Tattered Flags

After some unforecast snow overnight, the walk with the dog was quiet.  Down the street, a Village vehicle, someone marking gas lines as part of some upcoming work, based on the detailed markings, likely a needed excavation.  They'd been doing a lot of that in the last few months, so it wasn't a surprise.

What WAS a surprise was that the technician was spray painting the colored markings for the gas line work ON THE SNOW, which was already melting.

Yes, every Village has an idiot.  We just have more than one.

When did common sense go out the window?  Is it something I just noticed once I got to the "Get Off my Lawn" age, when it's so easy to forget the dreams and illusions of youth in the cynicism that creeps in as we pass 60?   I was reading a fairy tale to my youngest grandchild once, and I suddenly thought, "Look, A pumpkin turns into a fully-outfitted, gilded coach, and Cinderella just blindly gets in it and rides away.  Who in their right mind would DO that?  Apparently, Cinderella did and found her Prince and a happy ever after. The rest of us?  We usually get a sharp dose of reality and glass slippers that REALLY hurt to wear.  

Some of what might be considered common sense is innate intelligence, and that's all relative.  I always thought I was pretty clever, then one day I went to the U of Pennsylvania, where my former father-in-law, a robotics pioneer, was professor of computer information science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. In his lab, there was a robotic arm that would play ping pong with you and win.  It was built by a freshman.  At that moment, I felt incredibly stupid. I muttered "beer, donut" and quietly left to liberally sprinkle some chicken and myself with some white wine as I made dinner with my mother-in-law.

Some of my aerial adventures certainly decry any semblance of good sense.  But even on my worst day, I didn't imagine some of the things I encountered over the course of my later career in the aviation equivalent of "hold my beer".  Most survived, and with a legal slap on the wrist or just a stern talking-to, never did such things again.  But there were just some fools who seemed to dare us to come out to be the witnesses and guarantors of the outcome of the very act we spent so much time trying to prevent. But some just didn't listen or learn, and the day inevitably came when I ended up at a front door. I know I'm supposed to start with “I'm sorry for your loss,” but I couldn't. I merely stood there as someone who had just aged before my eyes, grabbed onto me like a lifeline, breaking into tears. I remember one woman on a small drought-ravaged farm.  She couldn't have been much more than a hundred pounds and felt like a bundle of sticks against my muscled form as she cried, sticks that had weathered so much for many years, only to be tossed upon a fire, for which I could offer no healing rain. You don't forget that.

Somewhere in the Good Book it says know thyself, and though my interpretation of that was likely well out of context, I learned early on about limitations and tried not to exceed them, or red line.  Looking in the mirror this morning, I note the scar where I got whacked hard by the bungee cord of a CF700 engine cover standing out in relief on alabaster skin that shows every worry, every tear.  I realize that I, too, made mistakes that changed a life, often mine, in ways other than good, and that it was only through fate, luck, or a God who factored in my own stupidity when putting a calling on my life, that I am still here.

I do understand the lure of doing something without really thinking it through. As a child, I once used my dad's soldering gun to try to give Barbie a tattoo (to impress GI Joe), only to melt her whole arm off.  Another Barbie lost her leg being launched in a potato gun across the fence.  Then there was the time my brother got me to eat a dog treat shaped like a Hershey's kiss. When I bit into it and made a face, he said, "It's a dog treat, it's made out of sawdust and cow poop."  (Not true, VITAMIN FORTIFIED sawdust and cow poop).  Of course, I ran crying to my mother, who simply said, "If you're stupid enough to do something just because your brother tells you, don't come to me for sympathy."

I didn't learn immediately; there was something about the unknown, the unexplored, the "what if?" in life. I was the kid that even though I got straight A's, fidgeted in class, couldn't sit still, looking at the whole "classroom" aspect of life as a waste of time which drove me half-consciously, out into the world as soon as that bell rang away from a comfortable berth, from the menace of the mundane, to the wonders of a world beyond walls.  Even as a child, I understood the ancient human instinct of the chase, and I rushed out to claim what I thought was lacking in my structured upbringing: wisdom to acquire, adventures to behold, and fun to have.  

Which again was quickly quashed by my mom, who was a former Deputy Sheriff for Multnomah County in Oregon.  She had seen too many ways to end up in a body bag and passed on some of that wisdom.   The lessons took; I attempted to daydream less and listen more, and later in life, as airmen say, to keep the pointy end forward and the rubber side down.   

Like my mom, I later learned the ramifications of physics too well. I'd like to say I retired without ever having to burn my clothes at the end of the workday, but I can't.  I'd also like to think I could take in all that the world dished out at me like a trooper, but I can't.  Sometimes late in the night, I'll wake from a dream, one I have often of an actual event, a crash where the aircraft broke apart as it hit trees and terrain, a fireball erupting from a fuel tank.  Two were killed immediately, but another onboard wasn't at the scene.  A grid was walked; there were footsteps in the snow and pieces of soot and burned fabric.  The body was surprisingly far from the wreckage. He'd run clear, then walked, then crawled, already dead, just not realizing it yet as he strove to flee.  I stood there and cried so hard that I had to don new PPE.  It's an image I will take to my grave. 

I wake up today to my mortality in a world that's full of those still wandering in happy denial.  I can't change them; I can only change myself.  I gave up alcohol years ago, I eat extra veggies and apparently when I was a kid and said, "I can't wait to grow up so I can stay up as late as I want", as late as I want apparently is 9:30.  I can't undo past excesses, poor choices (never order the seafood at that restaurant in the terminal with little foot traffic at SFO International), and questionable taste in automobiles (seriously, I owned a Dodge Shadow??)  But I can live with where it brought me.  Moments of the loss of sense or self are nothing more than fate's little footnote, already fading, a scent, the sound of a voice, a flower pressed between pages, never to be opened again.  Those regrets don't drive my day; they are a shade, a shadow, a whispered warning, perhaps, but a quiet one.

Outside, there is snow. I'm going to go out in footwear that is not suitable, fueled by a bowl of Frosted Flakes and too much caffeine, and seize the day.  I have my lessons, years of patience, and extreme care that got me through broken clouds, turbulent air, and unforecast change, where the senses of my command brought me out to safety. How slow had been those flights of passage, and how quickly they were over.  

So, for today, I'm just going to explore, laugh, and wonder in the world. The snow is melting, and the laundry will hold. For what is one day? A short space before the light too soon, and the echo of an owl's wings brushes against the windowsill. Just a brief interlude in the sun's dance. 

