NOVEMBER 17, 2024 – Last night before sailing off to Nod, I read more of Ian Frazier’s latest book, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough. I highly recommend it. Currently, I’m reading all about the Bronx in the opening stages of the Revolutionary War. Of course, it’s all about the men, because, it seems, throughout history, men, not women, are the ones who initiate and wage war. Just before settling into the book, I’d read yet another election-postmortem article about how men tilted toward Trump earlier this month. I guess it was the macho factor. Frankly, I’ve never associated intellect with macho, but maybe that’s just me, a mostly old guy liberal—at least since the nation swung to the right.
In any event, today had an auspicious start—discounting heavily the latest post-election political news. I woke just before Apollo’s chariot rose above the east shore of Grindstone Lake. As I am wont to do when I’m alone at the Red Cabin, I headed out for a half-hour hike along the shoreline path. On my way out I grabbed from the “bud-cap” kit, a stapler and the lanyard that held several 10-pack sets of paper bud-caps. I figured on my way back from the east end of Björnholm I’d take a detour through the “tree garden” and staple a few more bud-caps on any white pine I’d missed along the south-end trail, called “Björn’s Walk.”
As always, the walk was invigorating; a great way to start another beautiful day “up at the lake.” On the edge of “Djurgården” (see yesterday’s post) just inside the tree garden, I made a discovery—or rather, re-discovery—that was downright exhilarating: on full display were a trio of flourishing young hemlocks, each marked by a blue stake. Camouflaged by surrounding foliage all summer long and well into autumn, these plantings from three years ago were now in show-off mode. I was ecstatic. I’d forgotten all about them, and here they were, as healthy as could be—hemlock numbers 28, 29, and 30. I still had plenty of garden fencing with which to build protective barriers (against the browsing deer in winter); right after breakfast I’d assemble and install them.
I continued on my way, traversing Djurgården and taking “Hilda’s Meander” (a trail named after my grandmother Nilsson] to the junction of Björn’s Walk and “Ray’s Way” (a trail heading up to the heights and named after my dad). Along my route I wasn’t surprised to see several white pine I’d missed in my intense bud-capping operations Friday, yesterday and two weeks ago. From the large ring on my lanyard I ripped a paper bud-cap and carefully folded it around the top of a three-foot high pinus strobus (the Latin name for the eastern white pine).
My source for the bud-caps is a stash of scrap paper that I collect for precisely that purpose. When bud-cap season (late October – early November) arrives, I apply my wife’s old school paper cutter to about 200 sheets of scrap, cutting them into 800 bud caps.
Rarely do I notice the contents of caps—remnants of junk mail; generic disclosures that accompany bank statements; miscellaneous blank forms; et cetera. This morning, however, the first paper I pulled off the lanyard was from a summary of a doctor’s visit early in my medical “expedition.” The date was January 24, 2022, just three weeks after my definitive diagnosis. The summary read, “The following issue was discussed: Multiple myeloma without indication of having achieved remission.”
At the time it sounded ominous. I was still feeling weak, sick, not sure how much time I had. If only my future self could’ve sat my early 2022 version down and explained the future: “On November 16, 2024, you’ll be stapling this summary around the top buds of a white pine tree up in your tree garden. Better than that—it will be the third year in a row that you’ll be stapling bud caps to your trees following your stem cell transplant in successful treatment of your multiple myeloma.” As I returned the stapler to my pocket, I reflected on how my direct experience can encourage Cory as he embarks on his own diagnosis, treatment and recovery; his own road of hope, health, and happiness.
By the time I returned to the Red Cabin, I was exuberant. My angst over politics had all but vanished thanks to my walk in the woods and the perspective it brought.
It wasn’t quite 8:00, which gave me ample time to eat breakfast while perusing the Sunday Times or rather, while enjoying more of Paradise Bronx, Though I’m neither churchy nor religious, I’d listen to the Kyrie and the Credo—the most famous portions of Franz Schubert’s Mass in G Major. My dad wasn’t particularly churchy or religious either, but those two movements were among his favorite pieces of his favorite composer. While on my walk to the old cabin of Björnholm and beyond; as I’d hiked through the tree garden, I’d thought of Dad and how much he loved his Shangri-La. It was in his memory that I thought to listen to Schubert.
Before microwaving my oatmeal with blueberries, banana and walnuts, however, I decided it would be prudent to check for some small, trimmed birch branches in my stash of craft and lumber supplies in the back storeroom. Beth had asked me to bring back some birch “sticks” and pine boughs for Christmas decorations she wanted to make. I didn’t want to forget, so best to pull the birch out while I was thinking about it (the pine boughs I’d collected yesterday and had already packed into the trunk of my car).
Quite some time ago I’d stored some long, straight birch back in the far corner of the storage area. Other stuff had since piled up in front of my stash, and though I could see the birch, I had to lean over a few obstacles and wrestle some dimensional lumber out of the way to reach the birch. The pieces I wanted were jammed in place, next to several fishing rods. I pushed my way in for a better grasp. As I wrapped my left hand around a two-inch-thick, five-foot-long piece of birch . . .
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHRRRGGGG! My ring-finger hooked itself—but good—on a rogue lure on the line of one of the rods. Nothing hurts more than a fishhook piercing the nerve-filled meat of your finger . . . except, as I experienced back in January 2022, a biopsy needle stuck in the gluttonous maximus and drawing marrow out your pelvis. If we had neighbors, they could’ve heard me howl as I extricated the hook from my flesh—or was it the other way around?
Oatmeal, Schubert, The Times . . . they all vanished from desire as the hook holes—resembling the fang marks, I imagined, of a venomous snake—turned into a bloody mess.
After thoroughly washing the end of my finger, I staunched the blood flow, then applied some ointment to a bandage and wrapped tape around my finger seven ways to Sunday.
My finger hurt only when I recalled exactly how I’d injured it. Just before I’d inadvertently grabbed the birch-with-hook, I’d had the thought to put on a pair of leather work gloves; even mittens. I could see the fishing rods but had a restricted view of the fishing lines—and hooks and lures; I couldn’t see that birch piece I wanted had gotten entangled with the fishing lines. An inner voice said, “If you can’t see what you’re grabbing, you should use a glove or mitten. You don’t want to emulate a fish.” But frankly, I was too impatient—or was it too lazy?—to take 10 seconds to don a pair of work gloves 10 feet away or 15 seconds for a pair of leather mittens 15 feet away?
I’d gotten off easy. No having to drive myself to ER 20 minutes away; no sutures after shot of Novocain in the end of my finger—what my wife says is the most painful thing she’s ever had to endure.
It could’ve been much worse, I realized, remembering the story a friend told me about a fishhook in the flesh . . . (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
