David Budbill

After three weeks of hot weather and drought, we've had a week of cold and rain, just the way it ought to be here in the north, in June, a fire going in the woodstove all day long, so you can go outside in the cold and rain anytime and smell the wood smoke in the air. This is the way I love it. This is why I came here almost fifty years ago. What is June anyway without cold and rain and a fire going in the stove all day?

I can feel myself slipping away, fading away, withdrawing from this life, just as my father did. When the pain you're in is so great you can’t think about or pay attention to anything but your own pain, the rest of the world and all other life don't matter. I think about my friends with dementia, cancer, arthritis, and how much more pain they are in than I am, but it does no good, their pain is not mine, and therefore, no matter how magnanimous I might want to be, their pain is not as important to me as my own.

When I came to this mountainside almost fifty years ago it never occurred to me that there would be an end to it. I went along never thinking about the time when I would have to quit. I imagined—I guess — all this would last forever, if I imagined it at all. Now I'm in my seventies and all I can think about is the time when my life will be here no more. For example, I love being in the woods felling and bucking hardwood trees, stacking and covering the blocks, then a year or two later, hauling them to the woodshed where I stack them again, and split them all winter long into the right size for the weather—then bring them into the house. Now this chore I love so much is seriously painful, and I can see, now, an end to it.