What We Were Thinking
All we really wanted was a place for folks to come and pray. A retreat, away from the city, far enough to feel tucked into the leaves, but not so distant that getting there was a deterrent to our collective spiritual disciplines and inclinations. What good is sacred ground if the feet never make contact?
It was late summer 1997. I worked for Habitat for Humanity, coordinating the volunteer involvement portion of their good work; Patrick clocked in every weekday morning at a nearby tree nursery, and took environmental studies classes in the late afternoons. We were four years and some change into our marriage, and through a series of circumstances and decisions, found ourselves dwelling-less.
We moved in with our dear friend and her three children (at the time toddler twin boys, and their younger-by-just-over-a-year sister. They’re fine young 20-somethings now, and even more dear to us than the days they were born), who lived on 22 acres of field plus woods plus pond. Well, when I say “moved in”, our chattels moved into the basement of her home. We settled ourselves a few hundred yards from the house, in a 15-foot tipi, then later upgraded to a 21-foot tipi, where we stayed through the winter.
In equal measure, it was both challenging and romantic to come home from work and class, walk through the tall grass to the door of our temporary canvas-and-pine poles home, light the fire and adjust the flaps where those pine poles joined together. Done correctly, this created a draft that drew the smoke upwards through the small opening at the top of the lodge. Sometimes my flint-and-steel attempts at fire-making took longer than was comfortable. I knelt on the frozen ground, my fingers feeling thick and clumsy as I struck the flint against the chunk of steel, hoping to throw a spark that would catch on the char cloth in the palm of my hand.
There are more contemporary ways to start a fire (matches and kindling, a blowtorch), but the thrill of seeing that char cloth ignite, and quickly dropping it onto the jute nest in the center of the fire pit, adding dry sticks, then larger branches and eventually logs, would never compare on the self-satisfaction scale to warmth stolen from a fire made the "modern" way. I held my hand at arm’s length away from my face, and flexed my once-again nimble fingers, grateful for my stubborn perseverance and skill.
1997's autumn was especially generous with its wet chilly rains, often soaking the hem of the tipi’s canvas along with any blankets we were using as a softer “floor”. More than once, Patrick and I lingered a bit longer over the dinners we all shared at our friend’s table, glancing out the window that framed the path to the lodge, looking for a break in the clouds, or wishing the fire had been lit by some elf from the woods who knew where we kept the flint and steel, and pre-made jute nests.
In that round circle of a home, our chattels safe and dry a few hundred yards away, we dreamt of and planned for the elusive retreat center that was hiding in the future. We’d spend hours poring over “homes for sale” classifieds, and on weekends, would orbit in a thirty-mile radius from the tipi, chasing the ads for 5+ acres, “Secluded!” “Away from it all!”, “Your new country paradise”!.
Along the way, we made sure we landed in places that offered up home cooking at the local diner, where we could savor our coleslaw and wash down cheeseburgers with coffee and conversation. We learned quickly that a realtor's idea of "secluded" and ours differed pretty much all the time. It didn’t take long for us to tell them that our standard of privacy was nudity.
It raised a few eyebrows, but no one could debate what we meant.
We were also assured of flowing creeks, dense wooded borders, and excellent road frontage, and all of it failed to deliver. So we'd shake the dust off our feet, climb back into the car, and salvage the day by remembering that the coleslaw was tangy.
Five months of this weekend ritual put us in front of much of central Ohio's up-for-grabs real estate, and we often remarked how little we had known about the topography of our home state, not to mention the dicing up of previously large farms, family-owned and beloved, about to become smaller rural "neighborhoods". We were one of those future neighbors, looking for a good fit, but naive about what it cost the previous owners to say farewell to a life we had only dreamt of.
And five months of searching had also resulted in a solid list of features that, for us, were now pretty much deal-breakers. We wanted: meadow, woods, creek, a house, a few outbuildings, and…privacy. All the elements necessary for living a prayerful, contemplative life.
(to be continued)
Checking In
Let me be clear--we're not nudists.
But we're also not opposed to getting dressed off the clothesline out back when it's convenient. When you have a home on 41 acres that's landlocked, that no one can see from the road, you tend to relax your rules a bit and take risks that would, in the city or suburbs, better acquaint you with your local law enforcement.
We moved, Patrick and I, in April of '99, from our relatively safe and fully-clothed suburb to what many still call "the middle of nowhere", and we haven't looked much in the rear view mirror to see what we're missing. We're not missing anything. But we did have to grow up, and out of, and way past our comfort zones to a place where we would come to be less startled and more delighted, even soothed, by a setting that never knew a chain link fence or a sidewalk.
The "Naked Acres" moniker came to us as the result of an acquaintance who never heeded our numerous requests to call before he came to visit. We're not reclusive, or involved in any manner of illegal what-you'd-expect-to-find-in-the-middle-of-nowhere activities. We just appreciate the gentle courtesy of which our kind is capable.
On that fateful morning, I heard the crunch of tires on the driveway gravel, and recognized the truck. It was summer, warm and breezy, and I was exercising my God-given homeowner's right to privacy, enjoying the view of the meadow from our front deck. I declined my husband's offer of the bathrobe that was draped over the chair nearby, and watched as he reluctantly walked the distance from the deck to the idling truck, which had come to a stop just at the bottom of the driveway's slope. The view of the front deck from this angle is clear, and close enough to draw conclusions.
Patrick approached the driver's side window, and after a handful of seconds, our acquaintance's truck made the slow and awkward retreat down the quarter-mile driveway. In reverse. Over the rickety bridge that spanned the creek, and up another incline until he was hidden from view by the trees that lined the driveway. It's not easy to do without veering into the poison ivy-covered buckeye saplings or the neighbor's cornfield. That was his last visit, unannounced or otherwise. We did see him occasionally in social settings after that, but not even the most gracious of exchanged pleasantries could erase the indelible understanding we'd all come to that breezy summer day.
I wondered what he and his therapist talked about at their next session.
Privacy is everyone's choice and privilege, and it somehow coexists with the human desire to interact, build communities, and be known. I dance back and forth between all of these on a steady, regular basis. I love where we live, where nudity is our standard for privacy (whether we exercise it or not), and I also enjoy hearing that crunch of gravel on the driveway from the cars of anticipated and cherished friends or family. Most days, I stand on our front deck facing the meadow, to the west, and keep my heart humble in gratefulness for even getting to be here, to have this view, to hear the warblers and the red-wing blackbirds whose call sounds like a drop of water gently leaving a faucet. I want others to experience those moments, to be here when the coyotes yip their way through the trees on either side of the creek, or to see Orion punching its star-yellow holes in the black winter sky after midnight.
When Henry Drummond, in the film "Inherit the Wind", tells the jury that we gave up our privacy when we welcomed the telephone, he both frames and forecasts the future of trade-offs that any technological advancement offers. There's a wincing tension we humans live with continuously--choosing between convenience and whatever else opposes it in a given moment: privacy, the satisfaction of taking the long sweaty way to completing a project, stronger muscles, the meaningfulness of the "getting there" vs. speed. Living here at "Naked Acres" presents Patrick and me with that choice daily. Some of our decisions are based on economics; most of them insist we dialogue with our core values intimately, and honestly. We pray to be aware of our options at least as often as they are offered to us, and choose with intention.
So, this blog is and will be a gathering of reflections on that journey, with our lovely slice of 41-acre paradise as both backdrop and writing fodder. I believe that we--you and I--can find that sweet place between a relationship's familiarity ("make yourself at home!"), and a genteel respect for someone's choice to self-reveal in his/her own time.
Welcome to Naked Acres.