When the rain comes

 

A great cup of coffee, raging fire, sound of light rain drops on the forest. And a four-day-old earache, relentlessly slapping me, trying to pull me out of this moment. I hate pain. It works hard in so many different ways to take center stage in my life. This morning I am engaged in an all-out battle with it. 

The rain holds off for about 3 hours but then inevitably yields a forecast too bad to be wrong. It is a great sound, rain on the canopy, and the crackle of the fire. We had to retreat from the warmth of the fire because of the rain. Now it only provides sound and visual effects.

I knew this was coming. Don’t act surprised. The song The Rain opens up days passed in my life. Rainy days usually. My childhood, my sisters.

It would be a crime to deny myself this sensory experience. The sounds of the rain are quadraphonic (surround sound for you millennials). It is a testament to our creator's power. The world can grow on one drop of rain at a time, and the same drop can wipe everything out of existence.

My pain has now been squelched by anti-inflammatory drugs and antihistamines. It was getting to the point where it was all I was.

The age differential between us and people who stopped having children by the time they were 30 has been fascinating. At 50, those people talk of downsizing and retirement and taking more seasoned sort of vacations. When you start having kids around 40, it is a different world. At 55, I was thinking about an Appalachian trail thru-hike in the next 5 to 10 years. 

A year ago, I got Covid. When you live in so much pain, denial is a wonderful ally. A year later, I am acutely aware that I have long Covid. My energy is tapped right out. But, you know me, my rage and fight inside is relentless. Even this, I do not accept.

So the pattern emerges in my existence: a pattern of denial and rationalization. As a young man, this was a far more damaging quality, today, a mechanism for survival.

It’s funny the things we hear in the rain. I suspect there are no hiding places. Rightly so. It is like a journey to a land where pain and age exist. During our stay, those circumstances would be the only ones we would have to deal with. 

The rain ebbs and flows as it wishes, setting the rules as it sees fit. Really, why fight it? In 2018, I recall Ben Crawford saying as he was hiking the AT with his wife and six kids: “When it first starts raining, it feels like such a betrayal. But, eventually, you begin to barely notice it as you somehow become part of it.”

When you're down and low...

 I woke up Monday to learn that my friend Jim McLean died of COVID-19. Jim was a friend from the early 80s when I used to camp at lone Oak campgrounds in East Canaan Connecticut. I was close friends with his sister and he was close friends with my cousin Gary. His poor family is now having to carry on without him. Damn these people who have politicized a vaccine!  It’s been a hard week. 

On Wednesday, we had to put our Bogey down. I just can’t believe he is gone. I hate this. He was so much more than a pet to our family. I need downtime now. Before the frenzied race to winter begins in the fall. 

Tuesday. I really did not sleep last night. Tormented by the thoughts of Jim’s beautiful family having to move on without him.

There appears to be an obstruction in my ability to write on this trip. It came so easily when we were at Killington. I dare say that some of the paragraphs written were some of the best stuff I have done. I will be patient though as I think it will happen. Until then I just sittin'
waiting for the bus all day. So many sounds, mowing way off in the distance, wind rustling, tarps blowing, crows crawling, chickadees, water sounds, eggs boiling, noises from the camper.

It is now Wednesday, September 1st. Good morning. Sour Girl by Stone Temple pilots from 2000 is in my head. It was a song written about someone name Jeanette Jania. Another long night with hardly any sleep. Soon we will be out and everything down for the winter beyond the sound of the river there is the subtle undercurrent that the diabolical forces of winter await. 

September 1, they now begin stepping this way.  Don't you dare say that it cannot happen even now?  I have had seen snow very early in the season in my life. The earliest I have ever seen it was on September 11, 1979. 4 inches fell in Bristol Connecticut that day.

The coffee now officially begins to perk. The sound and the smells of coffee perking in a true percolator, on an open flame, are some of the finest interactions with our senses there can ever be. Decades ago everyone knew how to make coffee correctly (passive-aggressive dig intended I guess).  Around 75ish, a few people had automatic drip coffee makers or Mr. Coffees as they were referred to back then. But they were a joke. Lukewarm, weak, and plasticky. A disgusting assault compared to that stovetop bliss they left behind.   

So I started reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I must say that I am severely impressed with Mr. BourdAin’s stark honesty to admit the things that everyone else is too internally shocked. The honesty makes the rooms take on an almost holographic materialization. 

At times I wish I could go back to 1982 and kick myself right in the rear end. I’d like to believe that all of this literary regurgitation somehow is blog-worthy at some point. Isn’t that right Mr. Terry Ward? When I think of the hours that I spent reading Terry’s bleeding heart hemorrhaging off of computer dot matrix tractor paper by the light of a kerosene lamp in the cabin in East Alstead!  Wow!  My dad too was finding an interest in this person that was doing the same job as him and making a little bread on the side by sharing his hippie generation manifesto. As the pages rolled out of the printer, Terry found and then lost love much to our own discomfort as readers. But we stuck with you, Terry. Something about you was so maverick, that eventually, you graduated to a blog. The Internet bringing forward so many others just like you. There in Langdon New Hampshire, a tragic star was born or perhaps fell off the back of a truck. 

Nevertheless, we loved you, Terry, in all your whiny self lamentations. Why? Because somewhere in you, each of us saw ourselves. You, who did not worry about how embarrassing it was to bear your naked soul to strangers. We were thinking it, but we were too scared to say it. LinkedIn says that Terry Ward has published Notes from the Dump for 34 years and 11 months now. Yes, that is November 1986 through the present day. Terry is listed as going to the high school of Hard Knocks High 1957 through 1962. Terry is a reminder that we can all bring something new to the world yes anyone can, even you.