The grim reaper doesn’t bluff, and that’s okay

2022-11-23

Dear reader,

I felt that 44 would either be the most amazing year, or horrible.

Horrible because of my impending doom. I could still call 43 the “early” forties. Not anymore with that double-four. When my dad turned 40 they filled his office at work with black balloons. He came home with a few, the leftovers of a cake decorated “Over the Hill,” and a birthday card with the grim reaper. At 9, taking in the memorabilia of this rite gave me a dim view of the decade.

The saving grace has been that 4 is, according to my son, “the most amazing number.” It has something to do with the shape of the numeral. Whatever his particular reason, his joy in the number stays with me.

Now well into 44, I’m finding resonance in both visions. I’m both in touch with my mortality, and at peace with it. 

Last weekend at a house on the bluffs at Block Island I found myself inside a set of concentric circles. Our friend’s vacation home was warm, and we soaked up the off-season quiet. The lawn in particular transfixed me. It was a plush, well-mown circle around the house. Just outside of it, the yard continued into a circle of coarse meadow grass, perhaps mown just once in the fall. Our bare feet loved the lawn but the meadow pricked at our feet.

How easy it would have been for the homeowner to spend another half-hour every week mowing and have a bigger lawn—more space to play and picnic! But we also saw two bucks and a doe come by and graze in that area. It was a spacious house, but not big. The lawn felt the same—enough.

After grazing and sniffing into the wind, the deer would disappear back into the next ring of landscape, a scrub forest of bayberry and shadbush. This area was even harder to penetrate.

In my teens I went into battle with the invasive honeysuckle that pushed in on the edges of our fields. I would crawl under the scratchy branches, wrap a chain around the base of the 20-foot diameter bushes, and hook it onto the hitch of our 8N. I’d pop the clutch into gear, and look back to see the bush jerked out of the ground and trailing behind me to the brush pile.

How satisfying it would have been to yank out all those bushes that colonized Block Island after the hurricane of 1938, and enjoy more grassy meadow all the way down to the ocean!

This is not to be.

The remnants of Hurricane Nicole came over us on our first night and morning there. Waves were capped with white to the horizon. A plaque at the lighthouse remembered the ships that had been driven into the shore. Many sailors lost their lives on the rocks below.

The plaque also spoke to how the bluffs were named in memory of a 16th century battle. The native Niantic forced the intruding Mohegans over the cliffs to their death. Today, invading tourists can walk the stairs down to the shore there. The long path down is marked with signs encouraging visitors to be mindful of their aging bodies. “Warning: You are now halfway,” said one. “Be mindful of your abilities for the return climb.”

The lighthouse was built in 1874. Farmers advised the Coast Guard against locating so close to the bluffs. Every few years they had to move their pasture fence back to account for gradual erosion by waves. In 1993, all agreed the farmers were right and moved the 2,000-ton structure back 300 feet.

The wildness of the Mohegan Bluffs and the ocean that they meet brought to mind what William Shatner said about his trip into space last year. It was fitting for Shatner, the living embodiment of his headstrong Star Trek character, to become one of the few humans to look back at Earth, and then on into space.

“All I saw was death,” Shatner wrote later. “I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. I turned back toward the light of home. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.”

Shatner had yearned to experience the voyage to space as the ultimate connection, “the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe.” He’s let go of that, he says. He is rededicated to life on our home planet.

It feels urgent that we try to learn from Shatner and other astronauts. Wild areas and wildlife populations on Earth are shrinking as we expand our collective lawn. Billions are being spent on rocket fuel while many will freeze at home this winter.

Can our civilization find a way to feel that we have enough? For me, the answer connects to being at peace with calling it a day, and being at peace with a finite number of years well lived.

On my farm I’m pushing out my concentric circles with a new orchard. Meanwhile, I look in awe at the miles of stone walls around me, and how the forest took over again when the farmers who made them moved on. 

One day in the future, I’ll be a nameless farmer who did some stuff here, stuff that was taken over by someone after me, and by nature’s push to rewild. When my son is 44, I’ll hope to be 77. By the time he’s 77, I’ll likely be a memory. I’m at peace with that.

I slept well inside that circle of grass. We could have wished for a longer weekend, but we basked in each moment as enough. Enough time to write, to play games, to cook together, and to go to bed early. 

A couple times we ventured out to where the whitecaps were breaking on the rocks. Our sneakers got wet. We came home with some rocks. We put our sneakers and socks in the dryer and napped.

At peace,

Tristan

Quill Nook Farm

P.S. Here’s one of the expeditions where I got my shoes wet.

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