My past may have brought high winds, bent trees, and fire; a helter-skelter of responsibility, fear, danger, and the occasional fractured heart.  Such is what I did, and such is what I am. But for today, I'll embrace what comes my way: the trees, a refuge of familiar order; the few remaining leaves; a brace of tattered flags against ancient wood, not knowing yet that they are dead.

I watch as a leaf flutters down from above, resting on the ground immobile, stilled forever, as it were, until the breeze picks it up and spins it aloft towards the sun which breaches the perimeter.  For now, I have the light, some of the sense my mom instilled in me, and a snowball the size of a small planet in my hand, just waiting for my husband to leave the house.    

A new day awaits.  

A Bit of Classic Prose and a Classic Firearm

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon;
let the brow o'erwhelm it.
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
-William Shakespeare - King Henry V

Learning to Walk on Broken Glass

"One day, some people came to the master and asked, 'How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness, and death?' The master held up a glass and said 'Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably, and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it, and it rings! One day, the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.'"  - Achaan Chah Subato  -  Theravandan meditation master

In my Facebook feed, I saw a snippet of a post from 10 years ago.  A photo of Barkley that had been posted in remembrance on that first Christmas after we lost him.  So many pictures from those happy times.  Happiness is still found, but the people and souls who made up our lives then have changed drastically. In the last few years, I've said goodbye to Barkley, Abby, and Lorelei Lab, my brother, my dad, and my stepbrother.  Now my little sister (biological) is fighting for her life with Stage IV cancer.

As children, we view the world as if it will always be as it is that day. Mom and Dad will always be there; the dog will live forever. There is little that cannot be fixed with glue, a bandage, and Mom's chocolate chip cookies. As we get older, those perceptions sometimes remain: that we will live happily ever after; that we will have children, who will have children, who will have children, the family living forever, in a defined order of aging and passing. We go into adulthood believing what is useful for us to believe, or rather what is intolerable for us NOT to believe.

After Barkley's death, we went out to see my Dad to laugh and remember much more than just the life of a dog.  While I was there, I took Dad and my new husband one day up to the cemetery on top of a hill, where we could watch our shadows upon two small graves. My brother did not go; still weary from both chemo and radiation, but helping us prepare flowers to take to those graves.

I remember standing there, shafts of sun hitting that small stone, listening to the short song of a hidden bird who sang four short notes, then ceased, as from a distance came the incurious, calm sound of bells. As my Dad did, I realized long ago that one must sometimes don that shirt of flame, which we do not have the power to remove but only to bear, without being devoured by the blaze.

There is no perfect order, there is no guarantee, but there still is, and always will be beauty. If we didn't learn that, we'd only move without living and grieve without weeping, neither worth the toll they take on that which remains.  For myself, I chose now to weep, and with that, remember.

I think again of those beliefs peculiar to childhood, namely those things we believe simply because we are too young not to believe. The first was Santa Claus.  I had my doubts the first year I sat on Santa's lap at the hardware store, and he was wearing black geek glasses. Santa should look like Santa, not a 30-year-old CPA. Still, I kept quiet, buying Mom's explanation that he was just Santa's stunt double, Santa being busy that day. Certainly, Santa was real; he had to be real. 

Then there was the Tooth Fairy. Dad still has this little note, written in my handwriting, an affidavit to the Tooth Fairy attesting that indeed I did lose my tooth, but I swallowed it with the piece of apple that pried it loose. It's wrapped around a little plastic box filled with baby teeth. Big Bro was a little less subtle. One night, long after I was asleep, Dad was alerted from the bathroom where he was preparing for bed with a "Dad, I caught the Tooth Fairy," and he had Mom by the arm and was tickling her, and they were BOTH laughing. 

The Easter bunny had just a slight role at Easter, being a tradition to bring sweets to celebrate the gift and the Sacrifice of Jesus, rather than being the reason for the whole holiday. Still, before church, we loved to find the little baskets outside the door, with candy eggs and a chocolate bunny.  Until one day, when we got up, and there was no basket.

 Mom and Dad announced we were too old for the Easter Bunny.  Instead, they were taking us on an outing tomorrow! To the State Capital! Yes, children getting to visit a government building instead of a basket of candy! You can only imagine our excitement. On the drive there, we whispered intricate conspiracies from the back seat to get out of this to no avail, not wanting to hurt our Mom's feelings. So we learned what a rotunda was. Dad finagled a tour at a local brewery on the way back, likely needing a drink after watching our tax dollars in action.

Watching the cans getting processed was a whole lot more fun than politicians in suits, and as we drove home, Mom did stop and get us some ice cream, realizing the day hadn't gone as she'd hoped but appreciating that we at least tried. I think deep down, we had known for some time the Easter Bunny was our Mom and Dad. But we were not yet openly willing to admit to another fractured fairy tale.

 Still, though, our parents let us hold on to the perception that the world was unbroken as long as they could. Some things, though, could not wait until adulthood. One was finding out we were adopted. So many people, then, and even now, ask me about biological parents, and I have no answers for them. But for the reason of the severing of that tie, which is not the concern of the world, neither of us sought to find them, outside the scope of our hurt or their harm, even if we refused to pass judgment for the reasons we ended up where we did. Or perhaps we did pass judgment, but were simply unwilling to pronounce sentence.

All I can truly say is my brother and I came into the best possible family.  Disciplined, loving, hard-working people who came from nothing by way of material means or privilege and still crafted a life of learning and beauty. Our clothes were handed down or handmade, our food from the garden, pasture, or forest behind the house, and our bikes were used.  But we had everything that was truly important, and that was a deep appreciation for every day, even those marked with illness or imperfection, easily forgotten when we were greeted upon returning home by our Mother's smile and the joyous bark of a dog.  

This was the beauty of family, simultaneously fragmented and undefeated, emboldened and afraid, yet still seeing the good in the world around us.  So we carried on, my brother and I, as we told our stories.  "Remember when Dad was told to give me the 'birds and the bees, boys and girls are different talk’ because Mom was sick?  It consisted of a photo of a boy from the Sears catalog in his underwear, a finger pointed to a critical area, and the admonishment "Don't kick your brother there!"  He would then laugh and remind me of something silly I had done in school, memories that shone in the sunlight on the telling, his laughter still ringing like a touch on glass. In our stories, we were children, and our favorite dog was always with us. We were not just immortal; we were invincible. We would run and run until our bones turned to water, and we fell in a puddle of arms and legs and barking dog, forever joyful.

On the den wall is a family tree my aunt drew with careful calligraphy, giving us each a copy. I note many branches, some ending abruptly as some died young, some were widowed, some childless, a lifelong bachelor or spinster among them. Now, on a branch, which had ended abruptly, is a name, next to mine, something I owe in part to a dog named Barkley.

For Barkley was indeed my family: his story, joining these others, each entwined into a family history of black sheep, white knights, the victors, the vanquished, each carrying with them loves and burdens and more than one four-legged companion with whom they shared the journey.  Each name, name by name and page by page, will be laid down until inevitably, only one name will remain, for that glass is indeed, inevitably broken. That person will, I hope, trace the names and whisper the stories that haunt the winds, even if no one is left to hear, but ghosts on the page, with no earthly house in which they wait for us.

As I start to weep, a hand reaches out to touch my face, in benediction, in blessing. That is the true beauty which sustains us; a birth and sacrifice on which the world was saved is re-enacted here in this world every day, in the saving grace of a small, imperfect family and the memory of a dog.

 - Brigid

Tree Watchers

From the nearest tree, a squirrel peers from the branches. I don't get too close, as rabies in the species is common, but there are a couple of the older red squirrels that are so used to me, they will come out of the shadows and greet me when they hear the rustling of the peanut bag. They're not pets, they are wild things, even if I've named a few that live among our 100-year-old Spruces, including Bubba, the world's fattest  Squirrel, who I can't see, though he is likely nearby. 

Such is the nature of wild things and wild dreams, which, when viewed, summon our wish for constancy, but when out of sight, seem so elusive and illusory that they appear less like dreams and more like ghosts that now live in another dimension. I scatter some peanuts and some sunflower seeds, making sure the feeders and suet corral are full, and return to the house. In my wake, small winged forms hop happily into the bounty even as I shut the door to the house, as the wind blows the snow into intricate patterns like some ancient hieroglyph that only God can read. - B.

Get a Dog - It Will be Fun They Said

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After 17 inches of snow, the rain began last night. The backyard is now a slushy mess, which Sunny loves. But drying her off with a beach towel requires 4 hands, so I got a "Chicken Stick" out ahead of time (her "let Mom write" bribe snack).  I then placed it on the counter before she came in from the fenced yard.

Coming inside, she gets a small, hard, round sweet potato treat for staying still while being dried off on the enclosed porch.

She gently takes the treat in her mouth, then spots the Chicken Stick as she enters the kitchen.

She SPEWS out the hard treat in a 60-degree arc towards my kneecaps at 1200 meters per second like a Canine Claymore. 

Sunny then stares at the chicken stick til I hand it over.

Then it's time for a zoomie in the living room before passing out to snore on the couch.

 I don't think I'm going to get any writing done today.

On Blogging

A young lady, daughter of a friend, wrote asking for advice on writing her first book. She had lots of journals, snippets of ideas, and didn't know if that would be enough to "make her a real writer". She said she had a blog, but "no one reads those; blogging is dead."

I had to tell her that anyone in this day and age who still writes in an old journal is indeed a writer. And that blogging was indeed not dead.

I look at the collection of my journals, gathered over the years. Just a few short years that stretched into twenty. So much can happen in that time. I started this blog in 2008. 2,289 posts ago. So much has happened in that time.

A well-tended grave, in a military cemetery surrounded by flags. One wooden box, bearing in cold air a warmth that can't be replaced, a well-loved dog toy resting on its lid. Two other small boxes on each side of it, one with a collar on top, another with a well-chewed yellow tennis ball. Some dried flowers from a wedding bouquet, placed between the leaves of a book of poetry.

On each page are short, simple words that do not begin to carry the weight or the sharpness of their past. But with time, those short flurries of words became long tales that are born from a soul that's an irrepressible retailer of words, a shopkeeper of phrase, an enabler of intent.

Book #1 was born out of a few blog posts and lots of journal entries that became chapters, then another, and another. It was born out of an internationally known author's belief that I was an author at heart and her encouragement to find my writer's voice. As I realized I am a writer and my world has too many words to be otherwise. 

I sit here now, no music playing, no noise---just the soft breathing of a rescue dog and my thoughts, words almost imperceptible to the senses, hanging in the air to be plucked by my fingers and laid upon this wooden desk. This computer is my accomplice, guarding me with its quiet accord, bearing with me the seclusion, the mystery. I should get up and do some chores before it gets dark, but while the words are still within reach, I am imprisoned by the very freedom of my hands.

I think of the classic writers - would Jane Austin have been a hit on Pinterest? Would Hemingway have been popular on Instagram? How many Twitters to win a Pulitzer Prize? Probably not, but I bet they had journals, too.

Creativity can be short bursts of color, forms, and words.

But not in the world that I like to live in.

Because I am a writer and I have too many words.

I am the run-on sentence. I am the "too many commas". I can't take a morning standing out among broken trees, red and blue lights flashing as words pass over the forest floor like the sound of big guns, and make it a quip. I can't look out upon the hills, the top of one wreathed in billowing smoke, as around me there are shouts and hollers, ringing out like war cries, yet spoken in hushed tones so as not to disturb the dead, and express it with a hashtag.

For words are my truth, immense, and they are my voice.

Those words are strings of thoughts that you would have to travel far ahead not to hear, before you outrun the reach of a voice. You can turn off your modem, but the words still exist. For they are my words, and though confined to a virtual reality, they are words that exist, in my head and my heart, their tone from the stillness and gloom of a life with a past where my words were my one truth in each passing day.

You can choose to turn away or turn off and not read. You can give me a 1-star review because the "author of this (biography) just talks about herself" (yes, seriously), but it doesn't mean I won't write. For I am a writer, and that is what we do, sharing the nature of that internal silence that follows us down into the depths of our soul and brings up a bucket from a well---one brimming with words that spill over, to quench the thirsty hearts of whispering men

I am a writer---that solitary person who stood in the corner of the schoolyard and just looked on at the popular kids. But I always had the words, even when I was too solitary to say them. The first journal was a way to capture in words,

I'm a writer, and there are so many words.

It is what it is, a way to capture in words on a screen instead of a page, pages that can be held close in or telegraphed to the world. It can be whimsy, it can be fun, it can be as disturbed as the mind behind it, or as calm as someone one can stare at in wonder, words that reach out like a consoling whisper. It can be as intimate as a kiss or as impersonal as the wind.

It can simply be a piece of bacon and a smile.

Blogging is not dead.

It is alive when the muse fails, and the hands stay still in the air with honest idiocy of objective, which made their fruitlessness both profound and poignant. It is alive when the fingers dance over the keyboard in a frenzy, grappling with ghosts in one final act of common courage.

It is alive when the keyboard is silent, and the house is still, and the one you treasure more than anything on earth looks up from the smartphone that you will never own and says, "I love what you just wrote".

