Some Thoughts on the Present

This morning my father took his five students--ranging from fifth to tenth grade--out for a paddle on Joe's Pond. With very little convincing I came along as a driver, a boat loader, and as the second person for one of the canoes.

Dad stopped at nearly every curve in the channel to point out something. There were the methane gas bubbles, rising to the surface from the decaying process underneath the mud. There were the kingfishers and the swallows, fleet by wing, bugcatchers, nimble. There was the loon on her nest and the crow in a treetop standoff with protective redwing parents. There was the mayfly in the short non-larva lifespan of some three days. Dad talked about the lily pads beginning to grow as soon as the ice goes out, gradually uncurling their reddened leaves into the sunlight. He mentioned that only a month ago this particular pond was still covered in ice...

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When I was in elementary school and highschool I took it for granted too. There were always the camping trips. There were long walks on Sabbaths in which we learned how to sit quietly on mossy streamrocks, listening to the water gurgling across old leaves and smoothed stones. There were the horses that came along, the cats, the dogs, the turtles--all gifts that I could hardly see because they were as much a part of my cheerful bubble as sleeping was at night.

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Last night I went to see Grayson. It has nearly been a year since he came to his new home, and I was not surprised to once again find him in excellent health, good spirits, and with an unsatiable desire for May green grass. When I arrived back home later in the evening, my parents mentioned that next weekend they had decided to go visit my grandfather's little old cabins and property in the woods of Heath, MA. Coming off from my slightly wistful visit of my childhood buddy, I found myself free to answer that I would love to go, noting that I was unconfined by a horse who would need his supper back home.

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And neither will my present moments return--the tiny world of a university campus, the flexible job schedule, the opportunities and freedom to go anywhere, do anything, as long as the money holds out. Working at a summer camp, taking the morning to help my parents cut and split their winter wood, going along as a driver on my father's school-outings...

Ask Mr. Renkins, the old Vermont farmer who stopped by yesterday morning as we ran our neighbor's wood-splitter, the same guy who watched me ride my white horse "king Arthur-like" through all the green fields as a homeschooled highschool student. He would shake his head again and say that I still haven't found it yet either, in the same way I watch my father's students squabble amongst themselves, not clear whether it was a kingfisher or a barn swallow who just flitted in front of them, and wonder where they will be in the next five years.