Halfway down the dead-end road, about 50 feet into the woods, is the cab of an old milk delivery truck, resting and rusting between a couple of trees. Its tires are gone, as are its headlights, windows, and much of its engine. The lettering on the driver's side door reads:
Pike Dist. Co.I say it's a milk truck, but I don't know, that's just what my neighbor tells me, that it's a milk truck from the 1940s. But whatever the truck hauled is long gone, and why it sits where it does I don't know. My neighbor says it's there because that's where it stopped, but there is no faint road or path, no nearby falling down house or garage, no slight depression or rotting timbers or stones or rocks to hint at an abandoned foundation. Why stop there? The truck cab simply is, in the woods, day after day, going nowhere.
Newberry, Mich.
The truck is on my mind because I walk by it almost every day, and today it is much more visible than usual, being neither covered by snow nor hidden behind foliage. This is my fourth spring in the woods, and each spring I have noticed this window of time and space when the snow is gone, but the buds have yet to burst, and I can see into the woods in a way I just cannot at any other time. The deep carpet of fall leaves has been flattened by months of snow, now forgotten. Branches are bare, wild flowers and berry bushes have yet to erupt and obscure. One can look into the woods and see, well, old abandoned cars, but also old trails, foundation remnants, leaning trees, broken and fallen trees, new raspberry canes, promising wisps of blueberry bushes, and old sawdust piles from back when this area was a logging camp.
Mostly what you see, though, is space - unfilled space that makes the world seem clearer and somehow bigger. And the time when this happens is time suspended. It comes after a few days of warm temperatures, after you've doffed your jacket and thought, okay, spring is here, and then the next morning you're trying to get a fire going because it's dang chilly again and it stays that way for a few days. Spring interruptus. Time suspended. The greening and budding slows down, waits. And a window into the woods opens.
And so it is during spring that the bare bones of the past are most visible. To me it feels like clarity, a reminder that you can dress up, cover up, hide behind flowers and berries, but underneath it all the abandoned cars, forgotten homes, and paths once taken or forsaken remain.
Farm Report
There's no stopping spring out at Seeds & Spores Family Farm - planting is in full swing. We started off in the greenhouse transplanting tiny tomato seedlings, then moved into the hothouses to plant young sprouts of broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, and beets. It took just one step to go from temperatures in the 40s to temperatures in the 70s.
While planting, conversation flowed, off and on, as it always does, and I think it has something to do with sitting in the dirt, looking at the dirt, doing something with a plant in the dirt, that allows conversation to flow in unexpected directions, swinging easily from a tale about a transmission flush, to the general topic of colon cleansing, to confessions about daily (or not!) teeth brushing, which brings with it the sidecar thought of flossing, which reminded me of my dad, who liked to insist that it was fine to use the same piece of floss over and over again and that not to do so could be considered wasteful.
There are 16 piglets on the farm, nine of which were born the night before.
