The Ways of Things Mechanical and Electrical

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

I am sitting in a car dealership while my car is being serviced and while they decide how much more they can find to charge me for before they reach my flash point.  I don’t know what it is about car dealer service departments, but they never earn my trust, even if the particular service agent I usually deal with has earned mine – in the sense that I believe he charges me less for unnecessary add-ons than any of the other so-called service agents would.  For so-called ‘service agents are really misnamed salesmen who are well-armed and advantaged by their certain knowledge of my absolute ignorance of things mechanical.  When I walk into the service department, I usually have one hand clenched solidly and protectively over my wallet, not that the precaution ever does me much good; when I walk into the service department, all that the service agents see is a fully plucked, fully dressed and well-stuffed turkey awaiting only a good baking to be consumable.

I have to pause a moment here and say that I am a man of no mechanical aptitude whatsoever.  That is not to say that I don’t like mechanical things, for I do.  I have a male’s love of fine mechanics and magical electronic devices.  I just don’t know a damned thing about they work, settling, instead, for appreciating and enjoying what they do.  I don’t understand the why or the wherefore of the individual parts in their uniquity; I only understand the value and service of the totality of which they are but a component.

I remember having dreams as a child about taking things apart, inherently understanding how they worked, and astounding adults by my ability to put them back together in a more efficient way than the manner in which they existed prior to the time I found them.  In actuality, when I did take things apart I was never smart enough to think about re-assembly during the destruction stage, so destruction was all I wrought.  So while I did astound my adults, I usually did so in a way I came to instantly regret.

But this is a piece about mechanical ability – or the lack thereof – and not about completely undeserved parental cruelty to innocent, angelic children.

This week has been one of those weeks that periodically occurs here on the Farm.  You know the kind of week I mean, of that I’m certain: the kind where everything that can go wrong to things mechanical or electronic does go wrong.  It started last Saturday when we left the house early with Peter and Amanda to celebrate my birthday with a fine meal at an excellent restaurant.  We had gone about a mile when the red warning light for low tire pressure lit up my car’s dashboard – the kind of red low tire pressure warning light which tells you one of five tires (including the spare) has low tire pressure, but fails to specify which one.

Did I mention it was raining as we set out for the restaurant?  Of course, you knew that already, as well as you also know that in this enlightened day and age of self-service gas stations, all of the air pumps are located by themselves, as far away from actual cover as the owners, in their wicked ways, think they can get away with while still being able to charge for what used to be free.

Oh, and when they do charge you, they always ask for specific coinage that you don’t currently possess, causing long walks to and from the air pump to the enclosed building where the correct coinage might, or might not, be available.

So being smart in the ways that only the mechanically challenged can be, I announced to the assembled family that we were returning home to get Helen’s car as I was not, while it was raining, going to (a) try to determine which tire was causing the warning light to glow, or (b) actually change a tire if one went flat during our journey.  So return home we did, and I am happy to report that we eventually had a fine meal without further interruption or, for that matter, further thought about the red warning light aglow on my dashboard.

Sunday passed in the bliss of a day of rest, but Monday morning reinserted visions of the red low tire pressure warning light into my consciousness.  When I went to my car to see if it had magically reset itself and was no longer playing a practical joke upon me, I found it hadn’t.  So it was off to the gas station with my tire pressure gauge to find the offending tire.  Did I mention that it was not raining on Monday and that I was feeling pretty smart at this juncture?  No, I guess I didn’t.  In any event, it wasn’t and, when I got to the gas station, I found the offending tire on the first try, and filled it. Then, having undergone the tortuous body winding required by the Japanese (wait, there’s a reason for this descriptor!) manufacturer of my car in order to banish the red low tire pressure warning light to warning light heaven, I was rewarded with a dashboard cleansed of red warning lights of any nature and drove happily home.

Monday was the first of three consecutive days of promised sunshine, a rare enough occurrence in Humptulips County this time of year.  Since our lower pasture has gotten randy with springtime lust, it requires a good taming.  And since it had been raining steadily for a week and the weather forecasters were pretty certain that we would have at least the three sunshine filled days, I decided that Wednesday was the day to attack the pasture with our heavy tractor and my new (just last year) industrial mower deck.  At the appointed hour of high noon on Wednesday (to let the morning’s dew evaporate), I walked resolutely to the barn, opened all of the appropriate gates between the barn and lower pasture through which I and the tractor must pass to commence our chore, raised the heavy overhead barn door behind which the tractor resides, and settled into the tractor seat to start it.  And, of course, you know the rest.

