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Wednesday, January 4, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
A meditation
in the barn
I decided to write the first
column of the New Year
down here in the barn, with
the horses and the hay and
the barncats.
My wife and I have man-
aged to do a few things right,
and this barn is one of them.
Aside from a particular
stretch of rimrocked desert in
northwest Nevada — which
I won’t tell you about — it
may be my favorite place in
the world. The tack room is
heated, I’ve got a two-burner
stove with a chipped-enamel
kettle where I can make tea,
and I’ve fashioned this per-
fectly functional scrap-board
desk that suits me fine.
The tack room is a kind
of personal think-tank. I
can brush aside a few wood
screws, old tubes of phen-
ylbutazone, random scraps
of leather, and daydream at
ease amongst the saddles
and four generations of well-
oiled tack. I like to sit here
and listen to the horses, or
lean into the window and
watch the dogs run circles
around the henhouse while
the wind shakes snow from
the ponderosas.
It’s not a terrible way to
jumpstart a day.
Or a New Year. Like
many others, I don’t do reso-
lutions — which are largely
a way of lying to ourselves,
and later forcing a series of
embarrassing excuses — but
I do embrace an evolving
series of long-range visions,
and winter is a great time to
indulge a few of them.
Increasingly, my thoughts
and energies are focused on
building a particular kind
of life underneath the noise,
a way of navigating where
politics end at the edge of our
front porch, where we gather
more often with friends to
feast and play music, where
next summer’s garden
explodes in outrageous vege-
tables, and where the obnox-
ious and heartbreakingly
beautiful colt in the third stall
starts as balanced and strong
as his promise.
It should be — but never
is — as easy as that.
The first one — shedding
politics like an old skin — is
the hardest one, but I’d like
to get there if only because
it underwrites almost every-
thing else. I’d love to pay
more attention to raising
great tomatoes than which
layer of government wants
to tax me, tear up the Bill of
Rights, or cajole me into yet
another Faustian choice. I’d
love to focus on flying lead-
changes rather than think,
even once, about how we’ve
achieved a nation addicted
to opioids and pharmaceu-
ticals, or ponder the endless
geo-political games played
by people we don’t know,
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JANUARY 19-29
PHOTO BY CRAIG RULLMAN
The Figure 8 Think Tank on a winter’s day.
probably wouldn’t like if
we did, and most certainly
would never invite over for a
barbecue and a beer.
I say all of that in a dreamy
way. I’m not at all sure how
realistic it is, given my con-
ceits and predilections. I’m
more and more certain that
our government is merely a
faraway monolith, working
feverishly, like Las Vegas,
mostly at reducing the indi-
vidual to an “imbecilic dip-
stick,” in the words of Ellen
Meloy. And I’d join Meloy
in saying that Vegas and the
federal government share
another trait, which is a kind
of honest and elegant fraud.
One of the finer things
about being down here,
aw-shucksing and pretend-
ing I’m folksy — a reader’s
criticism that I absolutely
love — is that for a while I
can also pretend that poli-
tics don’t matter much. And
that creates a wonderful illu-
sion right up until one of the
mares throws back her ears
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and squeals at the other one,
or the cats leave a dead rabbit
in the alley, or our oldest dog
pees on a bucket to remind us
all who is actually running
this place. I can embrace
those little reminders with a
smile, because the flipside of
folksy seems to be a constant
and largely uninteresting
anger.
Modern living — and
maybe its always been this
way — wedges us into an
endless series of contradic-
tions, a narrow channel with
a lot of sandbars, and I guess
what I’m striving for in my
quaintest visions of the New
Year is to reduce that fric-
tion, wherever and whenever
possible. I’m seeking a less
mediated life. I want to love
the bulldozer and the trees at
the same time, without look-
ing over my shoulder for the
next round of mortars lobbed
in from one angry insurgency
or another.
Of course, we never know
where any of this is really
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going. Just before the New
Year I was honored to offi-
ciate a wedding for two old
friends. It was a small and
lovely ceremony underneath
a gigantic cottonwood. We
were lucky to get a break in
the cloud cover and fabulous
evening light. And not a day
had passed before we learned
that two other old friends
were getting divorced.
The more I think about
things, the more I begin to
suspect that despite my best
efforts, I don’t have a single
answer. Maybe I don’t even
want one.
So for now, in the quiet of
this lovely morning, I’m just
going to sit down here in the
barn, listening to the horses
eat, and sipping tea from an
old Police Foundation coffee
mug. I might even light up
my pipe and fill the air with
the sweetest smoke. I can sit
here happily for a long time
doing that. And anyway,
it’s cold outside and there is
always plenty to do.
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Quilting: Red, Blue