It was 9 p.m. when I pulled off Glady road into an adjacent soybean field. Dust permeated the air and the bright lights of a far-off harvester moved slowly across the horizon.
“Are you here? Oh, I see your car. Come on over to the combine.”
Hugh hung up the phone and I watched the harvester approach amid the dust. Overhead, the stars glittered bright and clear in the black sky.
I had needed one more adventure – Number 30 – to nearly complete my list. I called Hugh at 8:30 p.m. to ask if he would teach me how to drive his harvester.
“Yes, come on out,” he said. “We’ve got a few hours to go tonight.”
I’ve known Hugh since I was 10 years old and started working for him when I was 14. And although I pulled calves and pigs and even drove one of his tractors at the county fair tractor pull, I’d never learned to drive the combine. Being in the driver’s seat of that piece of machinery was intimidating.
“An adventure,” said G.K. Chesterton, “is only an inconvenience, rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
But no sooner had I arrived and pulled on my work boots than I was seated in the driver’s side of an enormous grain harvester, looking through the windshield at a 35-foot header. Hugh sat next to me and talked me through the process.
We started by putting it in gear, then slowly starting the header. It spun furiously as I pushed the button that lowered it to the ground as we headed into a patch of soybeans. Then I watched as it flung the chaff and a conveyer belt pulled the beans to the center. We watched on a screen as the auger in the back filled the bin with beans.
“Do you see the conveyer belt?” Hugh said. “That’s called a draper belt. They’re very trendy. You are in with the times, driving this thing.”
I laughed.
“I wouldn’t dream of driving anything less,” I said.
After a while, we both watched as a fallen tree got sucked into the header.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
Hugh turned off the header and I climbed down and ran to the front of the harvester. I pulled the log out and hurled it into the nearby woods, then climbed back up the ladder and started again.
We had gone around the field a few more times when I reached into my pocket for my phone and realized it wasn’t there.
“Oh no,” I said. “I think my phone might have fallen out of my pocket.”
“When you got the log I’ll bet,” Hugh said.
We drove back to the woods and Hugh parked the harvester with its bright headlights shining on the area. Both of us looked around but saw nothing. A thick layer of chaff had built up across the field. Hugh called my phone but it went straight to voicemail, making me think it was probably run over.
It was almost 11 p.m. and I knew Hugh had probably been going nonstop since well before dawn.
“Oh well,” I said. “Let’s finish the field. We can deal with this later.”
I climbed back in the driver’s seat. By this time, I was familiar with the order of choke, header spin, header down and then forward, and I’d learned to reverse. The spinning chaff and bean conveyer belt were almost mesmerizing under the lights.
I thought about what a hassle it would be to have to get a new phone, and how I would make that happen this week.
And then suddenly I just knew that no matter what happened, everything was going to be OK.
“An adventure,” said G.K. Chesterton, “is only an inconvenience, rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”
I smiled and enjoyed harvesting the rest of the field. This, after all, was an adventure, and anything that happens as part of an adventure can be dealt with.
At 11:30 p.m. the last patch of beans was harvested and Hugh pulled the combine up to the grain bin to transport the beans.
“Alright guys,” he turned to the farm hands. “Let’s give it one last go looking for Katie’s phone.”
We all traipsed to the woods.
A minute later, I heard, “Found it.”
Isaac, one of the hands, had a good eye. The phone was cold and dusty but perfectly intact.
I thanked Hugh for teaching me to drive and jogged over to my car parked in the field. Like most adventures, this one too had had a happy ending.