“The plow vehicle finally came home, after a brief stint in the shop, over to Joe Norton’s. There was a reason the winch cable kept snapping, but I couldn’t solve it alone. Now I owed $97.50 which was a fair price. Coordinating the pickup had been a multi-tiered operation, tied in with frigid temperatures, babysitting, dinnertime, and the nuances of how one should leave a check in a mailbox, without offending the postal service. Bottom line, a John Deere Gator is an awesome thing. Add a plow to it, and you can handle many a driveway. I was getting pretty comfortable with it. A borrowed Gator, yes, but borrowed from family, who would not be using it, or missing it, during the winter. My son, in charge of the repair scheduling, pulled me aside last night. “One more thing,’ he said, affably. “The Gator got a little buried in a snow bank for a while. Even though you hate them, you’re welcome to borrow my leaf blower ...”. I knew what he was getting at. I declined with equal affability, envisioning my faithful legion of brooms & hand brushes , confident, almost dismissive, so sure they’d be up to the task. “You might want to pull it into a sunny spot tomorrow,” he continued. I took it all in, but I was starving, and my mind was on food. I can deal, I thought. But for now, I just need to get home, and eat something. There’s not much you can’t defer for a day. So, I deferred. Today, I woke up, ready to tackle the day’s puzzles. First off, I would gingerly set about thawing the machine. But maybe that could wait. As I shoveled, then dragged my vacuum across the snowy yard, sucking up flies seemed more important, suddenly. How many Airbnb guests had been on my case, lately, to deal with my “fly situation”? Thankfully, and I’ve never before been thankful for Phish, there is a song out there, almost a PR godsend, explaining, humorously no less, the reality of cluster flies in Vermont. Equally of concern, to my rating as an Airbnb host, could be lack of kindling, toilet paper and/or a decent bar of soap. Tracking snow into the living room of the rental, I looked irritatedly at my boots. I’m so sick of dealing with you! I thought, nastily. Then instantly, regretted it, because my Nepali, hand-crafted felted boots were nothing, if not miraculous, and oddly, fashionable. Back out in the dooryard, sooner than later, armed with an ice scraper, rubber mallet and dust broom, I pulled the Gator down into a few, lone rays of scattered, filtered (thru trees) sunlight. It can be challenging, living here in a National Forest. Our most severe west facing slopes are not paragons of warmth, in February. For the most part, mountain elevations over 1800 feet are not, or perhaps should not be considered, ideally residential. But here we are, living the life. Letting go of any previous lapses of judgment, as I inched the vehicle forward into what random radiant heat was to be found, I smiled. A small voice inside me said “ha ha “, and so I went back inside and returned to writing. These moments, my friends, are what we live for. What was frozen did melt off, eventually. Most things, take patience, and then everything else ... takes patience. Beyond that, I can only say this: patience.”
