Ode to a Missionary's Crocs

With hiking poles they clapped their soles
while strapped to backpacking sacks, and sang
their marching song with softer note to cookstove
cooked soup and tired heels and toes
rose-colored with climbing, walking, comforting
them cozy-like. Somedays, crocing, they slid
on mud amid puddles, squeaking wet and
clean with cold--but cradling feet in such a way,
contagiously congenial.

When winter whipped a fire-red
sheen across cheeks and stiffened beards
with beads of frosted snow, they worked with wool
and warmly wiped the windy blusters off and swept
them skating out through open windows, snuggling
about the chilly feet a lullaby of soft sole and
curving length sprinkled with holes.
Travelers, they lately tromped amongst trials
and children, sharing smiles despite a thinning
life of labor, flying with fever-relievers and bearing
help to souls by bearing him.


Faithful, they, even when holing, forbearing
several rocks only to bruise and black his arch, doing what
a pair of recycled tire bits, rough, dark, blistering, though trusty,
will never do.

A Few Much-Loved and Delightfully-Unified Scraps Finally Become Colorfully Warm

Drippings

"All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul-exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness. . . ." --Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

As I have looked this week at the results of an icestorm, I have seen thousands of frozen droplets dangling like crystals from saplings and fences. I have felt the cold hardening my gloved fingers and even overcoming the fluffed-out warmth of the little Arabian horse between my knees. I have slid down our dirt road on the heels of my shoes, spun up icy sections of pavement with my car, and punched through tough crusts. I have felt my misty breath come back in my face, and seen the white frost bristling my mum's eyebrows after a forty-five minute walk. But unlike this frozen region and these droplets, caught mid-drip into a hard tooth of ice, there are musical and spring-like drippings, nay, torrents of joy drenching me. They have not been sealed up, like these wires, in icy cases; they have not been confined by shortened sunlight, or buried, like the Reeses Peanut-Butter-Cup wrapping I found, underneath six inches of sodden snow. And due to their Source, neither will they be.

The Puzzle of Stickers

You are so proud the day your teacher gives you a gold star sticker for your brightness. It stays on your clothes all day, but when you try to attach it the next day, it falls, its points curling, onto the floor where it promptly finds your brother's shoe and hangs out on the bottom for a couple of days. Not to worry. The next weekend your grandmother tucks a whole sheet of smiling horse and leaping turtle stickers into your birthday card, and your friend gives you a whole book of global frogs, carefully labeled and realistically colored. They're pretty and shiny and stickable. They're yours. But you discovered when you were three that they rip easily, and by four that they can only be stuck successfully once (most happily on a wall until your collection is discovered and you receive a gentle spanking). By five you sometimes considered the consequences of sticking them, and by six you became stingy, only occassionally sacrificing a whole colony at once. Now you have a whole box of sticker sheets--fuzzy ones, sparkly ones, big ones, small ones--that you are too cautious to use randomly, and not dedicated enough to organize.

Sometimes you decorate your mirror corners, but then you get sick of them and ambitiously try to remove them, only being successful at removing the pretty parts. When you give a friend a card, sometimes you are generously motivated to seal it with a special sticker, but when you get such envelopes yourself, you find that they open funny. So you stick a few on your desk and discover that white remains are no nicer there than on your mirror. You try keeping them in your drawer, but no visitor gets terribly excited over a dusty and yellowing sticker collection. One day you put one on your nose, and then are struck with a creativity of simply throwing them out. Your mom finds them while you are at school and puts them back on your bed. When you get home, you are busy for several hours smothering a poster board with them, and then try to sneak the project into the recycling bin--they have been used their lucky once and they are finished--but someone inevitably cannot bear to see them go. The hideous poster ends up back in your room and you only used one hundredth of your collection to make it.

Finally, you try an extravagant approach: A sticker's life is apparently long, so make the most of it. You start your collection on mom's filing cabinet where she can keep them, where they are not being wasted by lack of usage, and where everyone can gloat about their cheap beauty. Who knows? Maybe your grandbabies will get excited about them, manage to rip a few of them cleanly off, and eat them. And not even a clique of stickers can stick long in a baby's digestive system.

A Ballad

It happened now in ages past--
A week has passed since that ago
When east coast lawns shared their repast
With green, whilst we had snow,
And waking he to seeing fiery red
Where brown and wire of chicken coop should be
Instead, he rising from his Sunday bed
Of sleep went racing out, bed clothes flying free
And little caring where they fell. Not yet dead,
There they squawked. Helpless, hot,
They crowded there and crowed
Their pain to the bursting heat, fought
Their neighbors the the coolest side. The road
Had not yet born engines flaring when he
Raced flames and clipped a door in their abode
Through which they panted, clucking free
And hurt not more than a singed span
Of proud-held comb. But he
Looked on his gold-licked arms and
Wondered at the scorch-ed skin with boiling filled--
For heroes feel not flame, nor stand
To see their Chickens burnt or killed.

A Lesson Learned from a Quitter Sock

You know how it is with quitter socks. From the moment you first favor them with the clothing of your foot they fit loosely and don't seem to cling to the form of your feet. When you first put them in shoes, they surely put up a smooth front at first, holding up until you speed up your pace, and then beginning their foolish creep, down your foot, into the toe of your boot. The temptation is to stop every few feet and pull them up, fixing the problem momentarily, and yet it really is a fruitless endeavor, ending in you dropping behind, constantly worrying, and continually focussing on the uncomfortableness.

There is the always the point when one gives in and must accept the quitter sock. To be sure, it is rather a claustrophobic feeling as it wiggles its way down to keep your toenails company, and you will notice that your heel gets cold as it comes in contact with the cool and slippery sole of your shoe. But then with the acceptance comes the ability to cope, and the determination to keep up, and the gratefulness for the other sock that hasn't quit.

Could it be that God allows us a few "quitter socks" just when we are confident that all our foot-clothings are new and in working order? Could it be that we take our waking moments for granted, our spiritual and physical nourishment, our warmth? Could it be that quitter socks test our endurance and enable us to wind our eyes around the trees and focus on the top of the mountain, pressing on and forgetting our discomfort in view of the glory? Could it be that quitter socks are an opportunity for Thanksgiving?

---

And why not thank Him? Thank Him for the socks that haven't yet quit, yes, but thank Him more for the joy of the race, and for the mountaintop, and for the experience promised upon the mountaintop where we shall finally see Him, and thank Him face to face.

Frosted Shredded Wheat for All Three Meals

I am on a diet, apparently, one of those in which you eat nothing but the same thing again for every meal. And so it is frosted shredded wheat--fresh snow powdered on all the browning crusty grasses. For breakfast this morning, I looked out the window in order to eat it as it coated the frost-toasted ground and everything else. For lunch, I heard it patter about me in its cold sweetness. For supper, I enjoyed the taste even as I felt it blowing through my sweater and bouncing against me like the spitballs of some imp. Is it sustainable, I ask, or is it just a fad diet come to yo-yo my clothing weight and my emotions in their preparation for the winter to come? As yet, the research results are inconclusive. I only know that I have eaten well today, and that it has been delicious.

Paul Bunyan Returns

I met her when I was fifteen, and she was formidable. Dressed darkly, silver hair cut in a bowl-shaped fashion, big feet, a slow, wide, thinking smile behind which she hid herself. I was an oboist of five years, timid, lazy, full of complaints about my oboe teacher, and Sue was another option in the area. I don't know if it was the command to put my cold oboe in my armpit to warm it up, or the pointing out that I shouldn't use my own spittle but water to wet my reed, or if was the strong eyebrows convincing me to play more confidently, followed by the calm and dimpled smile. I had a lesson from her once.

My butterflyish oboe teacher did not become more beloved to me after my experience with Sue, but I was certainly more grateful and spent a little bit more time on my scales and silly oboe exercises, waiting for the times when she would challenge me with real music. And then I found the Windham Orchestra, an hour away, to which my patient parents agreed to drive me--a real orchestra, with me as the second oboist. The music was hard. And I discovered the first night that I would have a solo. And I loved it. And I was delighted with Handel's firework music, calling for three oboes, and with Dvorak's 8th Symphony, calling for an English Horn. And I wondered who could possibly be the English Hornist, and who would end up being the additional oboist. I was expecting some night to meet another flitterer like my teacher, or a spry chap like Zeke, the first chair, his long white hair flying and his stature proudly standing about an inch shorter than me.

When I felt a presence next to me that night, of course I looked up, expecting by the feel of darkness and height to see a man. And when I had, I wished I hadn't. I wanted to shrink. It was Sue towering there, the same , slow smile stretching out her face as she recognized me and took her seat next to me as English Hornist and as third oboist.

She was still formidable. All she needed was an axe slung over her stout shoulder and a California Redwood rooted in defiance before her. But her solemn solos began to charm me. She was the first English Hornist I had met, and my fascination with her eerie tone gradually melted away her darkness. And when I learned that I had a solo two measures after hers ended and that I wouldn't have to count until then, she became an instant friend of mine. I marveled at her thick fingers maneuvering through the tricks of Handel, and I was amused at her bushy eyebrows going up and down with the lilting haunt of the English Horn and Dvorak.

I have not seen her in four years now, and had once again almost forgotten about Sue, the rebel oboist who had stolidly propped herself up next to me, her large and dependable embrasure making the big English Horn look small between her knees. I am a bit taller than I was then, definitely thicker, wearing dark pants and a gray shirt. Hair still light though, eyes still blue, feeling so small behind the new acquaintance of the big English Horn that I could perhaps hide behind it, except for my glowing red face and puffing cheeks. And then I saw her--Paul Bunyan, as my brother and I dubbed her--sitting there in the back of my head, her foot thumping inaudibly as the time for my solo came, her smile telling me to play more confidently, and her eyebrows going up and down for expression. Yes, Paul Bunyan has returned, just in time for the last couple rehearsals before the concert. And I hope she'll stick around.

When Not to be Thrifty

Three mornings a week, I meet the now bundled grounds workers as I walk back from the pool, watching them as they blow leaves off the sidewalks in a futile effort to keep them clear for the next ten users, no, for their own feet on windy days.

It's almost as if I must race the busy-bodies out in the mornings in order to feel the leaves under my feet and to see them sprawled and scuttling across the cold grass and cement. Each morning I fear that they will have stolen my wealth before my eyes can feast on it again, but as yet, the enormity of the task seems to have stumped them--they dare not touch the golden tree next to Nethery, the circle of color beneath it a witness of the thousands of leaves it burst forth in the spring, bore through the summer, and now bequeaths to the grass-loving bugs as their part of the inheritance, casually tinkling the golden plates as if they are common, as if they are only flecks of fools gold some child might be attracted to.

I durst not think I am the only one who benefits from such prodigality, and yet one does have to beat the darkness-blinded leaf-blowers to the leaves, just as one must dash in front of the wind to the sky before it gusts away the morning-pink clouds in order to feel them deeply...

Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek about taking time as a child to stop and pick up pennies as small treasures of wealth, enjoy them, and then go hide them for someone else to find--what a rebuke to my hoarding self. Shall I not begin to expose my pocketed coins to the world? Perhaps I will begin by taping a bunch of golden leaves to my window, that others too might find themselves not rained upon with snow, but with brightness.

What the Corn Revealed

To me it seems I was here
before leaves drowned the trails
with rusty gold; weeks past,
wandering about in a green woods
and green corn towering
above my head, knowing not
particularly where I was, but
in search of some connecting tromp
of tracks to take me home, a loop.
Even my feet laugh now--
but for the corn might I
have seen this edge of field,
clogged tread with mud as today
in finding the desired leg of trail
bleeding with leaves as if shot
and amputated from one of the deer
that leaves steaming pellets
in the air in front of me
this november morning.
Amongst sleet and worries of hunters,
nose bursting with red and running,
mouth madly laughing-- feet slipping on
last defiant sprigs of green and tripping
on the desolate stalks of once-tall corn.

The Joy Stone

I just remembered it this morning--the stone that sits copious miles to the east in my Vermont drawer. It is a mere pebble really, rather plainly dressed in its smooth robe of creamy white and yellow, and likely the gift of some river before it was the gift of a family friend on my tenth Christmas. In fact, if someone were to throw my stone out into the dirt road by our house on one of these rainy autumn days, and if it were to land upside down, only the grater coming by next spring might turn it over and cause one to stoop and wonder at the word "joy" lying in the mud.

Joy is unique in that way, coming in odd combinations and ungainly carriages. Yesterday it was pawprints in the sand and the flambuoyant fiery gold of unleaving trees, twelve years ago it was dashing barefoot about the yard in the first snow, and a few weeks past it was the homely box turtles and lizard in Tennessee. Turned upsidedown, none of these would be too elaborate either--except perhaps the underbelly of the turtle--and yet they are joy all the same.

I do not think that the gift of my inscripted pocket stone was accidental, although like many things at that age, I somehow missed the significance. I guess I am joy, beyond simply being captured often by it, but even right-side up, we humans aren't too much to look at either. We're awkward. We have dirty shoes. Our hearts continually connive evilities.

Paul writes: "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:3-6). If we find joy in things down in our neck of the woods, and if upright and purified minds praying for us find a greater Joy in our learning that true Joy is found in a higher JOY, how much more must the greatest JOY of all experienced by our Lord as he looks down with JOY upon his children who have asked Him to right them and pick them up out of the dirt?

Do bear that around with you. It will grow joyously warm-enough-to-sprout in your pocket, even as you begin to grow and burst resplendent out of His.

Now is the Time for Pumpkins

We never grew very many pumpkins, and when they did erratically sprout, they were never very big. It might have been because my parents did not think that the soil was quite right, or perhaps because our pumpkins were never like the plump ones some folks buy for carving, but I like to imagine that it was because they had me.

I remember my father tucking me in at night. As I gave him a hug and he prickled me with his beard, he would almost always whisper, "goodnight Pumpkinitus," followed by "don't let the bedbugs bite." Between my squeaks that he desist from the beard prickles, I figured out that my name was indeed Pumpkinitus, and with a childlike acceptance, never wondered why.

Then there were the pies. We were definitely pumpkin eaters when it came to pies, getting excited over the square-freezer-container boxes of pumpkin thawing on the counter. And then there was the fall I discovered that my mother did not like pie crust, and when her brave words were met with the chorus of "me neithers," we ditched the crust for the custard except when company came over.

On those nights when we had all been goofing around and playing and it was getting late and we were all whispering that dad had forgotten what time it was, I always dreaded to hear his remark, "hmmm... I think that some people are going to turn into pumpkins pretty soon if they don't get to bed." And then it was time to slip down the hallway and skedaddle into the covers before he caught us. My father read Cinderella? We never did. It was only years later that I had to giggle at myself for always thinking Dad was just being silly.

I think that is where pumpkinitus came from too--the disease one contracts when the hour becomes late and the eye-lids droopy. So I have pumpkinitus? Or am I Pumpkintus? It is all a matter of perspective. But knowing my dad, he probably looked at his wound-up little goldy-head, saw the child poetically bouncing around a college dorm-room, and meant a perpetual both.



Why I Stay Up Late

Life is good
And I will be the first and last
To part my teeth and say it.
How else could one
Fledge one’s brain with plans
Hatched from
Tender egg shells
And pretend to teach
Them songs they already know
By heart?

You are tired—
But have you tried
Waking at night
Stirred by the swallows
Drinking from your
Birdbath and reminding
You that they are hungry?

In the end I suppose
I don’t want to turn off life
And so keep it on
For the same reason
I rise while it is yet dark.

Over the Dunes

photo credits to Andrey

The Egg Question

My mum--a nutritionist, a flabbergasting vegan concocter, and a dear spiritual sister--shared with me once that the vegan who eats an egg is severely affected by the foreign cholesterol agent and suffers from it, whereas to the regular egg-muncher, one more egg is simply that--a tasty breakfast snack that certainly does not assist the HDL happy cholesterols in their battle, but certainly does not overdiscourage them since they are used to such insults. As I have experienced the affect that the rare wedge of cheese has on my digestive tract, it seems fairly likely.

In my modern literature class, we have been reading a fair number of texts, apparently well-known, and equally well-admired. To be sure all of them have contained clever writing, and as a dabbler with words, I am excited by the interesting twists of grammar and pecularly delcicious expressions they contain. But what of the content? It is not simply due to the fact that I grew up without television that I am slightly wary of the innards of these tales, nor to the fact that I have not read their like before--I demolished plenty of junk food when I was little--but in these last couple of years I have found myself gradually going vegan, and simultaneously, yearning for those letters that uplift.

What has less-than-moral literature to do with eggs? All too much when we imagine it slowly lining the arteries of our brain with greese-laden images of crime and sensuality, human depravity and grotesqueness, hindering the flow of clear blood and water to the source of our reasonings. At first it seems innocent enough, the smooth, warm-brown shells and the clear goo suspending the attractive golden orb, the beautiful feel of it in your hand, the fine tapered point, the playful freckles...

But I long to cry out to my professors like St. Augustine does in Confessions: "You clash your rocks and set up a great din: 'This is the place to acquire literacy; here you will develop the eloquence essential to persuasion and argument.' Really? Could we not have learned those useful words elsewhere. . . .?" and again: "It is simply not true that such words are more conveniently learned from obscene stories of this type, though it is all too true that under the influence of the words obscene deeds are the more boldly committed" (19-20).

I will agree that it tastes good; I was a toast-and-scrambled-egg eater myself for many years and it was an effort to see the little black frypan, perfect for a single egg, languish in the cupboard. But that is not the issue. Aren't there more healthful materials to which we might subject our minds and bodies?

Marinated tofu is delightful, a true savor of life unto life--a fully satisfying and fragrant dish for all meals...

Death and Disappointment, Death and Anticipation

One hundred sixty-four years ago was a day of disappointment as the awaited second coming did not take place. Laughing fingers were pointed at the faithful. Hearts were wounded by a deeper pain than illness, the sting of failure. Minds were frozen by a more paralyzing force than the coming of winter; an ache of more impending sorrow, confusion and death.

This week has been a week of deaths. Word came twice from home: about a cancer-battling church member, and about the venerable Vermonter who sold us our house. Word came also twice about those whom I didn't know: a gentleman down in Florida who was almost like a family member to some friends of mine, and an Andrews Professor's baptizer and spiritual mentor in Tennessee. Most shocking was the email from my old college, informing me that one of my favorite professors had passed away, only a week after a diagnosis of stomach cancer. So we are still experiencing the death and the confusion that our ancestors wept to expect. Because of the Great Disappointment, we are still continually disappointed in the deaths of those whom we hoped would continue to tingle with life.

On October 23, 1844, the farmer Hiram Edson was enlightened as he walked, praying, across his fields. He was shown that the time of the Second Coming was yet in the future; that there was still work to be done, both on earth and in heaven, before all would be ready; that justification and glorification of all Children of God was taking place in the time of waiting; that there was to be, through the experience of the Great Disappointment, an even stronger faith in love, mercy, justice, and peace; that the best was yet to come. And the best is yet to come...

So it is because of that Great Disappointment that we are still filled with a glorious anticipation. It is because of that Great Disappointment that we, who are alive, are able to share it, who would never have had the chance had our world ended in 1844. It is because of that Great Disappointment, and because of the disappointment of death, and because of the conquering of death through Death, that we can look forward, while living in thankfulness, with all the more gratitude to a time when death will be no more.

Feet

My brother claims that orange-striped Oliver has ugly feet. It is true that since the day he came to live with us as a sick little widget befrought with diarrhea, a boistrous purr, and the kind of eyes, that, as my mother says, often become "fuzzy" with lovey-ness, I too have giggled much over his sillyness, helping with the undignifyingly fond names such as "the Big Cheese" and "Beatrice Bunnyhoffer"--but somehow I cannot quite bring myself to pick on the cozy toes that have brought such a bounteous splotch of orange into my life.

