jumpingfish

I got an email from a colleague last night. It came after a week on the road and a really dismal day of decompression when I got back. The dismal days have been really deep, lately.

I had emailed him to ask about some work we were doing and whether I had overreached in a meeting we had earlier that day. I was worried I was treading on his turf. I was trying to be careful, trying to be humble, doing the kind of sanity check that is so easy to do when you work face-to-face but is difficult when you’re remote.

He wrote an uncharacteristically long reply which included this.

I went back and read what you wrote again. I think you are worried that you might have stepped on my toes or something like that, but you didn’t. I have worked with you long enough to know that you carefully think through problems and ask some pretty good probing questions, which is what we need on this project. I don’t mind you taking the stage, because I know it is going to move us forward. You are a known quantity to me. You’re in the inner circle. And you get to pass go and collect $200.00.

What an astounding response. As business communication, it certainly breaks the mold. I wasn’t looking for a warm fuzzy, yet this sure qualifies. People say it’s hard to communicate body language in emails, but it’s hard to misinterpret his. And it’s enough to cheer me up through the season.

And so now I’m wondering … what was that $200.00 he was talking about?

We sent him off with a great winter coat when he left for the north last year—a coat and warm gloves and a scarf and hat. Everything he needed to weather the cold.

This morning, my weather widget took forever to report the conditions in Cleveland—a metaphor perhaps for the beating that the midwest is taking. It must be mighty cold where he is right now.

Yet he says that his new favorite sound is that of snow blowing between the drifts.

I can hear it from here. The silent whisping, sandy sound of tiny crystals tumbling across each other. I can hear them from here, and I shiver.

He calls it “a conversion“.

And I wonder if maybe we should have bought him a cheaper coat.

1. First Shower

On the morning of the second day, it was cold. Trudy and I looked at each other and both said, “I’m not taking a shower today.” But on the still-cold morning of the third day, we saw things in a different light. Trudy walked off and took her shower, coming back happy and smiling and clean. And I went off to do the same.

Once in the shower, I realized that I didn’t have a razor.  I had left it on the tub at my mother in law’s house when I stayed with her last. And I realized I’d left my bar of soap back at the campsite. But at least I had my shampoo: Tea Tree Oil shampoo that I was looking forward to.

I could scrub my hair with Tea Tree Oil and let the tingling suds run down my neck and get a bit of a spa treatment from it. I figured that would make up for no soap. And I figured that Trudy could probably tolerate my fuzzy face, especially after her “You’re cute” comment yesterday upon seeing my stubble.

So there I was, standing in the warm water scrubbing my hair with the shampoo, amazed at just how oily my hair had become, because there were no suds. Well, more shampoo. Scrub. Scrub. Repeat. No suds. Hmm. What was this stuff? Moisturizer.

I had no soap. No razor. And I was pouring moisturizer into my hair.

2. Last Shower

After we packed our stuff into and onto the car on the morning (actually, afternoon) of the last day, we were exhausted. I looked over at Trudy and asked if she was going to take a shower.

“I’m not,” I offered. She nodded her head, but we sat there looking at each other.

The campground was virtually empty. Everyone had long since packed and left. And this meant that the showers were empty, which of course meant that the hot water was … hot.

We sat there briefly then both of us said in unison, “We have to take showers before we drive home.”

So we drove to the Live Oak camping area, where we knew the bathrooms and showers were new and shiny. And we got our clean clothes and our soap and our shampoo and our towels, and we went into the doors on the opposite sides of the building.

This time I did have soap. And this time I did have shampoo. And having stopped at the park store the day before, this time I even had a razor.

And I’ll tell you this, it was one of the most glorious showers I’ve ever taken in my life.

I watched a squirrel in a tree on the other side of the road the other day as I sat beside our campfire during the day. It was climbing to the tips of the branches, meticulously checking each hull for an untaken, unfallen nut.

One by one, it investigated each twig tip, climbing out carefully, holding on tightly with its rear feet as it checked out each prospect with its tiny hands.

A cold breeze rolled down the hill behind me, and I was grateful for the fire.

Beneath a gray, cloudy sky, I watched the silhouette of that squirrel at work, undaunted by failure. One by one the squirrel checked them all, only to find them empty. Until … yes until he came upon this one nut that had not dropped.

The squirrel grabbed onto it and pulled and then scrambled back to a sturdier place to sit and sat up on its haunches, as squirrels do. And, rewarded for unfailing persistence, the squirrel ate that nut.

So here’s the funny thing about the burn ban that they had going in the park when we were there for Thanksgiving. On our second day there, I saw a truck drive slowly by in the morning, and Trudy saw a sign on the side of their trailer that said:

Firewood For Sale.

In yellow letters on a big green sign, they drove around offering firewood to the campers while the burn ban was in effect.

Now isn’t that something? The signs were still up on the doors to the bathrooms announcing the burn ban, yet here was this pickup truck (it turns out from the park store) pulling a huge trailer load of Oak firewood for sale—nice campfire-sized bundles, just what you might need for a night of glowing embers.

And come to notice, there were several campsites down the way with smoke curling out of the woods and into the sky. (The winds of last night were gone.)

And funny thing: the park rangers who drove by didn’t seem to notice these flagrant violations.

So in the afternoon, as I thought about my pile of size-graded kindling sitting cold and unused next to our cold and unused fire pit, I waved down one of the rangers. I walked up to his white truck with the Parks and Wildlife logo on the door and said hello. As I strode up, he glanced at our campfire ring. He knew what I was about to ask.

“Is the burn ban off?” I asked.

No, he explained. There was still a ban in effect. And he pronounced the terms of the ban—only small fires used exclusively for cooking and extinguished as soon as the food was done. (Just as all the signs said.)

But then he explained that he didn’t really care. He said it with an empathetic roll of his eyes. Be careful, he said. Don’t get wild. No tall flames. And always have someone by the fire.

They way I figured it, they knew the winds were gone. And they knew that it was dipping into the upper 20s that night. And they knew it was Thanksgiving weekend, for heaven’s sake.

So they exercised their discretion. And we did ours.

As darkness fell on our second day there, we had a campfire burning with mesmerizing glowing orange embers throwing off that kind of heat that sinks deep into your bones and leaves you warm and content and thinking “It just doesn’t get any better than this.”