Working on the Fat Land

It was a week of work but not a workweek.  Here in the neo-Eden.  Living off the fat of the fatted land.  It was a week of work, working with Carolyn, but far from a workweek.

There was no alarm clock.  No sound but the early morning Tuis in the trees.  And after rising from Robin’s Bed in Robin’s Room, I would move in slow motion down the hallway to the kitchen.  Where the water in the kettle was always hot.  Steam rising from the spout, but no one in sight.  So morning after morning I had coffee on the deck and watched the light growing in the eastern sky.

Then to work.  And work we did.  For there were always jobs to do.  And once one was done, there were always others to begin.  And really there was never a beginning nor an end.  Pick beans on Monday, and by Thursday they are ready again for the picking.  Weed a boxed bed on Tuesday, and a week later the weeds are beginning to grow again.  Even when we harvested the crop of potatoes, the job was not done.  For the potatoes still needed to be washed and cooked and eaten.  And the soil in which they laid needed to be re-planted.

Yes.  There were always jobs to do.  And there will always be jobs to do.  Pouring heart and soul and sweat into the seeded ground and watching grow what will grow what will grow.

O!  And I am a shape-shifter.  A chameleon moving from job to job to job.

I have strapped a gas-powered weed-eater onto the side hook that hung from the full-body harness.  I have covered the ears with earmuffs and flipped the full-face screen down.  And suddenly I am a post-apocalyptic warrior.  Looking out at the dark world through a shade-shield.  My weapon hanging from my side and my trigger finger revving the engine roaring behind my elbow.  Look out lawn.  I’m approaching, swinging this screaming machine in wide arcs in front of me.  Down to the delicate work around flower beds and tree trunks.

I have harvested the potatoes alongside Carolyn.  Each of us wielding “garden forks,” which are just smaller versions of pitch forks.  Bent into the work and then standing and wiping my brow and staring into the distance at nothing at all with the fork upright in my hand like the old man from the American Pastoral and the potatoes rolling around at my feet.

I have chopped down the flax stalks with loppers, loping through the garden underbrush like a bushman hunting some hapless creature, the loppers snapping with a crack the flax stalks, some of which are almost twice my height. 

I have broken these stalks with my knees, the juice dripping down my legs and onto my socks.  And I have loaded the broken bones of these flax phalluses into a trailer and towed them down the road behind a John Deere tractor.  I am a country boy in the driver’s seat.  Sporting my trucker hat, the wheel between my legs.  And looking like I’m toting some nuclear waste, what with the bright green flax juice tattooed onto my knees and shins and shoes.

And I have planted trellises for tomato plants to climb, tied tomato plants to wooden stakes rising branchless from the earth.  And I have weeded boxed bed after boxed bed after boxed bed.  And I have strung up plants in the tunnel house and sprayed soapy water on pests lurking beneath plant leaves.  And I have beaten back the greedy arms of the garden below the house.

And I have done all of these things and more.  And I have done all of them happily in the morning light.  Under the guidance of Carolyn my guide and she never more than a stone’s throw away, working diligently on projects of her own design.

And everyday she would stop me in the midst of whatever I was doing and say, “Let’s get the hell out of this heat and go have some lunch.”  And we would.

And the lunches and the dinners were made up.  And made up almost always of fresh fruit and vegetables come straight form the orchard, from the garden out back.  And I stuffed myself taught until the skin was stretched taught like a turkey stuffed fat for Thanksgiving.

And there is no thanks that I can give that is elaborate enough for that week on the edge of the Wairoa River Gorge.  The afternoons spent reading and writing and running down trails.  And the nights spent sitting in the sitting room talking and cracking hazel nuts and watching made-for-TV movies. 

There are no adequate thanks floating in the humble wells of gratitude, and I can only hope that one day I’ll return the favor.

Another link clasped tight onto the traveling chain.

Thank you.