Our Big Spring Day
Yesterday was lovely, sunny and warm. 87 deg F, is what the thermo said. Spring and flowers everywhere.
Except I overslept! I never do that, but the family got up then just let me snooze til 9:30!
I have to tell you my dream: We were vacationing at a crowded, complicated coastal area. It was beachy and boaty, but somehow it seemed commercialized and wrecked to me: noise, charter fishing boats, traffic. I wanted to get out of there! In the distance I saw scattered islands with palmtrees, blue water. I said “I’m outta here!” When you gotta go, you gotta go. Time to bust out for some adventure. And I did. I commandeered some boat and was headed out. Then I looked back. Suddenly I saw that where I was leaving really wasn’t so bad, if I looked at it right, if I had a better attitude. Then I woke up.
Roland was hosting a meeting at a local cafe at 9 a.m. I was late. But the family was having a nice, quiet, sunny morning. So I had breakfast and hung out with them awhile.
I was also supposed to help my brother Kelvin prune his orchard. It looked like a great day for it. I’d take Henry along. Martha would take Lucy on a bike ride to do her errands.
We loaded up the car with yesterday’s huge shipping load of book boxes—Martha would deliver them to the P.O. on Monday. Then I headed out for a quick visit to Roland’s Meeting. Then to pruning.
Do you know Roland? He’s our local itinerant guru, a master wizard. He just turned 65. He has no possessions. He loves to play tennis. He’s energetic, wiry, feisty, bouncy. Cat In The Hattish. He housesits for people and hosts meetings in all the local cafes all day long. He used to teach several foreign languages and English to foreigners at cafes all day as well, but now that he’s getting his micro-Social-Security payments, he can just do meetings. His meetings are Fourth Way Work meetings. He’s been involved with this stuff for decades. Gale, another local guru has put aside his significant work for now and is working as Roland’s righthand man, calling people, driving as need be. For Roland, small is best. For me, too. Also, he doesn’t charge. Not in money anyway. So this also fits the needs of thrifty Michiganders. Instead he insists that as payment we let him mow our yard. He mows it randomly and leaves the mower here and there in the middle of the job, then finishes it later. By random I mean that he mows hither and yon, left right up down circles. Habit is the enemy. But practice is important. So he mows our yard. Of course, I love to mow it also, so we work it out. Also I provide him with bikes. He won’t maintain them so I pick up castoffs as I find them as his bikes corrode.
So I went to the meeting. Our Ann Arbor friend was there—PhD biochem, lawyer, musician. Also another guy who was the world-record-holder in the 440 in the 70’s. What a crew! We read some things aloud, told some stories, saw how they related. Then Roland had to play tennis and I announced The Pruning. Roland said I should’ve come in and declared that the Meeting was now A Pruning to begin with. Oh well. I had thought of it, but I wasn’t sure if there were enough tools or if Kelvin would actually be home.
Bart had time before Shape-Note Singing so he joined the pruning mission. We went home, got Henry and went to Kelvin’s Raven Farm. He was home and we set out. Henry had a slingshot and went looking for frogs. We 3 pruned for an hour and got quite a few apple trees done. We told Kelvin that the pruning had almost turned into a mission. I also brought up the subject of the new fad of Adventure Racing, where people do a variety of tough but thoughtful tasks for many hours on end. We decided that pruning and the farm in general would make a great Spiritual Spa and Adventure Race Course. People would pay to prune and learn serentity and gain fitness and health. And then we could send them over to our house where they could build a porch for me in a single day, digging the foundations and doing all the work with hand tools, measuring and planning and designing as they went. It would be a very challenging day that would wear them out and test their bodies and minds in many ways. So Kelvin said we owed him a lot for the pruning.
We went home then Henry and I (and Daisy the GWP dog) went to the local Red Cedar River to catch crayfish and frogs, bringing buckets, hipboots and busted old kiddy hand-nets with us. We had just caught a nice frog when a beautiful young lady showed up, scantily attired in sun-apparel, with a big camera. She said she was from the paper and doing a story on the river and had been traveling down it from park to park all day and hadn’t seen anyone but us til now and could she take our pictures. She asked me why I thought more people didn’t use the river. I said “TV.” Then I asked if I could take her picture, too, because I was a journalist myself. She laughed. But then seemed interested in the OYB stuff and asked if she could do stories for me. I said Sure, just check out the website. Daisy and I were out wading in the river. I turned over a rock and found a big hellgrammite and showed it to Henry and her on shore. She took pictures. This was turning into another “Adaptation”! Well… Maybe more like “Bridges of Madison County” in reverse. Well… Eventually she left to explore more of the river. Then I figured out how to catch the minnows I’d been after. Everything has a knack, doesn’t it. They were too quick to scoop, so I chased them into the net instead. Man, they were gorgeous! They proved to be Rainbow Darters (I googled them. But now link is dead) One website in Ohio called them “Our most beautiful fish.” They were! So we caught a bunch for our garden pond then went home. We told our story to Martha, and Becky who was visiting. Then I took Henry and Lucy to the woodsy park behind my parents’ house to hunt for salamanders.
When we had hiked a ways into the woods, we suddenly saw FIRE and smoke! Lots of it! I went up to it and couldn’t see around the area that was burning. Yikes! I told the kids we were going back and they were going to my brothers’ house (next door to parents) to wait with their older cousin while my brother Tim and I got shovels, called the fire department and put out the fire. So we all scootled on back and I told my bro and his eyes bugged out and in short order we were on our way. So were the firemen. They arrived (someone else had called) and pulled into my parents’ driveway and trundled into the woods, borrowing some of our shovels along the way. They were all very plump fellows, wearing very heavy stuff. In short order we had the fire contained by shoveling the 1 acre perimeter. I think we did nearly all the work. My bro was hyperventilating a bit and I told him to pace himself, breathe steady, and we got the job done. It was very windy and the fire was about 3 feet tall in the forest moving quickly, but we got ahead of it. It was very smoky, too, and we had to dash into better air every few minutes. So much for salamander hunting. We finished, left the few guys who had water-tanks do the squirting on logs in the interior and went back. Many neighbors were around and we told them the adventure. One said she saw trailerpark kids smoking back there yesterday. Later on we saw the firetrucks pulling into the trailerpark. I bet they gave some truants a scare. My folks had been gone but pulled up when we were all gathered. Their eyes were bugging out. I teased them a bit but then said all was well.
Then we went home and had a fine dinner of fish with lime and deluxe couscous that Martha had made.
What a day!