It didn’t!

But it did turn over.  The tractor is diesel fueled and has what is delightfully known as a glow plug – and it wasn’t glowing.  I tried several times to start the infernal thing, and, when it failed to cooperate, I gave up and trudged back to the house to get our hand-held battery assist device.  I found the hand-held battery assist device in one go (this being a minor miracle in and of itself), and carried it back to the barn.  Thereupon, I managed to raise the tractor’s hood, clear away the mechanical things above the battery (a strange design indeed, when the horn has to be unstrapped and moved so the battery can be revealed, but this – and the unique position of my car’s reset button for the red low tire pressure warning light (there, I told you there was a reason) – probably has something to do with Shintoism that I am wholly unable to comprehend, not being an adherent), and connected the right lead to the right post and the correct ground.  And then, nothing.

When I finally got smart enough to check the status of the hand-held battery assist device, I found it held no charge.  None whatsoever.  So I began to search for an available electrical plug, only to realize that all of those in the barn were placed higher than the length of the hand-held battery assist device’s power cord would reach.  Having finally found an old rusted horse trough upended in the farthest corner of the barn from the tractor’s appointed stall, I upended it underneath a near-by electrical plug, placed the hand-held battery assist device upon its top, plugged it in, and, realizing I had some hours to wait before it would be operational, went back to the house for a spot of lunch and a rest from my many labors.

By 4:00 PM, I felt the hand-held battery assist device would be charged enough to warrant another attempt upon the tractor.  And to my surprise, the tractor started with minimum effort.  Now having the means to carry the hand-held battery assist device back to the garage where it usually resides without having to actually carry it (why do they all weigh as much as they do?), I placed it upon the tractor’s hood and, holding it in place with one hand, drove the tractor back to the house with the other.  Not being dressed for mowing, I decided I would become suitably attired and then proceed to mow the lower pasture.  Thinking to also deal with a call of nature and remembering that the tractor always restarts once it has turned over after sitting unused for a while, I carefully turned it off and went in the house to do my business.

Did I mention that I’d parked the tractor right in front of our garage, blocking both entrances/exits?  No?  But you’d guessed, right?

When I came back out, business finished and suitably attired, the tractor refused to even turn over.  And the hand-held battery assist device was of no utility whatsoever, having given its charged all in the previous, successful attempt at tractor ignition.  So there was nothing for it but to plug the damned thing in again and wait several more hours for it to recharge for the second time.

Having a breakfast meeting scheduled for the following morning, I now turned my attention to moving the temporarily deceased tractor from in front of the garage.  Have I mentioned how much a tractor weighs?  No, I thought not as well.  I eventually had to call for Helen to help, and we managed to scoot it far enough out of the way so as to render the garage doors once again utilitarian.

The next morning, Thursday morning, I fired up my car in preparation for the short journey to the breakfast rallying point and – yes, you are correct – the red low tire pressure warning light was once again aglow.  I got out of the car at the restaurant to check the offending tire (as I was now certain I knew the culprit) and, sure enough, my tire pressure gauge indicated it had low pressure.  It had sufficient air and had taken three days to get to its existing state, so I felt comfortable going to the restaurant for my breakfast, well-knowing that my usual gas station was only a half mile away and I could refill the tire – again.

Having dealt with the car, I returned to the Farm and reattached the hand-held battery assist device to the tractor battery (reopening the tractor hood in the process, and so on and so forth, etc.) jumped upon the tractor, inserted the key, turning first to the left to engage the glow plug (which still refused to light) and – nothing.  Nada.  Not even a turn of the radiator fan.  Oh, yes, there was a clicking noise, but when it comes to starting tractors, a clicking noise is nothing.  Trust me on this, for this much I do understand about things mechanical.

So there was nothing for it but to call the tractor service department to come pick it up and work their magic.  Surely you can guess the next part.  Come now, surely you can!

And so it is that the tractor still sits where I left it Thursday morning, to the left of the garage as you are facing out, serenely awaiting the appointed hour next Monday when the tractor service department will arrive and carry it away for medication and its annual service.

