I squinted up into the clear morning sun at the open doors of the loft, thinking about the kid I used to be, and how much he didn’t know. The miles traveled only to end up right back on the same soil almost a century later. I marveled at the enormity and symmetry of it all.

I took aim at the ten-foot-square hole in the face of the second floor of the barn, some thirty feet off the ground, and tried hard not to miss. If I did, the wire would snap and the bale would burst open on the side of the barn, raining hay all over the place. That wouldn’t be tidy, not the way I wanted to leave things.

I leaned back just a hair and threw the bale underhand, my shoulder and biceps flexing smoothly, effortlessly. The dense greenish-gray block soared into the air, silhouetted against the pale blue sky. It passed neatly through the second story hay loft doors, just under the rope-and-pulley hoist that I should have been using, and then tumbled back into the shadows with a thump.

I gave a little smile of satisfaction. Not bad for an old man of eighty-six years. Not that you could tell from the outside that I’m a day over thirty, but from in here? I feel every single one of them. But today that’s just fine.

I emptied the truck’s bed, putting a dozen bales into the loft, one after the other. Once that was done, it was time to go upstairs and stack them neatly against the back wall to keep them out of the winter weather. It wasn’t necessary, since I wasn’t planning to sell these, but years of habit wouldn’t let me walk away from a job half done. It just felt wrong. The thought that somebody would one day get up into that loft and think that I just left things a half-assed mess because I was too lazy or stupid to do it correctly was intolerable.

I walked to the ladder a little ceremoniously. I could have jumped right up there, it certainly would have been quicker, but there’s no way to do it that doesn’t make you look like a jackass.