It’s not even Halloween and I’ve already seen what will be the best costume of the season.
I was helping with a community trick-or-treating event at the local YMCA. Lots of families with their children playing games, amassing candy, jumping around in the jack-o’-lantern bouncy house. “Monster Mash” on repeat over the PA.
At one point, the sea of costumed kids seems to part, and this third-grader appears with an orange ball cap and a plaid flannel vest, illuminated by the gym lights. No cape. No sword. No mass-produced rubber mask. Just sublime simplicity.
When he comes near, someone asks, “What's your costume?”
He replies, simply and without irony: “Guy in a log cabin.”
Then he strolls off.
When kids choose Halloween costumes – remember being a kid? -- they choose what they believe to be most formidable, dazzling, or magical. Halloween is the annual children’s furlough when, for a few days, they can act out being powerful and free –- a reprieve from the weight of adults always being the boss of things.
The most astonishing thing this kid could imagine, this year anyway? A guy in a log cabin. In this young kid’s mind, the most wondrous life would be that of fresh air and quietude, apart from this. It’s “the peace of wild things” that Wendell Berry describes. Can you imagine that?
Of course, I’m putting too much on this kid. But I can't stop thinking about it. Go in peace, Log Cabin Guy.
