Isolation

Jazz To The World; various artists

I remember seeing a documentary type news clip concerning federal lands that had received National Park, Monument, Forest, Grassland or other designation during the Clinton administration. During the clip, they showed President Clinton aboard Marine One touring these areas that had obtained these prestigious classifications. At one point, they cut away from the scenery to show President Clinton in an interview. He talked about Marine One protocol that required one Marine in full dress uniform to meet the helicopter on the ground whenever it landed.

They switched back to panoramic footage of the terrain where they would land. It was nothing but sand as far as you could see; except for one dark spot. As they got closer and closer to it, the spot took on the form of one … solitary … full dressed Marine, out in the middle of the desert, standing at attention, ready to salute his Commander In Chief after opening the hatch for him. The image was striking. Nobody around for seemingly hundreds of miles. And here was a Marine waiting for them. As far as anybody knew he’d been waiting there for three years.

I miss the isolation of our farm. I don’t, by the way, feel hemmed in by the neighbors. The expansive perimeter of lawn, trees, fences and gravel road outside the window near my desk reminds me of the vast sweep of breathing room we enjoyed out in the country. Believe me, from the time that I was very young, I could feel every inch of the half mile or so that separated us from the H.’s to the east of us, the half mile to the J.’s just west of us, the mile to the E.’s near the highway to the south of us and some other E.’s more than a mile to the north.

In the spring and summer, you could hear the tractors in every direction waking up the ground with the plow and cultivator. In the fall you could feel the milieu of the harvest in the surrounding farm environment with the rumble of the combines and the lonely drone of the grain dryers.

But with the arrival of winter on the prairie, that half mile span of space to the east may as well have been forty miles long. Not from the standpoint of trying to reach the neighbors. But our houses are closed up tight. Anything that can sustain a zero degree environs is shut out to the dark, the cold, the grit, the hard, the harsh, the snow and the ice. Our four walls and a roof become a refuge that encapsulates, until the return of spring, warmth, light and closeness. Life. A mere glance outside the window, into the world of frost and icicle, evokes a reminder of our seclusion, cloister and solitude.

“Jazz To The World” takes me to this place. The contemporary atmosphere of this holiday music gives a denser element of festivity to our Christmas decorations, an almost measurable sensation of joy to our annual celebration of giving. My family knows the reason for the season. It’s all right to have a little holiday ambience, as well.

Only seven months until Christmas!

Credits: To the H.’s to the east. What great neighbors!