The First Challenge

This morning I woke early with a desire to get some necessary work done. I brewed up a pot of coffee and toasted a slice of Katita’s cinnamon sour dough bread, slathered on the butter, checked out the news on my phone, and participated in a chat with some sisters about health. The day was off to a good start. I had an ominous feeling as I signed off the chat, but we will get to that later.

The task I had in mind was clearing a large patch of goat weed. The goat weed has replaced the woody yaopon plant which forms most of the dense understory on the property. The yaopon seems impenetrable. It takes heavy machinery to mulch and chop through it and you must follow that with ripping up the roots left behind, which are eager to regain control of the forest.

Where the yaopon was, the goat weed is. It grows with a vengeance, especially with all the rain/sun cycles we’ve had this year. You can easily uproot a single goat weed with a simple tug. But when you are faced with the prospect of clearing a million goat weeds, thick and towering 6’ high, it’s time to bring out the brush hog. And still it seems impenetrable. The brush hog stalls out in the fat fodder, the grasshoppers flee their hiding spots, whizzing by my face, and unseen logs and stumps create such a racket that it seems the brush hog will fly apart. But slowly, furrow by furrow, what seemed impenetrable, looks almost manicured.

And so the yaopon and goat weed give up their impenetrability. Now, if you are familiar with the Labors of Hercules, you may know why I am using the word “impenetrable” so often. Today turned into the first challenge. So I ask, what really is impenetrable?

First, let me go back to the sister’s chat this morning. Not about all the health stuff – people my age talk incessantly about that. Rather, let’s look at my parting words, which were meant to be cheery and uplifting: “Enjoy being alive!” However, I fear the gods may have construed this as an invocation, a divine incantation which must not be used frivolously by we mere humans. And, as I learned, some gods are quick and merciless in their vengeance.

Now let me return to impenetrable. What truly is impenetrable? Beyond the reach of mulchers and brush hogs? Beyond the reach of our understanding? A goat weed jungle or darkness or a physical theory or even some people may seem impenetrable. But not quite.

The future is impenetrable.

When I expressed my wish to enjoy being alive, some god misconstrued that as a foretelling of the future, something humans should not pretend to. We must take each day as it comes, bringing its blessings or misfortunes.

As I was mowing down the goat weed, I passed near a tree and somehow caught it up in my tractor’s roll bar. I pushed on through what I thought was a thick root, but was successful actually in tearing down that tree which landed on my neck and fell down against my back onto the tractor’s tire fender.

The collision happened so fast, I could not react. I tried to make sense of what was happening, and what was over in a second, happened in slow motion in my mind. It took a few minutes and many deep breaths to get over the shock. I could barely walk, but managed to get James Koenig, the plumber, to remove the tree from the tractor with his excavator, found my hat, made my way to the local clinic where Nurse Practitioner Julie ensured no broken vertebrae or ribs and sent me on my way with a muscle relaxant.

Hercules was able to kill the Nemean Lion and wear its impenetrable skin. I, on the other hand, will use the impenetrability of the future to heed the gods warning to live each moment in the present. And avoid driving too close to trees.

And now, as the cyclobenzaprine HCL takes effect, I think I will go to bed.