It’s so dry here, and so hot, and (at least for me) this has not been the best of all possible years. Beginning with an apocalyptic bang from rounds of live ammo sent airborne near our house by a drunken neighbor on New Year’s Eve, the year has meandered through a minefield of small and large sorrows. The angst of re-homing a nearly-impossible-to-place dog. The passing of Marina, my mother-in-law. The unrelenting descent of my own parents to withdrawal of bone and brain. The financial bloodletting of an investment gone so far south, I’m declaring it officially off the compass. The 10th anniversary of 9-11. And most recently, the death of our bulldog, Phoebe.

Deep breath. It’s time to change channels, step into my most beat-up, up-beat boots, and go for a joyride. With whom? With Jim, of course. Jim is the alchemist, and you’ll see why in a moment.

I call Jim on his cell to see what’s going on in his world.

“Geyser! We have a damn geyser here! Shootin’ more than 60 feet, near the electric wires, and soon we’re gonna have a real live Ben Franklin experience!”

Alright now. Time to parse this and decode the Jimspeak. Are we talking about [image of real geyser] and [image of Ben Franklin lightning]?

“How tall is it really, Jim?” I dare to ask.

“About 30 feet, then 14 feet when you crank down the water,” he says on the phone, the line crackling with wind.

“OK, then… you can control this geyser?” I ask.

“Well sure you can control it, what d’ya think?” he retorts.

Houston, we have a communication problem. Evidently there is a new natural phenomenon/disaster event out at the ranch. A geyser; specifically a damned geyser. Just the excuse I’ve been looking for to go out there, anyway.

“Jim, I’ll be right over to see the geyser,” I confirm.

“OK, but best get here soon, before she really blows!” And with that, the line goes dead. Perhaps the water has hit a live wire. Perhaps the wind has knocked the phone out of Jim’s hand. Perhaps … he has simply hung up. Whatever; I’m in the car with the camera and some plastic bags.

Driving to the ranch at Linden Lea is like walking the meditation maze at Chartres cathedral, only a little faster. To follow the twists and turns of the climbing, winding road requires just the right mixture of concentration and relaxation. Right brain’s driving, left brain’s analyzing the just-cooked-up geyser story and noticing the stubbly, bone dry brown grass to the right and left of the road. One scrape of metal on stone, one small flicked ash would set it off faster than hell itself, as Jim would say.

I drive down the long straight driveway now (road, actually) to the cow corral at Linden Lea, smiling as brown stubble gives way to irrigated pasture with clumps of cows in peaceful congregation under the shade of old oaks. Soon after, here comes Jim with his two best friends, Milo and Bubbas. Dogs, of course.

[still shot here of dogs]

“Let’s go!” Jim says in greeting. “Ain’t got all day, now!”

I scoop up my gear and we’re off. We drive to what is, literally, the end of the line–for the pasture’s irrigation, that is. Cobbled-together lengths of well-worn 3” irrigation pipes, both above and below ground, stretch across the 25-acre pasture, transforming parched brown into deep green Ladino clover, red clover, and Alta fescue. The entire pasture is uniformly green, but there are actually two distinct types of irrigation techniques in play here: wild flooding and grid irrigation. One type of irrigation is easy; the other is not. Time for a tutorial to see why.

[insert 3927.avi]

Hmmm. Grid irrigation is constant work, constant monitoring, constant pulling apart and putting back together the not unsubstantial lengths of pipe, over and over again in a given day. (In this field alone, 6 times.) And that explains why it’s so hard to get on Jim’s calendar in the summer!

[3931 jpg] Jim’s hand on pipe.

“See the geyser?” Jim motions, to a spot far across the pasture.

He starts to partially shut down the main valve to build pressure on the geyser (water line break) and really show it off. What geyser, I’m thinking …? Jim again directs my eyes to it, in the distance. I see a small bit of water gushing up a couple of feet in the air… I could humor Jim about this geyser thing, and say that I see it, and act impressed. But… nah. A direct challenge to the veracity of this story will be so much more fun. And educational.

