June 27, 2024

Interlaced

I woke up reaching over to feel for my wife. She wasn’t in bed, which meant it was already past four o’clock, the time she woke up to study. When I rolled over in bed, however, I saw my clock. It was three in the morning. I went to the restroom and found my wife sleeping on the couch. I always felt bad when I snored. She was a light sleeper and getting the rest she needed was a battle, even with a quiet night’s sleep.

My wife left me a sweet note written on a large roll of butcher paper that was mounted to the dining room wall. This morning, I appreciated her kind words. We sat down, drinking coffee together, when something unexpected happened. Rain fell from the sky. We were in a dry spell and the heat had been so intense that the shower, and its promise of a cooler day, made us beam.

When I walked my wife to her car, the smell of petrichor dominated the yard. The skies, dark gray with rainfall, offered a nice layer of protection against the morning sun. After she left, I fed the dogs, and then sat down at the dining room table with my laptop to write. When I finished my session, I changed clothes to prepare for my morning walk into the woods. While putting on my pants, I felt a small tick crawl on my leg. Where did this thing come from? Welcome to life in the country. I killed the pesky bug, finished getting dressed, and headed out into the woods, after spraying down with an unhealthy amount of insect repellent.

Despite the morning rain, the temperature was rising, and it felt muggy outside. I knew my camera lenses would need about fifteen minutes to acclimate to the intense humidity. The lens’ glass was fogged and the outside tube of the lens was wet with condensation. I made my way to the blind and zipped myself inside, out of the drizzling rain.

While sitting in the blind, it rained harder. This morning, there were no deer in sight, but an eastern gray squirrel showed up. The small squirrel wasn’t shy and grabbed some deer corn, carrying it up on a perch where it chewed single kernels held between its tiny clenched hands.

When it was time to leave, I looped back toward the house on a trail that cut through the grove. While walking through the pines, I heard a deer bark and saw it running north through the thickets. I never saw if it was a buck, doe, or fawn. The echo of a lone woodpecker striking a tree highlighted the grove’s peaceful demeanor, as did a mourning dove’s sad song that floated through the forest.

I showered and got to work, starting the day off with a slew of meetings. For lunch, I ate a bowl of ramen noodles, purchased from Costco. The online order arrived yesterday, and I was excited to eat, since this was the best instant ramen on the market. During lunch, I took time to think about a topic that had been on my mind.

I created content for several social media platforms, but I wasn’t a big consumer of social media, except for YouTube. I had always liked YouTube because I could find videos about topics I was interested in. While social media was mostly full of junk, content like the news, documentaries, and instructional videos were easily justifiable to watch. Lately, however, I noticed this platform was devolving into more and more junk. In a world where you didn’t have to be an expert to say you were an expert, the quality of information on my feed was taking a nosedive.

Thinking more about the effects of social media, I realized our minds had developed to perceive our physical environments. With modern inventions like computers and the internet, we were consuming mental information that our brains were translating as a part of our immediate environment. In this way, what was important to other people became important to us. What struck emotions in others, especially the negative, suddenly became our problems, too. Social media was about sharing, but the over sharing was taking over the way we saw the world. I was tired of thinking about the things others wanted me to think about. I had thinking of my own to do. 

Craving a break from being online, I was hungry to spend more quiet time thinking about things that were important to me. During lunch, I implemented a more rigid daily practice that included reading, reflecting, and recording my thoughts on topics I found meaningful. This was exactly what my brain was asking for.

In a stroke of luck, my wife got off work early. When she pulled down the dirt road, I was outside waiting, happy to see her smiling face. We said our hellos and then she sat down to study while I worked in my office. It was always nice knowing she was in the next room. Like a little kid, I kept going to see her during breaks.

After work, we made coffee and sat down together so I could show her the squirrel I photographed in the morning. The way it interlaced its tiny fingers while holding a single kernel of corn enamored her. It was undeniably cute. When we finished, I gathered all the trash in the house, including the cardboard boxes we received in the Costco delivery.

I set aside one large box to use as flooring inside my blind. My small folding stool kept sinking into the soft ground, and this was a quick way to fix the problem. I ran the trash to the service center and had returned home within ten minutes.

For dinner, my wife marinated a large piece of skirt steak with seasoning and beer. We smoked it on the Traeger grill and then made tacos when it was done. The food was excellent. After an early dinner, my wife took a bath and then got busy studying while I cleaned the kitchen before jumping in the shower.

Before going to bed, I sat down at my desk to make some notes. It was a good day, and I felt grateful to live on this amazing property with my magnificent best friend. When I got to bed, I kissed my wife’s cheek and then drifted off into a deep sleep.