05 - The Field in Winter
The Carrying · Episode 05
The Carrying · Episode 05
The Field in Winter
On the season nobody photographs.
From Episode Five
Drive out past where the houses stop sometime in January.
The fields out there are doing nothing. Nothing at all.
But nobody looks at a field in January and calls it lazy.
We've made our peace with not knowing that.
Transcript
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Drive out past where the houses stop sometime in January.
The fields out there are doing nothing. Nothing at all.
Flat and brown and wide open, with the stubble of whatever came off them in the fall still standing there in rows. Frost sitting in the low spots in the morning. Crows walking around on ground that isn't giving them one thing.
You’d say that field had failed.
You'd stand at the fence and say something went wrong out there.
But nobody looks at a field in January and calls it lazy.
Nobody stands at that fence wondering what happened to it. Whether it gave up. Whether it ought to be trying harder.
Everybody just understands. Something's going on down there. Nobody's ever seen it. And it'll come up in June the same way it came up last June, and not one person can tell you the day it decided to.
We've made our peace with not knowing that.
We don't extend ourselves the same thing. We treat every quiet stretch like a problem. Every season of not producing like it's evidence about our character.
You've had months where you were flat and brown and wide open and nothing was coming up. And you didn't say I'm between things. You said something's wrong with me.
There was about a year after everything came apart where I did nothing. I went to work. I came home. That was it. No plans, no projects, nothing I would've put on a list.
And I thought I was wasting my life. I'd lay there at night doing the math on how far behind I was getting.
And I still don't know what happened in that year. I couldn't tell you what changed, or when. I only know that everything after it needed it.
So what have you been calling a wasted year? Maybe it's right now. Maybe it's one you're still apologizing for.
Take a moment and consider that it was January. Take a moment and let it be a thing you don't have an explanation for. Take a moment and stop standing at the fence grading the field.
There's nothing to accomplish in the next few minutes. That's not a technique. That's just true. Get comfortable. Let your hands rest.
Now close your eyes.
Breathe in.
And let it go.
Now put yourself out at that fence.
Open ground. Rows of stubble. Frost in the low places. Cold on your face. Very quiet.
Nothing out there is growing.
And nothing out there is failing.
Nothing out there is worried.
That's the part I can't get over.
Now let the ground be you.
Everything you've called a wasted year.
Everything you've been apologizing for.
You don't know what's happening down there.
You never did.
Take one more breath.
Open your eyes when you're ready.
Something is happening down there.
If something stayed with you
What looks like nothing right now?
Stay a little longer
The questions, and the part that’s yours.
What have you been calling a wasted year?
What would change if you stopped standing at the fence grading the field?
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