Small Victories
12/21/20 • 3 min
When we lived at Terry’s house—a small log cabin in East Charlotte at the end of a very long and sometimes treacherous dirt driveway, I counted getting all the way home a small victory. Let me clarify, sometimes that victory was actually quite large. I tended to drive low-to-the-ground fuel-efficient Honda Civic Hatchbacks back then. Though I often outfitted those Hondas with studded snow tires, the depth of the snow in the driveway sometimes prevented entrée. Terry plowed the driveway himself and on his own schedule, which wasn’t always mine. He had built the cabin himself from timbers he’d taken from the land with a team of horses he’d borrowed from a neighbor. He was an excellent, though sometimes taciturn housemate. His cabin was the perfect landing place for us when we packed up and left Emmett’s dad.
When we lived at Terry’s house—a small log cabin in East Charlotte at the end of a very long and sometimes treacherous dirt driveway, I counted getting all the way home a small victory. Let me clarify, sometimes that victory was actually quite large. I tended to drive low-to-the-ground fuel-efficient Honda Civic Hatchbacks back then. Though I often outfitted those Hondas with studded snow tires, the depth of the snow in the driveway sometimes prevented entrée. Terry plowed the driveway himself and on his own schedule, which wasn’t always mine. He had built the cabin himself from timbers he’d taken from the land with a team of horses he’d borrowed from a neighbor. He was an excellent, though sometimes taciturn housemate. His cabin was the perfect landing place for us when we packed up and left Emmett’s dad.
Previous Episode
Farm Share
It is the season of bizarre vegetables. Being the thoughtful Vermonter that I am, I subscribe to a local farm share. Every two weeks I get a basket—actually it is a yellow plastic bag—filled with fresh produce. This is the time of year when my “Standard Family Share” gets weird. Red and yellow carrots, entire branches of Brussels sprouts, parsnips, and kohlrabi find their way into my kitchen. Who are these strangers?
Next Episode
The Pursuit of Truth
If my dharma were the pursuit of truth, I’d not be here tapping these keys right now. I’d have never left welding, where everything is black and white. Well, it’s really black and silver or sometimes black and copper; there are no gray areas. A weld is either a good one or a bad one. There is no in-between. You have to bring the metal up to the right temperature, use the right mix of oxygen and acetylene, the right flux. It can be fiddly, but there’s no getting around a good weld. It’s truer than the metal it unites. Period.
Other things, like the future or what a dog thinks, are not as straightforward.
On Saturday morning, a chickadee hit the sliding glass door and fell to the snow. I heard the clunk of its little head on the cold glass only in retrospect. At the time, I didn’t consciously notice it until my dog Dewey brought it to my attention. He whined and whimpered at the lower corner of the big glass door. Pinned to the spot, he looked out with concern. When I finally got his message, I went out onto the porch and scooped the unconscious bird into my hands.
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