. This allowed me to step over (barely) and then retrieve the stick. I was committed.
The climb was steep and somewhat slippery from the frost. I had to stop and rest three or four times during the ascent. When I reached the apex, I turned and looked down, and here is what I saw.
I found a way across the larger fence and climbed over it, too. Then I struck east across the brow of the hill directly across from Possum Cough, on the opposite side of the valley from our home. The view was stupendous. I stopped to rest at a hawthorne bush and looked down at Mr. Davidson's barn, seeing it for the first time from the other side.
At the crest of the far hill, a single tree stood high and stark. It struck me as the perfect place for a gravesite. Who can say whether or not someone's bones lie tucked among its roots, awaiting the sound of the last trumpet?
I rested again before crossing the rest of the valley, and checked to see if the timer would work in the chilly air. It did.
I paused beside a broken tree trunk and looked down at Possum Cough from this new angle.
The climb back down was much easier, though my quadriceps are feeling shaky as I type this. The birds were out in full presence, anticipating a warmer day. I saw a baby hawk in one of the far trees, but couldn't get a good shot of him. The chickadees and titmice laughed at me all the way down the hill. I ignored them, choosing my footsteps with care and noticing how supple and alive the lamb's ears looked, dotting the hillside.
I arrived back at Possum Cough slightly winded but feeling wonderful. My face was as ruddy as King David and all my fathers. But when I went back inside the house, I discovered that MeeMaw was still sick, still feverish. I installed her on the couch with something to drink and something to read and made her toast and coffee. I also ordered her to stay home from worship.
After church, we read the afternoon away, and MeeMaw rested and coughed and tried to breathe through her nose, the poor little dear one. Back to the couch for her, and then I went for one more ramble up in the woods. As I passed through the horse fencing out back, I noticed Biscuit sunning himself by the goat shed. He chirped his curious, trilling call to me but declined to follow me.
Once in the woods, I turned and took a photo of Possum Cough. At this time of year, one can see the house easily from the woods. In just a few months, it will be a dense green tangle of leaf and stalk and vine.
When I got near the southeast corner of the property line (the topmost left corner), I noticed one of the cows licking something. A brand new calf has joined the family here, and she's a fine looking heifer.
I found a loose bit of barbed wire and debated about stretching and securing it so that no smaller cows might find their way through. But then I decided to use it myself as egress onto Mr. Davidson's corn pasture to the south. I figured, "I started this morning as a trespasser; may as well end the day as one, too."
Walking the cut corn field was very pleasureable. Every sort of rock imaginable was lying near the surface, pushed up by the shifting earth and the frost. I kept thinking, "If I had a metal detector and a spade, I'll bet I could find some interesting artifacts." Perhaps even a bullet fired by - or at - bad old Benge. I found a lovely rock which had the top sliced off (probably by a plow) like a boiled egg on an English breakfast table. I put it in my pocket and walked on.
The short corn stalks were beautiful in a very bleak way in the afternoon wind. I mused to myself, "Just months ago, where I'm standing was lush and full of life and food. Deer and coons hid here. And now, it's bare and bears only the skeletons of what it once did. And come summer, it will once again teem with provender." I was reminded again of the brevity of life, and of the fever within me to produce, produce, produce.
I finally climbed back onto our property and secured the breach in the wire. Then I turned toward home and came back in the house, again ruddy-faced and content. I washed off the rock I picked up, and decided to use it as a paperweight. Up close, it looks like some sort of burrito cross-section. Looking at it, I am reminded of a scene in Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It, where the narrator's father, a Presbyterian minister, is walking along the river with his two sons and stops to look at a river rock.
Father: Long ago rain fell on mud and became rock. Half a billion years ago. But even before that, beneath the rocks, are the words of God. Listen...
Narrator: And if Paul and I listened very carefully all our lives, we might hear those words.
Norman MacLean concluded his beautiful book with the words, "I am haunted by waters." I walk this land and can say in truth that I am haunted by the soil itself. I never escape it. Nor do I wish to.
Rest well, loved ones.
