Easy Going

Think of what we take for granted living in the country. For example this morning a gentle rain on the porch roof. The roof is made of metal and the rain falls on it in a syncopated rhythm through which drift notes of birdsong. The most insistent is from a wren.

Rain prevents me from putting out the usual bucket of birdseed, though surely the cardinals are ready for it. Hale cautioned me that wet seed can turn sour very quickly.

I think it would be eaten long before that could happen, but I tend to follow his directions. He is the person with knowledge about country life who lit my pathway.

If he had lived through the pandemic, he’d be 105 on Saturday.

Centenarians are less rare these days. And before he showed his final illness I had expected he might celebrate this birthday. He had aged slowly until his nineties.

Isn’t that what we all hope for? To continue an active, productive life as long as possible? A life where, if physical labor is the measure of our days, good rest is possible without moving into collapse?

Equipoise is how I think of it. A lovely word. Contemporary life is famously imbalanced. Living here, we avoid much of that. A “quick trip” into Houston will show what I mean. The first close encounter with a rogue driver will shoot you full of adrenaline, faster than side-stepping a snake. And the traffic will keep your stress hormones flowing as long as you’re in it.

Here in the country we can have balance in our day and life. At night, we can walk out our front door and hear the hum of small insects in the grass—that song of early summer that quiets the spirit. We can look up and maybe see stars.

There’s a special time at dusk when the earth exhales. It’s a perfume of such complex simplicity that you wonder if anything could ever be more beautiful.

You’ll never smell it in a city, and maybe not in any town, for that matter. It requires that you be surrounded by green things growing in the earth without fertilizers or pesticides. Even mowing overwhelms it, because the intense smell of mowing comes from the amputations, not the flourishing.

To live with nature all around you as we can in the country allows us to establish balance within us. The rhythm of seasonal change becomes our rhythm, too. Ease becomes possible.

Even if we live in a busy town like La Grange, we can find that peaceful rhythm within a moment or two by driving along a country road, a county road.

Leon Hale knew that. I think it had much to do with his choice of occupations—the only writing job that let him travel close to the ground. And the book where that is most evident is Easy Going, a collection of his columns from The Houston Post.

To mark his birthday, we are bringing out paperback and ebook reprints of it in June.

I especially love that title— Easy Going—it seems so descriptive and true. His words read easy and smooth. Like going for a swim in gentle water.

The qualities his readers loved live on in his books. Like him, they’ve aged well.

And it’s no wonder, because his stories bring the people and places around us to life. The Texas we know and our grandparents knew. That doesn’t become less with time, but deeper and wider and more resonant.

EASY GOING will be available widely after June 17. Preorder now at www.tamupress.com/book/9780975272787 Readers can contact Babette Hale at bfhale2017@gmail. com.