Vale Noel Shipp. Diesel Mechanic, Wood Cutter & Philosopher

Until I was sent away to boarding school, I would be about the farm usually a few paces behind my father.  And I remember Noel Shipp, he would interrupt whatever he was doing to yarn with Dad.

I would listen.

Noel was a diesel mechanic, self-taught.  He was also a tractor driver, and he could build anything from the wood, from the trees he felled.

Of course, they often yarned about the weather, and sometimes the government.   Dad and Noel.

Noel could fix and build, and yarn and he got things done.   He also left things unfinished, sometimes.   And so, I stopped on this poem, when I was looking for something to console myself with, on his death. Just last week.

The poem is by Robert Frost, about a pile of wood that never got brought in.    That still is.

I thought that only

Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks

Could so forget his handiwork on which

He spent himself, the labour of his axe,

And leave it there far from a useful fireplace

To warm the frozen swamp as best it could

With the slow smokeless burning of decay. 

Noel Shipp finished jobs, but he was also often turning to something new.    He was missing fingers from accidents sawing wood.   He left conversations hanging, and so I would keep thinking about what he had said, decades later.

Noel Shipp made it to 86 years old.  A good innings for a man who did as much as Noel – sometimes leaving conversations hanging, and I could image he would not have minded the pile of wood in the frozen swamp, except he never visited cold places or the United States.

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The feature image is of Brenda, me, Ian and Noel Shipp at Black Mountain early January 2012.