Pixley

 

June 28, 2021

 Greetings from the irresistible,

 “What’s so funny?” asked the young man in the seat next to me.

I was still laughing about things that happened the days before, random bursts that I tried to keep quiet, but he couldn’t help noticing, or asking.  We were going to be on a four-hour flight, so I imagine he wanted to know if I was some kind of nut.

“Honestly, lots of things are funny but just now I was thinking of Pixley.”

I could tell he already regretted asking the question.

 Pixley California is a hardscrabble desert town patched on the edge of highway 99 in the middle of the state.  It is far enough from anything else that you would wonder how people came to stay there in the first place, or why they stayed.  It’s one remarkable attribute might be that the town’s name was used in the ‘60’s era TV sit com ‘Petticoat Junction’. 

 My brother looped through town searching for the gas station, noting the empty buildings, hollow cars, the few people walking at the edge of the road.  His daughter Cali dozed in the seat next to him, his wife Lee and I were in the back seat, having already spent too much time remembering the theme songs to ‘60’s era TV sit coms. 

 I got out of the car, curious about an old mini-Winnebago I’d seen sitting abandoned in the corner of the gas station’s lot, which was one of the more redeeming parts of the tableau.  I only had my back turned for a minute but when I looked back to our car, there was an old black sedan parked next to it, with a group of little girls boiling out of it, running into the gas station.  And right next to that, a Shetland pony.

 There was a large woman holding a rope looped around the horse.  She was red in the face, her clothes dark with sweat.  I admit I was astonished that a tiny horse had appeared out of nowhere.  Before I could think to say hello, I asked, “Did you just take that horse out of your car?”

 A wise person would not have asked this question, not that I have ever been mistaken for someone of that ilk.  The woman laughed a little, rattling her false teeth, and a little breathless, told me, “No, I’s just walking it, my daughter was driving the car.” 

 “I’s driving the kids to school and saw this horse walking down the road, and I said, ‘Kids, you ain’t going to school today!’ and pulled over.  I been walking it up and down the road trying to find whose it is.”

 Later my brother told me that he (and everyone in the car) was deliberately ignoring the woman with the pony.  It was a self-defense mechanism created from a myriad of experiences with the homeless, the grifters, and the sketchy types with complicated stories that always end with, “I just need a few dollars …”   Inside the car my niece Cali was rolling her eyes.  Not only was her midwestern uncle NOT ignoring the woman, he was asking her questions.

 The woman had a tattoo on her shoulder: ‘Pearl’.  I asked the woman if her name was Pearl, which in retrospect it was the second dumbest question I had asked that day, right after ‘Did you just take that horse out of your car?’  As if someone would tattoo their own name on their shoulder.

 “Nah, that’s my daughter, Pearl.” And then, yelling at the gas station “Pearl, I said no ice cream, just get me my soda!”  She barely broke cadence and continued to me: “I already called Animal Control, and if no one claims him, I’m keepin’ him.”  The horse looked up at me, much less curious about me than I was about him.  He looked tired, his coat was scarred, his hooves ragged.  Whatever past he had seemed to weigh heavier than the prospect of living with the woman who held the rope.

 The girls swarmed in and brought the woman her giant Styrofoam tub of soda, and she shooed them away, still explaining her plans for the horse.  I noticed there was another child strapped into the back seat of the car wearing only a diaper.  If this was an extraordinary day for her, she didn’t let on.

 My brother couldn’t resist buying ice cream for Pearl and the girls, and it turns out, most of whoever they knew back in their neighborhood.  By the time we eased out of the gas station Animal Control arrived, and even knowing the story I still smiled at the sight of a tiny horse standing at the corner gas station.

 It was an absurd little drama playing out in a sun scorched tumbleweed town in the middle of no reason-to-stop-here.  Even as I am telling you about it, I am laughing.  To be clear, I’m not laughing at the horse or his adoptive family.  I am laughing at the incongruity of it, and most of all at my joyful fascination in the whole thing.

 It delights me to think of how this woman changed her day, and then, to a degree, her life, in the instant she saw an orphan miniature horse walking down a busy road.  How often does this kind of story play out all over the world?  It also makes me smile that we happened to intersect with the story, which we might easily have missed.

 Which is some of what I said to the young man on the plane.  It only took a few minutes, but I think perhaps a few minutes longer than he was prepared for.  He laughed politely, not nearly as amused as I was, or am.  In fact, if you were sitting on the deck watching me write this, you might be tempted to ask, “What’s so funny?”

