Goodbye, Clarence

Running. Running every moment, trying to keep up with the gardens and the lawn, to plant what needs to be planted exactly when it needs to be planted; to avoid having things die. I can't sit down. Something might die. 

When I'm not planting and mowing and weeding, I'm on the road, always unloading from the last trip and packing for the next. I got in at 11:30 pm last night from a speaking engagement two and a half hours away in Pike County, Ohio. Showed them a good time, met some truly lovely people, had a beer and an impossibly tough ribeye at a roadhouse and hit the road again. Manager gave me $10 off and a bag of peanuts for the road, probably because I was nice about it. It all tasted wonderful. Just a textural thing. I turned around and gave it to the waitress. Not their fault somebody ran that poor steer ragged.

Good thing I enjoy seeing new scenery, new skyscapes, meeting new people, because there's a lot of that going on this spring. Watching the light play on the road, that does it for me.

I've finally unloaded the greenhouse, emptied that sucker all the way out, only to load it up again with tender things just now, because they're calling for upper 30's tonight. I believe it. This morning I shivered in 45 degrees. Walked out the door in a tank top and shorts, turned on my heel and got out the long pants and sleeves again. 45/37 on May 24? Really? I'll have to pile straw on the tomatoes and peppers tonight. It's a familiar drill. I covered and uncovered the peas almost daily through late April and mid-May.

The good news is that the sugar snap peas I so boldly planted in mid-April almost all survived multiple mid-20's freezes, and they're a yard tall and blooming now. This cold snap won't faze them. That was an experiment that succeeded. I've never had yard-tall peas bloom in May before. Whee!

I continue to run every morning, my 2.8 mile route, and I've been taking a small pair of compact binoculars with me so I can watch the yellow-breasted chats do their flight displays; see the last few migrating warblers slip through the leaves. It's enhanced my experience immensely. As much as I love to run unencumbered, some encumbrances are worth it. I'm looking for a nice pair of compacts now that I've thoroughly spoiled myself for naked-eye birding.

This landscape continues to bewitch me, as the haymeadows grow up and new flowers open each day and new birds set up and shuffle territories. I never tire of this road, this sky, these sounds and scents, never tire of watching everything change hour by hour, day by day.

Chet is always by my side, unless he's routing a deer, a squirtle, or that new stray cat we keep seeing. A dog has his work to do.  At eight, he's still solid muscle. No flab on him!

It's a bittersweet time for me. This morning, I bade goodbye to Clarence, who drives the bus Liam and Phoebe used to ride. Each morning, we had 20 minutes to chat (well, chat doesn't really encompass it) as he waited by the little cemetery I frequent until it was time for him to pick up the kids who live at the end of my road. I'd had a nodding, joking acquaintance with Clarence for several years, but when we had regular time for conversation, it got interesting fast. This former Marine was a jungle sniper in Viet Nam, able to go into the forest with nothing but his gun, ammunition and water purifying tablets, and emerge six weeks later, having not only survived it, but done a job too dark to tell. Clarence has stories, and I listened, usually only speaking to ask another question. He's one of the most fascinating people I've met, and I treasured those minutes. 

It's probably my writer's ear and the fact that I just like him that made me want to hear Clarence out. He often complained that I knew everything about him, but he knew nothing about me. I'd laugh then, and tell him he doesn't need to know about me. Nothing to know anyway. Compared to him, I'm nothing; I've never suffered real privation or had to do anything terrible. I'm like a sapling. He's a weathered oak, growing on rock.

It's not often you meet someone who has done things and survived ordeals that you cannot even imagine, and will tell the stories that go along with that. He saved one of the best stories for last. Yes, I've written them down, but I don't know what I'll do with them. They're his.

Now he's retiring, and the world being the way it is, I know I won't get to see him any more. I'll miss him terribly. I know he'll miss me. And I wonder how much of my desire to run every morning, rain or shine, ice or snow, was tied up in getting a new story each day. In giving an ear to someone who would otherwise not be lent one.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert air....Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751)

I think about what led me to listen for so many hours to a man who'd otherwise be sweeping out and cleaning his bus in those idle minutes each morning, lost in his own thoughts as I'd have been lost in mine. To peel back the layers, to try to understand what has made him who he is, to make a connection, build an enduring friendship. John Burroughs came close to describing it.

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look underfoot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is of the world. 

And somehow, this one works best of all.

Even after all this time, 

The sun never says to the earth,  "You owe me." 

...Look what happens with 

A love like that. 

It lights the whole sky.

Hafiz of Persia 

Thanks to Tim Ryan for the Burroughs quote, and to Dirk Coburn for Hafiz.  And to Clarence, for all the stories.