The Groundhog, a Toolbox, and America

A constitutional Crisis

Back on the 2nd day of February, Groundhog Day, I watched a video of a groundhog audaciously eating stolen vegetables while peering directly into a farmer’s video surveillance camera day after day in what appears to be a brazen rodent revolt.

A tomato. A turnip. A carrot. An Apple. Devoured.

The groundhog appears hungry, curious, and unafraid. I joked online that I’d like to recruit this groundhog for my Resistance squad. She seemed like she could stare death in the face and keep chewing.

I’ve been described as fiercely independent and I admire grit in any form. I live on a cold rainy Pacific Northwest Island in a 650 sq. ft cabin built in 1920 and meant for summer dwellers. It’s short on insulation and long on troubles. Adjacent to the house is a cedar barn built twenty years earlier which was the original house on the property. Inside that barn, is one of those grand white Husky tool chests that middle-aged men tend to have in their manicured garages with all of their socket wrenches neatly organized in pull-out padded drawers. This past Spring, I compulsively purchased it online and had it delivered to my house because I found I wanted to build things. Yes, I’m turning into my father. I know. But instead of Dickies, I’m wearing fly-flow ski bibs in the cold at least and I look rad. (Yes, I also own Dickies)

But like Virginia Woolf who wanted a room of her own, I wanted:

1. My own tools. And a place to store them, make mistakes, and become someone who can fix my own pipes and problems.

2. The freedom to do whatever I want with all those things.

After a first iteration where a broken version of the 600 lb. tool chest ended up marooned in my front lawn for multiple days with much interest from my neighbors, I finally got an unscathed version into my barn. Then I worked on organizing my tools and labeling drawers:

There are the usual drawers:

Pliers

Wrenches

Measure, hammer

Plumbing

Drill

Then things go a bit macabre:

Zip Ties, Rope, Clamps

Cords, Snip, Tie

Sledge, Pry Bar

Hatchet, Wedge, Splitting Maul

Circular Saw

Garbage Bags

You never know when you might need to disappear something.

Because January was a year of fires and plane crashes, and the dismantling of democracy.

And February is just mid-way with more people falling from the sky and more dismantling of democracy and I’m not sure if the fires are now metaphorical fires or if real ones will also erupt.

Because Elon Musk is a member of a made-up government agency called DOGE and they forced their way into classified material and then declared USAID a criminal organization and said it needed to die. I’m not really even paraphrasing here. And then they killed it. And now they’ve moved on to the Treasury, the Department of Education, and next up, the Military.

Because Donald Trump has removed all the checks and balances to include anyone who could or would have the power to stop him from doing virtually anything.

As a former service member, I can attest that the U.S. military is one of the most dysfunctionally functional entities on Earth which somehow does almost always function with a high degree of clunky precision when not told to do something too quickly or too stupid. And so I’m genuinely curious what DOGE will dismantle other than, I presume, removing any remaining protections and promotions of anyone unwhite and unmale. However, the stupid I’m concerned about is replacing the independent apolitical thinkers with yes men who will go down the path of using the military against our own citizens. Pete Hegseth was a first step in Military yes men.

Because existing in February 2025 feels like it requires body armor and well, the way things are going it might. February is already a dark month in which even sensible people sometimes put rocks in their pockets and walk into the river Ouse. I am starting to wonder if we are existing in the time “between” when things still felt mostly normal, and we were waiting for the red line to be crossed when we entered a Constitutional Crisis. When the electoral branch no longer acknowledges the balance of power created by the Judicial and Legislative Branches. When power becomes focused solely from the White House and what is happening is happening.

I spend my free time building things on my property with tools that can also destroy. I’ve repaired my septic, put in a brick patio bigger than my beach cabin, and built a new terraced area just beyond the grand western red cedar that stretches its arms like elephant tusks to the sky. And now I have been assembling a barrel sauna for the last month.

There is the crux of tools designed to build and destroy—the line between taking things apart so you can remake them and smashing them apart so they no longer exist. To kill something is to destroy it, to consume it. How much can we allow, and what can be done to stop it?

It occurred to me days after admiring the groundhog, that maybe when the groundhog stares into the electronic box it sees a reflection of itself. A groundhog eating a carrot. Big-eyed and toothy. And that’s when I stopped seeing it as brazen. As a revolt. And saw it for what it likely was. A groundhog staring into an electronic box watching a groundhog eating a carrot, a yam, a tomato.

And then it occurred to me as I read articles and watch journalists ask the questions about where the red line is and if the courts will hold? I’m watching all of us watching all of us. What I’m watching is the groundhog watching the groundhog. I’m watching America watch America as it devours the foundation of what makes us who we are.

I am out here on an island, anxiously noticing the glorious way the moon rises over the cascades as the day settles into night; the frost crackle on my windshield, the starlings moving into the painted red birdhouse to lay eggs and the octogenarians with their canes and bright orange vests skirting about Madrona Beach for their evening walks as I come home from work to make myself dinner with large carrots and Japanese sweet potatoes; as I give my teenager money for new jeans and go to bed with my electric blanket on high and the hope that democracy will hold.