Another day in the country
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
I read this wonderful paragraph the other day in Mother Earth News so delightful and thought provoking that I decided to share it with you — just in case you don't get the magazine. It's on the subject of spending another day in the country — so hang in there.
"Time, I have learned," said author Terry Krautwurst, who sounds like he could have hailed from some good German family in Kansas, "does not freeze, nor do moments in it. Time is the unstoppable current on which we all ride, at our various speeds and on our various journeys, through this astonishing world. Each moment in each place in nature is a remarkable coming together; never to be repeated precisely so, of lives crossing paths in time, like twigs swept together for an instant, then drawn apart, in stream eddies." Three sentences, mind-boggling in content and beautiful in craftsmanship.
Time, the unstoppable current on which we all ride, reminded me of my father in his last years. "I feel like I'm on a conveyor belt," he lamented. "and I'm about to be bumped off the end." He was coming toward the end of his time. His doctors had said, "finish your business," and he knew that his time was running out and he didn't like it one bit. He craved more time. There were things he still wanted to do — houses to build, trees to plant, money to be made. He was disappointed that time kept moving on at such a quick pace.
"The older you get," someone once said to me, "the faster time seems to move." I've noticed that phenomenon. Part of my fascination with country life was my perception that time moved slower in the country. City life, California life, was so full of things to do and I craved a slower pace. Alas, I've discovered that time still seems to fly in the country. It's Monday one minute, and Friday the next. Where has the time gone?
The unstoppable current was the description. We stand in time with our feet in the stream, unable to recapture what just happened a minute ago and unable to plunge ahead. We only have this immediate moment of this hour in this day on our astonishing journey.
I often find myself rushing against time. At first, I thought it was because I'm getting older, but then realized that it has been in my nature for a long time — this craving to see things happen quickly.
As an early garden-planter-person, I'd study the seed catalog for beans that matured quickly and corn with a 55-day growing period. Some of this was because I was living in the mountains with a short span between freezing weather; but part of it was because I was impatient to see results from my labor.
No matter my impatience or the prognosis in the seed catalog, those seeds that I planted were on their own journey in time, responding to the warmth of the soil, the moisture in the air and the nutrients available. Just like the beans in my garden, today, peaking their heads above the soil, they were riding the unstoppable current of time to fulfill their destiny, which had nothing at all to do with me. Beans have a 90-day lifespan and I have a 90-year lifespan; but we are in the current together.
Whether it is vegetables in the garden or people in a town, we're being swept through time and each encounter is a remarkable coming together. When I taste that first tomato of the season, I must remember these three sentences and savor our encounter — with or without salt. When I'm caught in an eddy with other twigs in town — whether it's a funeral or town council — I want to celebrate our being caught in this small pond of Ramona for a brief moment in time. I want to savor the circumstance of our being drawn together whether it's a neighbor sitting with me for a spell on the front porch or a reader stopping to share this paragraph in the Marion County Record.
As Red Green, one of my favorite personalities on television, says, "We're all in this together, and I'm pulling for you!"
Here we go, little twigs swept together for an instant and then drawn apart. Each on our own journey through another day in the country.