It is alive because here my voice has no word count; it can be black-and-white or filled with color. It will be stories of battles fought and won, of great mysteries, and simple pleasures. It will be warnings that the younger self will not grasp until the older self breathes its last. It will be joys and sad caresses, tender words laid out upon the tongue like a wafer, a benediction, a blessing, a self-communion of one formed of two hands. If you do not read, I will still write, as I do not write, so you can claim some part of me. But if you come out from beneath that place---that conception of existence we hide under like a tortoise in his shell and listen---the words will draw breath, even after I am gone.

Blogging is not dead.

It breathes as long as I do. Whether you read or even comment,

I'm a writer, and there are so many words.

- Brigid

Dinner on the Fly

Back when I was in my late 20s, I had an evaluation for a leadership position for an aviation outfit I worked for.  It was something no woman had ever held, and certainly not anyone my age.  I'd like to say I was cool and collected, but I was nervous as could be.  At any point in the interview, I expected the next thing out of my mouth to be "Beer" or "Donut".   The senior folks read through my resume (oh please, please tell me I used the word "Statistical" and not "Sadistical") and commented on the recent MBA (not my first choice in studies, but I knew that just being a science geek or a pilot isn't a guarantee of leadership positions later).  They also mentioned my age (back in those days, you didn't have HR breathing down your neck, going "Good Heavens, man, you can't ask THAT question?)

After the technical-type questions, for which I did O (why yes, I CAN give a discourse on retrating blade stall and fully articulating rotor systems), came the deal-breaker: "Describe your organizational skills."

I thought of all those university classes, I thought of Peter Drucker's books and multi-attribute utility diagrams; I thought of getting a big box of an airplane across a big desert with steam gauges and sweat. One never forgets those flights, suspended in space, hanging from a point between mobility and absolute motion, thinking there is no better job as you chase the wind, knowing it's too good to last. I thought of budgets and acquisitions and purchase orders, and how none of them do you any good when you're looking down at 200 miles of open water, the EICAS panel lit up like a Christmas tree, and everyone is looking at you to make a decision before the other one flames out.

All those things I thought, but what came out of my mouth without pausing for breath was "I once cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 23 pilots, including real mashed potatoes and pie without a microwave, and everything was hot on the table at the same time.

"Oh, Crap, did I just SAY that?"  I thought as I felt a breeze on my cheek, the axe falling, most likely. What's next, a conversation about dishware and shoes?

But I got the position.  A couple of days later, I was riding herd on several hundred people.  I hoped they didn't all expect pie.

So, for tonight, a little lesson on creativity and timing.  Sometimes it all comes together, sometimes it's "Hello Aurelio's?"  There are a million cookbooks out there, but some of the best meals are when you just get creative with what's in the kitchen. Sure, there is the occasional disaster (duck wings and chicken wings do NOT cook for the same amount of time unless you have a craving for rubber bands, and you too can make fresh-caught fish taste JUST like elastic by ignoring the instructions).  But, after taking some instruction from cookbooks and with practice, most folks can learn to craft such a meal without resorting to a sodium-drenched frozen something that costs three times as much as making it yourself.

It started with a pack of two turkey tenderloins I got as a (buy one - get one free) for $10, some fresh veggies, and some dry goods. 

 I said, "Tenderloin with garlic sliced in a chardonnay sauce?" and Partner in Grime said, "stuffing with onion and celery as a bed?" and it went from there.

It ended up as this.

Turkey Tenderloin in White Wine Reduction with Garlic and Mushrooms served on Onion/Sage stuffing with Walnut Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Pear Cinnamon Balsamic glaze. 

No recipe, no rules, and two big thumbs up.

Start with the tenderloin(s).  Marinate in a dab of olive oil and a little lemon juice, then rub with garlic and roast until not quite done (about 10 minutes less than the package directions, still pink in the middle). While that cooks, chop a couple of large sweet potatoes into two-inch chunks, toss with a little walnut oil, and place in a cooking pan. While you're in chopping mode, chop 1 1/2 onions (the half onion into small pieces and the whole one into larger chunks) and chop 2-3 stalks of celery.  Throw the whole onion, cut into larger pieces, with the potatoes.  I have these nifty Ceramic knives that Old NFO gave me many years back that make it easy. Preheat oven to the temperature on the tenderloin package.

Get out a box of Stove Top stuffing (normally I make my own, but I got this for a buck on clearance), put water and butter per directions in a pan with 1/2 teaspoon of sage, and set on a cold burner.

Sauté the celery and the half onion bits in a pan with a little EVOO until the celery is JUST starting to get limp and the onion is starting to caramelize.  Toss the celery and onion mixture into the stuffing water, then put the pan back on a cold burner.

About now, the timer for the turkey should go off.  Remove it from the oven and let it cool slightly, then slice it.  Place the potatoes in the oven, raise the temperature to 375°F, and set the timer for 30 minutes.

Turn the heat on the water for the stuffing to a warm setting (you want it to heat, not simmer).  In the same pan you sauteed the onions and celery, saute some sliced mushrooms and a child-sized handful of fresh basil.  When the mushrooms are starting to soften, drain off any liquid and add 3/4 cup of white wine (the alcohol will cook off, but you can substitute apple juice), and a splash of lemon juice. Stir until the liquid begins to cook down slightly. Place turkey slices on top and let it finish cooking, stirring occasionally to let the wine reduction cook down, adding 2-3 tablespoons of butter at the end to thicken. Leave the pan on low, stirring occasionally, while the potatoes finish.

When the timer goes off for the potatoes (or when they start to get soft), drizzle 1/4 cup Cinnamon Pear Balsamic Vinegar over the top (available from Saratoga Olive Oil Company online).  Stir and return to the oven for 10 minutes, or until the center is soft when poked with a fork.

Raise the heat under the veggie-infused stuffing water to boiling, then add the stuffing mix.  Stir, cover, and remove from heat.

When potatoes are done, everything is done. Serve turkey over stuffing with sweet potatoes. Drizzle any extra juice from the glazed potatoes over the turkey and stuffing. 

It might not be dinner for 23. It may just be dinner with your best friends of the two and four-legged variety; time to laugh, time to shed the worries of the week, watching them all fly away as toasts are made and thanks is given.

Tracks of Time

In the morning’s snow were small tracks; some the bold steps of the predator, some the almost openly meek meanderings of a creature not yet aware it was prey. There were the sure steps of deer, another set of small, fairy-like paw prints that simply ended, perhaps with a shadow and a mouth set in the “O” of pain that bespoke owl.

