I’ve been avoiding a big problem. And this week my vacation forced me to face it. Blankets, literally blankets of brown leaves (mostly oak but also beech and sycamore and buckeye and you name it) have been smothering our yard for months. Why didn’t I rake them in November? I tried, but the tall trees that surround our house just laughed at me—every year they do that—and the leaves kept falling and blowing in. Then the rain and then the snow packed them down into those huge brown blankets.
Over breakfast this week, watching the news of the war in Ukraine got me thinking about their problems and mine. Monday morning I haul out my leaf blower and rake and tarp and start blasting away at the first of the six brown blankets. What about those thousands of volunteers signing up to join the resistance as Russian tanks and trucks rolled in from the north and east? One volunteer was a 72-year old guy, hunched over, unshaven, looked a little like me in need of a vacation. What would I sign up for? I don’t own a gun, but I can shoot a soccer ball, operate a chain saw, rake leaves. Would the resistance take me?
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Day 3 the news tells us the Russians have a 17-mile convoy on the road to Kyiv about 20 miles out. The Russians warn they’ll take the capitol and President Zelenskyy himself, who refuses to evacuate Kyiv. That night I can’t go to sleep until I map out my Tank Jam Plan for my militia captain. First, we identify the three main routes we want the convoys to take approaching Kyiv. Second, we recruit tow truck drivers and junk yard owners to set up blockades of junked car bodies along the side streets of these main routes for about 1 km before the 6 km mark from town central. Those blockades will prevent the convoys from fanning out. On the rooftops along this stretch we station snipers, recruited from the hunt clubs around town, ready to shoot distraction fire. In the storm sewers for 500 meters at the 6 km mark we set up 20 teams of two sharp shooters to fire from the storm drains with rifles to shred truck tires and with anti-tank guns to disable the wheels of the tanks. All shooter teams are synched by cell phones to our militia’s captain in his garage watching the advance from a drone camera. He signals the timing that leads to the crippling of the first 20 trucks and tanks. The ambush takes 30 seconds, followed by our shooters’ immediate vanishing. Tank Jam complete. Convoy paralyzed at 6 km out. My militia captain looks over the plan and says, “It’s not so bad, for old guy who shoot only with the foot.”
Day 4 the news tells me over granola and grapefruit that the convoy is now 40 miles long and 18 miles from Kyiv. No sign of any attacks on the convoy. The Russian army forces are huge and the Ukrainian forces are small. We’ve not seen any clips of the Ukrainian army or air force. Where are they? I clear two beds down to the green ground cover and find an old baseball that belongs to the shortstop next door. It’s our first warm day in months. Shoots of snowdrops have been pushing up against the soggy blanket of leaves that I blast away. That’s tough optimism for those little shoots to know it’s time to start rising up. I move my whole operation to the next bed.
Day 6 I wake up convinced that the outcome of this war depends on taking out that convoy, early and swiftly. Deal a major logistical and moral blow to the Russian forces, now. Show that a few saboteurs can paralyze a 40-mile convoy. The news tells me that the convoy is stalled at 16 miles outside of Kyiv, running out of fuel and food. But there’s no sign of our resistance dealing lethal blows to any part of the convoy.
One of the Google Earth images I see this morning shows part of the convoy passing through a tall pine forest. Fire, that’s a weapon that does not require huge armed forces. I tell my militia captain that I can round up a team of lumberjacks and firefighters from that region to steal into that pine forest tonight, both sides of the road, and set up simultaneous burns that will trap the convoy in a corridor of fire and terrify them into a chaotic retreat. Cut the convoy in half. More tank jams. The lumberjacks and firefighters will contain the fire and disappear into the forest dark.
Day 7 of the war is day 4 of my vacation and I’ve cleared three more beds, hauled at least 11 tarps full of leaves to the slash pile, and built the most intimidating leaf pile in the neighborhood. Today I uncover the first blooming crocus, butter yellow, and three more baseballs, one rotting at the seams from a ruthless winter buried under pressure. I return the balls next door, feeling a modest satisfaction at having replenished his supply of ammo. Eventually, after the war is over, I expect my militia captain might call me in to offer my psychiatric services for our shell-shocked volunteers, but until then I could be building 15 intimidating leaf piles along the convoy route outside Kyiv. I imagine the convoy drivers eying my piles, halting the advance, sending out their bomb squads in hazmat suits to carefully dismantle one pile after another. They’re not amused to find these are just suspicious looking leaf piles. Until they decide to ignore the one that contains the blast that craters the convoy and forces the Russian retreat.
My vacation has made it clear to me that this is not just Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or Putin’s fight with Zelenskyy. This war is an autocrat testing his power against a democrat, against all democracies. And the other autocrats of the world—Erdogan, Assad, Kim Jong-Un, and even the aspiring Trump—are waiting to see if the joint powers of so many democracies can save ourselves as well as Ukraine. The rest of us watching so far away feel both hopeful and helpless, as our democracies join forces to decide the fate of this aggressive autocrat. This is the hard part of our global yard work, a job we can’t avoid any longer.