I have been chuckled at lovingly for my feet too, one dear one commenting that the height of my arch makes my foot rather capable of shaking hands, another observing that my toes are calculated to a rather interesting angle. But they are good feet. My sister read somewhere once that high arches tend to make for the longest lasting feet, and I might add as well that my toes seem to like my own shoes quite well. Then too, these feet have carried me for twenty years although I have steadily given them more to bear, have resiliently returned to their pinkish state although I have been foolish enough to subject them to the larger feet and blue bruises of half-tonnish creatures, have remained tender to feeling although I have gritted my teeth and allowed the blisters of rain-filled hiking shoes to overcome them; and they have learned to drive standard, have been poked by rocky-stream beds, and have curled up in wool socks on cold winter nights and clammy-footed othernights.

Most importantly, my feet are learning. They are developing a voice and an action, taking me sometimes to those who need encouragement, and discovering even before I have caught up with them that to be shod with the gospel of peace is more pleasant than to barefootedly arch themselves over the thistles--somehow, even as they gain more earthly scars, they are becoming more beautiful...

I will see Oliver in about two months, and perhaps, like the last time I squeaked up our porch steps, his will be the first loving eyes to halt me, and his the first feet to step on my own in his version of a hug, flipping around my foot, hugging it with all four paws, and attempting to disembowel it. I don't know. But this crazy thought keeps telling me that I needn't fear--that my feet can tread as lightly as his amongst the crackling leaves of October, shining with the sprouting fuzziness of Love.

Silent Pools and Yellow Swim Caps

The swimmers were brought in to the pool room, resting back like nobility on their specially wheeled shower chairs. Lowered gently with special equipment and loving hands, they relaxed into the calm water, into the arms that wrapped beneath their shoulders, and into the yellow floats that supported their heads and necks. But these waters apparently are not stirred by angels, for these same athletes were lifted back out in the same manner they went in: maimed, cognitively impaired, and silent. Only one crawled out mostly on his own and then lay helpless on the deck, smiling and patient as he waited for assistance into his chariot.

I am learning how to crawl too--my head capped with yellow, and my lungs often drowned with pool water. I feel weak as I have to cease my efforts after nearly every length to catch the breath that rotary breathing seems incapable of supplying. Unlike the invalid waters, mine are turbulent with stroke after stroke of activity, but these stirrings are cruel; they slap me in the mouth as I gulp at the air, they chisil their way up the nose I reluctantly place back in the water, and they reveal muscles that have long enjoyed concealment. I seem to have more trouble accepting help than the patient fellow on the deck. I strain on in inefficiency until I am plunged down to the humility of asking for the encouragement and technique that will make me a fluid swimmer, attempting not to grimace as I realize my deficiency.

Do not my waters need even more of an angelic touch?

This cripple must learn to relax into the arms of the Gentle Healer--and then she will be taught to swim, bursting out of her yellow cap of enthusiasm with a golden Buoyancy.

A Happiness of Plums

Even to say "plum" is delightful, and apparently I am not the only one to think such silly thoughts. For one, Helen Chasin has an entire poem devoted to "The Word Plum":

"The word PLUM is delicious

pout and push, luxury of
self-love, and savoring murmur

full in the mouth and falling
like fruit

taut skin
pierced, bitten, provoked into
juice, and tart flesh

question
and reply, lip and tongue
of pleasure."

And just this last week Andrews English Chair Douglas Jones commented in class that he loved Ezra Pound's choice of words in "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" when he ends one of the poem's lines with "blue plums."

But "plum" is also a bluish purple thought that wants to tumble me out of a plum tree back into Langdon, NH-- a child light enough that I don't squash any of the fruits I land on beneath our neighbor's little stand of trees--to scuffle around in the cold autumn grass with our German-Shepherd-Husky Duke, before he had cancer, and to gobble up the plums my mum tried to save from the bellies of my siblings, cousins, and I.

And it is the color of jam in that little book from the Shed Porter Memorial Library in which the family has so many plums and so much plum jam that they become round with its sugars, and fix their floor tiles with it, and dream about it, and are ruled by a purple stickiness. I don't think that it would scare me anymore.

Even now they are looking at me--juicy, plump, and bursting with their tender fibers, waiting for me to follow them back to the little story my Aunt Jean wrote about a little girl named Emily collecting plums with her brother and sister, putting them in a box, and taking them home to stew on the stove and stir with a long wooden spoon.

But instead I can only place their cool selves in my hand and eat them at mealtimes and othertimes, telling them that another day I might have the time to hold tight to their little stems and allow them to roll me back into the stories they come from...

Right now I only have the time for their happiness.

On This Day

Seventy-seven and nearly-a-half Julys were amongst his keeping, though only thirteen Mays were amongst mine, and it was a Saturday, and we were called and told that Alhzeimers had won, and we without a grandpa. I only ever got so close as to hug him once or twice that I can remember, and that with great fear--not that he was big and fearsome, but stern and grim and years of battling the world against my tender few... yet how it is that I cried so, and that September 22 never creeps out of the morning mist but I recall a grandpa who I never saw except he wrapped in mystery and gruff whiskers and I in shyness and distance. And so I think of those I know dearly--far away--and with much much fondness.

Psalm 23:3a

This waterlily is white--and rightfully so. It has petaled its life in sweet water, has been touched only by rain and dew from the heavens and the stray minnow school's nibbling, and has for its center a dollop of fragrant brightness to spread--alighting on kayaks, hiding amongst curls, and coming home along with wet clothing and a transparent snail.

Let them give thanks to the LORD for His lovingkindness,
And for His wonders to the sons of men!
For He has satisfied the thirsty soul,
And the hungry soul He has filled with what is good (Psalm 107:8-9)

Think on These Things

What if you had woken up this morning to face another day as usual, beginning in a wheelchair and a ride in the bus to a school you would not be at if your IQ was above 55?

What if you wanted to be friendly to the new person sitting in the corner, but everyone told her not to shake your hand because they always seemed to misinterpret your welcoming actions as aggressive grabs?

What if you could only nod or shake your head when someone asked you questions you knew the answers to, and if your hands were perpetually in a position that looked somewhat like yoga?

What if the morning's feat was to recognize your own written name, first and last, and maybe say it?

What if you were miserable but could not explain the emotional turmoil within you and could only let it leak out in fights with your neighbors, complaints about a hot forehead, moans about a headache?

What if you couldn't read the Bible because you were illiterate and could never hope to be otherwise, and if you could not fathom the image of a Heavenly Father?

To echo Jane Kenyon, "It might have been otherwise."

"Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
Say to those with anxious heart,
'Take courage, fear not.
Behold your God will come with vengeance;
The recompense of God will come,
But He will save you.'
Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
Then the lame wiill leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy"(Isaiah 35:3-6a)

The Importance of Being Joyful

Once upon a time her name was Sheba. That was back when her muscles were atrophied, and when her coat was full of black grime, and when she lived at a long dark barn in Connecticut. I don't think she was acquainted with very much love in those days.

