Through the Worst of the Winter

Spring, Year 1

He’d done it. He’d actually done it.

Charlie stood on the rickety front porch of his new home, amazed by the silence now that the mayor and that carpenter had left. Save the wind blowing through the trees— God, there were a lot of trees! —there wasn’t a sound to be heard: no passing cars, no upstairs neighbors, no sirens blaring. It was just him, his thoughts, and a backpack full of slightly rusty old tools. Just his own muscle, and a packet of parsnip seeds, and the deed to this overgrown patch of dirt.

“Oh, shit,” he said out loud, as the weight of it all finally crashed down on him. He sat heavily on the porch steps. What had he done? Charlie had hated everything about his life, it was true—hated his pointless, boring job; hated his lonely little beige apartment; hated the sameness of it all, stretching into the future as far as he could imagine—but it had been his life, had been something he knew. Staring out over the acres of weeds and rocks, he tried to grasp at that feeling that had burned so brightly in his chest just three weeks ago, that feeling when he’d looked at his future and said no. Not this, anything but this. But that determined voice was now as silent as the trees around him.

He’d never felt more alone.

Charlie had imagined he’d feel free, when there were no more alarms to set, no more PTO to request, no more congested rush-hour commutes. Instead, he felt adrift. There wasn’t one single person to tell him what to do, and he had no idea where to start. Why the hell had he thought he could hack it as a farmer, of all things? What kind of quarter-to-third-life crisis was this? Didn’t people normally just buy a stupidly expensive car? Maybe his friends and his mom had been right; maybe this had been a ridiculous idea. He’d thought of himself as a reasonably confident person, but it was failing him now. Maybe he should have a beer. Maybe he should have a cry.

Fighting down the wave of despair, Charlie opened the backpack and rummaged through it, as though the instructions for his new life might be written down somewhere. They weren’t, but he did find the letter again, the one from his grandfather that had led him to turn his whole life upside down. He read it again, feeling a tiny comfort from the familiar handwriting. When he finished, he tucked it into his shirt pocket. That was new, too: he’d given away most of his old clothes, trading businesslike button-downs and wool slacks for sturdy denim and flannel. At the time, he’d felt practical and outdoorsy. Now, wearing the plaid flannel shirt for the first time in his life, he felt like he’d put on a costume. Thank God he hadn’t talked himself into overalls.

“The only difference between a farmer and someone dressed up as a farmer,” Charlie said, out loud again, “is that one of them actually farms.” Instantly, he was grateful there was no one around to hear him; in his head it had sounded profound, but spoken it just made him sound like an idiot. He hoped he wasn’t going to turn into some kind of monologuing hermit. Still, though: there was something to it, wasn’t there? If he wanted to be a farmer, he needed to actually start doing it. He picked up the packet of parsnip seeds, looked out over the weedy land again, then put them down again. Start small. There’s gotta be something you know how to do.

A big rock a few feet away caught his eye. He wasn’t going to be growing anything with the ground still full of rocks. Standing up, he heaved the rusty old pickaxe onto his shoulder and waded out into the weeds. He might not know how to grow food; he might not know how to keep things alive; he might not know how to be in control of his own life; but he definitely knew how to break shit. And right now, hitting something really hard a bunch of times sounded like the best therapy he could afford.

^°^°^°^°^°^°^°^

Charlie flopped into bed five hours later, having spent the entire evening breaking up rocks and hauling them into a pile behind the house. He was drenched in sweat and his shoulders burned, but he had cleared out a decent little chunk of dirt, and he felt satisfied. He’d shoved a granola bar into his mouth two hours ago—thank God he’d brought some snacks, this house didn’t even have a kitchen— and even his current hunger was outweighed by his exhaustion. Tomorrow he’d wake up, find breakfast somewhere, and get back to work on the rest of the rocks. He fell asleep almost instantly, content with that plan.