A Hole in the Bucket

Somewhere in this story there is a point. I’m not sure yet what it is, though it may be revealed in the task of my telling it.

I’ll begin here in the middle, with when I left the Yankee tour bus in the parking lot at Queechee Gorge and got into the car service I had arranged to have meet me.

I had agreed with the driver on the general directions and the cost, and after a brief and conversation, he looked in his mirror and said, – So, is this on your bucket list?

– Sort of, I said. A very short one. I told him I had some health issues and needed to get away to someplace quiet and less stressful. That was not quite true, but not entirely false, either.

– I hear you, man, he said. Bummer. You doin’ okay, though?

I told him I was and thanked him for asking.

– You bet, he answered.

Two or three weeks ago I first told Liza about I how needed leave the country, to go to Canada.

– Why on earth do you want to do that? Are you in trouble? she said.

– No, it’s not like that. It’s just every day, now, the relentless not knowing what will come next. Tariffs, Medicare, FEMA, deportations, DEI, the stock market, IRAs, firings, threats, trashing the constitution and our lives. I  just can’t ignore what’s going on.

– Nor can I, she said. But I don’t think about it all day the way you do. Thinking like that is right where they want  you. Making you feel powerless and vulnerable when I know you are  neither.

– But I feel that way. I’m frightened and depleted. I don’t want to live like this, not here, not now, and not for four more years.

We talked for days. I won’t go into it all now, but you can easily see how that was going and where it eventually led, given that there I was in a car service heading north with nothing more of a plan than an inchoate need to get away.

Liza is a wise woman, way wiser than I am, and I didn’t listen to her.

I had found a place on Google maps along Halls Stream Road in Vermont, upstream from Beecher’s Falls, where the stream and road bend close to the border with Quebec. The stream there is wide, and seemed likely to be slow, shallow, and hidden beneath trees. A spot where the farmhouses on the Canadian side seemed so close you could hit the bright white side of one with a baseball.

We drove north on I-91, then on two-lane roads over streams that shifted from one side of the road the other. It was all so green. The tension began seeping out of my bones. Granite cliffs with plumes of water plunging through the cracks and tumbling white and hard to the side of the road.

We turned onto more narrow roads with gabled houses on both sides and large front porches and stacks of cord wood under the windows.

My eyes grew heavy, and I dozed though, without the scenery to distract me, I did not rest. Lisa and our argument spun on a loop, snippets morphing into a city street, alone, I didn’t know where I was, or how I could get home and not even knowing where home was. Asking for help from unresponsive passersby.

I was then suddenly startled, as if I’d been shaken awake.

– We’re coming up to three hours now, the driver said. How much further?  

Where were we? I had lost track of the miles and the minutes. The houses on both sides had crept closer, encroaching on the rutted road. A fluttering of Trump flags in yards on the Vermont side, Buy Canadian and No US dollars Wanted on the other. The dark and ominous Sharpee lines so thickly drawn at home had been traced this far north. This was neither peaceful nor woodsy and welcoming.

I had envisioned getting out of the car at a quiet, deserted spot, stepping into the stream and walking south with the current. Finding a safe spot to climb onto dry land in Canada. I’d find a small town café with place to sit, blow steam across a hot cup of Tim Hortons and nod to folks in flannel shirts.

I was, instead, thrown off balance, tossed roughly aside by my own foolish self-centeredness. I was ashamed to have ignored Liza, her feelings, discounting her. Leaving her alone where I myself did not want to be. What I had envisioned was a selfish adolescent fantasy. In leaving I had lost what had been the most stable and reassuring place I had ever been. I felt a fool. I had betrayed her. I had betrayed myself. I had chosen to leave only because I could while others could not. To let them deal with whatever would come next. I am not fleeing gang violence or drug cartels or anything near that, as so many others are. Not even close. I’m a privileged opportunist playing political runaway.

– What are we doing here, Bud? the driver said.

He was right. What was I doing here? This was not where I wanted or needed to be, away from Liza, from reality, however grim I felt it to be.

– Oh, I’m sorry, I told him. I lost track of where we were going. Pull over for a moment, please. I don’t feel well. I need to…

– You bet, he said, and he got out of the car, walked away, and lit a cigarette.

Did I know what I needed to do?  Yes.

I paid the driver what I owed him and asked him to take me down to Montpelier. To the Amtrak station.

I now have ticket in my pocket for the train that leaves tomorrow morning at 10:25 AM which gets me back home by 6:09 PM. I will call Liza and get a room at a hotel.

It will all work out ok, I am certain, as it likely would have if I had simply listened more and heeded Liza’s advice.

But I will say one more thing that has come to me, two actually: 1) A bucket is no place to carry anything other than water and, 2) A list is not where the life that you want and which makes you most happy should reside.