A Lesson in Brambles

I have survived every bad thing that has ever happened to me.

Of course I have--I'm writing this. And, dear reader, so have you.

I've also won so many of life's lotteries, I've lost count. I am rich in ways I have hoped and planned for, and in ways I could not have imagined. And perhaps, dear reader, so are you. Let's go for a walk.

One of the first land projects we completed after moving all of our stuff and selves to these Naked Acres was cutting a path in and around the old corn and soybean field so we could get a lot closer to the action of our wild neighbors: the winged ones, the four-legged and furry, the legless and slithery, and all the rest of God's Critters Who Have a Place in the Choir (if you're not familiar with that song, remind me to sing it for you sometime). Seventeen of the forty-one acres were cut into an L-shaped tillable field, the long part of the letter running north-to-south, and then making a 90 degree turn west toward the creek. The first path we cut simply outlined the entire L-shape, and we delighted in making that left turn from north to west because we could peer into the deep woods to our right that held onto their secrets, and eventually turn left again, heading south, and come to the Hill that sloped parallel to the creek. From the top of that Hill, we have a lovely view of steeple belonging to the little Baptist church three farms over to the east; it was idyllic and just what two urban transplants were taught to expect from living in the country. We stood on that Hill many times, gazing in all directions for long minutes, letting the full reality of our good luck wash over us and drench us in gratitude. Eventually, something would pull our feet forward, and we would continue our prayer down the slope of the Hill southward until the field flattened out and we could peer into the woodsy meadow to the south (we didn't cut a path through that bramble-y overgrowth until our second year).

With no plans to ever till that field again, it didn't take long for the ironweed and blackberries to lay claim to it, in random patches that pulled at our jeans and flannel sleeves, daring us to move even an inch further. Keeping the path maintained became a regular spring and summer pilgrimage, involving a neighbor's brush hog mower now and then, and, over the years, a series of riding mowers which the land seemed to enjoy eating on an annual basis. In time, we added a new path that cut a diagonal line from the corner of the L-shape back toward the entrance to the meadow (a place we have knowingly and lovingly come to know as "where the worlds meet"), adding twenty minutes to our walks. Nice.

So here we are, 18+ years and thousands of steps later, and the path has evolved as anyone could expect. Storms have dropped some of the black walnuts across the short section of the L to the west, where the Hill is, and we've not been too fussed about clearing them. Blackberry and multi-flora rose vines, thorny and obstinate, are now thick and tangled, and the most anyone has done in recent years is look at it and turn around, offering a thin promise to clear it up "the next time I'm out this way". But this morning, not quite 30 degrees and a blazing sun well on its way across the sky, I put on my chicken-decorated boots and headed down the path once more, taking the diagonal cut through the field heading northeast. I wanted that view from the Hill, thorns and tangles and all.

I hadn't been on the path by the woods in a while, so didn't realize just how overgrown it was. The blackberry vines were especially vicious; crisscrossing and arcing over the field grass, conjuring up images of the darkest fairy tales, where secondary characters were lured into the woods to meet their fate. I came to the edge of the cut path, where we'd stopped mowing last summer, and contemplated, literally, my next move. I didn't have to be anywhere (Patrick was still asleep and would be for a few more hours), I was dressed for the occasion, and had brought with me, as I always do, a full cup of curiosity. I plunged in, thanking my two layers of long-sleeved jackets and my sturdy work gloves.

Making it past the first few feet of crisscrossed vines was fairly simple--I gingerly pinched the end of one branch and moved it aside until I was well clear of it, then stepped to the side to ease around the next one. It felt like part Twister, part Jenga, as the path became more thicket-y. I added ducking and turning to my pinching and side-stepping moves, and "The Matrix" to my list of walking metaphors. The Hill was getting closer, but not quickly. These thorny vines and my maneuvers slowed my walk down to an almost-crawl (hey, crawling...in hindsight, would that have been a better way to go? We'll never know).

As all walks usually do, this one gave me free head space to allow a handful of dormant thoughts to unfold and take root; the slow and careful vine-pinching and advancing forward six or seven inches became a side rhythm to my recollections of my life's hardest times. There's no planning these moments of reflection and awakening--they just come, hoping we're awake and paying attention. One at a time, I considered everything I've ever survived up to this point...how I'd moved slowly and carefully through the shards of broken relationships and innocence lost, and the way the thorns of grief, ignored and untended, eventually caught my heart's sleeve, forcing me to stop and acknowledge there's no running through a thicket like that. Collected and tallied up, the hard times looked an awful lot like the long view of the path still ahead of me on this morning's walk. but up close, one vine at a time, they are conquerable.

