Country Ways ...Finale ...Rounding the Learning Curve

Change your heart—look around you.
Change your heart—it will astound you.
I need your loving like the sunshine…
And everyone’s gotta learn sometime
—The Korgys

Well, it’s another fine mess I’ve gotten into, except this time, I dragged Stella McKinley, my beautiful neighbour, into the mess with me.

Any hope I had of pursuing a romantic relationship with her is fading, if not gone—and I’m not sure after tonight she’ll even talk to me.

I jammed my leg under a log because of my carelessness—I didn’t properly mark an electrified fence and got zapped by my own defence against intruders.

Talk about being hoisted on my own petard…

Oh, did I mention, we’re snowbound because I didn’t buy snowtires? Yeah, thought I knew better than my neighbours who lived in the country all their lives….

Guess I didn’t.

My mood is glum to say the least. I mean, think of our situation—we’re huddled in my truck, stuck in the snow and surrounded by coyotes.

Through my fault…my most grievous fault, I muse, but my repentance sounds hollow even to myself.

Two hours pass. It feels like a lifetime.

We start up the truck every fifteen minutes and let it run long enough to pump some heat into the cab—by morning, we figure Stella will be able to hike out to the road and walk the four miles back to her farm to get help.

We don’t talk much. She’s not a happy camper. I don’t blame her.

About midnight though, we hear a roar and then the snow-covered windshield’s illumined by lights. Stella cranks down her window and cranes her neck out to get a better view.

“It’s Jim Crow!” She yelps gleefully.

I groan inwardly, already anticipating the whispered jokes at my expense in the local café and general store.

It's karma for sure, and rough justice for all my stupidity.

Jim comes up to the driver’s window smiling like the cat that swallowed the canary.

“Phoned you guys to check up on you and no one answered—kinda figured you’d come out to see the fence and I knew Jed didn’t have snow tires.”

Kill me now, I muse inwardly, grinding my teeth in frustration.

Well, I won’t bore you with the details of the rest of the night—the six-hour wait in the Emergency ward and then Stella driving me home and helping me into bed.

The good news—my leg wasn’t broken; the bad news—my ego was bruised.

Strange thing about interruptions though—they kinda dictate the direction your life takes.

That night with the coyotes was a watershed incident for me—and Stella. We’re going out now. She still figures I’m a jerk and maybe she’s right.

But…

But everybody’s gotta change sometime…

Maybe this time I’ll finally learn

That night we faced life and death, but between those two intervals we found a way to live and move forward and have our being.

I still believe my life’s a Morse code of long and short pauses, but I think I’m beginning to figure some things out…

Maybe the pauses are getting shorter because with age comes wisdom.

I can only hope so.

There is meaning in every journey
that is unknown to the traveler.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

© 2025, John J Geddes. All rights reserved

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