Listen to thisWe’re on vacation. Our research group of youth workers is spending the summer camping, swimming, exploring etc. Last month I spoke about how we juxtapose our sketches to understand the interrelatedness of our experiences in and out of youth work. Here’s a sketch I’ve been working on.
I cross country ski. The sunlight off the snow is blinding. Afterwards, I rest on the couch in my cabin near a warm fire.
We – six youth (Issac, Pat, Mary, Daniel, Carla and Brunsey) and me – are in the woods, cross-country skiing through the southern Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin. It’s their first time. A moment ago, we struggled to get their gear on. This section of the course is flat. I demonstrate how to use the poles and how to glide, moving my feet back and forth. It’s a beautiful winter day.
"Boring," Brunsey says.
My stomach growls for something to eat. I put on my leather jacket and back between the tall white pines. At the stop sign, I turn up the heat. Two bulls are running in a ditch next to the road. They escaped again from my neighbor’s farm. I pull alongside, roll down the window, and listen to the sound of their hoofs hitting the snow. A few years ago, when I was skiing in the woods, a young man on a horse rode across my path. His long coat flowed behind with the horse’s tail. It was a majestic sight. Ever since then, the sound has stayed with me.
A group of young men with sleek outfits and equipment want to pass. “Stay in the tracks to the right," I say. Stumbling, they jump from one track to the other. The young men pass.
After the bulls disappear in a stand of blue spruce, I continue to the Moose Inn, which is down the road. Joe, the owner, added carpeting and female bartenders, but it is still a country bar by most appearances.
A few minutes later, we come upon a woman with her two little daughters.
"Fuck!" Pat says as he catches a tip and falls.
"Watch your language," I say and give him a hand.
We pass the woman and her daughters. Pat the strongest of the group, powers ahead. Daniel and Carla ski side by side trying to get more glide out of their skis. I fall behind a little and try to give Mary, Brunsey, and Isaac a hand.
"I hate this shit," Isaac says, dusting off his butt.
"Wishbone your skis, dig in your edges and keep your poles behind you," I say as we approach the first major hill. It’s a comedy of errors. For several minutes a stream of cuss words flow from them as one after another they slip and fall backwards down the hill. At one point with Brunsey and Pat fall on top of me, we start laughing.
The waitress seats me at a table beneath a beer sign where there is enough light to read. She’s wearing a sleeveless Hawaiian jump suit.
"Aren’t you cold?"
"No, I move around a lot – the usual?"
I nod and call the farmer about the bulls, but no one answers. While I read and wait, an older couple at the bar tell a story about a cat that got caught in a chunk of snow behind the wheel of their pick-up and was still alive when they got home. No one questions this. The Moose Burger is reliable like the story I read by Turgenev, Brezin Lea.
"Here, watch me," I say and demonstrate.
"I can do that," Daniel says and follows me up the hill.
Their arms ache as they dig their poles in behind them and try to keep themselves from slipping, but they all make it, then scream and holler as they speed down the other side.
Pat and Daniel are side by side now.
"I'll race you to the next hill," Daniel says.
I pay my bill and leave. On the way home my mind drifts out across a white cornfield towards the moon.
Pat races ahead, muscling and grunting through the snow. Daniel uses technique to catch up and pass, but Pat lunges at the finish line.
Suddenly, around a bend, as if two boulders dropped from the sky, the bulls reappear in the middle of the road. The car swerves to the left, then back across the road and comes to rest in a ditch with the red oil light flashing in the dash. For a moment I think I see the man on the horse. He’s wearing a Hessian hat. He points a spear at me and disappears while the bulls lumber into the woods on the other side of the road.
"Who won," Pat says looking back with his face covered with snow.
"A tie," I say.
Fortunately it only takes a moment to dig out. I keep my eyes riveted to the road the rest of the way home. The smoke coming from the chimney is a welcomed site. I stop to piss in the outhouse. It’s cold, but I get it done, then stand on the hill over the lake a moment, listening to the wind make a sweet crying sound as it moves over the ice.
" – in the darkness we saw a figure coming toward us ... But we were mistaken, it was not he." From Dostoyevsky’s White Nights, the third night.
The sun begins to sink low in the sky. We make it around the course safely, then start a fire for the hot chocolate. Sitting on the logs shoulder-to-shoulder, we drink with our cold hands wrapped around the warm mugs.
I warm myself by the fire and climb into the loft where my computer sits on a wire spool next to my futon and work into the night on a section of a sketch I’ve been writing over and over again: Daniel and I sit on the beach with our chins on our knees,
"Do you think I'll be fucked up like my ol' man?"
I hesitate, say, “No."
I want to capture a moment of hesitation, but can’t quite get it right. In early morning, a bat, fooled out of hibernation by the heat, buzzes overhead, then crawls back into a small crack in the ceiling and dies, all its energy spent with nothing to eat. A purple hue forms on the horizon. I put on my old military overcoat and take a walk on the frozen surface of the lake. In the faint light of day, I can hear my feet hit the ground like a distant heartbeat.
"Like drizzle on embers,
Footsteps within me
Toward places that turn to air"
From Octavio Paz’s Draft of Shadows