If you looked closely enough, you could see the narrative variants of the cessation of life, a tuft of rabbit fur, blood-speckled snow. Further on, a scattering of feathers, designed for speed, intermingled with the downy innocence of plumage, which had been designed for failed hiding, lying in a tiny snow crater. It seemed like only yesterday when summer was blazing. Now, as I walk back to the house I share with my husband, darkness is already approaching even before dinner. 

We’d set our clocks back, and we’d stopped saving our daylight. My days begin as I lie under a blanket of night that starts to thicken and bunch up around six, when just for a moment, light hovered in an orb over the lake. Then, with a blink, it vanished up into the heavens, leaving just black exhaust in its wake. Summer was just here, and now it was gone, time passing much too quickly.

Against the wall, a clock of Mom and Dad ticks, the evening light illuminating only its face, so it appears to hang suspended in space. A ticking clock, holding in its hidden depths the regimented chaos of this world I’ve inherited, its ordered cadence the sound that moves me onward at a dizzying speed into a future still unperceived. Two hundred years ago, the days had their own measured order, as full and steady as the moon that rose each night in the sky. No one could have imagined today’s electronic dislocation, when, with the advent of the industrial age, time was taken from us and enslaved to a clock. Time changed from that of a fellow worker to an overseer, a sharp rap with a stick, a shrill whistle of warning. 

Off in the distance, I see a train stopped, yet with that sense of imminent departure that trains seem to possess. I like living by the train line that runs in and out of Union Station in downtown Chicago.  I like hearing it and watching the people bustle on and off as I simply enjoy my morning walk.  People traveled less on trains as years passed; we went in cars, faster and faster as roads got longer and days got shorter; driving to the market for our dinner instead of walking the land in search of game. The game itself had moved further inward, as had we.

In the dimming light, I looked through some photos. There was one of me in the cockpit of a jet, where I spent several years pushing my limits. There was a photo of a piece of lace that helped make a wedding dress, which I burned with the rest of the memories of that youthful mistake. I got married so young and too soon because I had a broken heart and thought a husband and another child would mend it. It only showed me how fixed the scars upon my heart were and how unforgiving he was who saw them. But bringing a smile, there were pictures, so many pictures of my brother and me.

Log trains ran behind my childhood home, and at night their path would cut shadows across our neighborhood. Shadows that would slide over the wall above my bed, over the model boats, planes, and trains my brother and I played with. By day, we'd grab our bikes and go ride the dusty gash of a roadway near the railroad tracks, where we could see and hear the trains go by, the engine passing in hissing thunder, sparks flying up like fireflies let loose from the rails, dust coiling behind it like a tornado in a trail.

We had no timetable, yet we always seemed to know when the train would come by. One moment the tracks would be empty, the next filled with the rhythmic rumble of sound, of life that materialized seemingly out of nothing; with an air of the deliberately accidental that lingered like smoke long after it disappeared from sight. I stopped my bike and simply stood watching, compelled to pause till in that infinite clutch of the temporary confederation of two elements, water and air; the frailest of integers and units of measure combining into a force that cannot be bound, not even in death.

The yard at the timber mill had more than one track running into it, and as two trains would travel in, we'd hold our breath in fear of a collision, only to have one veer off and stop, while a quarter mile of cars passed. I think of the missing man formation, in which a squadron of fighter planes performs a low pass, one separating and flying off to the heavens. A howling ballet, its performers, mighty machines. Both sights bring a lump to my throat.

Stopping on our bikes, out of breath, we see the engineer up in the engine, he's indistinct, and we wonder who he is and what's in his heart as he holds the power in, his steady foot balancing on an engine that knocks and rumbles. We're not supposed to be this far away from home, this close to the tracks, and we're going to be late for supper. But we knew enough, having learned the lesson before, that for something you love, for the ineffable feeling of rightness, of being exactly where you want to be, in tune with nature, the gods, and the sound of a train, there will be a price to pay, and it will be worth it.

Until the day he died, my brother was my best friend, even after a lifetime of years. As adults, just as we did as children, we’d sit out at Dad’s as we traced the stars with the beam of our flashlights. Not as a point in space, but a moment in time, the pinnacle of childhood, where morning, night, and summer are one; the sleight of hand of fate and blood that would later shape us both so far distant as not to be conceived yet. Over the years, he pretended not to see the occasional tears; I pretended I had accidentally dropped an ice cube from my drink down his neck. 

Years later, another picture, a camping trip with my brother.  We were out all day, heading in not by any clock but by the rhythmic cadence of breath and the measure of bone and muscle. My dog was reluctant to come in from the water, “Just once more!” he seemed to speak to us. But our stomachs signaled dinner, and we called him in with a whistle. He came up the bank panting and trembling with the excitement of the day, to a soft voice and gentle hand, seeking his pack.

Back in camp, we settled to clean our fish and prepare our supper, and hot coals lit our work. My brother said grace over a small glass of whiskey and water, giving thanks for slightly burnt roast meat, a can of beans, and some bread that once actually resembled bread before it had seen my backpack, tasting of the outdoors. It was the best meal we could all remember eating in a long time, tasting our labor and tinged with the smoke of our wildness.

The dog settled into sleep by the dying fire, as in the darkness we prepared our bedding beneath an ancient sky. As the world slowly wound down, stars began to spin their stories in space, and we talked.

We talked of the world and its beauty, love, and sin, where the words are our history, not other people’s words, which are not their past but only the empty gaps of their days. We remembered Dad’s stories of hunting as a boy in Montana when, as children, we lay quietly, listening to bedtime stories that knew no age limit, looking up at the quiet belly of the canvas, hearing not a clock but only the measured breath of contentment as sleep brushed up the remaining crumbs of the day. 

When was the last time you spent a day like that with no clock, no schedule, just time with those who mean the most to you? Now, too often, we rush, scurry, and do not take the time to stop and think of the times we gave up—the times spent rushing after something we didn’t really want or something demanded of us. Wasted minutes, wasted days. Suddenly, years have passed, and the second hand poises in mid-second as you pick up the phone to make a call in the late hour. But there is no one there to pick up that call.

As adults, my brother and I had many more rides together, this time on a motorcycle, cruising the high roads, racing down steep grades just as we did as children on our bicycles, plummeting down fast and breathless as if banshees themselves were at our heels.

I remember one summer evening in particular, after our very last ride together. As the bikes idled in the driveway on that last night together, in the light of his front headlamp, my brother was suddenly surrounded by tiny bits of brilliance, a swarm of fireflies that we disturbed as we parked next to the grass. He put his face down to get a closer look, and for a moment, it was all I could see: his laughing in the glow of the headlamp, tiny bits of light rising up like little angels. Then, just as quickly, they moved away, leaving us there in the dark. In the darkness, I felt an inexplicable cold, and time, for an instant, seemed to stop. 

