Annie Oakley, I ain't

Yet.

With a 22 caliber rifle perched against my shoulder, a nuisance fur-bearing rodent in my sights, and adrenaline coursing through my system, I squeezed the trigger. This, after struggling for nearly 10 minutes to dislodge a jammed bullet while Jim held the dog at bay and the animal lumbered around the farmyard.

The first shot traveled more than 150 feet; the animal stumbled. My second shot missed but the third put him on his back and by the fifth, it stopped moving.

Jim and I moved toward each other. He took the gun; I took the dog and headed for the house. He dealt with the remains. I set the safety on the gun and turned my attention toward dinner.

Just another afternoon in the country, I suppose.

A graceful bow draped in warm light

Photographers call it the sweet light. In the minutes that surround sunrise and sunset, the atmosphere diffuses the sun's rays to cast everything, from trees to buildings, in varying shades of warmth. Sometimes it seems the earth spins faster at sunrise and sunset because the sweet light changes its hue quickly and disappears without warning if you don't pause to take note. Today would be a good day to take notice.

Another law to protect us from ourselves

In my work as a personal historian, I am blessed to be able to hear people relate stories of the past, for often they involve heroic acts performed by ordinary people. One such story goes a bit like this:

In the midst of a Depression-era blizzard, a young man named Ray faced the tragic death of a beloved brother. The family called their doctor to attend to the sickly young man, but because of the storm, the roads were impassible. Ray hitched his horses to a sleigh and headed out in the storm to fetch the doctor and bring him to their farm. A few hours later, the doctor stood at the sick man’s side concluding there was nothing to be done. “He won’t last much longer,” the doctor said, and then he and Ray headed out into the night air to return the doctor to town.

With the sick man’s demise imminent, the parents wanted all their children gathered at his side to pray a rosary. That meant Ray, who’d just come back from taking the doctor home, had to head out in the blizzard again to collect his oldest sister. Ray donned his Mackinaw and mittens and headed back outside without complaint. The two returned in time to witness their brother’s passing.

The family telephoned the mortician and he ordered a hearse, but again, the roads to the farm were impassible. Once again that night, Ray hitched his horses to the sleigh, and with his dead brother wrapped in a blanket and lain on the hay, Ray braved the storm with his horses to meet the hearse.

Just yesterday, I read in the newspaper that Minnesota has passed a series of new laws addressing how we transport and handle our deceased. Apparently, there’s a movement toward “natural” funerals including more family involvement in death and burial. The new laws were crafted in response to this movement, to make it MORE difficult for families to bypass expensive, intrusive funeral services and procedures and assume those responsibilities themselves.

One of the new laws makes it illegal for anyone but an immediate next of kin to transport a dead body. Furthermore, a corpse must be carried in the same cab as the vehicle driver. That means it would be illegal to transport a dead body in the back of a pickup truck, for instance.

So much for strength of character, Ray. In 2007, the state legislature has decided it’s a criminal act to take your dead brother on a sleigh through a blinding snow to meet a hearse. Funny. I still think it takes a hero.

If you're coasting, you're going downhill

I had a houseful of young family members visiting over the weekend and I found their exuberance for life exhilarating. Two were laying plans to spend half a year teaching in Eastern Europe, another was interested in discovering – firsthand – the social evolution underway in China. Another talked about heading west toward the mountains; his plans made me think about the pioneers of the late 1800s, the ones who broke sod and homesteaded in order to build up the rural communities that now dot the countryside. Another still was updating his resume; it had taken him four months after joining a Fortune 500 corporation to discover no real purposefulness could be found in spending his days at this, his first post-collegiate employer.

I can contrast the exuberance for life I witnessed this weekend with attitudes I see and hear everyday from people twenty or thirty years older – people my age. Often, people in their forties and fifties who have become disenchanted with their roles in life are too afraid or too invested in the status quo to pull themselves out of life’s queue and change direction. Many of them have already started their countdown to retirement and talk about their lives as being on hold until that one day in the future when they can start fresh. In three or five years, they say, I’ll be able to stop doing what I find distasteful and do something else. They’re coasting toward the finish line, hoping something new vision of themselves will appear in the interim. I have news for these folks. Hope is not a plan.

Of course, none of us have a lock on tomorrow or next year. Not even the young people. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work at reaching our potential each and every day, even if this means we have to risk losing those things in life that make us comfortable. We should never be satisfied with the status quo when we could, with a little risk, do something extraordinary. Remember: if you’re coasting, you’re going downhill.