This Month's Story

“I found your dad’s old saw blade. It’s been sitting on the shelf in the white garage since we tore down in the old work shed. What about hanging it on the wall behind you, just below the two-man saw?”

Stella and I were sitting on the porch with some friends relaxing on the new/old wicker chairs and enjoying both the late afternoon breeze and the view of the Urchek’s field. Dave Urchek had cut it with his brushhog a few weeks ago and now we had an unusually clear view of the open field. The chairs were a mixture of some wicker I got at a yard sale in Derry years ago and some new ones we’ve bought since. As to the view, we were actively monitoring the field looking for a gray fox that has been spotted hunting the field.

Our collective thought is that the fox is a vixen since the first time we saw her she methodically killed at least five chipmunks before carrying the whole kill back into the woods. We figured that there had to be a litter somewhere back in there driving her. It was a remarkable thing to see her go about each of the kills. She was quick; each kill took about three or four minutes; it was uncanny to watch. Look, listen, kill; then take the kill to the growing pile on the back side of the field and then turning to go get another one.

Let me tell you about gray foxes in general. The gray fox we had seen from the porch several evenings earlier was the first any of us had ever seen. All the literature on gray foxes I had referenced since state that the gray fox is rarely seen in the open, preferring to stay in the deep woods and heavy brush. They have a distinct reddish face outlined in gray fur, a rich gray coat and a long bushy tail that sports a broad black strip running from rump to tail tip. They’re not small, more the size of a basset hound with the bushy black stripped tail adding to their apparent size and since they are fairly agile hunters, a pleasure to watch. Which is what we were trying to do this particular evening. However, it was getting late and it appeared that the fox was going to be a no-show.

Although she wasn’t putting in her presence this day, we had good company, the view was nice, and a group of deer (four fawns and two does) were making an appearance in the edge of the field; the youngsters impatiently running ahead so that any predator would have ample warning to load and prepare the old shotgun for the kill. We don’t let anyone hunt on our land and it is posted, Urcheks land is also posted but they occasionally let friends come by and shoot.

Stella’s cousin Walt goes over to their fields on occasion to shoot turkeys but Stella won’t let him do so on our land. I can’t imagine why she is so adamant; after all he’s her cousin. We’ve often had troops of 70 and 80 turkeys promenade in broad daylight close to the house and I can’t imagine Walt banging away at them would do much to diminish their numbers. I asked a farmer selling apples in the Saturday Farmers market in Ligonier, if the deer made any head way on the amount of apples in his orchard. He answered that he had over 7000 trees and if some deer were taking any of his apples he wasn’t going to keep count. I took home some of his apples and they were delicious. I guess if there were deer stealing a few apples from his orchard they were getting away with some nice eating.

But it’s the saw blade I’m talking about here and the answer Stella gave me as to where on the stone wall to hang it is worth repeating.

We are always finding stuff around from the old farm; horseshoes and the like. We even found a grave footstone with the initials of a family that lived here in the early 1900’s, (Stella’s grandparents bought the farm in 1923). She won’t let me bring the footstone near the house and so it sits atop the stone fence near the new barn well out of sight of the house. I found the two-man saw that now hangs on the wall behind us in the old shed not far from where I found the saw blade. It had one handle missing and our Amish friend, Roman, offered to make a new one, but I thought it best to leave it as we found it and hung it up over the old/new whicker chairs to compliment the old hay rake on the other end of the long porch. The rake is also not in perfect shape; a few teeth are missing, but I thought that just gave it character.

Now we have a rusty saw blade that’s been sitting on a shelf in the white Garage since we found it years ago. The blade actually has a history. When Stella was young, her dad had rigged it to run on a flat table to cut up slab boards he got from the Henigan’s saw mill that at the time was located opposite the farm across Gray Station Road. The slab boards he got from the mill were free and made good fire wood. Her dad would cut the boards using a broad belt rigged to their old Farmall tractor. Fire wood is abundant here on the farm and we don’t have any problem gathering a chord for use in the fireplace from the fallen trees around us. But in the old days when the entire farm house was heated by wood, it took a lot of wood and it was work and getting free slabs from the Henigan mill must have been a blessing.

Stella turned and looked at the space I pointed out on the stone wall below the two-man saw. As I said her answer was memorable.

“Bring the blade out tomorrow and let it tell you where it should be hung.”

This sounds like a Feng Shui statement but it’s not. According to the Merriam- Webster definition of Feng Shui, “Feng Shui is geomantic practice in which a structure or site is chosen or configured so as to harmonize with the spiritual forces that inhabit it” Stella’s too wise with the actual way the world works for that nonsense. She wasn’t suggesting that we place the saw blade so as to spiritly harmonize with the other hangings on the wall, instead she was suggesting that we let the blade determine where it wants to be hung.

This is another thing entirely. Sort of the old hippy answer to the question of how many persons does it take to change a light bulb? You remember the hippy answer: “It only takes one, but the bulb has to want to be changed.”

Now both Stella and I have taken years to understand the fundamental truth in that answer. I, for example, brag about designing our present home. But that is not exactly true. All too many times in its construction I have been faced with what appears to be an insurmountable problem. At these times I would relax, go do something else, and when I returned the answer to my problem would be waiting for me as the only obvious solution. Or to put it another way, the bulb (or in this case the house) had decided that it wanted to be changed and was patiently waiting for me to change it.

All around us that evening of the no-show gray fox was a world in chaos. What harmonious path through the field could the chipmunks have taken to escape the fox? Or for that matter, what path could the fox have found to ensure a full bounty of chipmunks? Of all the trees around us, which would fall to provide us with this winter’s firewood?

There is too much confusion.

Stella is right. Tomorrow I will get the saw blade and wherever it wants to hang, there I will hang it.

Maybe when I do I’ll see the gray fox. I’d like that.