He was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer a few days later, and, on Good Friday 2014, he was gone.

Now, as evening shadows gather, I can still recall our last phone call, when all I could hear was breath and my heartbeat, the phone held to my ear. Outside, the rush of the wind, and somewhere far away, the mournful sound of a train as I gazed at a photo of the two of us on the wall, the red hair standing out like a flame, waiting for him to answer.

We talked as we always did, as if nothing had changed from our shared childhood, but as I listened to him, I heard something else, the proverbial clock in my pocket. It was still ticking, more slowly, with a sound  I had never noticed before. Then, with the moonlight reflecting off a tear forming, when I was certain the world was still hushed, I heard a bark from the backyard: Barkley, the Labrador retriever, wanting to come in and share your time, all he ever asked for. So I set the phone down for a minute and opened the door to call the dog in, as that happy bark filled the world with articulate tone, a measured beat of time. The time that, at that one single moment, we both still had. - Brigid

The Gales of November

The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the Captain did, too,
T'was the witch of November come stealing.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot.

I've been fascinated by old sailing ships for years, thanks to one that has been a part of my memory since childhood, one that fueled my fascination with the archaeology of disaster. A hundred years have come and gone, yet the skeletal remains of that beautiful seagoing vessel still linger in a shallow grave, attesting to the passing parade of time and the long-ago era of the sailing ship.

The 3 a.m. hour of October 25, 1906, was like many an Oregon night: windy and cold under a black dome of a sky, with the moon drawing in storm clouds close, as if closing ranks.  The 278-foot-long Liverpool sailing ship, fashioned of steel plates on an iron frame, was laboring toward the mouth of the Columbia River on its way to Portland, Oregon. But its 25 crew and 2 stowaways, who were likely seriously reconsidering their decision, weren't destined to make it there.
Thick mists obscured the beacons of the lighthouses and the Columbia River light ship. There, Captain H. Lawrence made the stalwart decision to stand, to await a Pilot. A heavy southwest wind was brewing into strength, and the sail was shortened. Yet before the dawn flashed true from the east, the skipper found his ship caught in a churning mass of breakers and a fast-rising northwest wind, which rushed in one long unbroken lamentation above the deck.  Above and beneath deck, the crew had to be aware of what they were facing. Men ceased their tasks to pause or perhaps to pray, imploring the Master of their personal storms to deliver them from evil as rain poured onto the uneasy calm of their temporary refuge. The rest could not spare any thought beyond the internal fixation of simply staying alive.

Crunching over the bottom of the Clatsop Spit, the shock sent the mizzen top hamper crashing to the deck with a sound that would tear the heart asunder.  The good men of the Peter Iredale scattered like buckshot as the ocean again slapped them in rage. More sections of the masts, rigging, blocks, and tackle, inclined nearly to the horizon, suddenly thundered to the deck. Men scrambled to save her, to save themselves, amidst the tangle of wreckage, expecting the ship to turn and shake them out into the sea. But soon the fated ship had run aground, breaking off its top spars, as the heavy rain squalls and gale-force winds from the west pushed it ashore. The Captain ordered them to abandon the ship and fired rockets into the air to summon help. In that brace of cold and weary men, not an objection was heard; they were mute in the dreadful censure of nature's wrath.
The lifesaving station at Point Adams responded, sending a team of men to rescue the crew, pulled one by one, by arms strained beyond duty, into safety. It was a dangerous task, but the lifesavers managed to bring them to shore and shelter at nearby Fort Stevens. The maritime inquiry absolved the Master and his mates of any wrongdoing in the loss of the ship, and there were hopes for salvage. The hull was, for the most part, intact and undamaged, and there was thought as to towing the vessel, stern first, into deepening water.

For a few more weeks, the shipmaster stood hopefully by, praying that the Peter Iredale would be restored —a pilot's sheer love for his ship —but salvage operations were soon abandoned. The ship, now listing starboard like a wounded bird, half embedded in the sands, was abandoned, paid off by the insurance underwriters, and remaining simply a visage of loss on the landscape that claimed it. Nature being, as usual, the superior foe. Captain Lawrence was commended by the British Naval Court for his actions to save his men and his ship, and he was remembered as well for his toast to the once proud vessel as he left her. The red-bearded Captain smartly saluted, and hoisting a bottle of whisky, said, "May God bless you, and may your bones bleach in the sands."

The wreck languished for years, though a popular site for out-of-state tourists, and didn't make the news again until World War II, when a Japanese submarine off the Oregon coast logged some enemy shells directly over her remains, landing in the empty fields behind. The very next day, the Army strung rolls of barbed wire from Point Adams south to thwart a would-be enemy invasion, entwined through the wreck where they remained until the end of the War.

My Mom spent time in the Portland and Oregon coastal areas before she got married, and growing up, we used to rent a little cabin there for holidays and summer vacations, on a beach south of the wreck of the Peter Iredale. As many times as we went back to visit, the wreck was as constant as the tide for me, each year, like my own life, presenting something new and undiscovered. In some years, it was almost buried in the sand, and then the next, it would venture out boldly so that we could climb on its rusted hull and hunt for hermit crabs in pools at its feet, digging among its remains for artifacts and buried treasure.

There were times as I grew into adulthood that I stayed out there until the light was gone, watching the sun, unclouded and full of fire, declining low to the water as if looking into my face. The wind would whistle through the remaining beams of the ship, resplendent and keen, until a tear left my unblinking eye, the form of the Peter Iredale making me realize the insignificance of my youth.  In the distance, blue-black seas would kiss the setting sun as I turned towards my future and home. 
What about it fascinated me so? Still does. Archaeology, derived from the Late Latin archaeologia (meaning "antiquarian lore") and the Greek archaiologia, is defined in the dictionary as "the scientific study of material remains (as fossil relics, artifacts, and monuments) of past human life and activities."

