I think it’s safe to turn the furnace off now. I used to hold pretty firm that running the furnace after Memorial Day was wrong. Not this year. Summer is apparently here, and we should do our best to enjoy it because, the way things have been going, it could be over by the end of next week.
The first really warm evening of the season, I was sitting out on the deck at my house, watching the river flow by. It’s been holding at the normal high-water mark for almost a month now. It usually peaks and drops down to a trickle within about a week. The peak is apparently still to come, with some dire predictions for this weekend. But that evening, I had had a day when all the various projects I worked on went more smoothly than I could ever have imagined or deserved.
There had been successes in the machinery and carpentry departments. The high point of the day had been hiking up to start the main irrigation canal. That usually happens mid-May, but you know what this season is like. About halfway up the canal, I found a nearly intact skeleton of a young bull moose. It was picked clean as a museum exhibit, and a couple of leg bones had been carried off, but otherwise, it was all there. There was no indication of what killed him. I wanted to bring the skull home, but it was still pretty solidly attached to the rest of things, so I left it alone.
While enjoying the evening outside, I noticed a big flying ant on the deck. Carpenter ants are a big deal in my area. They will eat whole barns in no time if left alone. This time of year, there is a winged variety that may be the start of new colonies. So I was pretty focused on this one. It crawled along the deck boards, then, when it got to the space between the planks, it would turn right for about six inches, then sort of hop/fly across the little gap to the next plank. Then it would walk cross that one, hit the edge and turn right again before crossing the next gap.
I watched this for a while. The ant was on a mission and seemed to know where it was going. Then, after turning right for about five planks, it suddenly turned left a couple of times. Then, instead of flying across the gap, it found it could crawl down to the joist and cross on solid material. The deliberateness of it was fascinating. This ant was making a decision at the edge of each plank to turn right or left, to hop or walk the joist. It seemed to know which way it was turning before it got there. It had a plan.
I was right on the brink of making some cosmic conclusion about these observations when the ant got a little too close to the dog. He was dosing, but had an eye on the ant the way dogs keep an eye on things all the time. When the ant took the last hop across the gap, the dog ate it. It was one of those incredible moves where the dog went from almost comatose, to a lightning-quick strike of the tongue, then back to deep sleep. I don’t know much about the history of this particular dog, but apparently he is part aardvark.
There really aren’t many better ways to spend a summer evening than that, sitting on the porch and watching the cosmos at work before your very eyes.
Unfortunately, I spoiled the whole evening by going inside to watch Obama’s big speech on Afghanistan. He had promised that he would begin troop withdrawal in July, and he’s a man of his word. I think there are three guys coming home. By the end of the year, he proposed a reduction of 10,000. Then by the end (or perhaps about November) of 2012, another 23,000 will come home. That leaves a modest force of 70,000 (!) there. Through 2014. Only three more years of pointless war in Afghanistan. Somebody start a parade.
Well, if that doesn’t completely bleed us dry, I don’t know what will. The mission is converting to something that is purely “nation building” in a place that clearly doesn’t want to be built, and has never thought of itself as a nation. Democracy can’t function in a place with a 10 percent literacy rate. The bombing will continue until you learn to read and develop a non-heroin-based economy. Somehow, I think the ant walking across my deck had more of a strategy and plan than Obama.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column for 25 years.