Gone Fishing, Again

On not writing.

I worked all of yesterday trimming trees, weeding and thatching, taking over twenty-one-thousand steps on the job. A breeze blew down off the mountains, keeping the world cool, save for in areas of full sun, where the thin atmosphere allowed for the full belligerence of late June rays. There were elk tracks pressed into the ground, and on the front porch of the house where I was working, there was a pile of bear poop waiting for the pressure washer. Right now the breeze is still breezing as I lie in bed awaiting sleep.

Lately, I have felt little desire to write, to tell stories, most likely because I do not have much free time, and the time that I do have, I like to spend in the mountains, or warring with the kettlebells, or playing fetch with Dutch, or laughing with Miss FPJ. Last week, I worked nearly sixty hours. Though it detracts from my training schedule, I quite like to be busy; I also like that I walk so many miles each day. Few are the ways of getting a living on the hoof. Plus, for the first time in years, I am barely running, so I need all the walking I can get.

So no writing mojo then, just one more hectic life of unbalanced inputs and outputs, two hellacious and dreadful words I vow to never use again. An appetite though. We ate tacos tonight, the meat a ground local beef because our freezer is bare of elk. Cilantro, guacamole, refried pintos, green onions, lime for drizzle. Smashed three of them, then a bowl of blueberries, plain yoghurt, plain kefir, too much dark chocolate, my weakness. Slurped four bubble waters, another weakness.

Then we took a stroll around the Burbs of Paradise, saw a half dozen ducklings on the pond (I thought of Chekhov’s A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, but didn’t mention it), saw goslings, saw and heard robins, heard a pileated woodpecker, heard a black-capped chickadee, heard no cranes like we heard on Sunday during a different walk, saw a pelican—saber-beaked, dinosauric—heard barking dogs, heard children laughing and screaming, saw a dog being pulled down the street in a wagon, saw a blue spruce that is fat from being fed marshmallows, saw another blue spruce that is fat from being fed taquitos, saw many gardens in need of green thumbs¹, saw Russian olive trees (invasive, but pretty), saw Fremont cottonwood trees, narrow leaf cottonwood trees, weeping birch trees, cluster birch trees, chokecherry trees, ash trees, basswood trees, and saw, finally, horse chestnut trees, heard some aspen leaves quaking in the wind, discussed among ourselves our favorite house in the Burbs (the one surrounded by forest, near feral, ensconced in shade), and led Dutch, or were led by Dutch, to various fire hydrants and bushes for olfactory investigative purposes and subsequent liquid delineations, then returned home, where I crushed more bubble water, chewed some magnesium glycinate gummies, readied my gear for another ten hour day of trimming and weeding and listening to podcasts (neuroscience, conservation, spirituality, physics, author interviews, a conversation with Shaq, the basketball player who has a PhD in education, who is very, very generous), showered, stared at my girlfriend (where did she come from with her small wrists and thin fingers and huge eyes and her sense of humor; like one day, I’m all alone, I’m just Josh, I’m running through the streets of my hometown, I’m rafting a river in Oregon, I’m slaying demons, I’m writing down that I want a partner who is kind, who is supportive, to whom art is important, who likes to travel, who knows how to communicate from a place of patience, who is funny, who loves books, and then another day I’m on the phone with her, we are talking about movies, we are talking about books, we are talking about nomadism, she calls herself a head case, code word for unconventional, we are talking about all the places we’ve lived while I’m walking circles in a park where I had run night after night, month after month, in more circles, like I was stirring the universe, stirring matter, saying to the cosmos: I’m pulling in a star, I will not stop until I do, I will keep pulling, and pulling, and pulling; boom; I’m on the phone, a person on the other end who I did not know existed before then, before that moment, that conversation, a new voice, a new soul, and I’m walking in circles where I had run so many circles, I’m listening to the voice coming through the speaker, I’m listening to the voice in my head say this is your star, I know one-hundred-percent, zero doubt, I know the pulling worked, we are talking, and now fast-forward to the present, we live in Montana, I’m staring at the star, I’m like basically on mushrooms asking myself how in the world did this come to be, Where did you come from? What? Oh nothing I was just thinking out loud. You’re weird. Thanks.), and now here I am abed with zero mojo to write another addition of Front Porch Journal, writing anyhow.

Alas, here I am in fresh, clean sheets, the breeze breezing, the dog snoring, the night winding on, the great wheel turning, the leaves fluttering in the breezing breeze. I’m here. We are here. How? Nobody knows. Nobody? Nobody. Aye. Eye? No, aye. Aye.

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1. I always mention the “green thumb.” Well, here is your average American lawn:

It is shit. It is ugly. It is dead.

Here is a lawn I’ve doctored:

Now that is a lawn.