The Old Tote Road

The Old Tote Road

by | Jul 25, 2019 | Essays, Journal

I clabber down the old tote road towards the red pine forest, leaning on my staff, skirting boulder-strewn ruts and small gullies carved out by two days of heavy rain. It is only a mile or so from our cabin, still, my wife makes me wear a pouch with an iPhone and an epi-pen. I once poked a yellow jacket nest with the stub of my staff and had to run like an enraged bear through the mad tangles of this New Hampshire forest. 

I am wiser now.

I don’t know why I am drawn to this daily amble. There is nothing special here: miles of mossy stone walls slowly sinking under the detritus—a hundred years or more of leaf, moss and deadwood, edging what once were fields, overtaken now by massive white pine, ashes weakened by blight, red oaks and sugar maples; The floor is an impenetrable bramble of gnarly bush, ferns and bog. Here and there are old foundations, small and square, meticulously laid, dug into scrabbly hillsides, yet, somehow, hardy, cursing men lived in the rough cabins and spent their days cutting timber, carving fields out of impossible ground, wrestling massive granite stones to set the lines between them.

My epi-pen and phone hang on me like effete sophistry. I do not even recognize what bird is calling whom? Certainly not me—this morning intruder stopping by the great swamp. I scan the shores for moose. I know they are there, along with black bear, bobcats and deer, fisher cats, skunks and raccoons. It is a fool’s errand to think they would reveal what they know or where they lie at daybreak.

They, too, must have their walls.

The deer flies attack me like I am their last supper, but I learned long ago to dress for a summer hike as if it is mid-winter: heavy boots, gloves, denim—a shroud of mosquito mesh covering my head, tucked deliberately into my sweaty breast. They do not bother me, incessant as they are, any more than any other swatch of warm flesh breathing slowly in this still morning air, lingering with low fog.

If not for these flies I would have to share this trail with gobs of humanity bent on an easier hike. They will come in the fall when the weather is cool and mad dashes of color are ripped from the trees and soften this worn trail.

I only once met another hiker—an old woman with a willow basket and an old camp saw. She seemed unnerved to see me clothed in my normality and revealed in a wispish voice: “I am here to find some black birch to make my tea.” I offered her some extra mesh, but, “They do not bother me,” was all she said. A few steps later I looked back, and she was gone. The mystic in me saw some ancient Margaret searching for her illicit lover, Tamlin, in this lonely bower—but she probably just strode away faster than the flies could fly.

I’ve never seen her again.

At a certain point the tote road splits: to the left it cleaves around the massive swamp into which empties innumerable freshets, springs and small brooks, The springs of water that fill Black Pond—black as tea, steeped in a broth of bitter New England leaf.

To the right it arcs into a smaller trail that runs many miles inland into forgotten land. Another small trail wends three more miles to Trout Pond. Every day I remind myself to someday bushwhack that overgrown path, just so I can be one of the few who can say, “I have been there.”

But it is the Red Pine Forest that calls me. The vague entrance marked by a mossy boulder. I duck under arches of young beech, saplings that will never grow old in this forbidden place. The red pines are an odd anomaly, planted in straight lines by some dreamer plotting a handsome fortune In telephone poles—seemingly hundreds of piercingly straight spires interlaced by an equal number of deadened timber, holed by woodpeckers and jays—leaning and hanging, ominous widow-makers ravaged by wind and storms, who died trying. I sneak in as the sun is rising, bending under an arc of beech saplings into the mysterious grove. Like the immigrant red pines, I feel strangely out of place—as if I, too, am not welcome. I am Narcissus staring into his vain pool of water, drawn and entranced by fleeting, corporeal beauty, but unlike the red pines I am not trapped here, stoic to the last.

I watch the streams of light bolt in flashes of geometric entropy scanning the soft needled floor. I feel a murmur of wind and a cackling jay urging me quickly to leave. And so I clabber back home along the old tote road, coddled by deer flies, swarmed by mosquitoes, kindred to the moose and the old Finns of these woods, accepting there are things I may never know.

If you don’t stand, you cower…

by | Jul 19, 2019 | Journal

     Maybe it is time to be less forgiving. I have rarely agreed with our president, but I held on to the shreds of truth that shore up his arguments: we can’t welcome every immigrant who makes it to our border; we cannot bow to the audacity of corrupt governments in corrupt countries, and we can’t let our democracy morph into a theocracy of liberal dogma.

