A walk, the sky and a pile of manure

I’m a big believer in the adage “If you surround yourself with manure, you’re going to stink all day.”

(OK, it’s not an adage. I just made it up. By the way, never say “old adage.” It’s redundant. All adages are old. That’s how they got to be adages.)

Anyway, with that refreshing thought in mind, I decided to take a break from the political mudslinging that so often envelopes our purple little town and go for a walk Friday morning.

I mean, it’s bad, and sometimes you can’t get away from it. The mudslinging (OK, worse than mud) between various factions gets so filled with bile every election year, it’s enough to make you wish these people would just hop into a steel cage match and be done with it. I think it might actually be less vitriolic that way and if the city put it on pay-per-view, anything brought in by Measure H would just be a luxury.

I also needed a break from all of those clownish (pun intended) attempts at political advertising that are cluttering our mailboxes. Fortunately, at our home in the country, such a break isn’t hard to find.

I had it all planned out — I’d go out to the field with Hank and Annabelle the dogs, take lots of deep, fresh breaths of mid-October country air and enjoy all of God’s beauty, without once looking at my iPhone or thinking about the Chico City Council race or anything political. I even had a song on my lips as I walked out the door: “Sweet Virginia” by the Rolling Stones, which has a great singalong line that goes “You’ve got to scrape that (let’s just say manure) right off your shoes.”

“It’s a great day to scrape the (manure) right off my shoes,” I thought as I headed out the door, knowing it didn’t quite have the impact of “It’s a good day to die,” but feeling slightly liberated nonetheless.

We headed west, past a grove of orange trees and toward an open field just beyond my brother-inlaw’s big, great, old-stylecountry red barn, complete with a weather vane on the roof. I thought about the work that went into those century-old masterpieces and the incredible self-sufficiency of the people of that era, and wondered if they had any idea that a hundred or more years later, so many people would pause to appreciate their work — and mourn as it finally crumbled away.

At the peak of the barn sat 13 pigeons, wisely keeping themselves above the fray of all below. At the same time, Hank and Annabelle were behind the barn, both accomplishing (shall we say) “Task Two” of our morning walk. As they finished up, I briefly thought “There’s definitely a political analogy here somewhere,” but quickly knocked that thought out of my head and went back to enjoying the beauty of the day.

We kept moving west past an olive orchard to our left. It was harvest time last week, and every morning, I awoke to the sounds of a dozen or more workers arriving before sunrise. It’s an amazing experience to listen to them ply their trade, and if you’ve ever lived next to an olive orchard, you know exactly what I’m talking about: A cacophony of clangs and rattles punctuated by hours of singing and laughter as workers bring in the harvest, then move on to another orchard and start the entire process all over again.

Meanwhile, Hank the Dog had spotted a vulture. Hank loves chasing big birds, and I mean big birds that are already in the sky. If he sees so much as a shadow of a vulture or hawk, he takes off in a sprint, finally forcing out a series of barks a few steps into the run while tracking the bird above. He’ll never catch a bird in the sky, and he’ll never get tired of trying.

As I looked up at that vulture, and into the blue morning sky in that crisp fall air, I actually felt relieved of everything that had been a source of stress. Outside, away from politics and social media and all those who haunt it, life went on. Real life. Where one can enjoy the fruits of our labors, and the labors of past generations, and do wonderful things like watching our dogs race through the fields with joyful dreams of sprouting wings and chasing down the birds of the heavens.

Then, still gazing skyward in awe, I turned around, took two steps forward and plopped my right foot right into a big pile of horse manure.

And that’s when I knew no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to get away from it.