Frost

In the morning we’ll finish loading the truck and head north. It’s not so much a vacation as it is a working road trip. Year number three, something we look forward to. We’re a week later than usual. I just could not mentally manage the idea of driving during the Labor Day weekend traffic, so we put it off.

I’ve put a few things off this year. Brush cutting and clearing out the remnants of the previous owners along the edge of the ranch got put off. A lot of shit got put off. The older you get, the more compromising you become with projects that twenty years ago would take two days. Knocking on sixty, well, those things can drag on for a bit. Compromise. You wrestle with it when you’re younger, embrace it when you’re older. I have no doubt when I get to the next chapter, I’ll call it wisdom.

Yard work isn’t all that’s been put off this year. I decided over the winter to change things up. I can’t tie flies all night, every night like I used to. I’ve been asked several times why I don’t fish anymore. Well, here’s the press release, I make a few casts nearly every day of the year, the world just doesn’t see it. To be honest, that scene has changed, and I no longer fit in. The game is too fast, too Hollywood these days. I can see my train coming, I’ve got too many other earthly things I want to do before it stops at the station. Channels need changing, pages need turning.

On a trip to New Hampshire last winter to visit my daughter I made a stop on the way home at The Frost Place. Robert Frost and his family lived there full time from 1925-1920 and spent nineteen summers on the property. His work has always held a special place in my heart, his words and prose have always felt like home. Some of his poetry still feels like it was written for me. So on a clear and cold late afternoon I sat on the porch and watched the sun fall on the White Mountains. Cold mountain air clears the soul, invigorates the mind, and focuses the eye. I think my mother said that once. Regardless, ninety minutes of silence on Robert Frost’s porch looking at the world changes your perspective.

So rather than sit on that change, tomorrow morning when we get to the end of the driveway and can turn left or right to go chase the light, I have no idea which way we’ll go. I only know we’ll go.

When we return, things here will begin to change. New outposts on the interwebs, a different look and more layers of the proverbial onion. I recently had a conversation with an old friend at our class reunion about the words and water here at Backwater Flats. She’s one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever known, so I listened. Deep into conversation and halfway through a beer she said, “it’s good, do it for you.”

So, I am.

See you on the road.

And KBK, thank you.

 

Littles Pond, MA

8 September 2023