I Thought You Might be Dead

I came around a corner on the trail and there was Carter in the distance. We waved, and he called out, “Max! Good to see you. It’s been a while—I was starting to think you might be hurt or dead.” We both laughed as I walked up and shook his hand. I didn’t know it then, but he had been lucky to survive the woods just a week earlier.

The last we’d spoken was early April and it was now mid-July. Normally, we saw each other every week or two as I hiked across his property. Carter lives near Culpeper but owns the Carter-Baum property about a half-mile from our place. He has graciously allowed me to hike the trails in his woods for the past twenty years. From my house, I can make it a two to five-mile loop, depending on the paths I choose. While he does not live there, he is often onsite taking care of the trails, working on the garden, or doing some maintenance on the pre-Civil War era house on the property.

 After shaking hands, Carter invited me to sit in one of the lawn chairs outside the old house and we started chatting. I explained that Cathy and I were traveling in April and May, and then I was sick in early June, and it took a while to recover. There was a stretch of extreme heat when I didn’t walk much, and a couple of days when I did hike at his place, but he wasn’t around.

Time gets away from you sometimes.

We caught up on this and that. He had several trees that were damaged or came down in storms back in June. He smiled a slow smile and mentioned trouble with one of the trees. While he and a friend were cutting it down, it “barber-chaired” on him, and he had some minor cuts on his arm and leg.

 His smile belied the seriousness of the incident. For those unaware, “barber chairing” is a dangerous phenomenon where a tree trunk splits vertically from the cut rather than falling. It often throws the back section—or the saw—violently sideways or towards the cutter. Carter was lucky; the trunk went sideways and the chain stopped running before it ricocheted into his leg, leaving only surface cuts.  He was fortunate not to lose his leg, or bleed out and die. It occurred to me that while he joked about my dying, a week before, death had emerged from the shadows in the woods and watched him cutting the tree before chuckling, and then quietly whispering, “Not today Carter. Not today.”

 Carter and I don’t really talk politics or sports. We talk some about the neighborhood and how it has changed since the days of his youth when his aunt owned the property and he played or camped there. We talk about nature, ash borers, Trees of Heaven, spotted lanternflies, and such. What is growing in the garden, the status of the deer population, or whether anyone has seen a bear lately. That is to say, we talk about everything and nothing.

 After about half an hour, it was time for me to continue my hike. He mentioned he was glad I wasn’t dead, and I answered I was glad he hadn’t cut his leg off. We shook hands again and I was on my way.

 Everyone needs a neighbor like Carter. What I should say is everyone needs a friend like Carter. We started as neighbors but grew into friends who see each other in the woods every couple of weeks. Five or thirty minutes every couple of weeks for twenty years.

 Yes, time gets away from you sometimes, but sometimes, it adds up.