The Way the Wind Blows

Last night's 70mph winds have, I'm afraid, left me shaken more than a bit this morning. I went to bed way too early, after a particularly trying day, and woke up in the dark, to the sound of rain pelting the window, hard. In spring and summer months, describing a storm would include words like "soothing", or "rhythmical".

But what I heard last night has kept me alert and on edge throughout the day. And when one feels one's house tremble on its foundation, with hard pelting rain and that sound of howling that only a 70mph wind can sing...yep, "shaken" is still the right word here. "Soothing" is still another season away.

It's not the first time, and I truly hope not the last, that the creations surrounding us have rattled our souls. I've spent more than one sleepless, speechless night on the edge of my bed, watching the sacred spectacle of a thunder-and-lightning union going on inches from my face, separated only by thin glass and humble prayers. Nature, in these wild moments, holds nothing back, and assumes nothing about our ability to receive or process what she's unleashing. It's funny--as a child, I was terrified by storms. Even the announcement of a tornado watch was enough to send me down to our basement carrying my pillowcase crammed with clothes, shoes, a familiar stuffed animal, pen and notepaper (I would be the hero who scrawled in my 5-year old hand "We're in the basement under the laundry table!", and let the wind waft the note to our rescuers). Now, living here for nearly 20 years, that fear has evolved into silent respect and wonder. I stand on the deck, face the west and the gathering clouds, and give thanks for even getting to see the power of wind, rain, cold and warm fronts, and the silver backs of the maple leaves on the trees lining the ridge.  Growing up is more than feet and inches; the inner self stretches inward, carving out a deeper capacity for wonder and gratitude.

So...what to do with this "shaken" feeling? It was an unsteady hum underneath the meetings and activities of my workday. I walked the halls restlessly, inventing reasons to check the stockroom for handmade patients' gowns and training supplies. I sent print jobs to the copier that was farthest away, and made a few trips out to my truck in the parking lot, packing for my workday in Columbus on Thursday (as I write this, it's only Tuesday). I just could not settle down.

It's important to pay close attention to that which makes us feel uncomfortable. Lessons abound in these moments of uncertainty and feet-on-shifting-sands. Such feelings call us to examine our assumptions about our routines, our expectations, and our cock-sure swaggering selves. It is time well-spent, if we give ourselves over to it. The trees that I've taken for granted all these years are now missing a few limbs this morning; the lawn furniture that goes nowhere, ever, is now strewn across the chicken pasture, and I put on my boots and a headlamp before dawn to return each chair to the sitting area beneath a grove of volunteer maple saplings. 70mph winds change the landscape just enough to leave the impression that not much is permanent, nothing really belongs to us. At least, not for very long.

Patrick said he came downstairs in the midst of it all, because the swaying of our house on its foundation was more than he wanted to deal with (tough choice in a storm at our place--stay upstairs and enjoy the free-fall when the house blows down, or, come downstairs and be buried beneath the rubble of the upstairs? Haven't figured that one out yet). When things calmed down a bit--less wind and more rain--he came back upstairs. But I doubt he slept much after that.

For now, it's enough that we didn't lose electric, that the sump pump kept working, and the house eventually stopped swaying. But make no mistake--the wind that visited us last night left behind a message. Bravely, we stand and listen, shaken. Awake. Paying attention.

Connected

It's 36 degrees, and the fronds of palm trees go horizontal in the stiff north wind. From my seat at the tall tiki table inside, complete with a fringed umbrella, there's a wedge-shaped view of the Atlantic, churning and white-capped, framed by a three-story condo on the right, and a grove of spindly pines and low shrubs to the left.

We're on vacation at Tybee Island, Georgia, just the two of us, and our minds point north toward our Ohio home, wondering if the overnight single-digit temperatures this past week have been too much for the furnace to manage. Our friend, Pam, has been tending to the chickens, the cats, and our solitary rabbit (George). She shut off the water days ago and drained the pipes, and tells us everything is fine. We trust her. And we still register some low-level anxiousness.

Never has the feeling of "it's up to us" been more solid, or weighty, as it is now. I can't even see in our rearview mirror the days of apartment living and taken-for-granted calls to landlords when the heat was out, or a sink was clogged. On the farm, when life clicks along for months without incident, it's easy to forget that we're the landlords, until the toilet tank keeps running after a flush, or the crawl space where the furnace lives has 4 inches of water from an afternoon downpour. I learned quickly how to hook up the portable sump pump, and run 30 feet of garden hose out the back door of the mudroom before we installed a pit and "permanent" pump in the gravely floor of our dirt hole basement. It gives us a slightly wider measure of reassurance, but the nervousness of what could happen still hums beneath the surface of our homeowner confidence. Being a grown-up is more than just sitting up front in the car on family vacations, I can tell you that.

So, on this vacation, our attention is currently divided between a beach we see once a year, and 41 acres of meadow, creek, woods, pasture, and privacy back home, all of which catches and holds this dream of a life we're living. We are grateful for the gift of such contrast, and try to be good occasional tourists, visiting shops on the island, and not checking the central Ohio temps too often on our phones' weather apps ("it's going down to -4 on Thursday, honey".).

When we signed the contract for this piece of paradise we call Naked Acres, I'm not sure we understood the depth to which we would commit ourselves, but we did know we weren't city kids anymore. We have been and are In It, truly, for better and for worse, and have made good on that promise since 1999. The flooded basement in January 2000, the ice storm and barn roof collapse of 2004 (right in the middle of goat kidding season), the surprise summer derecho of 2012 that left us without power for 4 days in 100+ degree heat. These, added to years of Perseids, Geminids, Leonids and once, a rare glimpse of Northern Lights, have balanced our role as caretakers with that of humbled, awestruck sky-gazers. It's a full package deal, this rural responsibility. And when we do head off down the quarter-mile driveway, nothing snaps or breaks behind us. No matter where our travels take us--the Kroger in Mt Vernon, a mere 17 minutes away, or a sweet little island off the coast of Savannah--the invisible cable that tethers us to this land stretches and contracts, and keeps us ever connected to where our hearts reside. I don't know what effect that has on our sense of "being in the moment" (and I'm not currently interested in doing the research), but I'm happy to trade that for the realization that I can no longer tell where I end and the land begins. She is with me wherever I go, a part of every plan, large or small, starting point and destination simultaneously.

Whoever said "you can't take it with you" was wise and spot-on when it comes to material things (and it's a blessed relief to know I will not have to pack it all up). But I wonder if he ever stood watching the wingspan of a sharp-shinned hawk skim the dried up stalks of ironweed in the pasture to the east, knowing full well who he was, and to whom he belonged.

That hawk, and everything zooming beneath its precision flight, rides shotgun with us all the time. We're never gone from this place, and that kind of emotional luggage is a joyful burden to carry.

A Solstice Reckoning

It's strange...we're about to celebrate a new calendar year in the middle of a season where anything new is still months away, and not guaranteed to any of us.

It begins today...December 21, 2017.

Winter, season of tree bones and unobstructed views.

Winter, finding us tethered to furnace and slippers.

Winter, the turn-within season, where we add a few pounds and allow ourselves more butter and gravy than any other time of the year because it comforts us.

Winter, for the Navajo, the season of telling stories.

Winter, brave season of putting on every layer we own just to fetch the paper in the driveway.

Winter, season of unavoidable and untended losses rising to the surface like steam and heat, hard to ignore their hungry gaze.

Winter, with its leggings and toboggans and snow ice cream experiments.

Winter, missing departed loved ones for this first holiday since their passing, or the sixteenth, makes no difference; the empty place at the table still aches and echoes.

Winter, when some sturdy bird tribes still dot the feeders with their welcome eye-candy colors of red and bright blue, and we thank them with seeds and suet.

Winter, its inner flames licking logs of contentment and bonding among dear friends and family.

Winter, with a simple palette of browns and grays and soft deep greens, dusted or covered or blanketed in the purest white.

Winter, which holds in frozen suspended suspense the unfinished garden projects left in the field at the end of a busy harvest.

