“…Inside the meadow is the grass, rich with darkness. Inside the grass is the wish to be rooted, inside the rain the wish to dissolve. What you think you live for you may not live for. One star goes out. One breath lifts inside a crow inside a field.”

~ Joanna Klink, from “3 Bewildered Landscapes”

 

Here we are starting another February, dear reader, and I’m sharing a past column with you again, just because it’s a reminder of what matters amid things that seem too much with us, as Wordsworth once wrote. Since then, Rattletrap hitched a final ride on a flatbed trailer, and the old truck that friends gifted me with has not kept AAA as busy. The crows still watch, the robins have returned….

On a windy morning that promised snow, I found myself stranded (again) in my infamous rattletrap car pulled over into a deserted parking lot along the back road to Saluda, waiting for the AAA tow truck to arrive. With a red light squawking ‘overheating!’ and coolant running like a stream under the car, it was not a good day.

“Well, it could be worse” I said to the AAA representative when calling for help. “It really could!” she said as we laughed together. In the scheme of things, what’s a two-hour wait, a broken-down car, another repair bill? In the scheme of things, that’s really nothing. I think of a friend dealing with brain surgery and stage-four lung cancer, and another who recently lost her husband of 40 years.

Somehow, my troubles seem to pale in comparison. So, I sat there in the quiet car, watching dry leaves scamper over winter grass, racing like children on a playground while handsome iridescent crows rule an open sky over stark branches of sycamore. Short stems of emerging daffodils peeked out through earth, only wishing to bloom into light. Those are promises, I think, that it will be OK, that things will go on. How good it is to pay attention, to watch clouds roll overhead, crows swooping, occasional cars whisk by, the low spread of grass over rocks.

Wind and silver gray skies push over mountain ridges as I sit scribbling thoughts onto a wrinkled car wash receipt. Twiddling thumbs, I keep waiting past the two-hour mark. Finally, the tow truck guy arrives. Over the past few years, we’ve become old friends. He’s glad to see me. We catch up on old cars, trucks, life, how fast his kids are growing (and how much they eat), and the new beads he’s sporting in his beard. He’s a good soul, and picks me up a drink along our way to the car repair shop in Landrum.

I’m touched by his kindness. I so needed a dose of that very thing, and kindness comes home with me, where River dog paces out on the back deck, barking at the rumbling tow truck and anxious to be walked down the street to water shrubs and delight in winter crows. That’s what matters.

~ ~ ~

Saluda Welcome Table is every Tuesday at Saluda Methodist Church from 5:30-6:45. All welcome, donations appreciated.

 

Learn more about Saluda Community Land Trust (SCLT) by visiting saludaclt.org or calling 828-749-1560. Monthly meetings are the first Wednesday each month, 3 p.m., at Saluda Presbyterian Church. The Robinson Community Garden sign-up meeting is Feb. 9, 6 p.m. at SCLT’s office in the Saluda Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall. Contact Dave or Marilyn Prudhomme for more information at 828-749-9172.
Saluda Singles (40+) will have a potluck on Feb. 9 at 5 p.m. at Saluda Center.

 

Saluda Downtown Foundation meets on the second Tuesday of the month at Saluda Library.

 

Calling all artists: the Saluda Business Association invites you to enter the juried Saluda Arts Festival on May 20, 2017. Entry deadline is March 17. Visit saluda.com to link to the arts festival page.

 

Donations to help support Saluda Historic Depot can be sent to P.O. Box 990, Saluda, NC 28773 or on HistoricSaluda.org.

 

Happy February Birthday to Wylie Rauschenbach, Wesley Pace, Biddie Dawson, Ginny Jones, Jenna Igoe, Suzanne Igoe, Pam Thompson, Catherine Raymond, Eva McCray, Ellen Rogers, Margaret Miller, Paul London, Ward Sandahl, Bill Klippel, Pat Bares, Dwight Smith, Ingrid Sandahl, Fred Baisden, Duane Bateman, and Ragan Thompson. Happy 136^th birthday to the City of Saluda!

 

Thank you for reading this column, dear readers. As ever, the goal is to make you feel like you’re enjoying small town life in a friendly mountain town called Saluda. Feel free to contact me at bbardos@gmail.com, 749-1153, Facebook, or visit bonniebardosart.com.