 

 Hope this finds you asking dumb questions,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith

Summer's first blush

  

June 21, 2021

 Greetings from the first blush,

 I have been smiling at glimpses of Summer through the windows each morning.  Lingering in the low grass, in the first light, in the one crystalline jewel of dew. Driving around town with the windows down, I felt her there, delighting in my choice of music.  Seeing the cameo hue in the clouds at dawn, and by eternal magic, again at night.

 The warmth came on the feathers of tiny Robins on their first flight, in the mourning doves soft hymn.  The spaces in the trees closed in with green.  Miniature fawns teetered on matchstick legs between new leaves and shoots in the yard.  These were more than hints.

 A few days ago, I pushed into the Flint river in my kayak, and paddled without much ambition downstream, winding several miles outside of my little town.  It has been a long time, but the rhythm came back quickly.

I paced with dragonflies cruising along the water’s surface, felt like they were happy to see me, sometimes hitching a ride on my boat.  The water was clear so I could see the rocks and billowing seaweed. 

 I was vaguely aware of the date on the calendar, somehow connected to the sun and stars, and how it would announce the arrival of my favorite season.  But I could feel it in me already.  My morning coffee, the first sips usually in dark, were in the pale false dawn.  The daylight eased back the twilight, painted yellow ribbons on the green even before the world was ready to be awake.

 On the river I soon lost track of moments and just felt the flow of the water around me.  The blue arced over the trees, dotted with small birds, and now a heron, graceful and also outlandish, as if shuttling back to some prehistoric era.

 Along shore a dozen impossibly tiny ducklings skittered in the water, mostly hidden by the foliage there.  I was still delighted by them when suddenly there was a flurry of air and feathers and their mother crashed through the grass and into the water, squawking and splashing, wildly swimming at me.

 She was angry, her wings up as she skittered across the water at me, protecting her little brood.  I was so taken aback I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I paddled quickly away.  She chased me for far longer than I expected, close enough for me to see the wild look in her eyes.  Even this morning I am smiling at the courage, and how well her strategy worked.

 I coasted on the indifferent current, until I scraped onto some rocks and held there, rested my paddle and let everything relax for a moment.  I could feel the ebb of the river, felt it align with my pulse.  I let my mind drift back over the week.  There have been these little moments of warmth and light, filling the gray places left by winter, and even the damp spring.  I felt Summer close around me, the dampness on my skin, which is already darker from the sun.  My reverie was shaken as a fish leapt from the water in front of me, just out of the water to take an innocent victim from the swarm of gnats floating there.

 There were flowers growing in the woods near me whose names I don’t need to know.  Snowmelt from months ago fills the streams and lakes and wanders down ways made by God before we all existed and pools in small places, reflects the sky and trees.  In an invisible magic dance, it finds its way into the sky again and rains into the green and makes it greener.  It makes rivulets and creeks and ponds, and it makes this river.

I floated by people fishing, some serious, others merely using their lines to make ripples in the water.  Two men stood in a flat boat fly fishing, a graceful ballet of arcing lines, living bookends over the water.  I paddled quietly past another pair intently casting from shore, and yet another walking their boat along the shallows, talking about a wild night in a Mexican bar. 

 The river led me past small islands, kids splashing on the bank, a single deer timidly watching me from the shallows.   A choir of geese paddled to a steep edge and somehow in perfect choreography walked into the woods for some appointment none of us will know.

 Hours passed unnoticed, and I glided to a stop in a small opening in the thick growth along the shore.  Landing where I once set a leaf free, where we sent my mother’s ashes into this same river.  The kayak made the water giggle around its hull, and then eased onto the shore, and set me back onto the other earth.

 Yesterday I set off into the farmland to carve a twelve-mile rectangle in the humidity.  It seems odd to write this, but I was smiling as I walked to the end of my driveway.  I felt like I had been given a gift.  The morning stood bright and warm, a gift to me to celebrate Father’s Day, and the arrival of Summer, my friend, maybe my closest companion.

 In the time I moved along the roads, wearing mostly sweat, I pushed past the opening I was given and into Summer, into the season of ripe fruit and rich sunsets, of fireflies and thunderstorms.  I thought about moving down that river, which felt like gliding on my bike, or hiking in the woods, or this very run, all linked to being immersed in nature, in Summer. 

 This morning, watching the first light reflected in the rain pooled outside my window, I know I have been invited to another beautiful season of life.  I can’t wait. 