Winter, the ultimate waiting room season, that gives us nowhere else to look but at ourselves and each other, if we're smart and not squeamish.

Winter, thawing then freezing then cracking under the weight of our hope that it will not have the last word.

Winter, inching us toward more light and less darkness, one dawn, one sunset at a time.

Winter, we wait in your stark presence, busy our hearts with forgotten tasks, give thanks for heat and food, and hope you'll not stay too long, and beg your forgiveness when, in the middle of March, we hurry you toward the door.

What We Were Thinking, Part II

As the rainy autumn chilled quickly into winter, our weekend house-hunting explorations paused. We tucked into the tipi more cozily, having mastered the art of fire-making, and upgraded the floor coverings from blankets to canvas. It gave us time to reflect. And our backsides were drier.

We had that list of what we wanted from a piece of land, where folks could come to pray: meadow, woods, creek, a few outbuildings, a house, and...privacy. It became almost a mantra to us as we sized up each new property we visited. Nothing we'd seen so far had all of these elements, and to us, they were essential.

During his time working at the nursery the previous spring and summer, Patrick and I got to know his co-workers from Sonora, Mexico quite well. They were patient with his evolving attempts at Spanish, and he gently coached their English as they potted pine saplings, loaded box trucks, and ate their lunches together in the small break room. 12, sometimes 14-hour days were the norm, and Patrick would often linger at the end of a shift, thanking them for whatever new vocabulary he had learned. But what touched Patrick--both of us, really, as I heard the stories second-hand--was how these men had made the hard decision to be away from their wives, their children, their families back in Hermosillo, to find better-paying jobs (better by Mexican economic standards) here in the States, so they could send money back home to keep food on the table, rents paid, and little ones clothed. They were often away for nine months of the year. I imagined, wincing, what milestones they had missed (first steps, older family and neighbors passing away). More than once, I'd give Patrick's hand an extra squeeze when we were together, grateful for the privilege of simply having him within arms' reach on a daily basis.

As Cinco de Mayo approached that year, Patrick wanted to do something special for his work-friends, to perhaps close even an inch of the gap between them and their homeland with food, the centerpiece of all cultures, second only to language. In any kitchen, Patrick is fearless and talented; I weighed 98 lbs when we were married (haven't seen that number in years, and don't expect to anytime soon), and will happily clean up after him, no matter how many utensils and pans he's used.

So he pulled out all his best cookbooks, researched online, and created a menu that respected the Sonoran region of specialties, and also stretched his culinary skills in the process. We loaded up the car with posole, hand-made tortillas, menudo, an avocado side dish that wasn't guacamole, and every anticipated Mexican condiment we could find on that morning in early May. We set up the buffet in the break room, and posted a sign on the wall above the table, asking the other staff to allow their Mexican co-workers to fill their plates first, as a courtesy.

When I arrived around 5:30 that evening to collect Patrick, I found him in the gravel-and-dirt parking lot, a line of his Mexican co-workers grasping his hand in thanks, hugging him. Some were wiping their eyes with handkerchiefs or the backs of their hands. Not at all what we had expected, this response. We were humbled all the way down to our socks.

The line dwindled down to five of the men, who, in their combination of Spanish and English, invited us to dinner at their shared quarters on the nursery grounds. We negotiated a date and time, confirmed it in English and Spanish, and went home to wash the Tupperware that was piled in the back seat of the car.

The rest of that summer was filled with visits and dinners and more Spanish-English conversation lessons. We learned more about their families, their beloved state of Sonora, and cooked them a huge Thanksgiving dinner before they took Greyhounds back to Hermosillo for the winter. We dropped them off at the bus station, and confirmed plans to visit them in January.

Patrick left the nursery before Christmas and accepted a position in fundraising at the local office of a national nonprofit organization. One of his new co-workers took an interest in our search for land, and happened to live in the area where we were looking. She mentioned a farm that was on the market near her house, and offered to check with the realtor, since she knew him from the sale of her home. After checking, she reported sadly that the farm was in contract. We thanked her for the update, and left for Hermosillo, Sonora the next day.

