Plowing with Words

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You might not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but you can teach an old dog old words.

The crossword puzzle clue was, "Like good farmland"; six letters, no perpendicular clues.

"Perhaps some variation of 'loam', 'loess' . . ."

Then "arable" crawled up from somewhere, like an earthworm. It would fit, but . . . but I didn't know precisely what "arable" meant. So I looked it up. Arable farmland is in distinction from pastureland. Arable land can be plowed. Pastureland is not plowable; but usable as grazing land.

I am almost eighty-six years old, and have been hearing and using the word "arable" for almost as long, but like so many words a curious kid hears and reads, I had fenced in a definition of sorts by eliminating what it probably did not mean, and running it with things it got along with: a foggy, useable system, close enough not to be wrong, but loose enough not to be precise. Arable land is able to be plowed.

I have plowed arable land. I suppose by definition it had to be arable, else I would not have been able to plow it. It was hard work, hard enough to make one wish it were left as pastureland. But that was in Washington State, a long time ago, before people became smart enough to let the Douglas firs lead the land back through pastureland, and eventually to woodland.

When Sally--the big Percheron who disliked plowing even more than I did--died, Dad dug a hole with the ratty old Caterpillar tractor and buried her in the pastureland, now quite likely woodland. In the meantime, it took me eighty years to learn what "arable" really meant.

I suppose that is a sign of something: I cannot think of the right word. Maybe dementia.

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