June 27, 2023
[To read this memoir in order, go to the category My Left-Handed Wheelhouse] here on the blog.]
I was having a triumphant day, the day I broke my arm. It was June 27th, and the date had long been on my calendar for Emma from the Monroe County Conservation District to conduct a site visit. She arrived on time to a bottleneck in my driveway. A man from Stevens Disposal was there in his big truck to take my garbage can away. After two years of hauling an almost empty can to the curb, I’d upped my recycling game and cut the cord to the landfill. The tiny bit of garbage I still have is now adopted by friends with garbage service. Thanks, friends!
I explained this to Emma, the reason for the bottleneck, and then we commenced the tour of the perimeter, stopping for a while at the rain garden, then heading into the woods. It turns out the young woman was an Ed Abbey fan, so we had fun when she recognized the names of my dogs, Bonnie and Hayduke. She expressed her delight at the district working with me as I morphed my once suburban property into a 2+ acre demonstration destination for rewilding, permaculture, increasing habitat for pollinators, and food forest. The morning marked a huge landmark in my journey with the land I’ve come to call Whimsy Farm.
Earlier in the day I had darted out to pick up my CSA box, parking on the far end of the parking pad for some reason, and then doing a bunch of stuff in the house before heading back outside. I remember glancing at my mementos on the fridge, including a magnet my friend Dawn made me years ago. “Just one moment can change everything.” I read the message often and it didn’t register as significant in that moment.
More on my mind was that I had completed an ambitious outdoor chore list for June three days early! As I assessed my success, I got a text from my sister. Chat in thirty? Great! I decided to get a few quick things done in the back yard before the call. I poured a glass of white wine and left it on the wrought iron table on my deck underneath my brick red umbrella. I was excited to tell her that I was starting my ambitious July chore list the next morning—three days early– permaculture projects in Zone Three of my property, particularly building a Hugel bed and doing a biochar prep and hopefully burn. I was on a roll!
But what really needed doing right then, I decided, was a touch up on the straw on the dog run. The dogs like to run back and forth on the south side of the chain link fence, usually playing an intense game of bark-and-run with the next-door neighbor Dozer. In fact, Dozer was running amuck that day, coming over the fence to our land and causing my dogs no end of joyful outrage. I figured placing myself in the mix would be good for the sound pollution my dogs were inflicting on the neighborhood. Dozer doesn’t have a loud bark like they do.
I piled my blue wheelbarrow full of straw and headed over to the south fence. I was flinging flakes, looking up at my glass of wine under the umbrella, thinking with satisfaction about my wonderful morning visit with Emma and my completed list, my land coming into beauty and vibrancy. Things were really working out for me in Michigan. I felt something funny and looked down.
Ants! All over me. They must have been in the straw. I began sweeping them off my arms and shirt with my gloved hands. Meanwhile Dozer was back! The dogs barked like crazy right next to me. I shushed them and swatted ants, meanwhile pivoting on one foot to get another armful of ant-infested straw quickly onto the path.
I couldn’t see the huge divot in the ground because the red clover I’d seeded was successful and covered the six inch drop. The divot had been created when I buried my power lines at the same time I installed the Generac on the south side of the house the first winter I was here. I went down fast, still shoosing and shooing, and instinctively held my right arm out to catch my fall in the soft clover.
That’s when I heard the snap. I heard a snap. Snap. I still hear the snap.
I often shared with people my metaphor for life: there are meadows and summits. We travel through our meadows with easy days and manageable problems, and then one day, poof! We are at the base of a summit we must climb. I have climbed many summits. And until that moment I had been rocking a meadow. Just one moment turns a meadow into the base of a summit.
“No, no, no….” I started chanting as I grabbed my wrist with my left hand and hurried into the house to get some ice. Snap! I kept hearing. Muck boots and all I plopped in my chair in the living room and dialed Linda, my next-door neighbor who kindly takes my little bits of garbage.
“Are you home?”
“Just got home. Why, what’s up?”
“I think I’ve seriously injured my wrist!”
“What do you need?”
“For you to take me to urgent care.”
“Okay, come over now.”
I left the water running on the rain garden and my glass of wine on the deck. I threw my purse over my shoulder and grabbed my ice bag and my right wrist with my left hand. The dogs would be fine in the pen. I heard the magnet’s wise words in my head. Just one moment….