Did I mention that I have the same feeling for tractor service departments as I have for car dealership service departments – the same feeling, but with a twist?  I am reasonably certain that tractor service departments are more sophisticated for all of their rural ambience.  I am certain that every time they have your tractor in their possession, they fix the offending problem and then disable a working something prior to re-delivery so that you will have to call them back.  After all, they not only get to charge you for the servicing of the tractor, but for its pick up and delivery.  I realize that putting this notion into print is risky, since it is just possible that a service agent from a car dealership service department will read this piece and get a nasty idea.

With this blog’s readership?  Not likely.  I’ll leave it in.

But now I got smart.  Clearly, I needed to take the car (did I mention that the topic was now the car?) to have the tire checked for the nail I suspected had taken up residence.  So I checked the mileage and compared it to the next servicing point, realized that there was not much overlap and decided to let the car dealership service department check the tire and do its service magic the next day.  I phoned my favorite service agent and made an appointment.  Now all I had to do was get to Seattle the next day for my two scheduled morning meetings before the tire once again set off the red low pressure tire warning light on my dashboard.

Not only was I successful in this endeavor, but I also got my car into the dealership a half hour prior to my scheduled appointment.  I was proud of the latter achievement, thinking it would send me home earlier, forgetting entirely that it simply gave the car dealership service department more time for mischief.  During the course of the afternoon they managed to find three additional things to do (and charge me for) and to advise me that there was, indeed, a nail in the tire and – ready for this? – in a location where it couldn’t be repaired. A new tire was required.

Of course I bought into this story.  Don’t be silly!  And I have a brand, spanking-new tire to prove it!

And an empty wallet.

Oh, did I mention that I had the foresight to take my new laptop with me to the dealership so I could while away the hours of waiting by writing and surfing the internet?  Did I mention that the computer absolutely refused to connect to the car dealership’s guest Wi-Fi?  I thought not.  That’s why I am writing this piece the next morning while pretending I am still at the car dealership.  Please don’t tell anyone of this authorial license, as I wouldn’t want my integrity to be impaired.  After all, one’s personal integrity is the only thing over which he (in my case) has unilateral control.  Unlike things mechanical or electronic, for example.

But here comes the good part – as I was driving away from the car dealership on my one new tire (and my three slightly used ones), the car drove like a dream, even the rattling noises from the back had been removed.  What a feeling a well-serviced car gives you; it is even better than the feeling you get when you drive a new car home from the showroom for the first time, because it’s your beloved car in which you’ve spent many a mile and it’s like new.  It’s been born again, and you’ve been saved from buying a new one for at least another 5,000 miles.  And, on this particular trip home from the car dealership, I rejoiced not only in this feeling of mechanical perfection, but in the certain knowledge that the mechanic had removed the rat’s nest he’d discovered in my air intake filter box and taken a picture of for my edification.  Therefore, I was no longer breathing the putrescence that had undoubtedly degraded my mechanical abilities to levels far below my personal norm!

Have I previously mentioned they found a rat’s nest (surely a field mouse’s nest, and not a rat’s nest as they described it)?  Have I mentioned they charged me nothing – not one red cent – for its removal?  I am, accordingly, deservedly triumphant!

I find that when it comes to things mechanical and electronic, little victories count most.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 2 Comments

A Spring Thunderstorm

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

We’ve had a week of stormy weather at the Farm, a crazy quilt of weather that’s swung from gentle rain to soaking rain to cloudiest to hail, and back around the horn again.  And again.

Last evening, this craziness culminated in a thunderstorm.  Not just any thunderstorm, but one of the especially violent spring thunderstorms that come only in late April or early May: the kind that gathers its forces slowly, menacingly over the hours, not the minutes; the kind that first utters scattered rumbling threats from afar as if clearing its throat in preparation for its final overhead scream of war; the kind that tests your level of discomfort with skitters of lightning scattered about in deliberate, probing reconnaissance; the kind that advances inevitably upon you all the while.

For all of its advance warnings, this storm paused in the moments prior to final onslaught to coat the atmosphere with a mixture of oil colors in shades of dread and remorse, thickly applying each coat by means of palette  knife, layer upon layer, until the sky was suffused with portent as if it were the pock-marked face of God, until the air was nearly dense and gritty enough to touch, until the air was nearly edible.  I am almost certain that had I gone outside in the moment before final assault, I could have grabbed and eaten some, and remained, chewing as if a cow with its cud, to be cleansed anew by the long-promised downpour of God’s rage and tears.