It has been nearly ten years now since that afternoon when we first went to see her. I remember having a sore throat throughout our four hour journey, and vaguely remember thinking it nifty that she was six months younger than I was. I was too scared to ride her, but my siblings did.

Several days before we brought her home, my sister had the bed-time epiphany that Sheba's new name would be Oh-Be-Joyful, and so she arrived at her friendly new homestead already bearing a new name--a call to joyfulness which she has never turned down since.

I had not seen her for almost two years when I went to visit her this last week, and during this time, she too, like her buddy Grayson, has gone to live with a new family. I will not deny that her coat was not as shiny as it was when we used to brush her every morning, neither was her tail as beautiful, since she has scrubbed much of the top hair off, and there were burrs in it as well as in her mane and forelock. But she still has her new name--she is still Joyful-- and that at least is not something that burrs, nor dirt, nor years can take away from her.

An Office Worker's Rain

enter ID, squint at screen
half-blind, wholly hapless,
scrawl advisor, number, name
on edge-- repeat. watch umbrella
crawl between glass doors, drag feet through
dingy-lit lanoleum,
shoes squeaking a scream into gagged
air, doors swinging shut a glimpse of green
on gray as always inside, sigh.

Lest I Forget

What a queer thing is memory: sporatic, embarrassing, ticklish, and rather jolly.

Upon reading an e-mail from a friend who recently visited a clear-watered small lake called Lempster Long Pond, I was reminded of the many times we got up at 5a.m. on a Sabbath morning in order to get to the rock at the far end by about 6, to eat breakfast there, jump in to the scrubbingly cold green-depths, and get back in time for church. And the huge snapping turtles in the swampy bay and the loons toting around their chicks on their backs, and the great blue heron balancing on one foot with great dignity in even his dangling head tassel, and Oscar the dog who we would let off onto the shore and who would swim the last bit.

Today I found my favorite pen, a very fine-pointed thing of the metallic aqua color one sometimes finds on special types of flies that crash into one's window screens on hot days; an implement that instantly guiltifies me about my pen-thieving tendencies, and yet pours me full up with the pleasure of the friendship of Keiron Hall who later presented me with my going away present--the coveted inkwell that makes one take too many notes in class because it is so delightful to write with.

When I saw the two girls headed toward me with a white "Y" shared between them originating from some ipod gadget, I squeaked and immediately remembered listening to one of my favorite Chopin Piano Concertos with my mother in a similar fashion, letting the music pump a connection into us that words would not have created quite so beautifully, and I giggled again at how I would deviously play around with the volume and skip songs and how Mum would give me a I-love-you-so-much-and-you-are-an-imp smirkle.

---

Random memories are exhilarating as well as perplexing, especially when they bring into one's mind a Bible verse one read three years ago on such-and-such-a-day-when-the-sky-looked-so-green-that-one-found-ants-crawling-in-it sort of thing, or when the memory text one learned when one was six presents itself for inspection to a shocked audience of recent members. We are promised that we need never worry about the things we should say in regards to God and His glory in us-- and I suppose that it is through His sense of humor and His delight in rambuctious rememberings that He will work this out. And I can recall now quite a few such specimens.

Fashion, Hanging By Her Toes

"A lady is known by her shoes and her gloves" -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Tone

If I were to see me lifting weights, I am sure I would laugh. To use the explanation my friend Cathy gives, I am like a stretched-out rubber band, just as strong as the unstretched ones but rather less convincing.

But I continue to get up a bit earlier most mornings so that I can either go running (in the dark, here) or patter down the stairs to the Lamson Hall Health Club to lift weights. Some of my friends have marveled at this, mumbling something about my self-motivation, but I know that this phenomena has nothing to do with me. I know that Someone shakes me out of bed even when my alarm does not do its part.

Romans 15:1 reads: "Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves." God has given me the ability to rise early and exercise, but beyond this, He has given me the desire to seek Him. Through both my physical and spiritual workouts I continue to grow and find in Him the tone that I have always desired.

But with the extra strength comes responsibility and encouragement to be granted to others--especially to those still asleep and struggling to rise out of bed.

Let Loose

I used to keep turtles as summer pets, and when the nights began to burn the grass consistently with frost, I would take them over to our neighbor's pond to release them. Standing just beyond the bulrushes, I would watch the little fellows paddle out exuberantly and franticly all at once into the deeper waters, and always noticed that the center of the pond would almost simultaneaously birth a dozen or so forms of bass who would then circle the bewildered little newcomers as if to welcome them.

----

I sit in the doorway of my advisor's office in the English Department at Andrews University, attempting to figure out the details of my transfer. Her husband comes by and I am introduced--last name too, of course--and not thirty seconds later I have a friendly voice from the right and an exclamation from across the hall, and a cheerful assembly of professors and doctors of English and not English, some of whom I have already met, surrounding the part of me that portrudes from the harbor of the office, and swirling about me the cool green feel of a new stretch of friendly waters--and it has already been proven that these ones truly mean their welcome.

Journey Across the Desert

Once again on the eve of college-life, it is C.S. Lewis who is my inspiration--and this time it is The Horse and His Boy.

Like Shasta, I travel across a wide desert, although mine is not one of sand, but of hours away from home and of mountainlessness and of pavement in place of dirt. Like Shasta, I journey with good company and in two-some style, but instead of swell talking horses named Breehy-hinny-brinny-hooey-haw and Hwin, the cousin-steeds, I and my cousin Merideth are carried by Dinah, the bug-case, and led by some rented creature with no personality and a Massachusetts plate my parents and grandparents condescend to eat from.

I can smell my hot self as the sun pours its heat over me even with the windows down, and there is indeed the smell of hot car and the hours go by and we stop and walk around and eat and it is heat and sun and smell all over again, and sound of squeaking kayak on top of car and occasional jingling from an unhappy alternator belt and hours and beautiful pink sun now and nearly twilight and still desert and no hope of anything else.

Shasta had a mission--to save the Narnians and the Archenlanders, or you might say, Aslan's people--and for that one goal he sweated the miles across the desert from Tashban, heading for the twin top of Mount Pire. I might indeed come from a nicer place than Tashban and be headed off with no mountains in sight, but I have already found several Oasis' of providence like the Winding Arrow River. And I know too that my journey must be worth it as well as his--because my goal, by God's grace and direction, is the same.

Final Ride

I wanted to visit my little fellow and I needed some alone time with him--how awkward it would be to call someone, ask to come over to their place, and tell them to leave. But God had already arranged it weeks ago that Grayson's other Emily would be off colpuertering...