For me, this wreck is archaeology in the sense of physically touching past lives and hardships. Yet it's more than that, it's the wellspring of memories, of my generation and the ones behind, and its lure comes from the comfort of continuity, the blending of the past with our future. For me, it is the lure of the rust-hued countenance of a ghost ship. Lighthouses have been built and abandoned, wars won, battles lost, two generations have lived and died, yet the wreck of the Peter Iredale lives on. I've climbed around it, waiting for it to speak to me. Except it would tell us nothing but that someone was there, someone with courage, spirit, and adventure in their soul. Someone who would risk all to tend to their ship, to their comrades, even if everything falls around them with the crash of a broken sea. It is a message that we cannot fail to understand, for it is our message - it is what we, as pilots of the air or the ocean, as explorers of a nation, uncover each day. The days aren't easy, nor is the journey short, such as it is with any road that takes you to your heart's desire.
There have been many a night when I'd been on a recreational sailing vessel on that same river, on that same coastline. I was not the Master, simply one of the totally amateur mates, trying to learn my duties (which were keeping a running tally of how much beer we had left). Yet on those nights, when the others were sleeping and I was up late, on deck with a mug of tea, I'd think back to the crew of the Peter Iredale and what they were doing before nature picked them as its play toy.

They were likely gathered cheerfully, just as we had been, eating and drinking, attending to their chores, and sharing the resemblance of familiar duties. They were no different from the airplane pilots turned sailors I was spending my weekend with. On the deck, feeling the weight of my drink in my hand, that knowledge came to me like the cool night breeze, yet it also brought me the warmth and comfort that I felt in my hands. When we look at the past, at people and events, and study them, it is not so much that we wish to reconstruct their lives for the dead, but for the living. Our lives. In this moment, the memory is often more vivid than reality, yet it is no less true.

I still dig in the past, in the sun-bleached remains of my day-to-day work, or simply in the earth. I recall once digging in Dad's garden, getting out the last of the remaining carrots, when, rooting deep, I unearthed a tiny plastic soldier, and that tiny battered warrior, recreated a flood of memory of childhood days when my younger brother and I played for world dominion out in the back yard. The touch of its small, battered form brings back the scent of the earth in our backyard, the shade of the apple tree that sheltered us, and the warmth of the sun. Was this little figurine simply a forgotten toy, or had it been buried in some forgotten childhood memory of military honor? Like anything long lost, he spoke to me of a demand for remembrance. Recognition for the role he served.

We are all archaeologists of life. Coming back to my own home late the other night, when I'd only been away for a couple of days, I opened up the place, exploring its contents as if I was discovering it after a hundred years. For it is indeed the past. A receipt for lunch with my best friend, a couple of stray kernels of popcorn that escaped the flame, rolling beneath the stove like ball bearings, a homemade calendar on the refrigerator marking the days of our own history. Outside, some ancient wood, carved by hands long since stilled, a Japanese float, off a net that floated three thousand miles to be tossed up by the Peter Iredale and snatched up by a little auburn-haired girl. It is my home, and like any true home, it always holds within its walls the artifacts of those it believes will return to it.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

It makes us human, these artifacts of our past, these shifting layers of sand, shifting layers of history.  We sort through the remains of our life, our eyes squinting into the glare, westward into a sunset that also glints through the rusty hull of a shipwreck, staring until we are too cold for curiosity, but never for hope.  Bit by bit, like us all, it imperceptibly succumbs to the ravages of time, struggling to keep from being washed away and forgotten. Remember us. Remember me, in this place, at this time, a large and once tideless rock reduced to small grains trickling through my hands, from century to century, from hours and minutes, from miles and footsteps, until we step beyond the shadow line.

Fifty years ago today, the immortal waters of Lake Superior conferred in its justice the full measure of November's unrest upon the Edmund Fitzgerald.  29 men went to their graves that night, claimed by the vast silence of time that did not see fit to give them enough to meditate at ease upon the final days of their lives.  The ship sank in only moments, the waves tossing the men's last words unheard into the distraught depths. The blackness overwhelmed and silenced the last bit of light that fell upon the ship as it went under, and the end of all things came without the sound of alarm as the hearts of those 29 joined all souls that had breathed their last in those vast waters.

On July 4, 1995, the Fitzgerald's 200-pound bell was recovered during a joint expedition between the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, the Canadian Navy, the National Geographic Society, Sony Corporation, and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.  The day started like any other, with a softening of the shadows, a false dawn before the water was illuminated with the embedded glory of the breaking sun. As diver Bruce Fuoco cut through the final support that day back in 2005, the Edmund Fitzgerald's bell was set free. There was enough tension on the line in that final severance to send it flying up when the mount melted away, freed from the weight of ghosts and the embrace of the deep.

When the divers finally managed to bring the bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald to the surface, it is said by some that it rang. The purest sounding bell you can think of, and immediately after, a kaleidoscope of butterflies swarmed the ship and family members. This cloud of butterflies, miles from shore, when the bell broke the surface, perhaps only a fable, still gives hope for one last gesture of the earth's absolution

From not so far away, here tonight, I hear the faint tolling of a bell. Against the window, the whisper of the wind off a Great Lake, enough wind to keep pushing me onward, enough to see hope on the horizon.  From the bones of a sailing ship to my own life, the span of distance is small. - Brigid

Leaving Ancient Nights Alone

Sleep didn't come easily last night - the phone started ringing early, and I had to tell several people that "I'm retired" to be met with heavy sighs, one distinct expletive, or silence. So, up late, I finished one of the final chapters of my next book. My thoughts go out to the teams working the ground in SDF, the families of all affected, and everyone at UPS. 

 -------------------------- 

Leaving Ancient Nights Alone

 Before this fire of sense decay, 

This smoke of thought blow clean away, 

And leave with ancient night alone

 The steadfast and enduring bone. —

The Immortal Part, A. E. Housman

 I woke at about 3:30 a.m. and entered the bathroom, only to be confronted by what was either a giant gnat or a drone. In either event, I dispatched it with a size seven moose slipper, crawled back into bed, and tried to go back to sleep, which was easier now that I was retired. Being on call always wore me out. I'd put in a full day at work, but I might also get called out in the middle of the night, so I would go to bed extra early and then wake up in the middle of the night. That is not good for the waistline or any sort of regular social plans, but it was a rhythm as familiar to me as the sound of wheels hitting a runway, and the memory of one of those nights came back with the flip of a light switch.

 ----- 

There’s a band of severe weather to our southwest right now, creeping on up as if it’s slow enough we won’t notice. I hope the phone doesn’t ring tonight. If I’m lucky, it will just be heavy rain and I won’t be standing outside somewhere looking like a five-foot-eight lightning pole. I have a mental picture of how that might turn out and think of a sign on a restaurant wall in St. Petersburg that said: Parachute for sale, never opened, used once, small stain.

