FALL...I PREFER AUTUMN

This time of the year does something to me. As I may have mentioned recently in this space, it’s autumn in Patagonia. It’s a season that makes me singularly restless. It’s not just the existential symbolism—which at this age becomes rather poignant, the fall before the winter of the seasons and of life. I really try not to pay much attention to that. There’s nothing I can do about it and, frankly, I’m a lot freer now than I ever was at thirty or forty.

At thirty or forty I used to pretend I didn’t give a crap. It was an attitude I copped, though a more conscientious professional than I was would have been hard to find. But when things got tough at work, for instance, I’d say, “Hey, I was looking for a job when I found this one,” and I was rebellious enough to say it to the face of whatever boss or client I happened to have at the time. But back then, things ate at me anyway and filled me with stress and nerves and neuroses.

Well, at this stage of the game, when another several decades have passed and any day you get up feeling fit and healthy is a gift, I really don’t give a crap anymore, and nothing is more important to me than whatever I’ve undertaken voluntarily and for as long as it strikes my fancy, whether I’m getting paid for it or not. Nor will I let anything stand in the way of the activity of my choosing at any given moment, and that, for me, is a first. One I’m still trying to get used to. Maybe that’s what people mean when under “occupation” on their social media profiles they put “happily retired”. Maybe they mean that free-wheeling feeling of “not giving a crap” what the rest of the world is doing because their time is now their own. But I wouldn’t know, because I’m not retired. It’s a word I don’t like. It sounds too much like “withdrawn”, and I haven’t withdrawn from anything.

On the contrary, I’m often more engaged now than ever before, more passionate about what I’m doing, more certain that the only thing that is important is doing the things I do to the very best of my ability, because if not, I’ll just be wasting my precious time. I’m not retired, or even semi-retired. And just as I don’t care for the word “retired”—synonyms include former, past, ex, pensioned off, disengaged, elderly, etc.—I prefer the word “autumn” to “fall” (synonyms, drop, decline, descend, diminish, decrease, dwindle, dive, etc.), although in this last case I do use them interchangeably. The simple fact of the matter is that I’m just making better choices of the activities that I take on, and for the first time in my life, the ones I don’t get paid for are just as important to me as those that I do get paid for. Quite often more important in fact.

Take this blog for instance. It is of paramount importance to me, because it’s where I’m visited by my “ideal readers”. I’m talking about people who aren’t reading me because my by-line happens to appear in this magazine or that newspaper, but who are actually coming here specifically to read me! I’ve worked for publications where I was writing for many thousands of readers. And I won’t lie. It was important to have my work in periodicals that were household names for many English-speakers in different parts of the world. But I find myself much more enamored of the hundreds and often thousands of people who take the trouble to read the very personal pieces I write here each month. And even more so of those who share them with others, via the social media or by other means so that my reader base continues to grow.

But even this precious blog sometimes gets sidelined when some other task or factor is temporarily obsessing me. In this particular case, a piece should have come out on the twenty-second and here it is three days later and I’m still here writing. It’ll say April 22^nd on the dateline when I publish it, but that will be a white lie. Though I started writing it in time to publish by deadline, another matter monopolized my attention: the weather.

Early morning in the forest gathering wood. 

Mark Twain is often paraphrased as saying something to the effect that “everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” Quote nigglers will tell you that the quip was originally made in print by Charles Dudley Warner, a friend and fellow reporter—Twain did indeed say that “a journalist is a reporter out of a job”—whom Twain may later have quoted in one of his public talks, but never in any of his writing or interviews. But whoever said it knew what they were talking about. People do talk a lot about the weather, especially people from my native Ohio and from my adopted Patagonia, probably because weather—especially all-pervasive weather—in those two places is a predominate force to be reckoned with.  

Now, worry is something else that I’m slowly but surely rooting out. You know, like when you can’t sleep at night and your old habits of worrying yourself sick about things return and you always seem to forget that this has happened over and over again over the years and that things have seldom turned out to be nearly as dire as you expected them to be, so all that worrying was of no use whatsoever and only managed to encroach on and spoil your present moments. After all is said and done, you may realize someday, as I have of late, worry begins like worthless, and if that’s just a coincidence, it shouldn’t be, because those two terms should always be used in tandem.

Off for a morning hike

Practical thought about a situation is worthwhile. Because you might just find a solution. But worrying when a problem is insoluble, or the future unfathomable—as it nearly always is—does nothing more than waste your precious now-time and fill you with anxiety when you could instead be enjoying the present moment. Whatever it is, it’ll be what it’ll be, que será será, as Doris Day sang, and there’s nothing much you can do about it except face it the best you can when the time comes.    

April here is like October in Ohio or Michigan. And like in those places that witnessed my childhood and teen years, the approach of winter is a very big deal. People talk about “how bad it’s going to be” long before it arrives. They worry about being isolated, about cold temperatures, flu and months of gloom. They wonder if winter storms will knock the electricity out and for how long. Will pipes freeze and burst and cut their water supply. Will pipeline heads freeze and interrupt their gas supply. They so often use the word “dread” when speaking in fall of the coming winter. So stop worrying about it and do something about it! Insulate. Make sure you have redundant services. Buy a gasoline generator. Move to a warmer climate. But don’t just sit there and bitch!

Here in Patagonia those precautions can be crucial depending on the year, and the severity and length of the winter. In 2017 and 2018, I had some health issues that limited how much of my own rural labor I could do. In those years, the answer was “none”. I had to hire it all out. And in the following two, I did a lot of my own physical work but still not close to all of it. In those years I worried about having enough firewood to get us through a sometimes five-month Patagonian winter. And the rural workers whom I paid to help me out were always busy with other fair weather projects before they started gathering wood, just in the nick of time, before the rainy season began. So for four years there has been just enough—about eight cords minimum—but not one stick too many before spring.

This year I’m feeling pretty hale and hearty again and promised myself that I wouldn’t be caught out. I started gathering firewood at the end of last year, in the first days of Patagonian summer when it was first dry enough, and haven’t stopped since. By the time the day laborers got around to asking me how much wood I’d need for them to come up with this year, I had already gathered, cut, stacked and covered well over the eight cord minimum. I was going to let my pride take over and tell them that this year the ol’ man wasn’t going to need a thing from them. That he’d done it all himself, and had enjoyed every minute of it.

Last evening light - photo_Daniel Pacheco

But the autumn weather has been spectacular this year with little rain, drying breezes, clear skies and a plethora of windfall timber on the ground. On top of everything I’d gathered myself, I decided to ask the two groups of workers to help me gather another three cords.

So on the twenty-second, when I should have been posting this blog, from first light in the morning until last light in the evening, I was cutting, loading, hauling, unloading and stacking the last three cords. The day’s work I did was the single most intensive day of manual labor that I’ve put in over the last twenty years. It felt wonderful and like a very good day. Night was falling as I covered the last stack with thick black plastic sheeting. I was exhausted and slept fitfully and restlessly from overdoing it. But I had a little smile on my face when, in the middle of the night I heard rain on the galvanized metal roof of our cabin. I had all the firewood in that we would need until next summer and it was dry, under cover and protected from the elements. Nothing could have felt more satisfying.

So for the last couple of days I’ve been writing this blog. It has been the most important task in the world to me for the time it has taken. Today is a stunningly beautiful blue and gold autumn day in this corner of Patagonia. So it also seemed of capital importance for me to get in a four kilometer hike along the mountain road this morning. It was indeed a great day for it. Crisp, clean, bright and wonderful. That hike and posting this blog are the two most important things I’ll do in my life today. Who knows? Maybe ever. And maybe that’s how every day should feel.