But his anger seems to have no bounds. His political bravado is predicated on lies, misjudgments and unabashed bigotry. He is, in short, a brooding maniac without bounds. I was once simply embarrassed by him and mortified—yet not afraid—of his megalomania, yet I now doubt he is fit for the office of president. I am late to the game, I know…

I am late to the game because I do believe in the power, progress and ultimate purpose of democracy—to serve and manifest the common will of our country. He was elected because he won. Pure and simple. She didn’t. But he crosses and crisscrosses the moral boundaries imposed upon us and embodied by “our” constitution; and right now, it is not “we the people;” it is an “us against them” revolution—an abnegation of the sacred trust of democracy to lead a diverse coalition of humanity forward to a better tomorrow.

But we are not moving forward. We are fractured schists of angry and myopic ideologies averse to compromise, devoid of any real empathy and impossibly and implacably entrenched in our divisions. He is not solely to blame, but he is the goddamned president whose first and only response is to diminish and denigrate the promise of competing points of view—and, more tellingly, any thoughtful and noble person who calls out his blundering, racist and misogynist bravado.

I am embarrassed by my votive quest to find a quiet and wise response to this maelstrom of inadequacy. I am embarrassed that I have not been chattering like an annoyed grackle whose nest is being torn apart. I am embarrassed for his party whose parochial silence is stunningly devoid of any semblance of originality and  temperate vision, but mostly I am embarrassed to say that I am an American living in an un-American time in an un-American place, yet I still love this country more than I can put into words. I know we are not a lost cause because people are literally pouring across our borders—legally and illegally—to find and feast on some small slice of the American dream. There may be a very few who are very bad, but that is an easy game to play—there are bad men everywhere—and he is one of them.

Our insidious him, our president, sees the sinister in any shade of skin, bent of sexuality, or non-conforming prayer that does not mirror the vanity preening in his mirror. He is a bully on the playground, not a steward of our great and imperfect experiment in freedom. If he was in any school, he would spend the better part of every day in detention.

I am writing this because I can and should have done so sooner, and I realize that my pensive thoughts need to put into action. My rusty belts and levers need to be oiled and put into use. Democracy cannot be a passive amusement. Freedom is not a gift with a pretty bow. It is a messy idea we stand beside and fight for. It is an overwrought garden that can easily overwhelm even the most diligent farmer. I love that I am free to disagree, free to engage and free to change. I love that I can write this and my only burden will be a condemnation of my ignorance and a defanging of my intellect. I will not be thrown in jail. I won’t lose my job. I doubt I will even lose those friends who disagree with me vehemently. I will, however, rise tomorrow and go about my day with a blessed commonness surged with a new and motivating purpose—to make sure he is not our next president but merely a tawdry footnote on a messy page of history.

And I won’t go quiet unto that good night. 

Our country is better than him.

Diesel Lullaby

by | Jul 5, 2019 | Journal

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately writing sketches of songs—some more complete than others. I have found that it takes time for a song to evolve into its final form, so what I have posted here is more the end of the beginning, not the end. Denise gave me the idea for this song and gave me the first verse to have at it. She has a great way with words and an even greater way at finding enduring themes. I’d welcome any comments or helpful critiques. No worries… I have a pretty thick skin.

Share if you can!

(more…)

Fenn Speaks…

Fenn Speaks…

by | May 11, 2019 | Essays, Journal, Poetry, Teaching

I am You, and You are me…

Screen Shot 2019-05-07 at 12.09.07 AMGive a damn & figure it out

 

     I feel like one of my students: it’s the night before my big presentation at All-school-meeting, and I still don’t know what I am going to talk about. I just know I am supposed to talk about me…

That’s pretty scary for me because, well, I’m me. At any given time I know myself too well, and at other times I’m like, who is this guy? 

I’m the guy whose socks probably don’t match, and one of my socks is on onside out.

I’m the guy whose engine warning light in my van was probably on the whole way to school–and I never noticed.

I’m the guy who forgot to post an assignment on Fenn.org and his students are plotting a revolution and mass protest.

I’m the guy who tries to be a teacher–and so he is…

So, how does one start something like this?

I am John Fitzsimmons, and let me tell you about me…

(No–way to vain and presumptuous)

Hi, I’m Fitz, and I may be old, but I’m slow…
(No–you are not here to hear the truth)

Hi, I am Mr. Fitzsimmons, your new teacher: I just flew in from Chicago and boy my arms are tired…
(Nope… That was funny forty years ago)

Hi… so glad to be here: Last night I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out…

But if you know me, you have heard this all before…

I’m the kid who got grounded if I ever got a B for a grade… Because my mother would think I cheated…

I’m the kid who went to Peabody and Sanborn and CCHS and who warns all you going CCHS next year to wear thick-soled boots to school…so you don’t cut your feet on the broken hearts I left behind.

