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leave what you find.
[leave no trace rule #4]

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Last summer I worked at this farm, and one day the guy who ran the joint came in while we were eating lunch.
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We all kind of looked at him, all the interns who worked the farm, because he usually didn't come to the house until after we ate. He would teach us then how to build greenhouses or plant cover crops or whatever. But this time he walked in right in the middle of a flat-out latka fiasco, sat at the end of one of the benches around the table, and rolled a cigarette. We all watched him kind of uneasily. The flystrip hanging from the ceiling fan quivered in the breeze.
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Let's say each one of you lives to be a hundred, he said, putting one finger on the tip of the cigarette and rolling it from side to side, like he was proposing a game. That is my wish for you, to live to be a hundred and die in your sleep, full of your years. And now you're what, in your twenties?
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He puts the cigarette between his lips, like he can't just let it sit there, reaches in his pocket for a lighter that he lost a week and a half ago. Let's say the last ten years of your life, you are slowly laying it down, he said, you are slowly going to seed, you don't wish to use any more of your summers, you just want to tell stories and remember. He covers his eyes with one hand, shredded and crisp like tree bark. So. You have seventy summers.
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My roommate makes a move to go to the fridge, but he goes on. You each have seventy more summers to do anything, anything at all. You could build a place like this, he said, rubbing his hand over his face as though just the thought completely exhausted him. You could move somewhere, move to a huge city, live out your days in a terrace, in a field, in a prison, in someone else's country. You think this sounds extravagant, but that is only because you don't know any better.
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He waves away the beer she brings him, takes a drink out of someone else's glass instead. One of the guys is watching him with his mouth actually open. I've never heard Bob confide in us this way, but I love the way the words feel, their warm, golden sheen, even though the day has been grey and misty. I do the math and think to myself, Sixty-eight. The thought straightens my spine.
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I'm not going to tell you what to do with such a gift, the farmer said, and stood up quickly, like a young man with better things to do. But you've been told. There aren't any excuses now. He walked out of the kitchen, batted the flystrip out of his way without looking up, and stood on the porch for a second. He placed the unsmoked cigarette back in his front pocket. I'll be lucky if I have twenty summers left, he rasped to no one, but he didn't sound sorry, just interested.
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We watch him disappear around the side of the house. Someone gets up to wash the dishes, someone else cracks his abandoned beer and starts humming tunelessly. The sun heats the herb garden outside. It's July, my twenty-second summer. I rub the dirt between my fingers slowly, feel the warmth rise from my hands.