Fencerows: “Ditching the Old Year”
By John Luthens
Native Americans burned ceremonial fires, dancing in forgotten places to dispel the past and welcome in the future. Many of Finnish descent prefer to sit in a wood burning smoke sauna, sweating the demons out and letting them curl into the wind. Call it superstition, call it mumbo jumbo, but I have come to believe there are healing powers in nature that defy understanding. I don’t need to understand them. I just know when I need to go…
The year had skidded harshly towards the finish and I felt no spirit of hope beneath the tires. When January 1 poked its bloodshot eye above the eastern horizon, I was still firmly stuck in the shadows of the past. New Year’s morning found me sulking into the tangles of a windbreak ditch in the farm fields behind my house.
New Year’s morning.
The company was forced onto the trading block along towards Thanksgiving; top secret stuff to the rank and file, but the kind of thing that brings a gleam of gamesmanship into the eyes of the suits and ties. I played along and I loath myself for it.
Elm tree twisted above the ditch in the New Year’s light. Countless seasons of sweat-thrown fieldstone have been thrown into the cut and the very roots of the elms seem weighed down by the rocks. They refuse to grow straight, forced instead to arch sideways in gnarled shadows.
It was a rollicking game of capitalistic chess; pieces of people’s lives tossed about and traded for pennies on the dollar.
It’s difficult to worm into and it’s harder to find a way out. Grape vines wind tight over the edges and cockleburs pop everywhere. I read somewhere that cockleburs inspired the inventor of Velcro. I believe he made a lot of money. He probably bought his own ditch. I find the little pests are annoying.
One by one, beckoned over the intercom into the front office. The intercom was a predator call, but they couldn’t afford to harvest us all. Evolution and Natural Selection; isn’t that how Charles Darwin coined it? Charles Darwin was said to be a child of wealth and privilege.
Cottontail rabbits hide in its brushy bottom, waiting for an opening to hop into the lush hay fields that rise on either side. There’s a fox den hidden beneath a pile of logs, so there aren’t too many rabbits. The fox is sneaky. He only slinks out at night.
It worked itself out in the end. The owner of the company split for Florida, while many of the friends I worked with were spit onto the street. Loyalty is a feel-good word that doesn’t mean squat in the reality of the trenches.
I sat in the tangles of the ditch till well after sunrise, making resolutions that I knew I wouldn’t keep, healing in a wild and hidden place. Some prefer a polar bear plunge to purge the evil spirits from their soul. I couldn’t afford to catch a cold. That would be a rough start to a new year.