OutTakes
by Edd Merritt

Yes Mother, Holidays are for Schmoozing

Goodnight you moonlight ladies
Rockabye sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the
colors I choose
Won’t you let me go down in my
dreams?

Maybe I’d been spending too much time recently with Ken Kesey’s Stamper family, lumberjacks in a novel entitled Sometimes a Great Notion. Sequestered at our camp, for the better part of two nights I was deep into the climax of the story in which the author’s writing explodes in a mind-boggling description of father, son and cousin beating trees down a hillside in Oregon. They cut and skin redwoods, screw-jack and slide logs to get them to the mill ahead of a rain that threatens not only to swell rivers but endanger the very lives of the “jacks”--all of it done amid concurrent threats of violence from organizers of a strike at the mill. His narrative hops among the characters’ thoughts and unique verbiage like a jigsaw puzzle, and yet rather than lose the reader, it fascinates and gives insight and flavor to personalities like very few things I’ve read.
Now, our camp in Vermont is on water – not a timbering river such as Kesey’s – but a peaceful pond surrounded by hills and forests of northern Lamoille County. It is a wonderful get-away, and on this Labor Day weekend when many other places seem clogged by summers’ end vacationers, it was absolutely dead still. There are few powerboats on a normal day. One would imagine that a holiday, though, would bring out at least one trolling motor. I listened hard – heard not a gurgle of an engine. They must all have gone to the Fair.
It was so quiet, in fact, that even the resident loon didn’t care to finish his beep – OoooAAh . . . oh, never mind. Have you ever found it too still to read? I did.
With dusk each evening, I moved from our deck down to the shore where we’ve built a circle of stones around a fire pit, and I lit wood from a stack there. I’d collected branches from an early season snowstorm and twigs that dropped from tall birches growing down a hollow nearly to the water’s edge. Other pieces I had already hauled up the hill to my truck to carry to Charlotte for our woodstove. I think the setting of my book had caused me to go a bit overboard in the wood hauling. I overextended myself, believing that I could still cut and lug logs as if I were a teenager. Fantasies are hard to retire. Time and separation may cause you, painfully, to romanticize your abilities.
In fact, my lower back said, “Merritt, sit, stay. Enjoy; don’t destroy the trees. There is enough work here for days and probably months. Remember, that’s one of the appeals of the place.”
So, for a change, I took my body’s advice.What had been a full day of activity on my part came to a halt and with it came attention to my surroundings.
We have been held captive by politics for the last few months, and I was pleased to be away from the din of reporters trying to fill air space with analysis that, at best, only nibbles at the border of importance.
With my mind off the radio and into my surroundings, the lake suddenly became illuminated by activity. In front of me hundreds--probably thousands--of bugs circled a foot over the water while others skittered on its surface. Above them bats swooped up, down, cutting corners through the air as though piloted by a kid with a new radio-drive navigator, narrowing each bat’s turning angle by ten degrees.
As the sky dimmed, the last glow of the sun’s rays receded behind hills directly in front of me. Things at ground level disappeared in darkness. Looking upward I saw only the tops of what from my vantage point were the tallest birches ever. Their branches seemed to bend down, intent on returning my gaze. Others ignored me completely, reaching instead for the multitude of stars popping alight in the darkening sky.
Despite the trees’ leanings and the bugs’ hyperactivity, not a sound emanated from either one.
Finally, I was at the bottom of a dome formed by shadows. I stared upward into one bubble of a vast universe. Oh yes the Milky Way flowed through it, as did stars and planets – however, there wasn’t anything manmade in my little window of space, not even an errant satellite. Briefl, a shooting star flashed and disappeared – burned to a crisp.
All I could think was, “what a huge mystery, what a great story lies out there.” How can we spend so much time immersed in the immediacies of everyday life without, at least, periodically pausing to move our consciousness beyond them?
That pause is very often the road not taken, isn’t it?
I’m not arguing to melt our social glue and that which holds us to the earth. If we’re going to live collectively, we have to be reasonable, or we will soon cease to exist –and martyrdom certainly isn’t on my agenda. Leave that to the extreme wackos.
Yet I find it very beneficial – if not necessary at my stage in life, anyway – to just lie back periodically and use whatever senses are left to me to focus on a “beyond” about which I know very little – to momentarily remove myself from planetary cares—free myself from job worries, economic hassles, child rearing, car washing, house cleaning, lawn mowing, picture hanging, bill paying – yes, even newspaper writing.
That was what I recognized this weekend under the trees on the lakeshore, beneath stars and planets and who knows what else – schmoozing in the most positive sense of the word.
So, thanks again, James Taylor, and goodnight, sweet baby.