As slowly as the storm built, it passed in but an instant.  The storm front moved on to other objectives, leaving behind a steady, soaking rain to wash the air clean of oil paints and to bury the remains of the now-fallen hailstones with which it began its assault.

And when everything was clean and buried, the sun reasserted its cheerful aspect as if to say that all was now forgiven.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 1 Comment

Perhaps

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

It’s very early morning.  By all measures, I should be asleep, but I find myself writing  instead.  The house is utterly silent except for the clicking of my keyboard keys, my fellow occupants either asleep or quiet in their wakefulness.  The driving winds and rain of the past 24 hours have either abated or been reduced to audible insignificance.  It’s too dark to look out the window to determine which might be the case.  The only means of doing so would be to rise from my chair, go downstairs, and open our front door to the cold night air.  My desire to do so is far outweighed by my wish to remain in this chair, warmly swaddled by the subdued library lights, by this midnight hour’s mood.

by rights, there ought to be a jazz quartet playing softly in the background.  This is not a moment for the vocalists I usually prefer.  Its jazz should be sweet, low, and intricate. certainly piano, bass, and drums. And, perhaps, a vibraphone.  Definitely a vibraphone for melody, for lazy syncopation with the heartbeat of this profound silence.  Playing something gentle, something slow, something such as ‘Round Midnight.  Perhaps Milt Jackson and the Modern Jazz Quartet would do.

Or, perhaps, the quartet might play a simpler piece, something more haunting and suitable for the midnight hours.  Perhaps Erik Satie’s Gymnopaedie No. 1.  It would be perfect in spirit – classical, yeti jazzy enough – but tool restrained for the early morning if played only as the haunting piano recital pieced Satie composed.  Perhaps, instead, a version played by a clarinet, piano, drums, and guitar.  A quartet led by someone like Eddie Daniels.

But if a quartet is not to be found, perhaps a consummate solo jazz pianist would suffice.  Bill Evans or Keith Jarrett, perhaps.  As much as I like Oscar Peterson, his grunting would disturb this mood.  I can imagine myself going downstairs to find my copy of Jarrett’s The Melody At Night, With You, and returning to put it in my portable CD player.  I can see myself settling down with it and with a new book from my shelves, my last book read to conclusion before last evening’s bedtime and now safely re-shelved.

I could use my headphones so that those asleep within remain undisturbed.

Perhaps that’s what I will do.  It’s been awhile since I last listened to the album –  far too long in fact.  And I need a good reason to get out of this chair: a reason that will encourage, rather than destroy, this mood; a reason to enhance the magic of these hours.

Yes, perhaps I just may.

(And so I did.)

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A Friend Turned 90 This Week

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

A friend of mine turned 90 this week, just as I will likely turn 68 at mid-month.  There is nothing inexorable about turning 90, or even 68, even if the continual rotation of the clock’s hands remind us that the passage of time is.  We are either here or not to celebrate our birthdays when the hands reach the appointed hour.  Time just keeps moving; it cares nothing for the clock, for clocks, no matter how sophisticated or precise, are nothing more than mankind’s puny attempt to bring it to heel.  After all, time will surely outlast the clock; will surely outlast us.

But when the clock’s hands do reach the anniversary of our moment of birth, it is a moment for celebration, and meaningful celebration requires reflection upon how a life has been lived.  While it’s perfectly proper to blow a birthday horn in recognition of someone merely having outlasted, once again, the clock’s turnings for one more year, such an act of celebration seems more relevant for a one-year-old than a 90-year-old.  The newly born have the grace of an innocence derived from a lack of significant experience; 90-year-olds can make no such claim, nor should they wish to.

My friend has much of which to be proud, and no doubt a few sorrows and misgivings as well.  But sorrows and misgivings are private things, and surely should remain so.  For each of us is singularly ill-prepared to judge our own worth, eccentricity being the essence of existence.   When one is a tree, the fact of the forest is lost.  A tree’s consciousness stops at the bark, ours at the skin.  Only the forest, only the collective consciousness, is able to judge us for what we’ve become.