Our friends lived humbly in Mexico, and close to each other. We saw them cuddle their children, dance with their wives on the patios of their simple homes. The joy in their faces was unmistakable--we'd not seen it at all when they were at work on the nursery grounds. But here, their feet on more beloved and familiar soil, they settled into the routines and relationships that nourished their souls. As we chatted around tables of food and extended family that week, each of these men in turn stated clearly, passionately, that they were done with the migrant gig. Hermosillo was where they belonged, and they'd find ways to make it work. "No more away from our loves". What they really wanted was what they had in that moment--wives, children, aunts and brothers-in-law, close at hand and more precious than the paychecks they'd sent from Ohio the previous year.

On the flight home, our suitcases laden with pastries and "armpit tortillas" (now, now...it's just a reference to the size of the tortilla--from armpit to fingertip--these things were HUGE, and delicious), we unfolded our impressions of the time we spent with them. Their lists of "wants" were anchored in relationships, not things. It silenced us when we approached the topic of resuming our house and land-hunting. We knew the land we hoped for was out there somewhere, but some key element was missing in each of our searches. The plane landed, we arrived at our little apartment, and started a load of laundry. "Maybe we've been asking the wrong question", I suggested. "Maybe it's not what we want from a piece of land; it's what the land needs from us.". He took the now-battered list from his shirt pocket and read it aloud: "meadow, woods, creek, a few outbuildings, a house, and...privacy".

30 minutes later, the phone rang. It was the realtor for the farm that was in contract, the one Patrick's co-worker had mentioned. The agreement had fallen through, the farm was back on the market, and would we like to take a look?

We met him at his house, and accepted his offer to drive us in his car to see the place.

The driveway was long and the bridge over the creek was beyond rickety. As we crossed it (my eyes were closed) and came around a slight curve, past a long white barn and a square outbuilding with peeling white paint, the scene opened up to reveal a house sitting atop a hill, and a rusty chest freezer in the lawn just off the front porch. Three cats sat hunched on the porch, and a series of misplaced t-posts were stuck in the ground at odd angles on either side of some dead-looking bushes that framed the spot where the driveway ended and the path to the house began. We got out of the realtor's car, and noticed mounds of plastic milk jugs and 2-litre pop bottles in an old red barn at bottom of the hill. Patrick spotted the shiny silver curves of two beer kegs nestled into the slope on the north side of the house, and a shed surrounded by what appeared to be the leave-behinds of a recent estate auction.

A shrieking sound, much like a child in pain, came from the barn, and we turned quickly, startled and ready for action. "Oh, that's the peacock, Sparky", the realtor said. "The owners moved to the city, and couldn't take him along". We squinted in the sunlight toward the sound, but couldn't see anything.

A large L-shaped field lay to the east, all 17 acres of it, and edged in woods filled with black walnut, maple, ironwood and oak. "About eight acres total, those woods, black swamp", the realtor beamed, "and in April, you should be able to hear the spring peepers clear as a bell". I smiled, wondering what a spring peeper was, and if the noise would keep me up at night.

We drove the realtor's SUV to the farthest northwest corner of the property, where the "L" part of the field met the woods, and peered through the tree trunks. The house was no longer visible; I felt apprehensively detached from civilization, and let a fleeting doubt zip through my brain. Did we really want this kind of life? Where were the grocery stores and the hospital? I kept my thoughts inside, silent as we drove back to the realtor's house where our car was parked. We shook hands, and told him we'd be in touch.

Back at the apartment, our first words tumbled over one another. "Did you see all the trash?" "A chest freezer? What were those kegs?" "I've never heard a peacock's call, have you?"

And then, it dawned on us. Meadow. Woods. Creek. A few outbuildings. A house.

Privacy.

We saw on that land all that we had originally wanted, hidden only by the wrong question.  It wasn't about what we wanted. It was about what that piece of land needed. From us.

Every empty milk jug, the two kegs and the chest freezer, whispered a faint "help" as we had surveyed the landscape of what was about to become our new home, our dream.

A place for folks to come and pray.

We rolled up our sleeves, wrote Sparky into the contract, and started cleaning up.