[insert 3935.avi]

And so we’re back in the truck, crossing the pasture over to the geyser. It appears that, to convince me of the geyser’s existence, I am going to be thrown into its gushing maw. I waterproof the camera as we roll over the bumpy non-road. But by the time we reach the geyser, Jim has forgotten about the threat to dump me headfirst into the blasting water, and is formulating a repair strategy.

[3942.avi]

[3939 jpg of Jim standing near geyser]

———
Tomorrow, perhaps, Jim will come out here with a backhoe, dig out the leak, reconnect pipes, patch, wait for the patch to dry, then test the irrigation grid. The problem will be solved; the geyser will be no more. Or, maybe Jim will fix the problem the day after tomorrow, just to get a little more mileage out of the story. Because at the end of the day, according to Jim, although problems don’t go away unless you meet them head on, a good story is worth keeping around for a day or two, too.

I’m looking at the geyser now, actually starting to believe it could be 30, 60, 80 feet high once Jim completely cranks up pressure on the main valve. The sun hits the water just right and suddenly, there’s a rainbow right in the middle of the irrigation disaster. Watching the arc of color, I mentally note the sorrows of the year, then let them slip away into the pond, marking each one with an imaginary chrysanthemum floating downstream and far away. (Don’t ask me why the chrysanthemums; saw that in a Japanese movie and seems like a nice image.)

For now, the field is green despite the heat at end of summer–lush enough to feed the cattle, and large enough to make an effective firebreak should a spark land in a patch of far-away stubble. Right on cue, a spotter plane zips across the sky, a reminder of the possibility of trouble.

On the drive back we chat about the weather, the real joy of seeing green in summer, and the rewards of hard work and persistence.

“I find joy in this pasture. In growing things, and knowing what I can produce with a little sweat,” Jim confides.

Alright Jim. You’re right. It’s a damned big geyser. It’s bad, it’s a loss of water, time, and energy, but it can be fixed. I look around, as I always do on these visits to the ranch (partially to make sure that no cow or bull is about to charge me) and I assess. And here’s what I come up with.

I am in a lush green field, a small but real place where summer and troubles are held at bay. I’m with a friend who, when you call him on the phone, really does stop what he’s doing and listen, ever-ready with the antidote (in this case, a crazy and ridiculous story about a geyser). [link to stories section of site]

And I’m thinking. Did Jim “get” that I needed a joyride? I don’t know. Did he invent the geyser story to give me a reason to come out? I don’t know. But I do know that when Jim called me to check in about my trip back East to see my folks, that call inspired a story in his head. A story about a geyser. A “must-see” visit to the geyser. And that’s where the alchemy comes in.

There will always be brown grass, a fire spotter plane at end of summer, and danger. There will always be something broken (in this case the irrigation pipe), needing repair. But also, there will always be green somewhere. A foil to the spotter plane. A story about the amazingly large geyser. A trip outside one’s self. An alchemy.

I say so long to Jim and, back on the winding road, I’m easing left and right with the curves, and thinking about my own spotter plane and geyser. The shoot-em-up neighbor is long gone. The hard-to-place dog now has a home. My mother-in-law, Marina, is also home. My parents will not suffer forever. The investment is turning around. The World Trade Center, my favorite place to visit in NYC, is gone, and with it 3000 unexpected heroes, but their legacy is forever. Phoebe is once again a puppy, forever. And selfishly, most important to me, my handsome husband, Jorge, still goes to work in the morning and comes home to me at night; healthy, witty, and cheerful.

I could ask for more, sure, but why? Like Jim, his cows, and his dogs Milo and Bubbas, I already have it all. And whatever I don’t have right now, it just isn’t that important. There. That’s the alchemy of sorrow into story.

Thanks for permitting me this ramble. An upcoming post will be more down to earth, I promise. Or rather, it will involve the earth and the sun, and how some solar panels dropped into Jim’s lap one day and dropped Jim’s freezer bill from $500 to under $5 per month in a single golden instant.