My friend has done many things in a long life, things that most of us can only wonder about.  He fought in a war once, exhibiting such significant bravery that he earned a Silver Star, a medal some argue was insufficient reward for the lives saved by his continuous acts of courage.  He returned from war to go to law school, taking up his place in his community by practicing law at the sort of stellar level that causes lawyers – beings defined by their parsimony of praise – to grudgingly recognize publicly a few of their fellows for their abilities and skills.   This recognition came to my friend not once, but repeatedly.  Upon his retirement from practice, he decided to engage in further studies of life, of writing, of travel, of the experience of everything under his sun – for his is an ever inquiring mind.

But his was only a retirement from the practice of law, for in this so-called retirement he determined to wrestle with the devil he knew best – memories of a hot August sun on a hilltop in France where death was all about him, north, south, east, west.  In so doing he exhibited his courage anew, for this was a wrestling match with his own deep-rooted emotions and regrets – emotions and regrets honed and quickened each year when the clock’s hands celebrated anew those seminal weeks of a long-ago August from which they sprang.  The most obvious product of this wrestling match was a book; the less obvious product a sense of self-acceptance and peace within himself for a job well done.  For, when finished with his writing, he’d come to understand he had done all that anyone could possibly have asked of him given the cards he’d been dealt in the heat of that French August, the kind of understanding achievable only by consciously wrestling with one’s most powerful demons.

I will see my friend tomorrow at his birthday celebration, and have been asked, along with all other attendees, to be prepared to provide an anecdote of his life.  I find this an extraordinarily difficult assignment.  How can I, in a single anecdote, celebrate someone who is simultaneously mentor, role model, partner, fellow conspirator, fellow instigator, and friend?  How, after all, can I celebrate a life that has risen to heights I’ve never trod?

Every forest possesses one or two tall trees that stand out from any vantage point from which the forest, in its totality, may be observed, those one or two trees always in search of the light.  One of those tall trees in the forest in which I am privileged to stand is my friend, my friend who turned 90 this week.

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An April Dawn

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

The dawn lies heavily upon the Farm under a sky of clotted cream, the not-quite-day swaddled in a weighty silence broken only by the repeated call of an unknown bird.  Its call is loud, insistent, forceful – an unyielding demand for a brighter day than this dawn promises.  This dawn is pregnant with dusky light, pregnant with expectations of a warm, gentle, nourishing spring rain, pregnant with unfulfilled promise.

The day lies quietly within this womb, patiently waiting to be born.

Posted in Humptulips County, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off on An April Dawn

Replacements

Posted on March 28, 2013 by C. (Gaius) Charles

At a little after 4:30 today, the man I was hired to replace walked out the door for the last time in his pre-retirement life. While he is not officially retired until April 1st, today was his last official day of work.

I must admit, I was unsure whether this day would come quite when it did; I was hired knowing that I would one day replace him. When I was hired, his retirement was something of a running joke, always “in three months” when the last time we asked was three months ago.  When he formally announced, while it was fairly obvious he was serious this time, the temptation to treat it as something of another instance of “oh, maybe in three months” still existed. Nevertheless, I engaged as best I could in the practice of knowledge extraction; that is, transferring the wealth of knowledge about the work he did from his head into mine, hopefully in a semi-efficient manner, and hopefully in a way that ensured that others would benefit further down the line.

He is, in ways, a lot like me – quiet, reserved, someone who most coworkers would describe as dedicated to his work but not particularly open with them.  Indeed, to gain his trust and to have him talk to you in something more than terse responses was something of a trick. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t tell you all you needed to know when asked – it was that he is not the type to dally.  He is the type that walks into meetings and immediately starts getting things done; no chit-chat, no waltzing around the subject. His wry reactions to organizational decisions and the realities of the work we do would always be humorous, and typically be somewhat cutting, an indication of the true meaning of a particular practice or standard. He also is the sort with voluminous amounts of information about the business and the rationale behind decisions in his head. Alas, he did not often transcribe that knowledge to paper.

I joked with others that perhaps the true solution to the problem of all the knowledge that would walk out the door with him was simply to lobotomize him, devise some sort of brain-to-computer connection, and then hook him up to our computer network for open access to all employees. We would laugh over it, since, indeed, this is often what it feels like when someone who carries what he did in his head leaves. I would see e-mails half-jokingly stating that he should not be allowed to retire, that he was, in fact, too valuable to the organization to lose. In the past, or so I’m told, this transition from one person to another of all of the requisite knowledge and procedures is not something my organization has been particularly good at, which has resulted in knowledge walking out the door that would require work to relearn – or, in more than one case, frantic rehires of the retiree (which is allowed, but only after a waiting period, and is dependent upon the retirement plan to dictate whether this is something doable).

