This is Old Green. Been around for a long time. Now she's down to AG plates, so she can be rusty, and clunky and have no muffler. She speaks with a rumble and a roar. All the small boys love to ride in ner. They all hope she's still rolling her wheels when they get big enough to drive. She's our Saturday morning date truck. We load her up and go to the transfer station, coffee in a thermos. She's still warm in the winter and cool on the hot days.
She's our wood truck. We load up our gear and head to the wood lot in her. Two chain saws. Just in case. They are both vintage saws. We get razzed a lot about our antique saws. But, hey. They have cut down piles of trees and cut up hundreds..maybe thousands of cords of wood. The oil jug. The gas jug. The file. The peavey. The hookaroo. The wedges. The splitting hammer. The rope.
Our boys were all taught to safely use and care properly for a chain saw as soon as they were big enough to pick one up. That's the number one reason we still have our antique saws. They were properly taken care of. Filed, cleaned and air blasted after every use.
This June morning we loaded up and headed for the wood lot. To get some tops that were left in the mill yard. The Mill Yard. How many times we have roared up there in old green. That busy mill yard. Hank would turn off his machines and lean against old green and we would talk for a bit. There was the mill. The tractor. Hanks tools of the trade. Piles of logs waiting to be sawn. Piles of freshly cut, stacked lumber. Huge pile of slabs. Pile of cordwood. Huge pile of saw dust. The dogs running up the well worn path through the woods, barking us a greeting. The scent of new sawn wood.
This day it is a beautiful bluebird day. The sky is blue, blue. Like the color of Hanks eyes. A few puffy clouds move slowly along. Its silent. So silent. I can hear a far away ckick a dee. I can hear the trees sighing soft, sad things in the wind. Just sighing. I can hear my heart break. From the silence. The saw sits covered with blue tarp. The tools are neatly in their proper places. A shovel. A rake. A peavey. A hookaroo. Frozen in time. Just how he left them. Waiting for him to come back. The plantain is growing in the tire ruts. The lumber is gone. The cord wood. The slabs. A small pile of sawdust is still there. And a small pile of logs. Waiting. Just waiting. The dogs path is growing in, no joyful, bounding welcome.
I sit on a stump and weep. I should be doing my job. Making sure there's no sticks and bark in the way for Boone to stumble over with his saw. But I can't see. Because tears. SO I just sit there. It had rained hard the night before, and every leaf and fern and blade of grass glistened with diamonds in the bright sun. A red bellied wood pecker was talking in his hoarse voice some where. The trees kept up their sad murmuring. A dragon fly landed on the stump beside me. His gossamer wings made little rainbows. I had to borrow Boones handkerchief and pull my self together.
I think about silence. One day we were just riding around Vermont, and unplanned, we drove up to the mountains. Every where we went, Boone would say, I remember Hank and I were on this road...I remember Hank and I ate at this restaurant, I remember Shane and I were up here for a Maple Seminar, I remember... When all you have left is memories, those memories are pretty special. We drove up Jay Peak. I remembered another day. We were on the bikes and we pulled off at the top of Jay Peak and shut off the bikes and stood there. It was so quiet. It was the quietest quiet I had ever heard. Almost we could hear the still small voice of God. All around we could see nothing but the mountains and the trees, and a ribbon of high way that we had just ridden up. Even when we talked our voices were lost in the quiet. Hank and I often reminisced about that quiet. Now as his dad and I sat up there I thought That is how it is when you go away. All the noise of living disappears and we can hear the voice of God calling us home. They heard that still small voice. My boys. They heard.
We drove into the morning to go say goodbye to Shane. We drove across America. Half way. every day the sun came up. Every night the sun went down. I watched it sinking into the rosy tinted west. Just like that old hymn I learned as a child. "Some day when sinks the golden sun, into the rosy tinted west" . The nights were full moon nights . One evening we could see the golden sun on one side of us and the golden moon on the other. We saw the stars sprinkle across the vast prairie sky. W e drove through Chicago on our way home. Just as we got out of the city a huge rainbow arched across the sky. One end in the lake. We drove through it. In to another night.
Life goes on. Its supposed to. Its all in the plan. We pick up the pieces and go on. May you always see the sun and the moon and the stars and rainbows. May you always hear the birds sing and the wind sigh. May you always feel the warmth of love and the brisk cold of winter. May you have memories to fill your heart. May you hear the great silence. And the still small voice.
