On Getting Off To a Good Start

It's a commonly-heard sentiment. "Let's get off to a good start." On this project. This assignment. In this game. Monday morning. Hit the ground running and all that.

The senitment grows louder, becomes more encompassing as December comes to a close and January enters with all the significance we decide to throw at it. But what does getting the New Year off to a good start mean?

Toasting the past year's successes and good times? Sure.

Reflecting on failures and disappointments? Yep.

Setting new goals? You bet.

For many of us it's all of these things. For me it's also a time to try to step away from these same things.

So I'm glad my wife grew up in the countryside.

The Peach Farm - Fukushima

We make the drive from Nagano to Fukushima once or twice a year. There's not much to do on the peach farm where my wife spent her childhood. Even less when the roads are iced over. The warmer months are filled with physical work and simple living. With winter the work disappears under the snow, leaving only the simplicity of living, staring me right in the face.

 Hand-cut firewood for the boiler. No fire, no hot shower.

Persimmon and daikon radish, dried to be eaten later.

New Year mochi rice cakes. My mother-in-law still makes them

but it takes all her remaining strength to cut them.

"Hakusai" - what some call Chinese cabbage.

When we need one we go out and get one.

Shoveling the dirt-and-rock driveway while the kids play.

Each morning the laundry is hung up to dry; rare is the home with a clothes dryer. Or a dishwasher. It's interesting when there's no more hot water. My mother-in-law has the hands of an Alaskan fisherman.

My in-laws' house has no heat, save for the kerosene heaters that have evolved into hybrid electric models. This means we no longer have to open all the windows periodically to clear the dirtied air. At night we go from the warm living room to the unheated tatami room where our futons are laid out. Our breath escapes in thick white puffs as we huddle deep under our blankets.

Across the street.

When there is no work to be done everyone gathers in the living room, the only warm space in the house. Television is the default pasttime. Traditional snacks and seasonal fruits are passed around the low kotatsu table.

There's no Internet in the house. My in-laws have no need and no desire. And probably no clue what they'd do with it. I can get 4G access - the farm is not completely removed from civilization - but to sit and peck away at my phone?

Not today. Not in this place.

On the farm I am forced to live in the present. Nature, encroaching on all sides in her beautiful display, begs me to come do the same.

On a farm, the past and the future disappear if you just let it.

Back home in Nagano the demands and requirements I've placed on myself come roaring back, right along with the Internet and the hot water.

But outside my window is a beautiful place, and as I sit down and focus on where I want to go this year I feel the ever-present, ever-insistent call to go out and live life now, in the place I call home.

Adding that to my list of goals for 2022, I'm off to a pretty good start.