  

Hope this finds you living it up,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith

Making ends meet

 

June 14, 2021

 

Greetings from the lashing,

 

Making ends meet.

 I have not thought about using this term in a while, in part because it has been enough years between now and the days when I was budgeting my pennies so close to think of the phrase from a personal perspective.  Or what it means.  I’ll spare you the research; no one knows its source really.  We assume from how it’s used what it means, and now we use it without regard, practically. 

 The gist of the answer is maybe five hundred rears old; sailors would repair ropes instead of replacing them, by lashing damaged ends together, making use of what they had.  The other common answer is the idea of tightening your belt when money is short, those ends around your waist.  And just as likely, the accounting reference of making the end of the balance sheet meet, both expense and income.

 I realize no one comes to this space for the history of idioms; me either.  But it helps to set the stage, absurd as it may seem.

 Earlier this morning, about an hour before I was really awake, I could hear thunder from the storm that is idling here.  I thought of a word which made me smile and led me back to the last bit of sleep I wanted. 

 In the last few weeks, I’ve been fortunate to have some adventures, to push past some of the restrictions we have all struggled with.  There has been running and climbing and reading and sharing important things and being astonished and exhausted.  Also, sitting idle with no plans to fill those moments, and no guilt after.  It has been an emotional time, with some crying and a lot of laughing, maybe more laughing than in the last five years.  And, to present you the word from 3:39 this morning, more joy. 

 This time has given me a perspective, a bit of contrast, and I’m reminded that for me, and maybe for many of us, it can be a struggle to make ends meet when it comes to our own joy.

 Long ago, another life it seems, I walked into a bank and tried to cash a check and was instead given a hollow feeling.  The feeling that comes right after learning that the money had run out before the days in which I needed it.  I had failed to make ends meet. 

That hollow feeling has surfaced in other times, but not because of my finances.  Some days, in a moment of reflection, I realized that I was overdrawn on my joy account.  I realize how that may sound; joy is such an ambitious word, as if it can only be achieved in some crescendo moments in life. 

 There have been days, weeks maybe, where I would struggle to make ends meet.  It’s different, I think, when you are not talking about finances.  It’s easier to shortchange yourself in other ways.  There are diapers to change and lawns to cut and bills to pay and things to worry about.  There are tragedies and injustices, there are chalkboards filled with problems that cannot be solved.  How can we aspire to joy when faced with the overwhelming ache of living?

 The way this would materialize is that I would reach the end of a day or a week and realize I didn’t have enough joy to make it to the next payday.  So, I would go without, go hungry, to borrow a term.  That hollow feeling, the sense of lack, which for me was often something I didn’t even identify, grew in my core like a dark flower.  Maybe I thought it was a badge of honor to feel that hollowness, a part of being a grown up to feel the sacrifice of that light.  Of course, I was wrong.

This is not a demonstration in self pity.  For me it is a realization that sometimes, too often, I had the joy in my account, I just didn’t know how to make ends meet.  I didn’t know how to lash the ends together to make what joy I had go as far as I needed it.

 Because in truth joy exists in each moment we are given, not just mountain tops or birthday parties.  It is tucked inside grief, inside monotony, inside inscrutable dilemmas.  It is in rainstorms in the dark hour before you are ready to end sleep.  Just writing this delights me.  There is joy in this morning, and it’s not meant to be saved for a special occasion.

It takes practice, but with effort we can learn to find the bright spots in our day and link them together to create a life that feels richer and more colorful, more satisfying.  Think of the most joyful person you know and imagine how they would do it.  With song and other people and giving and forgiving and celebrating and reliving and singing and savoring and sharing.  They do this in the face of what would conspire to make them feel hollow.

 You have the means to make ends meet, we all do.  Don’t go hungry when there’s no need.

  

Hope this finds you solvent,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith

Slowing Time

 

June 7, 2021

 

Greetings from the fullness,

 Each step became a journey of its own.

 Last Tuesday I celebrated my birthday, and all our birthdays, by climbing Half Dome, a rigorous ascent from the floor of Yosemite to the granite knot that towers above the tree line.  In the twelve hours we spent making our way up, and then down, I became reminded of one of the more important lessons of living.

 A week later I can still feel the fullness of the day.  Not only in my sore muscles, but in the new places that have been sparked in my mind. 

 A few years ago, I read a book by Jedidiah Jenkins, and watched a small documentary about his travels on bike from Oregon to South America.  The adventure was interesting, but the lesson was what stayed with me.