And so yesterday I went to see him, driving a half-hour around curves and straight across long stretches and up hills, finding him standing covered as thickly with flies as with fleabits. He perked up as I brought him out with my halter--a hand on his mane--dancing his little hooves in joy of going somewhere and bucking me up until I had to admit that my tears were not befitting to a rare and beautiful day of sunshine and a view of mountains, and cool trails, and a rather unafraid deer, and most importantly, a happy-go-lucky horse enjoying a special time with his girl.

No, he's right. We're both exquisitely guided.

You are no-longer a black colt anymore than I a filly-child
Dressed in frilly pink dresses,
But you yet flutter your nostrils at white daisy-patches And roll your eyes, bending from strange
Horse-eating bark in the road and frolicing
When I monkey onto you bareback.
When they thought your name was Raisin, I covered your ears
And your eyes too when they didn't believe you a boy and looked.
That time the nasty mare dented your flea-bitten bumper and
When you cut a thin, red snake into your leg backing off the trailer
I've iced you and soaked your stone-bruises until you
Kicked the Epsom Salts into a puddle on the floor.
You've covered my heart with horse-hair when it lay bare
Against your neck, sneezed yellow snot on my face with
Your wiggling nose and tried to eat toggles off my cargo pants,
Ear-pricking a whinny at me when I come to bring you home.

What's this road before us? Not that long black tunnel
We whisper of when joints burn with arthritis and pain prevents
Grass munching, else there would be acceptance. Nor
a trail blocked with a log--you love to dash over those or bushwack
If needed. It couldn't even
Be a freshly-graded dirt, spread as thickly as chunky peanut butter
With rocks--we would face the bruises together.
No, this is asphalt, a big highway I fear to take you on,
Scared you would lose your snort for country places, your
Romance for green fields. Love bids you stay--eight years later--
So I will have more reason to return, knowing your little nicker still begins high and
Ends in a deep chuckle that makes me laugh too.

Fields in Mid-August

I sit clattering here on a chattering old cutter bar--a giant sewing machine recklessly unraveling all summer's careful stiches--wintergreen, goldenrod, spiky juniper, wild blueberries, spare stems of hay, young pine, the stray anthill.

Here are no hydraulics, only the wheels to work the pitman rod back and forth, pulled triumphantly by Toyota and wickedly content to buck me off upon encountering a rock, keen blades clicking until they jiggle off their own bolts and destroy themselves in their own efficiency, cutting cleanly the metal, years old, still working, but now in need of adjustment

Further up the knoll Grandpa pulls a modern bushhog behind his farmall tractor. It doesn't carve as clearly as what he commonly used, in years past--the cutter bar-- but it is good that we have backup and Grampa himself admits it works, well--but rather complicated--looking wrong in its orangeness. But that's changing too, like the cabin needing paint and de-mousing, and a lift to its tired joints, and help remembering the glory of its first tidy seams.

In a few hours we take our scythes and clearing saws and bushhogs and tractors and damaged cutter bars and return them to their places one last time--it is time to go, all to Michigan in a few days. School calls and for some, a new way of life after 39 years in New England. And then again, fall is coming and we must leave Summer to busily restitch the patchwork that she loves, knowing too that frost will overtake her before she finishes. But that can be beautiful too.

What For?

There was a man once who lived in a little cabin out in the woods--far out from any sort of regular houses--contentedly, albeit a bit lonely-like. He had friends whom he would go and visit and take gifts to that he had made, and whom he was always writing letters to and invitations to his little hermitage, which sometimes returned with red stamps on them that the address could not be found, or returned with a kindly written excuse, or like some, didn't return at all.

But the man was far from discouraged. All around his cabin were woodlands and meadows and a pond and tall tree holes and little burrows and salty places and berry patches and as a result of so much plenteous extravagance, so there were also woodpeckers and 'coons and deer and bear and meadow voles and ants and the man delighted in seeing them come and partake of the natural wild delicacies and would talk to them from his porch as he saw them. Because there was no one unfriendly ever visiting the little cove of contentment, the man's four-footed and two-winged neighbors trusted him and minded not his companionship (we might even suppose that they enjoyed it).

One day as the man knelt in the dirt outside his cabin removing a few rare weeds that had come up amongst his lillies and humming, he saw out of the corner of his eye a little orange cat who was sitting under one of his tall pine trees and watching him. He was so surprised that for one split second he noticed that he had stopped humming and then his first thought considered it queer that such a creature would have come way out to his place when there were no houses for miles, and his second observation was that the cat was very small and very thin. He felt compassion and made a little friendly sound in his throat at which the puss dashed into the ferns behind the pine tree and was gone.

Several days went by and the man could not get the little cat out of his head. He began calling the creature Amie and although he would tap his forehead every time he did it and call himself daft, he began putting food out, fresh every day and making those friendly noises in his throat quite often. Six days went by and nothing happened, and then the next morning, he noticed that a little food had disappeared and it was with much excitement that he sat and watched his woodland friends that evening, whispering in such a joyful fashion that one after one he saw them lift their heads from their banquet, look at him, and move even closer.

The next morning a tiny sheltered and padded woven basket appeared next to the man's porch and this time he thought himself so silly that he would not admit to himself that he had put it there and like a addled fellow kept blaming it on "that compassionate man who lived down in the pond a ways." But he couldn't help his excitement about the piece of food being gone and he didn't stop to think if it had been one of the 'coons.

Three days and several morsels later, the man spotted a speck of orange over by the ferns and restraining himself to only one friendly noise, made himself keep working. To his elatement, more orange appeared and the cat hesitantly li-ft-ed--sl-o-w-ly--eac-h--p-aw across the clearing and arriving tentatively at the dish, ate some food. That night the bed had been slept in, and the next morning found the man waiting to serve Amie some breakfast.

Whoa! Not so fast! A helper? Amie sprinted for the ferns and was so fast that the man wondered if the repast had even been noticed. Well, Amie would be very hungry for supper, and so he waited, kindly.

But supper was two days later. The man dared hope that the friendly noises helped draw Amie back, although reason told him that it was the food. Then again... what was touching his fingers, soft-like and...and...fur? He couldn't look... but he knew he was being studied and his fingers quivered under the examination... and shivered so that Amie scurried to the ferns, but he could see the pert orange face peering at him... and drawing nearer.

Three more mealtimes were spent in this fashion and each time the man noticed that less food was getting eaten and more time was absorbed in an odd vibrating underneath the flaming coat and a strange pressure against his knees and loving hands. But that wasn't all. His berrypicking one morning was disturbed by a rustling in the bushes and a squeaky call and a special time of companionship and understanding nose-rubs. That night he left the window open an inch and a half wider than normal... and after a close encounter with glowing eyes, the mans feet were clothed with gladness--in other words, a little orange cat called Friend.