Hopefully, I did better than most.

This is not to say he will never grace my presence again as a fellow coworker; this possibility has not yet been ruled out, and our long-term forecasting of workload suggests that this is a distinct possibility. But as always, we must plan as if once he’s gone, he’s really gone. No rewind button. No handcuffing to the chair. No last-minute requests for that one nugget that nobody else thought of.

A few of us sat around, including my manager, chatting with him in the last minutes – I think we all knew what was about to happen, even he, and we wished to belabor the point somewhat. After a good half hour or so – slightly longer, for I had joined mid-stream – he shook our hands and said his goodbye, then walked out as he always did, brown leather jacket on, satchel by his side, badge in hand. None of us followed. Rather, we looked at each other – a sort of “well, that’s that” moment – and then moved on with the conversation.

Others popped in moments later to coordinate followup steps now that he had left – revoking access to various resources, making sure appropriate people were updated, and so on and so forth. One coworker popped his head in and jokingly pointed out my sudden leap in seniority; with his departure, I am now the lead for the programs I support.

I had known it would come; I even knew it would come today. Yet, it hasn’t sunk in.

Perhaps Tuesday, when the realization that that satchel won’t be under the desk for three days a week anymore hits me.

But until then, a pumpkin sits on his chair, a sort of wry acknowledgement on my part of his departure.

~ C. (Gaius) Charles
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The Possibilities of Spring

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

It isn’t officially Spring on the calendar until next week, but today’s Weather God could care less what the calendar says – for it is surely spring today in Humptulips County.  The sun is going in and out of a light cloud cover, and what the day lacks in temperature it makes up for in spirit.

The slightly hubristic quality of the Spring air has ushered in a new ambience for sound.  Spring sounds have what Winter sounds lack, for they are individually more clearly heard and singly distinct while being intertwined in chorus; within an audio mix seemingly controlled by a master sound editor’s experienced hand, a master sound editor who somehow simultaneously enhances the sprightliness of each individual sound and the grandeur of resulting choruses.  Each sound is distinct, but of a piece  It is as if a group of players have finally come together in well-rehearsed combination following a winter spent practicing singly to hone individual skills.

But most importantly, this is the kind of day when I wish for long-lost friends to drop by unexpectedly and share their life stories with me; the kind of day when I want to be comforted by learning what they’ve made of their lot in life: their successes; their failures and losses, and the resulting lessons learned; their hopes and dreams for their remaining future; their level of acceptance of hopes and dreams no longer capable of being fulfilled; the emerging footprint they will temporarily leave on this earth until it fades into the fullness of yet another, after-death springtime; the possible footprints their children, and their children’s children, may temporarily leave in their turn.

No such long-lost friends have shown at the farm on this, the inaugural day of this Spring, and it is unlikely that any will physically do so before it ends.  Therefore, memory – so singularly insufficient for my stated purposes – must somehow make do in their stead. For I am too far away in distance and in time for long-lost friends to think of me or of visiting, but I suffer no resulting melancholy because of this awareness.  After all, it isn’t so much their physical presence that I desire today, as it is spring’s renewal of its ritual, annual blessing of the possibility they may yet come.

For this is spring and spring is all about possibility.

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Harbingers of Spring

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

As I write, morning is crawling out from under the rock of night and the day has dawned, lightly fogged.  Yesterday our farm was the center of a fog bank; as we took our morning walk, it seemed to us that all of the fog radiated from some central point near the marsh on its southern boundary.  Today, by contrast, the fog seems to be thin and lightly dispersed throughout the area.  Today’s fog will probably not have the staying power yesterday’s had, and will likely be gone before the morning has shaken off its cobwebs, performed its toilette, and become properly alert.

Yesterday’s walk was in the fog, an unusual occurrence since it often burns off by mid-morning when our walk usually begins.  A walk in the fog is refreshing, since nothing looks as it ordinarily does, and even the most familiar objects shyly suggest an illicit, alternative life-style just beyond the capabilities of our imagination.  It’s as if things usually taken for granted are in desperate assertion of hitherto unrevealed qualities in order to put the lie to our complacent recognition, to beg us to acknowledge more to them than our complacency can comprehend.

