Saturday

We are once again up at the cabin, with plenty of snow about.

Am I allowed to rest?

Certainly not!

At four in the afternoon when we arrived, our over night bags, grocery and other miscellaneous stuff was unloaded out of the car and we headed off to do the ten kilometer track from Northfork to Soapstone Basin.

Such is the winter life style up here, no such thing as lying on the couch drinking beer. Yes we practice the healthy life style; at least my wife makes sure I do it. That’s why I’m sitting here typing with a glass of wine, after reading the surgeons general about how healthy red wine can be, I figure it best to keep up the pace.

Yesterday at the local grocery store I ran into Tyrone, who is a judge at the third district court here in town. He was picking up steaks for dinner and I was picking up something healthier like fresh fish for the grill. Our topic of conversation, or rather I should say his topic of conversation, how long he had to wait until retirement, or as he put it the time before he could enter into the next phase of his life…..

He made the comment that he needed a career like mine as an artist. I smiled, as an artist I really don’t have that idea or notion of retirement. It really doesn’t exist in our vocabulary and I couldn’t really image what the galleries would say if I told them I was going go into my next phase of my life and if they could just please start sending me my monthly checks as I sit on a lounge chair somewhere in the Caribbean.

We started comparing occupations, grant it mine is most likely more relaxing, but at the same time it can be slightly stressful with the prospects of your next sale and incoming check. Tyrone on the other hand has the luxury of a check being deposited into his account for a pre-determined amount. Myself, it could be several months before I see anything.

Them I begin to thing about what he needs to do in order to earn that dependable income. His job as a judge would mean reading through volumes and volumes of boring depositions about cases that have basically nothing to do with his life. That alone would drive me to contemplate suicide. There is no way I could do that. So of course he would envy the life of an artist and of course the artist would envy the live of the nine to five paid government employee.

The grass is always greener on the other hill. Is that not how the saying goes.

Richard Boyer