Raspberries

plump thimbles
brimming with and
dribbling concentrated
beads of red, tracing
thin threads across fingers,
jackets; embroidering
even lips with lines of crimson.

Emily's Place

It hardly seems like two more months could have slithered already into the hole of history, and yet seemingly they have--I didn't get to know them very well either.

I only know that they woke me up sometimes at 2:30 a.m. to tromp me all 21.3 miles over the Great Range of the Adirondacks...

That they paddled me across Saranac Lake in a yellow double kayak with friends, made sailing boats of my green crocs, and tickled my hand into picking wild blueberries for a yummy fruit smoothie...

That they greeted me each morning with twelve horse rumps and generally nine saddles, and many rides worth of kids all wishing to share my joy...

That they burst over my head a little bubble of spiritual moisture, committed friends, and Godly purpose...

Yes, these slender two months have given me a glimpse of God's place, which has gratefully become...

Indian Cucumbers and Other Delicacies

Dug up and snapped off, washed

in a cold stream and crunched--at once earthy, refreshing--

so crisp that one immediately goes

and roots up another.

Higher Notes

Tonight as I walked my horse the half-mile home from his pasture, two Veeries, one perched on each side of the dirt road, warbled back and forth to each other, making the whole evening air swim with burbling streams of notes that seemed to dribble down even into my shoes...

It is Spring. I am surrounded by extravagance. Indeed--

"How Can I Keep From Singing?"

My life goes on in endless song
Above earth's lamentations,
I hear the real though distant hymn
Which hails a new creation.
Above the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing--
It sounds an echo in my soul--
How can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest 'round me roars
I know the truth, it liveth,
What though the darkness 'round me close,
Songs in the night, it giveth.
What storm can shake my in-most calm
When to this rock I'm clinging?
Since Love's the lord of Heaven and earth--
How can I keep from singing?

I lift my eyes, the clouds grow thin,
I see the blue above it,
And ever on this pathway smooths
Since first I learned to love it.
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart
A fountain ever springing--
All things are mine since I am His--
How can I keep from singing?

Probably neither Veery has the words of this old hymn consciously running about in a less-than-pea-size brain--but the same force calls them to trickle their little brooks of laughter down onto my head, as that which pulls the hoarse notes out of my earth-bound being, placing them up on green branches and giving a new perspective to the pot-holes in the dirt road. A higher one.

I See Things

The last camel has just dropped its broad feet deep into the burning grains and crept past the only landmark in miles and miles of desert: a boulder the height of one camel and the width of several more. It is still hot. The sun has been a ball of burning glare all morning, and now, being mid-day, the heated light glints off of the otherwise expressionless sand. Even the camels begin to tire, their tall backs looking less like mountains than like small humps fuzzed all over with dried brown grass. As the drivers grow hungry and spread peanut butter thickly on pieces of dried and crumbling bread, the camels relax their placid forms, becoming one with the yellowed expanse.

Minty Ground

She thought that mint would be a sweet addition to her garden and so she transplanted it from the edges of the pond into the little plot beside the house. It smelled so good when she knelt barefoot in the dirt to weed out her thyme and basil, or bent over at the other end of the tilled ground to inspect her blossoming peas. Sometimes she could even find the minty flavor springing into her kitchen window while she washed dishes.
The velvety, fragrant little community became a literal multitude of happy greens, all spreading their roots throughout the entire area of herb beds as if it was theirs to keep. She was concerned as she thought of the carefully mothered tomatoe seedlings sunning in front of the house. It was time for the mint to go before they wove their lacy strings around every beet sprout and chive stem and suffocated the whole garden of her manure-enriched loam.
As she began cutting into the mass of mint with her spade, the fragrance almost changed her mind and for a moment she paused, pointing her nose up into the air to smell the apple blossoms from the orchard next door. She resumed her task with new energy, hauling pounds of mint down to the weed and brush pile near the pond. She hummed as she opened the up the soil to new life and stopped to study a toad she unearthed from its burrow.
Straighting up--finished and breathing freely--she noted the depression in the soil caused by the drastic surgery. And she knew that the scent of mint would linger on her hands for hours.

Of Goats and Deer

This morning's run
thumped me through mists
and rain-run mud,
past farmer Brud's farm
where filing up the bank
of the road came goat
after goat, a flock of floppy-eared
cloven-toed creatures, a herd
of sweet-clover-mouths
out for early jaunt unfenced
and free as the frogs out on such
a moist morning. One fellow
bleated at me and pranced on his
neat toes to my fingers,
a bottle baby seeking esteem
and wither-scratches.

Tonight's drive sighted
me in evening fog with rainy drops
against my wipers, night just
placing its wrappers wetly around
my town in a way that makes
me fear mildew. A shapely blob
on twiggy legs morphed from pavement
dank as my foot clutched the brake
tightly, shifting all sights to
the deer frozen in the lights
and clearly undecided until
I was too close for breathing,
diving in front of me before
I was fully stopped--
metal and hide finding
their acquaintance hindered
by ten cloven feet.

Twenty and Tending Sheep

I am in-between college and a summer of ministry, and in a worldly sense, doing nothing. Coming from a hard-working family, I have felt a slight bit odd volunteering my time to some church folks in need and helping my mother garden, clean-out, and work around the house as I wait for June 8 to arrive, especially knowing that I could have been employed with a well-paying job for these few weeks. This morning found me miserable, feeling useless, and basing my self-esteem on productivity. And not for the first time.

As I sat praying, nearly in tears, I somehow knocked my daily devotion book, My Life Today by Ellen White, and it turned of its own accord from May 19 to June 5. Curious, I began to read, and to tremble: "The Bible Shows the Way to True Happiness." I read of satisfaction found in a life of doing God's will, whether it seem small or great, of the importance of soaking up God's Word in order to impart His light to those around me. I read of true happiness, of self-esteem found in God, of doing everything for the glory of God instead of for the pride of accomplishment, of making God "first and last and best" in everything. Flipping back a page or two to June 3, I read "The reason why some are restless is that they do not go to the only true source of happiness. They are ever trying to find out of Christ that enjoyment which is found alone in Him" (158). That would be me.

I thought I had been compassionately chided enough, but God wasn't done with me. I proceeded to read of David and how God sent him back to tend sheep, even after telling him that he was to be the king of Israel and showing him that his destiny lay shining before him. David was placed in solitude, in a quiet, unglamorous, and humble occupation to grow his character into that of a true leader. Most importantly, David was content and joyful and totally trusting of his Heavenly father. His joy came from doing his Father's will and in patiently waiting for the time when God would call him to his next position. Ellen White says of David's experience: "But with new inspiration he composed his melodies and played upon his harp. Before him spread a landscape of rich and varied beauty" (159).

