There’s a magical spot in my parents’ yard. It wasn’t here when I was a child. Two maple trees that my dad planted with one of my older brothers have reached to the heavens. They provide a shady spot that always has a breeze blowing through it. Their green canopies full of caterpillars, chipmunks, squirrels, and song birds. It seems like magic. I know there’s some kind of physics to explain why there’s always a breeze under these maples, something about the thermodynamics of the open field in relation to the treeline. NH has been witheringly hot, thick with humidity. It’s always a significant and welcome drop in temperatures once I get over to the table placed under the maple canopy. I’m a fragile human being. I thrive in low humidity and temperatures of less than seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. I’m suffering y’all. Suffering.
Megan and I have taken to getting up at sunrise to go get in some work on our fence before it becomes too hot. It’s been a slow and tedious process of scraping. A few pieces of the fence were too far gone to save. I asked my nephew, Dillion, who has the tools and more know-how than I, to come help me replace those pieces. He’s such a wholesome, kind young man. Every adventure I have ever had with him has been fun...including the time, when he was maybe all of three, and we took him to a Waylon Jennings concert down in Western Massachusetts. Waylon was old and feeling his age at that point, playing small intimate venues. He died a few years later. His voice could still call up all the feelings in a soul. It was one of the best shows I have ever attended, even though Dillion didn’t care much about a voice in those days. Dillion fixed up our fence project with some fresh lumber. Our boss was happy with his work and paid him double what he requested. We scrape a section then rake up as much as we can. Then I get to vacuuming the lawn. If you ever want to feel off your rocker, go vacuum paint chips off the ground. Of course the fence has been flaking its paint for however many years, so I could vacuum all the earth down to bedrock and still not get all the chips. But I do my best, sifting through grass to get them all. My dad let me borrow one of his shop vacs. It’s small and does a fairly decent job if I take the filter out. Of course with the filter out, I am dusting out the neighborhood. I try to pay attention to the foot traffic and cars around the house so I don’t cover anyone in a cloud of dust. I end the morning filthy. If I stayed a little longer into the heat of the day, I’m sure I could make mud pies with my own sweat and dusty legs. I’m sure you are finding me more attractive by the blog, hey? I have high hopes that some eventual day that fence will be scraped, primed, and painted.
I work on mowing the lawn for my dad, doing small sections as they are in the shade. My dad gets all his lawnmowers from the dump. He tells me he can’t believe what people throw away. He said usually they are simple fixes, water in the gas or a spark plug needs replacing. He has three in varying degrees of fun to use. One was decent. One smoked and belched; it was very not fun to use. Both of those quit on me. Now I am using the least pleasant one. It hardly has self-propel. If I mow long enough it gives me tingly fingers from how badly it vibrates. Reminds me of my old Harley. Old Harley riders call that feeling ‘magic fingers’. I have heard the new bikes are smooth as glass and you don’t get that sensation anymore. I never minded getting magic fingers when riding my Harley, but it’s not as fun an experience getting it from a shitty lawn mower. My dad and I tinker with each lawnmower as I break them in the hot sun. We clean blades and change spark plugs, puttering. We are unable to fix either of them. Dad will bring them to his friend who owns a small engine repair shop at some point. My parents’ yard isn’t fun to mow, too much stuff. I can never get a rhythm going. Little piles of junk everywhere, some of it movable, some of it not.
I mow carefully around my mom’s lush flower gardens, in one section her mint has escaped their beds. I breathe in deeply as I mow over the escapees, the smell of mint delicious in the air. Down behind the barn there is a random pile of who knows what, I can’t even tell anymore as it’s all overgrown with ferns. I am a little wild and risky when I mow, slowly pushing my mower in, hoping I don’t run over anything and bend the blades, until I hit something solid. I mow as much of the ferns as I can. They smell divine. I’m pretty sure heaven is going to smell just like a field of ferns in warm sunshine. If you get to heaven before I do, don’t come back to tell me if I’m wrong.
Megan and I spent three weekends in a row moving people’s belongings from one house to another. I’m the muscle. It’s hot, hot, hot. One Saturday, Megan’s parents’ house burns down. A lawnmower in the attached garage catches fire and explodes. I hold Megan in the pouring rain as her childhood home burns to charred studs. Nine small town fire departments respond. The street is lined with engines and lights. From the smoldering wreckage, brave men and women, bring charred photo albums and pictures in burnt out picture frames. I watch Megan and her two sisters sift through the ashes in the small garden shed, trying to save old memories, art work, and family keepsakes. My heart is too small for the love in that shed, and it aches in my chest. All of mine and Megan’s important papers were being stored in that house, while we travel, all gone. I don’t like stuff. When we sold our house, the people who bought it offered to buy all of our junk, too. So I walked out with my clothes and I didn’t feel one stitch of sentimentality about any of things I left behind. I can see that many people don’t feel this same way. Megan’s parents are physically fine.
