My Walk On the Dark Side

 

My Walk On the Dark Side

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When I began writing this column, I determined to be as honest as I could be, that if my life took a grim turn, I’d say so, not pretend everything is whirly girly.

Most of you know the legend of the wolves but I’ll give a brief recap. A wise man told his grandson that within us, we all harbor two wolves, who vie for our attention. The gray wolf encourages us to love, to respect, to give honor when due, to do good. The black wolf revels in hatred, rage, despair and all dark deeds. His grandson contemplated these words several days, returned to ask, “How do we know which wolf wins?”

“The one we feed,” Grandfather answered. The other night my black wolf grew sleek and fat, sated.

It’s all about my current project of replacing my old-style, sieve-like, windows with a modern version which keeps out the wind, rain, and a goodly portion of dust. After three weeks camping out in my bodega, I hoped to be able to tell you this week that I am back in my sparkly clean house. It’s not to be.

I had had a sleepless, pain-filled night but that is no excuse. This kind of night cycles through my life periodically. Usually, the following day is different.

After three weeks, the bottom portions of my windows are in place. Mr. Window Man has to go to Guadalajara to form the arched top framework using specialized machinery. He took templates of the arch of each window.

In Guadalajara, a city of over 6,000,000  people and more ways in and out than the entire Montana State (unverified), that morning, at about 10:00, corn farmers instituted a protest at the government-set price of corn, and blockaded every single entrance into the huge city with multiple layers of farm machinery. That evening, Window Man borrowed a scooter to get home, leaving his truck hostage with my window frames in The City.

As an aside, I support the corn farmers, no matter my inconvenience.

All traffic into and out of the City was at a standstill. In our little town, people went into a panic, drained every drop from the two gas stations and cleared shelves of groceries.

Me, I went walking on my dark side, black wolf by my side, wagging with encouragement. My thinking, flawed, went something like this: If it takes three weeks to remove ten windows, replace eight of the bottom portions, minus screens and caulking, how long will it take for the tops to be made.

Do the math! Certainly, do the math without adequate information. I’m skilled at this, by the way. The blockade is of unknown duration. If my windows require four trips to Guadalajara, that might well put us through November into December. I have family visiting the final week of November.

I’ll spare you the details of most of my figuring, the imagined days sitting in my bodega, wrapped in quilts, icicles hanging from my frozen nose, while birds flew in and out the open windows of my unusable house. I managed to drag the project all the way into the new year. My family arrived and we spent each night in a hotel, lived on street tacos. I created an entire drama/tragedy while my Black Wolf smiled.

The entire following day, aware of what I had done, I was as useless as a wrung-out, dirty, wet dishrag.

By mid-day the third day of the blockade, the farmers and the federal and state governments had negotiated a significant raise in price, allowing the farmers to begin harvesting.

The next day, Window Man installed three of the arched tops of my windows. I’ve not seen him since.

I’m still holed up in my bodega, living life on the small side, hanging out by a fingernail around the farthest edge of bright. I’ve been assured that my windows will get installed and I’ll have time to clean my house of concrete chips and brick dust before family arrives. While I’m not that confident, I’m determined to not be seduced by my Black Wolf, much as it hangs about, wanting me to pet it.

For me, this is a mere inconvenience. I’m not starving, homeless, nor scared. I still have a bed to sleep in and that is no small thing.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

November 6, 2025

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________