experience

One way I’ve (unintentionally) annoyed my daughters is my insistence that, every now and then, I’m inhabiting the Middle Ages. This afternoon, in a stretch of breezy sun, at that optimum seventy degrees, I dug my fingers into the warming garden beds and unearthed worms, threadlike strings of root, lifting handfuls of johnny-ups for a friend.

Somehow, in my fictive Middle Age world, there’s only sunlight and soil, the constellations overhead undiluted by manmade light. This world lacks the drone and pollution of the internal combustion engine, contrails, the unending pressure to earn a living, get the kids one place or another, be accountable to the world out there. I have this vision of a world in perpetual growth, the earth still solidly at the center of the universe, the sun orbiting my serf’s homey patch of soil.

Conveniently, the Pope remains distant, the Children’s Crusade hasn’t happened yet, the Black Plague and smallpox are on hiatus. The thatch over my head is rat-free, famine hasn’t reared its head, and – of course – family life is just fine.

It’s a nice reverie, though, when I remain for these hours in my hands-on-the-land dreamlike stance, gathering tangy greens for dinner, my cheeks sun-kissed.

But you may be surprised to hear that the Middle Ages were like a starry night. Let me explain. Have you ever heard people talking about the Dark Ages? This is the name given to the period which followed the collapse of the Roman empire when very few people could read or write and hardly anyone knew what was going on in the world.

– E.H. Gombrich, A Little History of the World

Woodbury, Vermont

I walked into work yesterday morning with a woman who didn’t grow up in this country. She’s learning to drive, an oddity here for a woman in her thirties. In rural Vermont, just about every kid – usually long before the requisite 16-years-old – drives.

Although like most Americans I’ve had a romantic fling with the happy motoring years (just how many times have I driven around the country?), I told this woman part of me longs to hang up the keys and know the earth only through the soles of my boots.

Our world is so overly, crazily full of images – mine as much as anyone’s. As one kind of antidote, our after-dinner twilight walks are as much about the walking and conversation as wandering through the lingering bits of daylight and spying the first stars twinkling overhead. Spring, drenchingly wet, raw, gloriously full of minute surprises, tugs us.

Last evening, my younger daughter and I stood outside as the cool night came down, listening for the peepers. These tiny creatures haven’t stirred in our neck of the woods yet, but the streams tumbled melted snow, in a steady song, to Lake Champlain.

My sister-in-law is a painter, and I’ll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She’ll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

– Anthony Doerr FullSizeRender

Stony Soil Vermont

Vermont Writing

The Middle Ages, Vermont 2016

Watching the Light