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The Varied God

~ On the Human Experience of the Seasons.

The Varied God

Monthly Archives: June 2013

Mr. Douglas!

30 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by Tom Cooper in Agriculture, Farming, Home, Nature, Seasons, Summer

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Farming, Green Acres, learning, life

One of the more popular TV shows when I was a kid was Green Acres. Coming on the heels of The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction, it was one of those rural comedies in which we laughed at the hijinks of supposedly ‘country’ folks—the twist in Green Acres being that we also got to laugh at a city feller, its central character Oliver Wendell Douglas. Mr. Douglas, as he was invariably known to the cast of goofballs who surrounded him, was a New York attorney whose dream for many years had been to leave the city, buy a farm, and learn to live on the land like they did in days of yore. One of the comedic tropes of the series was Mr. Douglas launching into an impromptu speech about the tradition of the noble American farmer, while patriotic fife and drum music played in the background.

It was pretty funny stuff, especially as the series progressed and we learned how little Mr. Douglas knew about farming. He couldn’t grow anything, he couldn’t keep his tractor running, he didn’t know how to take care of livestock. His elegant, citified wife Lisa was no help either. I have heard that the original concept for the show did not call for the wife to be Hungarian, did not call for her to be foreign-born at all. But when Eva Gabor’s agent got her an audition for the part, the producers immediately understood that she was meant for that role.

I enjoyed the show back then, but thinking about it now in a cultural context, I’m a little confused. This series ran from 1965 to 1971. These were some of the years that saw the migration of many young people from the cities and suburbs to communal farms; when Joni Mitchell, in her song Woodstock–practically the anthem for a generation–sang of getting back to the garden. A man who spoke of leaving the city to learn how to live a simpler, more elemental life on the land could easily have been perceived in these years as a hero, not a buffoon; but Mr. Douglas was just not portrayed that way, and so his desire to live on a farm was made to seem ludicrous.

When I first mentioned to an old friend that I had moved to this 18-acre tract of land out here in a rural area of Jefferson County, he sent an e-mail back in which he compared me to Oliver Douglas. We had a laugh about it. But it also worried me a little, and I still worry from time to time. Do I know what I’m doing? If Oliver Douglas is the archetype for my behavior, must it be perceived as quixotic, foolish?

In my last post I wrote about cutting the grass here, and the fact that I’ll have to get used to those parts of it that will never be cut. On the other hand I was out this afternoon, turning my windrows of mown grass, hoping I’d be able to get a fresh batch of hay into the barn before the rain came. I did; fresh, dry, fragrant hay that I know Chaz and Holly will be munching with delight by this evening.

A few months ago I didn’t even know what a windrow was. Now I am working themwith reasonable confidence. There is a lot to learn, living here, and a lot of mistakes I will still make. But I continue to learn, one thing at a time. You learn what is important in the moment, and you go from there.

I think Mr. Douglas could have learned too, if it hadn’t served the writers’ purposes to keep him in the dark over six seasons about even the rudiments of farm life. Not everyone who moves to the country to fulfill something within themselves is a buffoon. I hope I am not, but time will tell. And in case ANYONE out there has missed the connection—yes, I have a Hungarian wife.

Getting Used to It

20 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by Tom Cooper in Autumn, Death, Fall, Nature, Seasons, Spring, Stoicism, Summer, Winter

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

life and death, Nature, Seasons

Yesterday Leah found a dead fawn on our driveway, at nearly the farthest point from the house. She was riding, and came down to the house to get me. I walked along beside her and we discussed the likelihood that someone coming to or leaving the house had struck the fawn with their car. The creature was tiny, scarcely larger than a small dog. There were no signs that it had been struck. Its fur, the lovely white-spotted fur of the newborn, was still slick in several places, as if its mother had not completed licking away the birth fluids. It only took a moment of looking around at the tall grass lining the drive to spot a large area where the grass was crushed and matted, indicating that the doe had struggled here to deliver her fawn. But what happened then is anybody’s guess.

The only sign of trauma on the dead animal was a bloodied muzzle, but that appeared to be more the work of an opportunistic scavenger than a predator. Black flies already swarmed the corpse. My instinct was to ascribe the death to natural causes.

‘It’s our property,’ Leah insisted, ‘we have to do something with it.’ We, meaning, of course, me. I picked it up by the hooves, so petite that all four fit in the grip of one hand. Its weight was minimal, but its head swung loosely as I walked, the flies swirling off in angry clouds around my legs. I walked into the deep grass, about fifty paces off the drive, and tossed the corpse under a juniper tree. Likely it will be food for some of the same predators who had already been at it.

This is, I’m guessing, the sort of thing I’m expected to get used to, living in the country. But I don’t know. I’m pretty old now, perhaps too old to become inured to the casual death of such a beautiful animal. Even this morning I still feel the small hooves in my hand, the sloshing dead weight swaying as I walked. I think its wrong to be indifferent about that.

We had some snowy days this past winter, after a few winters of very little snow. Figures, since deep snow was exactly what I dreaded most. I hadn’t made any provision for plowing snow; I don’t like to purchase expensive equipment before I’m sure it will be needed. We awoke one morning to find it impossible to get out of our drive and onto the road. The only results of shoveling like mad for a few hours were a sore back and a few insignificant, narrow paths in the snow. I think I’ll be needing that snow plow.

Here in late spring I find all of the areas of our property that are not still wooded covered in waist high grass. I have mowed out a large ‘lawn,’ but the rest is undisturbed. Having come so recently from the suburbs, I can’t escape the feeling that this is an encroachment, something I should, but will never be able to, control. I need to get used to the idea that in some places on earth, grass grows without the intervention of power mowers and weed eaters.

I’m sure I’ll have similar qualms in autumn, when the leaves in their stupendous abundance begin to fall. I’ll rake and blow them off of the sidewalks and the patio, back to some acceptable perimeter that defines our yard, and then spend hours glaring out windows at the piles, silently challenging them, inwardly troubling myself for not doing something about the leaves.

Each season out here presents something I’ll need to get used to, whether it’s the snow of winter, leaves of autumn, or summer’s stunning armadas of flying insects. All of these things I believe I can come to assimilate into my lifestyle, to put up with, or ignore, or deal with on some level, whether it’s with better equipment or a more stoic outlook.

But the cycles of life and death–especially when they materialize in the untimely death of a newborn animal–are something that will always mystify and sadden me, and that’s as it should be. This is what makes us human no matter where we are, whether we are in the most sterile suburb scrubbed of anything natural except Bradford Pear trees and banks of mulched geraniums, or deep in the wild, surrounded by uncontrollable vegetation. I know I should have buried the fawn. I just didn’t feel up to it, and now it’s too late.

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