Planning, Rain, and stuff that Matters

May 18, 2010

Rain isn’t what I hoped for today.  Considered generationally, there are folk in my past who might think me a little funny knowing I’d rather not have rain.  My grandfather farmed the windy arid panhandle of Texas.  In those days, sixty to ninety years ago, if one was to farm in that landscape it was dryland farming.  Rain mattered.  You took it when you could get it.  Certainly, rain could come at the wrong time, just as harvest began for instance, but more times than not, folks welcomed rain.  Harvest rain, though, is where I’m at today.

Hay has been cut and down and drying for nearly a week now.  I figured another few days and then baling.  After last night and then this morning’s continuing rain, chances are baling will not happen until the first of next week.  I am hoping this is neither good nor bad, but rather a moment to live out one more part of life that can neither be scheduled nor manipulated to what I prefer.

I never really knew my dryland grandfather.  I imagine knowing or not knowing my grandfather could not have been planned anymore than I could plan for rain ten days out with absolute certainty.  And maybe the unplanning of life is where life becomes full.  The idea goes against business and political practices where planning for return-on-invest and votes become mathematical constructs.  Life, though, might be best lived when the unplanned is experienced as soulful richness when blended with the planned.  Where planning gives health and wellbeing by having a full pantry or root cellar and unplanning allows one to lift their head to the sky, open their mouth, and taste the remembrance of an ancestor.

© David B. Bell 2010