As yesterday’s fog burned off, a flock of robins was revealed, clustered about the base of two of the larger trees in the spinney that served as the apex of our walk.  Robins usually seem more solitary in habitude, but these had found something of more interest than solitude and were happily sharing their find.  In truth, the robins were only the day’s second harbinger of spring.   The first was the blooming skunk cabbages in the marshy flats adjoining our neighbor’s pond – pale yellow hints of a spring to come, assured complements to the rust red of the robins’ breasts.

The third major harbinger revealed itself late in the afternoon after the sun had been on display for a few hours: as the sunlight waxed, a riot of color broke out underneath one of the apple trees in our tiny orchard.  The crocus array Helen planted there a decade ago finally bloomed anew: purples, blues, yellows thickly scattered at the base of an as-yet leafless tree, ablaze in a wet, mossy-dark field, a shade of green that tugs on  heartstrings attuned to the smell of fresh-mown grass in such a way as to yields anticipation, rather than dread, of the work required to achieve it.  The long summer will put paid to our eagerness, but, for now, our mowers remain restless in their stalls while the grass emerges from hibernation.  And so the crocuses are granted their annual resplendent show, reprieved for now from their eventual mutilation by the blades of summer.

Bird song grew more abundant as yesterday’s fog dispersed.  Its density didn’t arise to the levels of a full spring day, but its gradual daily increase serves as yet another indication that spring is nearby.  For yesterday was alive, a not-yet-spring day typical of late winter in Humptulips County – full of tantalizing promises to fire the imagination; hinting of a future weal to ward us against the gray of wintry days yet to come.

Today looks to promise more of the same as yesterday, but make no mistake: winter remains in ascendancy, while spring only lurks in its corners.  But that’s enough for me;  enough for now.

Posted in Humptulips County, Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off on Harbingers of Spring

Winter’s Solitude

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

Solitude reigns in late winter in Humptulips County.  When Helen and I walk, we hear the lesser sounds more easily since they aren’t overwhelmed by the raucousness of spring and summer.  Where we are on our morning walk, for example, can easily be determined by the sound of our footsteps, clearly heard in the muting, moist air: soft slaps place us on the asphalt of shared lanes, somewhere in its midst; more complex cracklings place us on our gravelled driveway, either coming or going depending upon the relative vigor of our stride.

We often hear birds on our walks, but the density of winter’s bird calls isn’t that of spring or summer.  The intervals between individual calls are frequently significant, causing me to hold my breath to see if a responsive call will come before the same bird emits a second or third forlorn inquiry.  I often gauge the intensity of my anticipation by the time it takes for me to note the absence of its usually audible rasp.

And so it is that the less noticeable become the noticed. The “wauk, wauk-wauk” of the Common Nighthawk, for example, is suddenly audible as a distinctly solo piece rather than as the sound of a minor instrument struggling to be heard in a strident symphony.  For late winter is a time for less to become more.

This is not to say that late winter’s countryside is still and noiseless. This is only to say that winter is a time for us to notice the subtle sounds related to our passage through the morning: the plink of something unknown slithering into the depths of our marsh as we come to its attention; the wind’s unrestrained passage through pines and the heavy grass of the abandoned acreage to our south; the thrashing of startled smaller life, whether bird or mammal, through the underbrush or the dense stands of bare blackberry canes; the occasional, plaintive neighing of one of our neighbor’s horses longing to be free of its barn; the warnings of protective dogs, whether as loud barking from behind adjacent fences or as  howling from afar brought to our attention by an errant wind.  It is as if our morning walks are conducted on sparse, somewhat abstract landscapes of intermittent, unrelated, muted sounds that somehow, through the magic of aggregation, yield a coherent canvas.

Posted in Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 1 Comment

Flame and Ash

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Gavin Stevens

Yesterday, I received a Facebook post from a former high school classmate asking me if I could find someone I barely remember to invite them to our upcoming 50th reunion.  The posting was in response to my sharing of the lyrics to a new Over The Rhine song as posted by the duo, and my comment that I was looking forward to their upcoming album.  My former classmate seemed to think that I was referring to an album of pictures related to our high school.

