If I did “New Year’s resolutions” — and I don’t — I probably would’ve broken them by now. I know this because a) I used to engage in the annual ritual, so I have a track record to go by; b) I’m not one for adhering to structure; and c) I don’t do goals.
Not having a set of clearly defined goals with specific ways to measure one’s progress is heresy in this get-ahead society or ours, I know that. Maybe goals work for you. They don’t work for me.
Now, do I know what I want? Absolutely. I get up every day committed to advancing in that direction. I just don’t feel the need to invent some magic structure to put around it.
So I begin 2024 knowing where I’ve been and certain about where I’m going. The “how” takes care of itself.
“Our life is frittered away by detail,” Thoreau said. I squandered much of my own Life on something else — ambition. I wasted years chasing what I never truly wanted.
This morning I woke up without ambition and lacking anything resembling a plan, only sore muscles and throbbing joints from slingin’ firewood yesterday. I had no goals, but I knew that I wanted to advance in the direction of being productive, even mildly so.
I love to work. Physical labor, within my abilities, appeals to me. And because work creates momentum that doesn’t observe aches and pains, I returned to the labor I began yesterday.
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”
Henry David Thoreau
After taking out the trash and dumping a bucket of kitchen scraps into the compost, I grabbed a chainsaw and brought it down to the woodpile. Over the last six months I’d stacked a bunch of trimmed branches and felled trunks there, all straight, all cut six to eight feet in length.
I saw no reason not to buck that and add the resulting chunks to the pile I built yesterday.
Most of it was oaks and hickory. Deserving of special mention is the tree I took down the day our cabin was delivered to The Mountain — a black locust, six inches at the base and maybe 15 feet long.
Black locust is hard, heavy and makes excellent firewood. I’m not sure if I’ll split it or not, perhaps saving those pieces for “all-nighters.”
As I tossed them on the pile, I was struck by the beautiful end-grain of the heartwood. (See today’s header image for a closer look.)
I bucked only hardwoods this morning, leaving a couple dozen red cedar trunks intact and stacked. They’ll come in handy later, I believe, as runners and poles. Waste not.
So satisfying. So very simple
This afternoon the camper was filled with the aroma of simmering gumbo, another of Deb’s trademark dishes. On this day, and the way she made it, it checked off two traditional New Year’s observances — black-eyed peas and, in the form of andouille, pork — with cole slaw taking care of a third (cabbage). Our plates had enough room for skillet potatoes left over from yesterday.
Again, simple.
Inescapable simplicity just might be my favorite part of our existence on The Mountain. Life occasionally can be gritty, hard, mean or sparse, but the absence of artifice and complication will keep me rooted here ’til the day I die.
Happy New Year, People.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB