Day: July 18, 2013

“I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes, open your hands. I have just come from the berry fields, the sun.”

– Mary Oliver, ‘I don’t want to live a small life.”

“A life in fear and anger is the smallest of lives,

the cruelest waste,

I can say this to you because I lived

such a small life

for so long a time,

and I knew my soul was drying up,

it had shrunk to the size of a pinhead

and my heart had lost it’s voice,

and could only whisper,

and hope and risk had turned my spirit cold,

and hope had fled.

So do, look at me, look at my flowers,

I wander this hill every morning, a lonely pilgrim still,

in search of them, they sing softly to me,

they remind me to start the day anew,

take the new chance every day is,

take the leap, worship time, the

God of all.

Look at me.

Listen to me.

Open your life.

Open your hands.

Open your heart.

Open your mind.

Unlock the shackles on your soul,

and set her free. To find the berry fields, the garden,

the sun.

Kiss me with your golden mouth,

and ride winged clouds,

my last gift to you.

When something like the corn harvest comes, I start thinking – how do I capture this, how do I project the feel of it? Riding by this cornfield, seeing the corn harvest truck parked down the road, I thought this image might get the feel of it, and of the very hot day baking the harvest.

The corn is being harvested and the loud old corn trucks are out to collect the corn and bring it to market. I like evoking paintings with my photographs, I do it by softening the focus so that it  evokes a pastel rather than a hard-edged gritty farm truck. The truck is beautiful to me, it always looks like a painting in my eyes. Corn trucks will be all over the place in the next few weeks, then vanish until next year.

A couple of years ago, our friend Mary Muncil (she married us) introduced us to tubing on the Battenkill and we got  hooked. I rushed on Amazon to buy some tubes and a small rubber boat came that could have taken us to Hawaii. Maria intervened and we sorted out the tubes. We love tubing, we put in at our neighborhood swimming hole and ride down to Shushan or Rexleigh Bridge. Once we put in in Vermont and had a great three hour ride back home. Steering is the thing, you can sweep into tree trunks and brush if you’re not alert and I got a paddle and am pretty good at it by now.

We saw a bunch of small kids zooming down the river with their preserver vests, the river is their back yard.

We went down to the Battenkill to check things out before our maiden run tomorrow – the rains have been so heavy it wasn’t safe to tube until this week. Tubing is simple, and great fun, it is a spiritual experience to lie back and let the river take you someplace, the Battenkill is beautiful. When it hit 96 degrees today we just grabbed our swimming trunks and ran down  there and plunged in. Very nice, restorative, the first time this week I haven’t been sweating and hot. Our swimming hole belongs to a farmer who lets people park on his land and use the water. In turn, we take good care of the place.

Can’t wait to hit the water tomorrow (storms permitting.) This is definitely one of the sweet spots of rural life.

Red has a big weekend coming up. Saturday, we finish our testing for a therapy certificate from Therapy Dogs Of Vermont, we have two supervised nursing home visits where Red will be tested for composure, grounded, responsiveness, connection and temperament, the last leg in a two-month therapy training program from Therapy Dogs Of Vermont.  We plan to work with veterans and are focusing on the Cambridge, N.Y./Bennington, Vt. area once he gets his certificate.

Sunday is Open House at the farm, and Red will be performing his sheepherding stuff. This will be a big year for Red, he has hones his herding skills, and now will bring move of us into the next chapter in our lives together. I trust Red, he is up to anything and he inspires me to be the same.