Awake at 4 a.m. Cool air eddies through the open window and into my bedroom at the Johnny Gunter place, swirling the residue of an uncomfortable dream already forgotten. My nocturnal amnesia imparts no sense of loss. Those dreams are the baggage shed by an overburdened brain, and remembering them would be like clinging to a suitcase filled with junk that no longer serves me. No dream catcher, thank you. Just an open window to the forest through which those fugitives from my subconscious can escape. Maybe they’ll take on some new identity, be absorbed and transformed like carbon dioxide taken up by new summer needles.
By 4:30 I've given up on sleep. Night-scrubbed stars fade in the glow of the newborn day. A few bird calls drift through the window, bubbles of sound riding the growing current of a new day. With coffee and a Clif bar in hand, I find my way to the front porch. It is nearly summer, but forty-five degrees makes a mockery of my canvas jacket, and I retrieve the old down parka hanging inside the house. Dawn bird chorus rises in earnest. The density of voices defies my need to dissect and identify individual songs. Sip of coffee. Small breath. I give my ears over to the entirety of high-pitched tweets, mid-range chitters, and hoarse buzzes. The chorus seems removed this morning, as though the birds are distancing themselves from my perch on the porch. A high-lead logging whistle pierces the birdsong from an unseen ridge to the north. Briefly, I wonder how many active bird nests were destroyed by that clearcut. No wonder my dreams are sometimes disturbing.
After I finish my scribbling, finish my coffee, finish my oatmeal and blueberries, I’ll fire up the DR brush. The grass in that odd low place west of the garden hasn’t been mowed this spring and is tall enough to hide a leopard. In the past, that quarter-acre concavity has beaten the hell out of my riding lawnmower. Now I'm forced to beat the hell out of myself by clinging to the handles of the DR. The steep banks at the head of the hole were created when my maternal great-uncle Johnny and paternal grandfather Roland built the house back in 1949. They needed a place to push the dirt when the homesite and parking area were leveled. Before white people came, this spot was probably a low-lying hollow in a shady old forest where cold water seeped quietly around drooping clumps of maidenhair fern on its trickling path toward the valley bottom. I wonder how many bird nests were destroyed when the land was cleared all those decades ago. One cost of attentiveness is the realization that none of us can negotiate the ridges and canyons of our lives and remain unsullied by human-caused harm, even damage incurred generations ago. We can only forgive and move forward.
The prospect of starting the DR causes a tinge of remorse. My aging body is becoming increasingly enamored of power tools. Managing the Johnny Gunter place with what remains of my life has become untenable without the roar of engines that burn my grandchildren’s fossil fuel inheritance. The Briggs and Stratton on the DR will drown out the birdsong and set the barn swallows who nest in the garage on edge. Last night, the 19.5 horsepower Kohler that drives the portable sawmill seemed to sense my ambivalence. The engine inexplicably started dying while I sawed 2 x 4s for the house rehabilitation project. My rational side understands there was probably moisture in the fuel. But another part of me believes the engine was giving the barn swallows a break.
The prospect of starting the DR causes a tinge of remorse. My aging body is becoming increasingly enamored of power tools. Managing the Johnny Gunter place with what remains of my life has become untenable without the roar of engines that burn my grandchildren’s fossil fuel inheritance. The Briggs and Stratton engine on the DR will drown out the birdsong and set the barn swallows who nest in the garage on edge. Last night, the 19.5-horsepower Kohler that drives the portable sawmill seemed to sense my ambivalence. The engine inexplicably started dying while I sawed 2 x 4s for the house rehabilitation project. My rational side understands there was probably moisture in the fuel. But another part of me believes the engine was giving the barn swallows a break.
Sun breaches an unnamed ridge behind the house. Silhouettes of clearcuts and conifers on the southwest ridges glow tangerine. New sunlight opens the dawn sky like a summer-blue iris. Old Douglas-firs on the hillside to my right shift from orange to lemon. The bird chorus wanes, and I recognize old friends: squawk of Stellar’s Jay, throaty bark of Raven, burble of Black-headed Grosbeak, and the vaporous voice of Swainson’s Thrush swirling into the brightening sky.
Fingers stiffen with cold. My coffee grows tepid. On this late spring morning riding the heels of angst-ridden dreams and birdsong broken by a logging whistle and tranquility about to be shattered by a gasoline engine, I am utterly stupefied at my good fortune. Whether by accident or intention or destiny or all of the above, I have stumbled into this messy life where everything matters. What a privilege. I slip back into the house, crawl into bed, and sleep for two more hours.