Wednesday, February 22, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
measure of frustration I
saw that it was snowing on
the porch like a ticker-tape
parade.
Again.
I had been tuned out of
the weather forecast, having
mostly given up on this win-
ter’s predictions as just more
bad news, and digesting
the wildly divergent results
much in the same way I have
come to view our national
politics: entirely too loud,
often obscenely wrong, rou-
tinely annoying, and com-
pletely beyond my ability to
influence.
I’ve been trying, honestly,
to embrace the suck with
enthusiasm, and to thrive
within the available margins,
but mostly I’ve stopped car-
ing too much about either
monolithic and impersonal
apparatus — the weather or
the government — except
as they directly affect my
efforts to get things done.
And later today, as it
occasionally does, the sun
came out. The new snow-
fall melted quickly and took
some of the old stuff with
it. That was a win for those
of us who, by design, main-
tain long lists of things to
do outside. But it’s increas-
ingly clear that recently, as
a ground-based fact in our
local life, and in our national
dialogue, that we have done
little more than triumphantly
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Slush
This morning I woke up
at 4 a.m. This is earlier than
usual but I was prompted by
the insistent wet-nose pok-
ing of our oldest dog, Buddy,
who is nearly blind, mostly
deaf, and recovering from
a nearly fatal injury to his
elbow that was probably my
fault. He’s 14, and even if
the wound manages to com-
pletely heal we are, all of us,
aware that the long good-
night is not so very far away.
In a way, he’s become
slushy, as hard as that is to
accept. But if it’s hard, it’s
also true, and so we indulge
him in whatever ways we
can, which means that I got
the message, rolled out of
bed, slipped into my mocca-
sins, and let him outside.
And standing with the
door open, with no small
achieve the season of slush.
The problem with slush
is that it nurtures a claim to
be many things, but really
isn’t anything. It isn’t snow,
exactly, it isn’t really ice, and
it isn’t quite a warm puddle
on the asphalt. On top of that,
it’s usually filthy, and back-
grounds our daily life like
blitzkrieg photos of Polish
border towns in 1939. That
is to say, it exists entirely in
degrees of gray, is uniformly
ugly, and deeply conflicted.
I’m really not trying to
be dour — though it’s pos-
sible I’m edging up to a rant
— but let’s at least be hon-
est about one thing: the “300
days of sunshine” meme
was invented in a Bend tour-
ists’ guide in the 1930s. It
isn’t true at all — the “aver-
age days of sunshine” trope
exists somewhere closer
to half of that — and it has
likely not been true since the
Pleistocene.
“300 Days of Sunshine”
is an effective tool for real
estate sales, and stocking
our local hotels and forests
with the paying camper-van
and flip-flop set, but it’s also
propaganda, and this winter
has been particularly long
and strenuous. Many of us
have had slush creeping into
the attics and walls of our
homes, wrecking drywall,
soaking insulation, buckling
wood floors, and at least one
family I know is actively
pumping a pond out of their
basement.
Some of us have even
come to embrace the people
at Service Master as long-
lost cousins — or something.
And I feel confident I speak
for many others when I say
that if I never hear the words
“ice” and “dam” used in the
same sentence again, I will
have lived a fantastic life.
And, however faintly, I
can hear the rest of you. It
sounds like an admonish-
ment to quit whining. And
you would be right about
that. It really isn’t my style,
and rest assured I don’t like
doing it. But then again,
there is a great deal of truth
in Gordon Tall’s line from
Terrence Malick’s movie
adaption of “The Thin Red
Line”: “The only time you
should start worrying about
a soldier is when they stop
bitchin’.” So, there’s that to
consider.
In the meantime, we have
the slush. We probably have
weeks of it ahead. And mud.
Lots of mud. In the grand
picture of our Republic it
appears likely we have a
decade or so before the slush
and mud form into some-
thing useful. And again,
maybe that has always been
the case. Maybe that’s the
quiet lesson history keeps
trying to show us, if we can
believe those who write it.
So we try to take the les-
sons, and the temporary
hardships for what they are:
First-World problems. But
for us, here on our slushy lit-
tle rancho in the pines, with
our chickens and horses and
gardens, it just keeps com-
ing back to those things we
care most about — in this
case an old dog whose age
has made his mind and his
body slushy, who we love
and respect without pre-con-
ditions, and who we can just
barely stand the thought of
living without.
So. Let it snow.
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