My Turn

The last couple of years have been especially rough on my “I didn’t really want to be a lumberjack anyway” spouse. We’ve both been mildly shocked—shocked, I tell you—by just how much upkeep comes with the TRR’s beautifully wooded acreage. I’m convinced things would be manageable if it weren’t for the three so-called “hundred-year floods” that arrived back-to-back over the last eight years, a rogue hurricane named Helene, and now what can only be described as the Ice Apocalypse.

As I write this, Willie is driving up and down the driveway on the tractor with the scarifiers attached. For the uninitiated, scarifiers are enormous metal prongs dragged behind a tractor to rip into stubborn ground, usually in preparation for planting. Today, they’re being deployed to break up a four-inch-deep ice pack that showed up overnight last Saturday and has refused to leave, thanks to temperatures that have barely crawled above freezing. It turns out the ridge feels far less like paradise when you can’t actually escape it.

Over the course of our many adventures, Willie has damaged an Achilles tendon, pulled a hip flexor, thrown his back out, and collected such a wide assortment of cuts and bruises that he rarely bothers to show me anymore. (To be fair, he hates stitches, and I’ve insisted on them more than once.) He’s been laid out flat for months—months, not weeks—on more than one occasion. Paradise, it turns out, requires a very aggressive maintenance plan.

And now, apparently, it’s my turn.

I’ve been dealing with lung issues for a while. I came back from Scotland a couple of years ago with what I like to call a European-grade version of Covid, and my lungs have never quite forgiven me. Then, last week, I had a coughing fit so violent it threw my back out. This was not the “twinge, walk it off” variety. This was the full-blown, lie-flat-on-the-floor-with-your-feet-on-the-sofa misery. Three weeks in, with the help of a back brace, I’m moving a little better—but recovered? Not even close.

I will no longer be making wisecracks about Willie’s “old people injuries.” Lesson learned. Loudly. Repeatedly. Also, I don’t think the combined role of outdoor lumberjack and indoor nursemaid is working out particularly well for him.

So this week, we are both surrendering. We will accept that sometimes the weather snows you in. Willie will continue making excellent soup. And I, positioned on the living room floor with a sheepskin underneath, ice packs strategically placed, and enough blankets to qualify as a small yurt, will continue binge-watching entire television series from a position of deep discomfort.

Because sometimes paradise isn’t a postcard.

Sometimes paradise is ice, soup, scarifiers, and realizing—far too late—that the ridge always gets its turn.

And this week, apparently, so do I.