Thoughts

July 19, 2026

Smoke from eight hundred wild fires continues to carry down from Canada rendering our valley’s normally wedgewood skies a prison block gray. Eyes burn. Noses run. Ears clog. Fortunately, none of this afflicts me. Maybe a bit runny but mostly not. I’m not normally a victim of allergic reactions. Not normally. I don’t get poison ivy. Ticks avoid me. So do mosquitoes. I have been bitten by a snake but that’s because I was stupid. I’ve never been stung by a bee. I remember wondering whether or not I was allergic to my mother’s cooking? In boot camp all these guys would bitch about the food and brag on mom’s table. Not my mom’s. All these decades later I continue to gag at the memory of some of those meals. She was not a great cook, but she did have a good sense of humor. She needed it.

I have a major decision to make. The family is going on a vacation to Maine next week. My son has graciously consented to stay home with the dogs, although I expect his graciousness is at least in part due to his desire to have the entire house just for himself and his girlfriend. An innocent enough transaction. So what’s this big deal decision I need to make?

To take my computer or not to take my computer!

I don’t need to go through all the pluses and minuses. You all know them. Take it and keep my face buried in the screen rather than the sand? Or keep it home and wonder 24/7 what’s on it? Of course, I’m rather an anomaly since I don’t even have a telephone. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another thing to run out of or lose or drop or break or trade up…A phone at my desk is enough. I can reach you, and you can reach me, but when I am in my grove we can’t, and that’s the way it should be.

It’s peaceful and quiet in my grove. The apples are bearing, the peaches are blooming, and all the new trees we planted this past Spring are doing well. Hopefully, the peaches will survive the deer, and Dorian’s tree will one day tower over all the others. Why we’re not getting pears this year is another mystery? Things come and go in cycles to which we must adapt as well. No pears. No brie cheese. Easy.

My daughter took me by the arm on Father’s Day and led me to the grove where, lo and behold,a brand new bench which she had put together herself, sat between the pear and a now elderly apple. To sit there in the shade and still look out over a sun flushed meadow is a kind of heaven. No phones allowed. You might see deer or bear or turkey. If you’re truly lucky you might see mink or marmot. None of them has a phone, yet all of them - as Professor Harold Hill said in The Music Man - know the territory.