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Progress. It moves. The beginnings are hard to pinpoint. We like to think that we can nail it down, say, to five in the morning when we’re woken by snow removal vehicles outside on our street. However, it didn’t really start then, did it? The drivers and operators had to wake up, get dressed, have breakfast and coffee and get to the city garage. They had to start much earlier than five, just to push the snow out from in front of our houses and into the street and then begin to move it again and again, plowing, blowing it into trucks and dumping it.
Someone, the afternoon before, had to head down each street and plant the “no parking after midnight” signs in the mounds of snow that had recently been shoveled and plowed and shoveled again. Someone had to plot out the grid for this to happen. Progression through this project began years ago, didn’t it, with experience and history and two steps forward, one step back?
My dog doesn’t like trailers, snowmobiles, side-by-sides, or large equipment with lots of lights, sirens, backup beepers and general mayhem noises attached. It’s half past six as I write and he’s finally given up on sounding the alarm about the obvious invasion of Conan Street. I guess he figures we’re doomed and I’m too stupid to do something to protect us so he’s gone back to sleep. The cats were stalking around from dark parts of the rooms to darker parts in avoidance of the flashing lights. I’m now wondering if I picked the correct side of the adjacent avenue for calendar parking because I don’t normally park on the avenues. After living here for 30 years, I’m learning, making progress.
You’ll recall that I’ve been working on some folk art fishing decoys. Here’s a finished one pictured. I’m making progress on my pile of things in the works. A little sanding here, a little wood burning there. I chose to simplify things on this frog and let the shapes and lines of the design speak for themselves. The back legs have a sweeping arc that helps move the decoy in the water and gives the frog the illusion of movement as it sits in the decoy box, waiting. The underneath is black on the vintage coffee can legs and belly. I’ve found that in our lakes up here that during both summer and winter fish respond to darker colors like black, blue and red as much or more so than the bright colors like chartreuse and orange that humans tend to gravitate too. Maybe it is a me thing, maybe it’s a northern Minnesota thing.
Bordered with some pyrography inspired by the grain of the wood and my folk art tendencies, the black is offset by green stain intended to let the natural cedar colors escape instead of being covered completely by paint. In the hand, it’s a beauty. It is finished… or is it?
Still a work in progress. It’ll change over the years as the clear coat responds to U.V. light and the sun. It’ll change if it is fished, by the frigid water and the spear, bites from a Northern or two or more, hopefully. It’ll get dinged in the decoy box or the back of a truck bed or by banging its nose into the bottom of the ice. Decades from now, found by someone like me, it will be picked up and wondered at as they discover my small wood burned initials. Perhaps a collector will buy it and it’ll miss all of the above experiences and just end up watching the outside through the glass of a window from a shelf. A top shelf?
When the snow is gone and we can park on the street again will it be finished? I don’t think so. In fact, between tonight and tomorrow morning, we should see another three to five inches. Winter is progressing. Sometimes I feel like the snow. Moved from here to there. Pushed out the way. Lifted up. Thrown down. Packed away. Forgotten. Celebrated. Looked forward to and then ready to be done with. Many times, all in one day. One hour. Don’t you? Not just as an adult, but certainly as an adult, the progression comes with a lot of stress. It is high anxiety being responsible for others, for the progression of dreams, bringing them to reality and crafting reality into something functional and beautiful for yourself and others.
Last Sunday I walked across the street to help my neighbor move some snow after the last big drop. While we were working a woman got stuck by the Grace Lutheran Church. We shoveled a bit, I pushed a bit and ultimately, it was a bit of grit that he went and brought over and placed in just the right spots on the ice that her tires had spun down to, that got her out. Grit. Got her right out and we went back to moving snow.
Grit is defined as you might think in the physical sense. Gravel, chunky, frictional. It is also defined as “courage and resolve; strength of character.” Those features don’t just show up in the first decoy you carve. They have a kernel beginning at 4 a.m. when you answer your phone or get up with the old fashioned ringing of the alarm clock. They are present within each one of us as newborns, but they take time to come out. God knows when just when we need a bit of grit. He knows when a shovel full is required. As you might imagine, He knows when someone else can use our grit. Perhaps, that, more than anything, is the simple, two-color contrast of our lives. Being able to recognize that our progress is ultimately for the benefit of others.
Do yourself a favor this week. Pick up a bag of grit and keep it handy. You never know when someone else might need a little. A little goes a long way toward building courage and resolve. We’re making progress.