Megan’s dad has an old Tacoma, the front melted like wax. But the thing started right up, the melted headlights even worked. You have to love a Toyota. The community is so generous, food and gift cards and offers of bedrooms to stay in poured in from all around the neighborhood. The firefighters who thought to save keepsakes, Megan, and my sisters-in-law who sifted through charred remains, the community who answered the call in anyway they knew how was really restorative of my faith in humanity.
We hike a few hikes. One lovely meander in Pisgah State Park, led us around a delightful pond. We found secret swim holes and marked them in our minds for some other day. We’ll pack up a picnic and swim a day away.
We hike Pack Monadnock another day in Miller State Park. The lady at the toll booth tries to shame me for never having hiked it before. But a road goes to the top and I never found the idea of hiking to a parking lot appealing. It’s a spectacular hike, though. We go up the Wapack trail to the summit, a nice rocky, slab-y, scrambley trail. Miller State Park is the oldest state park in New Hampshire. I have been up Pack before. Once, in elementary school, we went on a field trip there. We drove up the auto road and had a meeting with park rangers about hawks. Megan has a bad knee from playing field hockey in high school, so she had a more trying time than the rest of us on the hike. But she persevered, and I was proud of her for getting it done. There’s a gift shop on the summit. We bought a sticker for Henry and Megan a sweat shirt.
“Debate “
My friend, Amy, flies in from the west coast for a wedding. We meet up for a hike at The Andres Institute of Art. There's several trails through the property, where you'll meet many different sculptures crafted by artists from around the world. My favorite one is called “Debate” by Tomas Kus of the Czech Republic. We find our way to this sculpture. Amy is a gem. She lived up the road from me growing up. She is my friend, Amanda’s sister. We've become friends since Amanda died. We finish our small hike and go grab fancy burgers at a little place we know. We eat outside. We have real conversation, easy, deep, serious, and full of laughter. I feel lucky to know her, blessed to call her my friend. She's smart and funny. She's supportive and will tell me when she thinks something is stupid. Sometimes, I can't believe how incredibly lucky I am to have such friends as I have.
One evening, my little nephew calls and invites us to go jump off a bridge with him. We agree to meet him at said bridge. Megan, Nema, and I pile in Nema’s car and head for the water. We meet my sister, P, there with multiple nieces and nephews. It's a rite of passage in summertime to jump off this bridge. I jump in after a minute. It's not high, but it still takes me a minute to gather myself for the first jump of summer. The sun is going down, a stiff wind makes the water choppy as it comes across the lake. I splash around with my three year old nephew. He shows me how well he can swim in his life jacket “look, Stacey, look I can turn around. Look, Stacey, I can dunk my head. Look, Stacey, look at me.” He comes up real close until our noses are touching. He studies my eyes. We laugh in the dying sun. My nephew, Ray, runs full speed, leaps over the guardrail, fearlessly, dives in to the moving waters below. My little nephew and I cheer from the shallow waters at the shore. Oh, summertime, oh, alive time.
Northeast Kingdom of Vermont
On one of the hottest days, Megan and I filled up Henry’s gas tank and took a day trip into the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. We visited border towns and drove up mountain passes, AC on full blast and enjoyed the views. We drove over Smuggler’s Notch. It was used by rum runners during prohibition. There are enormous boulders on the top.
Smugglers Notch, VT
The smugglers would hide out among these boulders if the law was on their tail. Earlier than that it was used by people who were escaping enslavement in the south en route for Montreal. They’d rest there among the giant boulders before making tracks for the Canadian border and freedom. I hope those Green Mountain rocks sheltered them well. I hope they all made it to Montreal. While we drive windy roads, admire waterfalls and lakes, Megan and I talk about where we’ll go when we are done with our job. We’re thinking about experimenting with a different set up when we go. So I have been researching and studying. It’s my favorite thing, you know- planning, learning about some new thing. This research and studying has been lifting my spirits, that, yes, someday we will be again in the woods and wilds.
aww... i love you, sister of mine!
You do like to research the hell out of things-- your thoroughness is actually truly impressive. I love you.