I thought back on the week I have been home, and was reminded again that God has placed me here. I thought of my parents and was reminded of the time God has given me with them before I begin my job away from home and my third year of college--this time out in Michigan. I thought of my eighty-year-old grandmother, who I was on the way to see, my grandmother who suffers from dimentia and who did not remember me when I gave her a hug three hours later, and was reminded that a day with family is precious to someone living in lonliness. I thought of my mother who supports my father in his teaching position and who has been running evangelistic programs for our church, and was reminded that she will begin full-time care of my grandmother for no worldly recognition in a little more than a month. Finally, I was reminded and shown that Christ took a time of forty days and nights of fasting and prayer after His baptism to seek out His Father, in the world's eyes a waste of time--"For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:18)--and that it was during this time that the devil tempted Christ in an attempt to sever His connection with God, fill Him with discouragement and fear, and draw Him away from His Divine mission.

So, with a sprout of joy and a tadpole of humility, I am tending sheep, and singing.

Oh, and Lord-- thank You for the birthday present.

P.S. We Are All Related

I can still say that Andy Ward is not my uncle, but to say that we are un-related would be stretching it about as much as to say that we are: he is my third cousin's uncle.

Andrea's paternal grandfather and my maternal grandfather were first cousins. Andy is Andrea's maternal uncle.

Now it is my turn to scratch my head as today I was given a replacement check by my great-grandmother's brother's great-grand-daughter's uncle, Andy.

To Find a Spring Chuckle

"Did you lose something this last winter?" I smile to hear Uncle Andy's Vermont accent once again, but I must admit that for the moment I am clueless--what have I lost and how does he even know that I am home? Is he calling to tell me that his mother has died?

Andy Ward is not really my uncle. I moved to St. Johnsbury, VT almost four years ago, a despairing sixteen-year-old leaving behind many riding friends in Langdon, NH and having troubles believing that God would provide others. Within a week I discovered that the dirt roads and trails around my house were extensive and that there were many fields containing horses about three miles away from me, but also learned that Grayson was the only horse in my immediate neighborhood.

Barb Machell was the first horse-lady I met on one of my exploration rides into the horse-inhabited areas, but she didn't seem like an immediate connection. And then several weeks later I was coming home from a hike with my family when we passed two thick morgans pulling little carts about 3/4 of a mile above my house--by the time they reached the edges of our property, I was bareback on Grayson, standing at the end of the driveway.

And that was how I met Andrea Turner. "Yeah, my mom told me about you," were her first words. Her mom? Had I met her mom? Apparently so: hadn't I met Barb Machell?

That first summer was a glorious one and among other newfound Vermont delicacies, I spent hours riding with Andrea and her Morgans--Misty, Magic, and Major. The trails around Andrea's house, I learned, were truly endless and kept winding you around corners and hopping you over logs, and coaxing you through just one more muddy puddle or over just another hill from which you could then see the trail, and the countryside, stretching on into the distance, forever. And I learned too that the little schoolhouse sitting at the bottom of Andrea's hill, where my grandmother went to school as a child, belonged to her grandparents, and that the farm below her's was her parents', and that her uncle Wes lived only a half-mile or so away if you took a shortcut through a field, and that just up the other side of the hill from her Grandparents, lived Andy Ward, her uncle.

One evening as Andrea and I were riding past her grandparents' house, her Grandpa Ken came out and took our picture, one which I would have loved to see: A slender grey Arab and a stalwart black Morgan, a sun-browned woman and a blond girl both in braided pigtails. Andy was there too, leaning quietly against his truck and smoking a cigarette.

After I knew that Andy was Andrea's uncle, it seemed that I saw him everywhere--sometimes he was outside his house when I rode by, sometimes he passed me in his white truck. And then I learned that he sold hay, and that he would be glad to supply hay for the girl with the "neat little white horse who looks like he's just floating along." Standing there and chatting in the hayfield as we settled up after a hundred bales, I learned that Grayson was the nicest moving horse that Uncle Andy had ever seen.

***

When I came home from college for my Christmas break this winter, one of my projects was to get a few musty bales out of my barn. $2.00 a bale in Vermont had seemed more economical than paying $6.75 a bale in Massachusetts, but by the time it had been transported four hours and then discovered to be full of dust, and by the time it had caused a visit from the vet for a hint of heaves, it wasn't that much cheaper. I figured that I might as well pay the higher price for better hay, and when I talked to Uncle Andy from whom I had never bought bad hay in the past, he quickly agreed to take the offensive bales back and reimburse me.

***

Grayson and I are back in Vermont now, he finished with Thayer Stables and I with my sophomore year of college. Two days ago while traveling with my mum, I mentioned that I wanted to call Andrea so that we could make the most of my few weeks home. But when Mum checked the messages upon our arrival home, Andrea had beat me to it--"Just wondering if Emily and Grayson are home."

We were going to ride yesterday, but she called me several hours before our meeting time and informed me that her Grandma Florence had passed away early in the morning and that riding would not be an option for a couple of days. No, there was nothing I could help out with as yet, but she would call me of things changed.

***

I honestly cannot remember losing anything this last winter. Now, if Uncle Andy had asked if I had lost anything recently, that would have been a different matter--but January? Has he found one of Grayson's freedom-craving easy boots, even though I am certain that both are sitting in my barn loft?

***

Tom Barrett has a sugar house on Frank Lawrence's land and runs his sap lines throughout Frank's woods at the top of, "Lawrence Hill," the road that runs parallel to our own. Such an arrangement is perplexing and only begins to make sense when you combine the bartering nature of many old-timer Vermonters, and Frank Lawrence's generosity, and the love for the woods that often brings Tom Barrett up Lawrence Hill from his place down in the center of St. Johnsbury to run his dogs. As fellow frequenters of the sugar maple lot, my family bumps into Tom Barrett once in a while, the rest of the time deriving that he has been there by the snow shoe trails along the sap lines, or by the extra attention that our dog, Oscar, might give to a particular patch of tall weeds.

A few days ago, even long past sugaring season for the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, Tom was poking around in the maples when he happened to look down and notice what looked to be a check folded in half and lying in the grass. As it had Andy Ward clearly printed on it, and as he knew Andy, he brought it over to Andy's place and they chatted for a while, briefly wondering how it might have arrived three miles away, through a field, and up in a sugaring lot. Tom eventually left, leaving Uncle Andy with the check to scratch his head over.

***

Uncle Andy tells me that he laughed after he looked up the check for $37.50 in his ledger, laughing some more that it was still intact--except for the ink being smudged in one place--and thinking to himself: "I bet I know how it got there."

Now that he knows for sure, Uncle Andy thinks that he'll tell Tom Barrett about it, too. But to me he simply says--"That reimbursement check must have jiggled out of your pocket somehow while you were riding that neat little horse of yours."