On Work

Nov 28 2009

We are all forces of nature: coyote, whitetail, white ash, hunter, farmer. Different traditions, different niches, different powers and weaknesses, all in tentative shifting balance on one small spot on a planet where most everywhere else humans have the upper hand.

It won’t be the coyotes, deer or trees that will destroy our houses, though, if we don’t look after them. It will be the snow and wind and rain.

That’s the real force of nature around here that we all must contend with. I don’t say do battle, because I don’t like the analogy much. I don’t fight it. It’s not a war.

I just get up in the morning and scratch my head and go out to my shop and get some tools and do some carpentry, some painting, some firewood cutting.

It’s just a job of work. Ho hum. Eight hours and then a nap, and admire what you did the next day. I am glad that I have a vocation that has a beginning, a middle and an end, and for which there is something to see when you are done.

And nothing to spin. Either done well or not. Or not done at all.

—Mick Wormersley, A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals

No responses yet

Leave a Reply