Not really, because I’m really the shy kid who spent an entire summer after 8th grade trying to find the courage to hold Megan Tassini’s hand–and I never did! 

I’m the kid who spent entire dances lurking in the corner of the Hunt Gym fearing that Stairway to Heaven would start, and a whole night would have gone by–and I wouldn’t have asked a single girl to dance…

I’m the kid whose father spray painted his sister’s figure skates black and told me everyone would think they were hockey skates, and I’d walk home in the dark from Greenes Pond, down Plainfield Road to 38 Longfellow road, still wearing my black figure skates… 

I lived in and on and through Greenes Pond, Whites Pond, Walden Pond, Warners Pond–The Concord River, The Assabet River, The Sudbury River. I was fish and fisherman, sailor and boat, landmark and explorer–all within this beautiful, precious, magnificent  expanse of earth called Concord.

I was an ADD wonder child whose eyes could dart in a thousand directions in a single glance; whose head was built out of dreams; who made sunburned skin a living, breathing whirl and endless dance of motion and adventure…

I was you, and you are me, and our lives are inextricably linked in this adventure called life… We know that nothing gold can stay, so we breath in the best of each day and never let it out.

I was a wrestler and now a wrestling coach. The coach whose only wise words to a wrestler heading out on the mat against a Goliath of a monster–a skinny kid from Fenn facing certain annihilation–and I shrug and say, “do one good thing. Do one good thing and accept defeat with a smile, for you don’t learn anything much from winning, but you learn a lot by trying.”

I was a reluctant, timid student–and now I am a teacher. Go figure… Maybe that’s why I drive my students crazy with answers that are not really answers. I respond to simple questions with things like:

Get through it, get over it. Give a damn and figure it out. It’s your essay not mine. Make it as long as it should be and as short as you can… Give me a pebble and I’ll show you the universe; show me the universe and I’ll give you a pebble… It’s not where you go; it’s how you go… Good writers don’t always make good poets–but good poets always make for great writers…don’t mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. 

And that list goes on and on because a good question is better than a good answer.

The question I ask myself each day is “Who am I and what should I try to do?” 

And that is why my life is shaped and formed, sculpted and forged out of the fire of my mind–a fire that is as bright and intense as it was when I was you–you who are probably dreaming and scheming of what is possible as soon as the old guy finishes his presentation and you can go off to recess. 

After 61 years on this planet asking the same question, what then am I?

In short, I am a poet–and everything else are tentacles on the octopus that is my life. So I am also a folksinger, a songwriter, a tinkerer and a maker of meatballs. I’m a father to seven wild and unadorned children, and a husband to a beautiful and forbearing wife. I am everything I ever hoped I could be, and far short of where I still can be. I am you and you are me.

I love teaching, but I equally love the coming summer as much as any of you, for  for summer gives me the time to live in the woods of a rustic summer camp in New Hampshire (and also Camp Sewataro in Sudbury were I first met and sang many of you); to swim, fish, sail and hike; to write in my beloved journal and to sing at campfires with piles of weathered, mosquito-bitten kids bunched like starfish on a beach, singing their heads off–even though, technically, starfish don’t have heads…

And so I will end this presentation of me–the immutable me–with the only gift I that is truly me and has never–as in ever–let me down–Song…

This new spring begs attention

by | Mar 22, 2019 | Journal, Poetry

And shivers its literal timbers.
Cold, wet and pleading,
Scarred by winter winds
And pasty snows,
My small field and patch of woods
Is now a monument
To aging neglect.

Shorn limbs and branches
Hang high and tangled
in the Sugar maples
(Widow makers we called them
Back in my logging days—
But that is a poem
For another day).
Even the last ash is too far gone
And will have to come down.

We already lost (last year)
The towering white pine
To heart-rot and beetles;
The fruit trees never took
To the shade and droughts,
And only the black cherry, neglected
In a sea of blackberry brambles,
Keeps growing unperturbed
In its stoic obedience
To tropism.

Always a lazy poet,
I find something else to do
And stoke the fire inside
And steep another strong coffee:
And tune my old saw
And scrape out the oiled dust
And clean the jets
And sharpen the chain
And lube the bar
And convince myself
The trees, too,
Can wait another day.