NOVEMBER 6, 2024 – Early this morning before the rest of the household was up, I quietly went downstairs, fixed myself my usual breakfast, then slipped out of the house and out of town. The election results had taken their emotional toll on us all, and for the sake of everyone’s blood pressure, I wanted to avoid what I knew would be the topic of conversation.
Last week, with an eye on the weather and the calendar, I’d laid plans to go up the Red Cabin/Björnholm the day after Election Day and return Friday afternoon. My purpose had been to install protective fences around the hemlock seedlings and bud-cap 500 to 600 white pine seedlings and saplings. The operation was designed to protect trees from browsing deer; helping one corner of nature defend itself against another. But then on Tuesday plans changed. I’d have to return for a medical appointment (not my own) early Thursday afternoon. The timing would allow me only today to install a dozen hemlock fences and staple bud caps to 500 – 600 white pin. An early departure was essential if I expected to approach my goal. This necessity coincided with my desire to avoid talking about the election results—at least before 8:00 a.m.
Under the circumstances, however, my expedition to the northland (ironically, Trumpland with a capital “T”) and arbor project served another purpose: chilling, venting, and pondering in response to yesterday’s momentous event. The nearly three-hour drive and seven hours in the woods gave me ample opportunity for all three elements of my response.
Initially, I was struck by the symbolism of the early morning weather—a fog so dense I could barely see the road. As I proceeded cautiously into the great void, I saw it as symbolic of our unknowable collective future. Everyone has a prediction about the future under the regime of the president-elect, but none of us knows for sure what will unfold. Will it be as we fear? Less so? More so?
By the time I got past the fog but before I reached zones with sketchy cell-phone coverage, I received or made calls to several friends, a client, and eventually, my spouse, who was despondent over what had occurred. All but two of these calls were replete with commiseration and anxiety over the future and disbelief over what had transpired. After arriving at the Red Cabin, I took more calls of despondency—and one from a Trumper, believe it or not, who asked how I was doing.
These cathartic exchanges were filled with a range of emotion, from humor to anger to despair to anxiety. I tried hard—with varying success—to stay positive. In one call I learned of the experience Jeff Oppenheim[1], a close college friend, had had while canvassing in eastern Pennsylvania. He and his wife are from Cape Cod—Massachusetts, which Harris/Walz were sure to carry the state. Out of a sense of urgency and civic duty, they’d volunteered to knock on doors in the Keystone State, one of the battleground jurisdictions. The work took them to a host of neighborhoods in various socio-economic areas surrounding Wilkes-Barre. As I heard Jeff’s account of the experience, I recalled my own door-to-door sales job in Buffalo, New York one summer while I was in college. I too had experienced many “no shows” even when I suspected someone was home, terse rejections, but also extended conversations of substance. What I hadn’t encountered, however, was what Jeff saw: a young man pointing a rifle at him as Jeff walked away from the kid’s house after the guy’s mother had made it clear she would be voting for Trump.
In another conversation, with a client who is a Democrat told me he wasn’t at all surprised by Trump’s victory. “I have the good fortune of knowing a lot of Latinos,” he said, “and I know that predominantly they are Trump supporters. For them, it was all about the economy.”
When I related this to Jeff Klenk[2], another close college friend of mine, in a subsequent conversation, he noted that often Latinos are anti-immigrant, as well—in the great American tradition of older-era immigrants despising the latest newcomers.
My Trumper friend was genuinely kind and caring about my reactions to the election. He’d voted for Obama twice and doesn’t consider himself party-affiliated, but this was the third time he’d voted for Trump. “I just wasn’t impressed with Harris,” he said. “She didn’t seem to have what it takes to be president.”
“No? What do you think it takes to be president,” I asked, “and what does Harris lack in that regard?”
“Tough. Ya gotta be tough to be president, and I just didn’t think she was tough enough.”
I wondered if by “tough enough” he meant “man enough.”
He added that there was a lot about Trump he didn’t like, starting with his impulsivity. “If only he’d keep his mouth shut,” said my friend. “I can’t stand it when he starts talking and makes stuff up. But I think he can stand up to foreign leaders. He knows how to do that. He’ll also get tough on immigration. Plus, I heard him say once that the key to his success is that he always surrounds himself with people who are smarter than he is.”
I felt as if I’d been locked inside some weird crazy carnival concession wherein some kind of pitching machine was hurling huge softballs at me five at a time and I was supposed to hit them back with a Louisville slugger, except . . . in reality I was in the middle of stapling bud caps to the terminal leaders of a group of four-foot-high white pine trees. Moreover, this friend had called out of genuine concern about how I was dealing with what he knew I considered an adverse result. It wasn’t the time or place to swing for the fences or swing at all, for that matter. Fortunately, my Trumper friend had to take another call before I might’ve changed my mind about smacking the softballs out of the park.
By 4:00, I’d secured the dozen fences around the hemlocks and stapled 100 bud-caps on white pine seedlings and saplings. This work allowed me to synthesize more fully the conversations I’d had earlier. As the sun accelerated it’s slide toward the silhouetted western shore of the lake, I took pleasure in the task at hand. The trees of these woods always settle my thoughts, my pulse, my worries about things over which I have but limited control or influence. In their clear but unspoken language, the trees conveyed a message of peace and reconciliation over matters in which these two conditions are largely absent. In short, here was my therapy session—among the towering pine, the sturdy oaks, the aspen groves, the young trees reaching inexorably for the sky, and the arboreal ecosphere in which the trees are nourished. This life will persist, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office.
Despite frozen toes and hands, with a headlamp I pressed on well after sunset, then dusk. I finished the day’s effort at bud-cap number 300. It was short of my original goal of 500, but on my return here—before deer-hunting season—I’ll polish off another 200, with time left over for pruning and trail maintenance—and contemplation of developments and pundit analyses between yesterday’s shock and a week from now.
I read no news, no articles today. Over a late, light supper I merely scrolled through NYT opinion headlines on my mobile app. Each was a planetary system within the same political galaxy. Every writer, it seemed, was pressed to provide some brilliant retrospective insight into how and why the Trumpster will remain in the limelight longer than we who despised him had hoped. Now we are left still trying to understand what we missed about his hold on one half of the electorate. There are a hundred things we missed; actually, more like 72,615,305.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Jeff is a lawyer and highly regarded member of the community of Falmouth. His parents were among the very last of the persecuted to escape Nazi Germany. Their experience with fascism and anti-Semitism informs Jeff’s worldview and commitment to the rule of law, justice, and the Golden Rule.
[2] After college this Jeff joined the Peace Corps and spent two years teaching in Mali and travelled extensively in Africa. Quite naturally, he became an “internationalist” and has worked around the world as an organizational development consultant. Every time I turn around, it seems, he’s leading a disaster relief training session in some remote part of the globe. Jeff has travelled to every country you’ve heard of and a good many you haven’t heard of. He is an adjunct professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He worries about our standing in the world, now that we’ve elected for the second time and avowed isolationist.
