My Car as a Metaphor

Anne McHale is a Service Member in Glendive.

I’m a person who enjoys variety in my days, so my position as a service member is a pretty good match.

In a week I’m likely to run between various farms, gardens, schools and the Boys and Girls Club here multiple times. Sometimes I feel like I’m living that riddle about the farmer with the fox, a goose and a bag of beans. In case you're not familiar with this riddle, here’s a like to the Wikipedia article: .

Gardening is a pretty material-intensive activity, especially this time of year. Luckily I have a trusty steed in my sedan which is often filled to the brim with plant starts, bags of compost (and occasionally worm composters), recycled containers, bins of local food, and scattered carrot tops. I imagine if I were to water my floor mats, diverse spilled seeds would bloom into a model of permaculture.

Children’s artwork often decorates this mess and a scattering of receipts for bought materials inevitably take flight each time I cruise with the windows down. I grab for the slips as planting soil swirls around me and settles into a layer over everything. In a past life, I loved how my car smelled when bringing coffee beans home from the store, or pastries. Now I love the days my car smells like warm, rich soil and it’s a good thing, because those days are most days these days.  Maybe producing soil scented air freshener will be my next entrepreneurial pursuit, and wouldn’t the world be a pretty nice place if there was a market for that?

Here is a photo diary of a week in the life of my car. Bloomin’ car mats and soil scented air fresher are in the pre-alpha stage of development. I'll make sure to let you all know when they hit the market. Until then...