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A Thanksgiving meditation on place

We were sitting around the Man Hut last night (anybody raised on Flanders & Swan will recognize that cadence, and too bad for those not raised on "The Reluctant Cannibal"), an artfully disguised closet with a TV and a refrigerator and bicycles hanging from the ceiling, watching my Titans fall apart on Monday Night and musing about the paths which brought us to this small town in Eastern Kentucky.

I am not yet a regular at the Man Hut, but some of my favorite people in town convene there most Monday nights, and they've been kind enough to invite me. Anyhow, one of our absent friends has just received a promotion, and I wondered -- while another Titan receiver dropped a perfectly-thrown ball -- whether that meant the promotion meant he would finally come to peace with living here, accept that his roots had been transplanted across state, and allow us to commit to long-term friendship. The rest of us in the room, see, we're staying here. But it's not for everyone, and we understand that.

I still have to explain my own peculiar trajectory when I meet people: Seattle-Los Angeles-Nashville-Morehead. But people want to know where you're from because it bears on who you are in ways I only slightly understand. And that itinerary seems to reflect only knotted brows and not much understanding until I mention little Maggie and her grandparents, and then it is accepted. More or less.

Well. I'll never be from here, but this is home.

Not simply because I'm tired of moving, but because this is home.

I've been writing in this space about the orchard we planted out at my father-in-law's place, and the chicken condominiums he and I finished for the BBQ special my wife ordered at his behest. And I've also written a few times about that place. It feels right, that place. It reminds me of the place which I visited for nurture for years on the north fork of the Skykomish River, but Garland exists now only on some indifferent slides and in memory. Which is fine, all in all.

(Nothing gold can stay, right Pony Boy?) (I can't pretend to know Frost -- is it Frost? -- but I do remember S.E. Hinton tolerably well.)

Occasionally, secular humanist that I am, I still need to walk across the fields and applaud.

And so, partly by way of experimenting with this software and partly by way of an answer to queries over the years, a photo. Once upon a time I worked at being a photographer, and wasn't much of one. Now I don't even work at it.

The orchard is at my back, and isn't much to look at just now, a bunch of leafless twigs in wire cages (to keep the dear off). Dan's garden, fallow now (though we just planted winter wheat) is in front of the barn.

Every once in a while I go out there on no particular errand. It's a good thing.

Mostly, though, we've been chipping away at work. And the chickens.

So one more indulgence/experiment. For some reason Maggie felt it necessary to take one of the decommissioned wire enclosures we set around the trees and convert it to a time-out chicken jail. And we let her, yes we did. Well, Dan handled the chickens. I'm not quite trained up for that job yet.

Posted by grant on November 20, 2007 11:24 AM | Permalink

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