 It looks like thunderstorms are building, but I hope for only rain. Rain I’m familiar with, the family having left Montana, but for a summer vacation to move out near the Washington coast. I like the rain. The rain washes clean, but it also leaves its mark. Gouges from rivulets in the calloused summer soil as if scraped by hard nails - bullet strikes on the hard earth. Marks that will not fade until further rain falls, warm spring rain that nourishes and renews. Just as my first spring here in the Midwest was a revelation, my first winter was an eye-opener despite being from a Montana family. Dense fogs of ice crystals that coat everything; thundersnow; winds that would blow off the prairie from the West, and rampaging clippers that came down from Alberta, bearing with them not a friendly greeting, but rather a sudden, sharp slap in the face. 

It’s a cold-blowing truth that there’s something within all of us that can be gathered up and strengthened. Something that can commandingly change the course of a life. The weather brings components of force, some deep and innate, working in our souls. Lightning cleaves the sky as a machete, the smell of cordite in the air lingering like gunpowder. Thunder echoes as a brace of artillery booming under a gunmetal sky; the power of the sky becomes a transcendent weapon that can form or scar the landscape of our world. 

Sometimes one has to work outside in it, bundled up in farmwear or Arctic military gear. You do what you need to while the wind laments, whispering of darkness in the earth. Your own voice, the sound of another voice in your ear evocative of evenings of past warmth, compels you forward; for to stop moving out here is to freeze to death.

I delivered my first calf in the cold; the calf not budging from his mother’s womb, the mother not helping in any fashion for reasons known only to her. There was no easy way to do this but to go in and help position the calf, hoping I wouldn’t get a broken arm from the contractions for my efforts. There, the head, my fingers finding the mouth; the feel of the unborn tongue, there tasting, life and breath, and air in my fingers. There is nothing in the world lonelier than being there for the birth of a solitary creature or the death of one. A little repositioning, a good push from his mama, the spreading of bone, and he was out, protesting heartily as outside thunder flashed, illuminating sweat and blood and, for this night at least, new life.

It is a wonder to me how that bone spreads for birth; yet when I see those telltale marks upon the bones in human remains; those marks on the dorsal side on the pubic symphysis near the margins of the articular surfaces and in the preauricular groove or sulci of the ilia to my eyes they aren’t notches of childbirth, they are the scars of sacrifice to save just one solitary life. I stayed in that place, in the shadow of that barn, until the house was empty and the land grew blood: looking in the mirror one day, motionless, eyes downcast, looking as if I was waiting for that blow I’d already received. 

It was then that I realized that it was time to move on, back to graduate school, back to myself.

Someone close to me asked why I was fascinated with the science of bones. I didn’t answer him at the time, but I will now. I have studied bones untouched by anything but time. I have studied bones in fragments, commingled with so many others, burned, broken, and laid bare to the elements. Still, I am always fascinated by the strength of that which is unfleshed. Bones are what lie at the center of us - not the heart, but that part of us that is the last thing to ever be dissolved, even if cut, disassembled, or burned. It is the hardest, strongest, most unwavering part of us; that which supports us, the last piece of us that remains of this earth when everything else is lost; the surviving remnant of all that was dear to us.

But even the strongest of bones can be broken under the fragility of human flesh, as fate strips us of all integrity, leaving us wrenched asunder of all that was. Smells of cooling flesh and salty tears, illusions of ice and rain and fire, detached and secret, yet oh-so-familiar. How easy when we are so very young to think we are bullet-proof, that our choices are the right ones. Certainly, some of my adventures would indicate that I, too, subscribed to such moments. However, with adulthood comes not only responsibility, but also awareness. Suddenly, for myriads of reasons- the evil intent of man, accident, aging, illness - the people and souls around you, as reliable as the sunrise, can with little warning leave you. In their absence, the sound of their goodbyes resonates in the emptying heart of your soul. You hear it always, but you do not respond to that fading sound, for to do so would be to admit to your own mortality.

But I hear the echo. I see it in the shape and form of things broken past integrity. I see it in a stormy sky, as lightning stains the dark, bitter air, shaping the earth in cold, dark shadows. I see it walking the landscape as the earth warms anew, the sky, blind and warm upon me, touching my skin, my form a wet seed growing wild in the cold, dark earth. I think of that as my cell phone pushes against bone when the truck hits a bump as I’m driving under a night as deep and black as the river Styx. It’s on my hip as I drive miles through county after county, past fields waiting to be planted and later, fields of hay; totems of silos huddled like Iroquois lodges standing solitary and watching. Somewhere out here tonight will be the truth when nature, physics, and fate pour forth their fury, spilling liquid, scorching the earth.

As I drive, I watch the sky for massing clouds, the vertebrates of highway passing underneath, the soft thump of tires as they pass over those small ridges of calcified earth and asphalt bone. I touch a small nail that dangles from the dashboard, along with a small piece of animal bone, found in the woods one day. That piece of bone is a comfort to me, like this landscape - hard and practical, yet capable of great strength and the flexibility to withstand what the heavens can throw at it. So strong and delicate, the bones of man and Earth. 

Later, I stand in a still-smoldering field, placing small flags to mark what my eye has captured. The wind picks up, swirling around the dust of spent lusts and ancient lies. Ghosts of sad reflection, a hundred thoughts never formed, and a thousand words never uttered. The wind sweeps my head of any emotion other than the task at hand, until the very roar of it is a warning to look up. When I do, when I truly look at the sky, I know in a moment when I can safely cast my eyes back down or run for shelter. It’s like listening in an ancient church to a priest chanting in a tongue that I do not even need to know to comprehend. They are words that belong in the defensive perception of light and order, which is our safety. 

I put my tools back into the soil, leaving my own parturition scar, trying to save a life by its closure, even if it’s mine. I keep one eye on the horizon even as I return to work. Whatever you do, don’t blink. You watch, you prepare, and sometimes, like other things in life, it sneaks up on you. One moment calm and upright, the next flashes of light against the sky, wheels running hard and fast either toward the storm or away. Previously dying leaves blown into fence rows, coming back to life with movement. The sky comes hungering after the land like a hungry wolf, something struggling for life between the two while pulled and tossed with need; something flaring up as old as time, as necessary as water. 

You never know when the wind will come up, and how it will touch you. You can arrive here as cold and hard and flat as the armor the land is laid with, and eventually the wind will arise, a murmuring voice that calls you in the night. Warm rain released like coins from above, falling like a gift; seeping in under your surface, leaving only small telltale drops on your skin as the sky clears. You look at the table, there lying side by side is a small envelope and some change, pennies from heaven indeed. From outside comes the crack of thunder, the rain tattooing itself onto the roof as a truck door slams. From inside the house comes the soft bark of a rescue dog, nipping at the wind like the rain itself. - Brigid