December

It's the end of December and I still haven't started my snowblower. 

I'm calling it a win. Life doesn't get much better than that. 

I know...things are kind of brutal right now for snowmobilers and ice fishermen, and I have some sympathy for them. 

Just not very much. 

In my defense, last winter when I had a trench through four-foot snow drifts just to get feed to the chickens, were there any snowmobilers out there shoveling every morning after the north wind blew it full? 

No, there were not. 

It's interesting that even with a subject as simple as weather, not everyone can come to an agreement. I really like not needing to shovel snow or thaw animal waterers, but that's just me. A guy raising calves would much prefer dry and cold to thawing and sloppy. If you're headed to the Caribbean, you’re probably hoping for sunny days, but the sugarcane farmer a few miles from the beach might be praying for rain.  

Shoot, sometimes I can't agree with myself. When I was farming, wheat harvest almost always coincided with the need for a good soaking rain to help the corn along. Even the most benevolent deity might draw the line at prayers for rain ONLY on the corn field. A year ago, everyone in California was desperately hoping for rain. Then the clouds opened up and didn't close until half the state washed away. 

When reasonable people can't agree on what constitutes a nice day, or when our own definition of what we want shifts from moment to moment, perhaps we need to be willing to cut each other a little slack about topics that are by definition more contentious. We're a few days away from a new year. There's a volcano erupting in Iceland, the glaciers are melting, and a war in the Holy Land, along with a few other places. So much is outside of our control. And though it feels like politicians have been running for office since a week after the last election, 2024 will be an actual election year, when we vote for any number of people who have an outsized influence on our lives.  

We won’t be able to agree about who those people should be. It wasn't too many years ago that I'd make a suggestion along the lines of, “...if we can just vote for decent, honorable, honest people no matter their ideology, the country will be all right.”  

That ship has sailed. “I want whoever will do what is best for me,” seems to be the more popular option, outranked only by, “I want someone who will punish everyone on the other side.”  

It makes me deeply sad. 

I'm pretty old. I'm staring out the window at a grey December landscape and I can't help thinking that I have significantly fewer days ahead of me than I have behind. My father died not long ago, and I've begun the process of tidying up his estate, although he did much of the work years ago. Using his example, I'll start laying my own groundwork, so my children and grandchildren won't have to fret about cleaning up my mess. I can figure out what to do with our land, my pickup and most of my other possessions. The ton or so of books in my office will be a problem, but that's the way things go. 

I'd like to straighten out the world, too, although most of it is wildly beyond my purview. I'm going to do what I can, though. 

And if it needs to snow a little so the snowmobilers are happy, so be it.  
 
Let's not go crazy, though. 

Copyright 2023 Brent Olson