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YOUNG MUSCLE

Today Keech and I did a goodly bit of lumberjacking, thinning and bucking trees in back of the house and on our good new neighbor's property, he was most glad to have that much more space so quickly. And though I'll be 63 this year, I still go at things as though I'm 25, which in certain areas of life is wonderful if you can still swing it, I can cut a mean dance to a good rock band, but felling and lugging 5 or 6 multi-ton trees is not the ideal task for the back that has suffered the slings and arrows of youthful profligacy so many times over. Swinging a partner and swinging a 30-meter cedar tree differ to a considerable extent. So it was great to have Keech's young muscle there to climb way up into and otherwise handle the heavy stuff, which his muscling body clearly enjoyed, as being in its time, and which mine still fondly recalled, but being no longer in that time has learned that such is no longer the way to go at things, so I go at them that way for a littler while less each year. With age, among the other graces comes a certain well-earned wisdom in which one increasingly forbears and observes, lifts a few branches with muscled pinky raised, the well-earned privilege of time's accumulation. Yet from my old groundskeeping days (now there's a few stories) I still know how to get a tree to fall not where the tree alone wants to fall, where the branches will catch on the neighboring trees and kickback the severed trunk right into the midsection of the inexperienced, or break a roof; rather, the trees fell right where trees and I agreed, after lengthy mutual consideration. It was good. And now at eve I sit on the deck with a tall cold beer, great sounds on the box and a back that is still carefully strong, watching the clouds slide over the mountains in beauty like a whole skyfull of women in gorgeous raiment, on their way to a heavenly ball.