Time to Bone the Duck - Ten Years On

Ten years ago I retired from my position at the US Department of Justice after a 32 year career. My decision to retire came after spending some time alone in northern New Hampshire a few weeks before. I had discovered that northern New England is definitely a good place to clear one’s head and get a better perspective on things. I returned to the Great White North seeking some much needed solitude and the quiet of a snowy woods, the wind blowing across an ice-locked lake, to ponder a different kind of future, and essentially a new way of life; to come face-to-face with this decision. And it was a decision I faced with a certain degree of trepidation simply because of the unknown factors coming into play, I had to put aside all distractions and misgivings . . . to step up to the table once and for all, to grab the knife firmly in hand, and bone the damn duck. 

So where does "boning the duck" figure into all of this? The year before, while still on the job, I had read the intensely popular book, Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell (later made into an equally entertaining motion picture staring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams), in which she describes how she came to cook all 524 recipes found in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking over the course of one year. The book and film document the trials and tribulations, victories and failures both small and large, encountered during the endeavor. Some days Ms. Powell cooked more than one recipe, getting the easy stuff out of the way and leaving the more demanding recipes until the end. Throughout her quest, Ms. Powell dreaded the thought that one day she would have to bone a duck if she were to successfully prepare the final recipe . . . pâte de canard en croûte [boned stuffed duck in a pastry crust]. Without giving away the denouement of either the book or the film, I will simply tell you that Powell eventually bones the duck and all was well with the world. Perhaps if she had sought out the snowy woods of northern New England like I did, she would have been able to accomplish her goal without all the existential dread.

The duck, in my own instance, was the decision whether or not to retire. Without going into all the specific details, I can tell you that I had been in the same job since I had completed graduate school and stepped out into the real world in search of a career. It was not the career I originally planned for, but it had been one of the most enriching experiences of my life. How could it not be seeing that I had spent over half of my life at it? I had only one career in my life, only one employer, and most of the people with whom I had worked with had been my colleagues for many, many years. Beyond the important work we shared, we had been there together for weddings, the birth of children, christenings and Bris Milahs, and, sadly, far too many funerals. We shared victories and defeats, we had popped bottles of champagne and cried on each others shoulders. I knew it would be a difficult umbilical to sever once the time came. And then there are the uncertainties of an unknown future. So I had to get away and walk the snowy trails and let the silence and the solitude bolster my courage to make the right decision.

Once home, I came to realize that the decision was not all that difficult. I had done what I had set out to do with my career, and there was still so much out there to see and do. I returned to my office after my time in the Great White North, drank a strong cup of coffee one morning, and then met with my bosses and told them that, after much soul searching, I had decided the time had come to move on and to entertain and explore a new and different destiny. It turns out it was really not that hard to bone the duck, as it were. The first cut is the most important, the hardest. Then you proceed.

And so here it is ten years on and the fears of an uncertain future were unnecessary. How nice to get up each morning and not have to worry about a tedious commute into the city and hours spent dealing with the pressures and stress of a career no matter how rewarding it might be in the final assessment. There has been time to focus on some of my own projects and not trying to squeeze them into a few hours here and there. I have been involved in several interesting research projects for others as an independent historian and research consultant. There have been guest fellowships at the University of North Dakota and Northwestern Oklahome State University and guest lectureships here and there. There has been time to do some interesting travel here at home and in Canada, Europe, and South Africa. There have been months of peace and solitude at our summer home on the shores of Sabbathday Lake, in New Gloucester, Maine. And I am now completing that great American novel I longed to write. Really. What more could I ask for?

So boning the duck proved not to be the challenge first envisioned when wondering what the future might bring. Once completed everything just fell away from the bones as it should. The adventure continues.