 “Routine is the enemy of time; it makes it fly by.  When we are a kid, everything is astonishing, everything is new, and so your brain is awake and turned on.” he said.  He goes on to say that as you get everything figured out and create a routine for life, the alertness goes away.  Soon the moments slip by unnoticed, and then hours and days.  Suddenly years pass.

 The cure, Jenkins says, is to create a life that demands you pay attention, be startled, afraid even.  To learn, to engage, to feel full emotions.  In this awakened state, we slow down time by crafting hours of living.  Remember those endless afternoons when you were seven years old?

 None of this is new.  I am only writing this out to remind you, and me, of the importance.  I have been thinking about the days my children were born, and those when loved ones passed, and other celebrations and challenges and adventures.  They were exhausting and demanding and thrilling and in all of that, those days were filled with such rich experiences they kept me in place.  Time stayed with me instead of racing away like a mischievous puppy.

 I woke on my birthday and stood in the dark with my brother Douglas and sipped coffee in the light of our headlamps.  We whispered our plans back and forth, giggling, already anxious to begin, but waiting for the rest of our group to wake.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I couldn’t wait to see it unfold.

 I am tempted to share some of the day, but I’ll admit I’m intimidated.  It was a holy time for me, and in this moment I feel unprepared and unworthy to describe it all.  And still, I am going to damn well write it anyway, because that’s why I am here.

There were moments like these: Climbing the ragged steps along the Mist Trail, the waterfalls raging in the dark next to us, our headlamps weaving in the air around us like manic fireflies. 

 Unnerved, nearly crawling up Sub Dome, feeling the open cliff pulling at me.  Trembling muscles, gasping for air, heart hammering in my ears, whispering “..give me strength…run the mile you’re in…help me to feel you here…”

 The air grew thin as we rose up into the mountain, and then we could no longer take our breath for granted.  Hundreds of strangers wishing me happy birthday along the way, or joining in our warbling song to celebrate.  And the ultimate mash up: dangling from the cables of Half Dome as my brother led a group of strangers strung down the mountain behind us in ‘Hap-py birth-day dear Dav-ud…”gasping with the effort.

 Praying for my sister on the summit, under a clear blue dome that stretched over mountains as far as we could see in any direction.  Finding the perfect place, tucked inside the mountain, to keep her stone for the next millennium.  The whirl of feathers in my chest when I looked over the edge of the cliff to the valley below.  Watching Lee’s tangerine escape; bright orange bounding across the white granite, and then disappearing into the air beyond the edge.  Then, reluctantly, easing back down the cables, and into the trails below, the sun baking us in the bright places so we would love the cool of the tall pines. 

 Lunch by the river, sitting on a log eating mangled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  We were entertained by a single trout idling in the clear, emerald water.  I didn’t want to leave; “I love this.” I said.  The others, packs already on their backs looked at me quizzically.  “This.” I said, gesturing around us.  I meant the idyllic setting, and moments later, I meant all of life.

 The trail was rarely predictable.  Rocks and roots and uneven places, we wound through the mountains on switchbacks that were not polite about their intentions.  I had to pay attention to where I was stepping or I risked tripping and falling, which in some places could be fatal. 

 My legs were so tired that I had to will them to move, to have a conversation with them, asking them to partner with me again, just another step.  Each step became a journey of its own.  It is a different experience than simply getting up and perambulating to the mailbox and back, unaware of the miracle your body is performing.

 We stumbled into camp a dozen loaded hours from when we left and dropped our things and then, inspired by Cali, made our way back to the Merced River and waded in.  I sat in the icy water and felt the muscles go numb, my aches washed away with the dust on me.  I felt the weight of the day, a welcome weariness that comes with filling the hours with new experiences, with learning, astonishment, fear, exhilaration, wonder, and the deeply rooted passion that still brings tears to my eyes.

 We are given the chance to feel life this way in ordinary moments.  Preparing a meal, fixing a flat tire, planting flowers, making coffee.  It comes to us in perfect sunrises, ping pong conversations, interruptions, long hard laughter, overwhelming love.  It comes because we allow it, choose it.  When we fill our moments with intention, deliberately choosing awe instead of emptiness, we become companions with time.  It falls into step with us, keeps pace as we move through our life.  In time, there is the infinitesimal and the infinite, and what separates the two is what we fill the moments with.

 

Hope this finds you taking your time,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith