Learning Lessons

True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.


  ~Edward Frederick Halifax

Field of Honor event brings 800 flags to Cody : The Billings Gazette - Montana & Wyoming News

Wyoming, where the mountains touch the sky.

Winners take time to relish their work, knowing that 

              scaling the mountain is what makes the view from the top so exhilarating.

                                    ~Dennis Waitley

Finding some quiet time in your life, I think, is hugely important.

Mariel Hemingway

Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.

Dion Boucicault

Sundown
Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.

Mark Helprin

Siberian Iris

My patronus must be an antelope.  Bjarne and I were out walking on the Peaks' road, and heard a call.  The only thing we saw was an antelope.  I didn't know the sound, so at first I didn't know it was coming from him and being a rather odd sound, almost more bird- or cat-like, I convinced myself it wasn't coming from the antelope.  After a bit, I noticed him off to my right, and running just a bit behind us.  It occurred to me that he was running with us.  No, I thought.  It must be my imagination.  It wasn't long after that and he stood.  I heard the sound again.  This time I was quite sure he was interested in us, trying to get our attention. 

 I think it was Bjarne that caught his attention.  A deer came to investigate yesterday when Bjarne was out in the yard.  The puppy barked and barked, but he didn't go out into the field where the deer was, while the deer stood still and watched him, then took big, very slow, graceful, steps away, and stopped again, waited and watched for the longest time.  He seemed more curious than afraid.

Later I noticed the antelope ahead of us, and I thought it was a different one.  He was running cross country in a west to eastward direction.  Then he stopped on top of a hill and called to us again.   When we came back down the road, he was off to the west again, and called.  By this time I knew what an antelope sounded like.  A high pitched warble-y yowl, a bit like a cat's screech, but short and not unpleasant.  He appeared to be circling us, and if it was just the one, he circled around the other way, crossed the road maybe 50 feet in front of us, and I realized then he had circled around us several times.  Jerry told me they are curious creatures.  

I took some pictures of him silhouetted on the top of the hill, and it was a cool image, soft in the evening light with his curved horns like parentheses standing in sharp contrast against the evening sky, but it disappeared in the transfer from camera to computer.  There's some magic for you.

http://twsoh.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=creation&action=display&thread=148

 

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.

James M. Barrie

For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.

Doug Larson

   What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.                                                                                
                                                                       
                                                                                            ~Abraham Lincoln                                     


                                                                             

 

My dad worked in the woods, ran logging jobs.  He left for work about 4 a.m. and came home after dark.   He would sit down in his recliner and put his feet up, too tired to remove his black, laced boots.  Sometimes he would ask us to untie them for him and when we would pull the boots off his feet, his socks would be clammy and damp.

When I was a teenager, he didn't do much logging.  He stayed on the farm more often, raised cattle and cleared land, grew wheat and hay. He had daughters to wash the dishes, and a small son who was able to do a lot of the tractor work from a young age.  That was nice.  Occasionally he would ask one of us girls to help with some field work and I would follow him, he doesn't know how much I trembled, going out to the barn or field.   Willing, but scared.

One day he needed someone to drive a truck and he had Eric working on something else.  I was glad to help, but all the driving I had done was on vehicles with automatic transmissions, and a tractor once in awhile to pick cherries or haul some hay, or bring home a load of sticks from the field clearing we had done.  Not often enough to feel significantly confident.

Turns out this truck had to be started with jumper cables.  Every time.  So together we rode out to the field on the tractor.  Just in case he had forgotten, I reminded him that I didn't know how to drive the truck. He knew as well as I did that this was my first time to drive a manual transmission, but he also knew that there was one way to learn, and we might just as well get it over with.

Standing nearby, Dad was coaching me. Breathing shallowly, my heart fluttered in my chest while I listened to the instructions.  Put in the clutch, let it out slowly and meanwhile, give it a little gas.  And don't kill it.  "Of course", he said, "You WILL kill it."  Just loved the vote of confidence.  At least, I figured, I had nothing to lose. Maybe I could have done it if I hadn't been so nervous.  Sure enough, it gave a hearty cough, a jerk, as I attempted this complicated trick, easing the clutch out, stepping lightly on the gas. Not enough gas.  Promptly died.  And wouldn't start again.  Life got a little more complicated.   The ache of failure hanging a little heavily on me, we rode the tractor back to the shop to get the pickup and jumper cables.   Ah, well, at least I had known what to expect, and since Dad expected the same thing, the only damage was to my ego and the loss of precious time.  My ego could take it.  The time?  Gone forever.

My brother was 9 years younger, and spent a lot more time helping Dad.  He was running equipment with confidence before he could reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel at the same time.  The expectation may have been that we girls would naturally know how to run equipment.  By osmosis, perhaps, because actually we were as green as green could be.  Luckily, Dad was pretty savvy.   One day I sat on the tractor seat, engine running with the harrow hooked up behind me.  Dad was standing off to my left giving me instructions.  Suddenly, my foot slipped off the clutch and with the tractor in gear it leaped forward.  Dad took off running to get clear of the harrow while I managed to get the tractor stopped.  Shaking his head at the close call, and from an even safer distance, Dad told me he had been expecting that to happen.  How did he know?  I don't think he did.  I think he knew things could happen and he knew things might happen.  Experience gave him, and me, a healthy respect for equipment, machinery.  I got that lesson very well!

My eldest son has figured out that I have a kind of terror of things with motors, but this doesn't stop him from using every available person to get the job done.  If he were around more there is no doubt in my mind that fear would be tested again and again.  He looks me in the eye, softens his gaze in understanding, and tells me what I have to do.  He doesn't seem to expect miracles, just that I do what he asks, very slowly.  Under his confident guidance, I have, still trembling, done things I never thought I could.  Exhilarating.

I was the first kid, so I guess things just went a little less smoothly for me than they did for the kids after me.  Someone had to break in the parents.  Luckily a couple of Mom's brothers paved the way, so I knew enough not to drive the car off the Paradise Valley Hill.  That made Dad mad, and he wasn't planning on anyone forgetting it.  In fact, I was terrified of that steep, windy hill on the way to our home, and was in no hurry to get my driver's license.  As a matter of fact, it would be interesting to know how many trips it took before I stopped visualizing the yellow car with the white top sitting among the trees where it flew off the edge of the road. Too bad for me, it was legal to get a driver's license at age 14 in those days and Mom and Dad needed someone to go for parts.

In spite of watching my uncles' experiences, I still had lessons I had to learn the hard way.  One day, as the platter of fried chicken was served, I was the first one to take a piece.  I reached for the plump white breast piece and got the surprise of my life.  Dad had had his eye on me and it should have been my warning.  He sort of exploded.  When I tried to explain, it was very eye opening.  I heard myself saying, innocently, that I had just chosen the best piece.  Umm. Yes, apparently that was the problem.  A great little lesson in being considerate of others.  When I got married, I learned that my grandmother-in-law, the mother of 15, learned to love the wings of the chicken.  Tenderest, most juicy part of the chicken.  And all that was left, most likely.

I had a much bolder friend who was constantly pushing the limits well beyond her parents' wishes.  My friend informed me one day that my parents were strict and assured me that her parents and others agreed. As if the consensus made it so.  After giving some thought to her comment, somehow I felt sure that although it may have appeared that way to others, I disagreed.  I was learning some amazing things, and was far from competent at any of them.  The challenges were mind-boggling to me, just an ordinary girl. Also, I knew my parents cared about me and about my safety. While there were other ways that  town kids spent time, I was not feeling ready to tackle another world.  Sneaking away would have been an option, had I not lived in mortal fear of getting in a wreck, getting caught, and getting in trouble. Dad seemed to have a pretty good idea just how foolish his children were and was fully prepared to put a stop to it.

Describing Dad feels a little bit like the blind men and the elephant.  Each one had their hand on part of the elephant and when asked to describe an elephant, one described what the trunk felt like, and one described what the tail felt like, and one of them described what the leg felt like.  It was not the whole elephant.   Dad does things his way.  I learned quite young that his way of doing things just did not work for me.  He's amazing.  It doesn't mean  people always see or appreciate the amazing side of him.

My husband grew up without a dad because his father died in an airplane crash when Jerry was 15 months old.  A few precious stories is all he has to know his daddy by.  We talk about our dads, honor them, love them, learn from them, get frustrated, perhaps, without even giving it much thought that someone lives with the pain of not knowing their father, and at those moments comparing notes about our fathers, someone sits silently. While the stories he would tell about me are not very flattering, and who would know better the resistance he met with, the battles we fought because I didn't want to cooperate, the fuss I made about painting the gas tanks and the bale wagon, probably nothing has made me appreciate Dad, and Mom, more than learning about someone who didn't have a dad to learn from.  What a difference he has made in my life, so much good I have seen, not just heard about from others.  I've seen energy, effort, talent, reponsibility.  Mistakes?  Even in that we have agreed, by Dad's example or lack thereof.  I learn from his, or learn from mine.

Growing up around interesting and talented people, I have never thought of myself as one of the amazing ones.  My cousin learned to sing tenor, and had a beautiful voice.  Comfortingly, she told me that we need plenty of sopranos.  All God's creatures have a place in the choir.  Some sing low, some sing higher.  Some of us are just grateful to sing at all, any old place will do.

Both young children and old people have a lot of time on their hands. That's probably why they get along so well.

Jonathan Carroll