In my life so far, I've made my way through, moving things aside, stopping to contemplate my next option, and getting stuck once in a while (sometimes viciously, with scars as evidence). I've reconciled fear and curiosity, forgiveness and indifference, as each challenge gave me the gift of choice in its thorny hands.  And while I haven't always chosen wisely, had the right clothes or tools for the occasion, I've been allowed to keep going, coming out on the other side, scratched and a little smarter about how to navigate amidst the brambles.

I did indeed make it to the Hill this morning, and smiled out loud: it was thick with blackberry vines as well. Huh. I stood among them, guides more than adversaries now, and enjoyed the view of the steeple to the east. In August, these vines would be dripping to the ground with fruit that I could eat.

I'd just won another lottery.

Walking With the Living

The weather-guessers said we're to expect anywhere from 3 - 6 inches of snow. Or not. I smile and tuck that into the way back of my head and step off the porch onto the grass, its blade tips still showing through a light white powder.

I'm taking a walking stick with me this morning, given to me by my dear friend, Jeannie, who, as it's written into her obituary, "entered the Eternal Now" in July of 2016 (let me step out of the woods for a moment to tell you that Jeannie was my closest friend for 34 years, and the gap in our lives since she died still aches, still sits securely in the "I can't believe she's gone" place. There will be a future story about her, perhaps many, in these blog pages. Watch for them. She was, and is, a don't-miss. Ok. Back into the woods we go).

The walking stick in my right hand is only 12" shorter than I am (4' 2"--go ahead, do the math), and has two small black bear paw prints painted just below the soft deerskin "belt" that wraps it's handle like a corset. It was a birthday present; Jeannie knew how much we loved walking the land. But this was the first time I'd really given it a workout.

I've been a walker for decades. In moving here from the suburbs of Columbus nearly 20 years ago, Christmas came early and stayed; it's a two-mile round trip walk from our porch all the way to where our street meets the larger two-lane country road running north-to-south between Mt Vernon and Granville. One of my favorite things to do when it starts getting light out around 5:45a.m. (so...in May) is to lace up my sneakers and walk those two miles before heading off to work. It's a great way to unspool my thoughts, unravel particularly knotty problems, and step back onto the porch with a feeling of being unburdened, refreshed, ready. But until those May days arrive, I'm perfectly happy to walk in the other direction, in the dark or the light. I trust the woods more than the two-lane country road.

On this particular morning, with bear paw print stick in hand, I head deeper into the land that hugs us close, down the sloping hill into the meadow/flood-plain, the tip of the walking stick making gentle indentations in the soft rain-soaked soil. An occasional sparrow zips overhead, and there are communities beneath my feet that I can't even see. I stop at random spots along the path, noticing the fudgy hoof prints of a deer, the way the water has carved new tributaries in the creek that cuts through the meadow, exposing old tires (a spring dry-day project) and the massive root ball of a quaking aspen that was knocked down by the derecho of 2012. Like a prayerful chant, my mind loops around a single thought: how did I get so lucky? To be here, to see all this, to be one of its caretakers? We don't call ourselves "landowners", for we own nothing. We're responsible for 41.1 acres, with the full weight of what that means. We watch for those changes in the creek bed, keep an attentive eye toward where the water pools and floods when the rains are heavy, when the first robins and finches return near the end of February, and which willow saplings need to be freed of the thick tangle of grapevines that cover them like a veil.

If I stayed inside, or never made it off the porch, I'd miss most of that. The farther away I go from the house, the chicken coop, the old goat barns, and walk into all that lives and thrives in the balance of the acreage, the more I understand my place. I am small and significant enough to leave a footprint (fudgy or not, depending on the weather), but not much more. I stand on sacred ground, galaxies above me and below me that know more than I ever will about most stuff.

Walking stick in hand, cherished absent friend in heart, I plod along, unspooling thoughts and knotty problems, letting my gratitude for the turn of luck that has placed me here run the full length of my 5'2" frame.

Among the living is where I am, and where I am supposed to be.

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.