The proper word for my reaction is “gobsmacked.”  I wasn’t bothered much by the fact that she clearly hadn’t read the post I shared, since I have discovered over time that folks on Facebook don’t spend the time to think about much of anything other than their petty concerns.  I was amazed that she would ask me – a complete stranger after so many years of divergent life paths – to find someone she remembers; someone I seem to think she might have dated once upon a time.  Of course, I can’t be certain about that recollection, since I haven’t heard his name in 50 years and have no clear recollection of anything about him – other than his name.

The request itself wasn’t offensive.  In fact, I spent a few minutes seeing if I could find him on Facebook more from a sense of curiosity than anything else.  Helping a friend – even one as tenuous as she – has always been a source of satisfaction.  My search produced hundreds of folks with the same name, for his family name is common.  There were far too many possibilities to open and read given my low level of curiosity, so after a few minutes of scanning the list I gave up the matter for at least the remainder of Lent, 2013 – and perhaps forever.

What did confound me was her tight focus upon our shared past.  I hadn’t reviewed her Facebook page for some time, and so I spent a few moments doing so this morning.  I discovered other clues to her intrigue with the past: her high school graduation photo; photographs from our 45th reunion; a list of friends heavily populated with our shared classmates.  In fairness, I noticed her list isn’t exclusively composed of classmates and many of her photos are of more current matters.  She, like me, has changed.  She was a gorgeous young girl, and is an attractive older woman; I was a severe young man, and am a somewhat mellowed Old Fart.

But while I cheerfully admit to Old Fart status, I refuse to spend my time looking backward.  Life in the rear view mirror isn’t interesting, except as a source for lessons or unwritten novels.  Life in the rearview mirror is important, but only because if you hadn’t lived it you wouldn’t be who you are today.  So when I investigate my past lives, it is for some reason which is important to the present or to the immediate future.

I suspect we shed past lives as easily as snakes shed skin.  Some of us may do so intentionally, but most do it without realizing the act is in process, much less completed.  Eventually, our dominant personality traits metamorphose into a materially different, but related, variant.  And if we live long enough, our metamorphosis may be into a new creature altogether, even if the path of our ascent (or descent, perhaps) can be traced, by means of memory and the occasional fact, to the formative source of self.

If this sounds Darwinian, mea culpa.  At various times of my life I have pondered writing messages to my future self to remind him of something I then thought important.  But while the temptation existed, I never took up the task believing, instead, that my future self would incorporate important life lessons into his corpus and continue to evolve.  I did not want to become stuck in time and he wouldn’t need the reminder, for the important matter’s essence would be part of his consciousness and, therefore, woven into whomever tomorrow’s volatile melange of circumstance, experience, thought, and conscience might produce at any given moment.

For my faith is always in the future, never in the past.  In the future lie new challenges and more evolution of self; in the past lie only the ashes of experience.

William Carlos Williams summed up my belief best in Paterson, Book Three, Part II:

“Fire burns, that is the first law.
When a wind fans it the flames

are carried abroad. Talk
fans the flames.  They have

manoeuvred it so that to write
is a fire and not only of the blood.

The writing is nothing, the being
in a position to write (that’s

where they get you) is nine tenths
of the difficulty: seduction

or strong arm stuff. The writing
should be a relief,

relief from the conditions
which as we advance become – a fire,

a destroying fire. For the writing
is also an attack and means must be

found to scorch it – at the root
if possible.  So that

to write, nine tenths of the problem
is to live.  They see

to it, not by intellection but
by sub-intellection (to want to be

blind as a pretext for
saying, We’re so proud of you!

A wonderful gift! How do
you find the time for it in

your busy life?  It must be a great
thing to have such a pastime.

But you were always a strange
boy. How’s your mother?)

– the cyclonic fury, the fire
the leaden flood and finally
the cost –

Your father was such a nice man.
I remember him well.

Or, Geeze, Doc, I guess it’s all right
but what the hell does it mean?
*  *  *  *
We read: not the flames
but the ruin left
by the conflagration

Not the enormous burning
but the dead (the books
remaining). Let us read

and digest: the surface
glistens, only the surface.
Dig in – and you have

a nothing, surrounded by
a surface, an inverted
bell resounding, a

white-hot man become
a book, the emptiness of
a cavern resounding”

Williams had a lot more to say on the subject, for, being a doctor by trade, he was always struggling to deal with the present – and someone else’s future – as he found it, using skills learned in the past to do so.  He remained enamored of life until his was lived in full, and all that was left were the wonderful ashes of his poetry.   And he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.  Nor do I.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | 2 Comments