The Constant

The view of the Freewill Baptist Church’s steeple some sixty acres away was swallowed up long ago by the random and burgeoning stands of a arborist’s dream collection: sycamores, black walnuts, blue beech, box elders, shagbark hickories, cherry, silver maples and myriad varieties of oak that we’re still identifying. In the early days of our tenure here, from the top of the Hill on the western edge of the walking path, I could stop and cast an unobstructed gaze across our own seventeen acres of once-employed cornfield, catching my breath after a steep ascent and exhaling into the glorious open space of the greatest responsibility Patrick and I would ever embrace. The cross-topped triangular spire rested comfortably against whatever backdrop the sky offered up that day, creating a postcard scene that we transplanted city dwellers found charming one sunrise after another.

Standing there this morning, my boots planted firmly yet gently on the leaf-covered soil, I peered through the bare branches of a young forest well on its way to mature and have to take that steeple on faith, much like its praying congregants do as they round the curve on the road leading them to their weekly inspiration. I can barely see the far eastern edge of the field line where our responsibility ends and our agronomist neighbor’s begins (not sure how he prays or what path he walks but it’s reassuring to see his white pick-up parked in the gravel driveway leading up to his home). If one is looking for a retreat from the world, hidden from view and not a billboard for miles, this is the place.

Did I ever tell you about the time one of those young and faithful Baptist congregants decided right there in a Sunday service that he wanted to be baptized? The pastor and all the faithful drove down to the narrow bridge at the end of our driveway, plunged his eleven-year-old body dressed in all his Sunday best into the frigid waters of the creek that cuts through our little agrihood (it was February, snow on the ground, thin shelves of ice along the banks), and brought him all clean and renewed and wrapped in dry towels back to the church to finish their collective prayer. I came upon the joyous scene after an early morning run to the grocery store and our neighbor, Jean, invited me to watch it all unfold. It pays to get up at dawn. Just sayin’.

That memory and so many others live alongside regular musings about how this place has changed since we took up residence nearly twenty-four years ago, how we’ve changed because of our touch with and connection to a place whose generosity has no expiration date. We made promises at a land blessing that first summer, most of which we’ve kept, a few of which we’ve had to revise with heads bowed in regret. From any position on the land, be it Hill or field or next to the compost bins, we look out across the paradox of reliable married to continual change. The Old Man tree with its tractor tire swing still dangling, the thick rope now a part of the branch around which it was looped some eighteen feet above the bustling creek waters below…how a heavy rain fills the low spots in the grass along the driveway on both sides where once I saw a little beaver swimming with two branches clenched fast between its teeth…two chicken coops still sturdy and capable of keeping out foxes and raccoons while the girls slumber and dream about whatever chickens dream about…the gentle soothing slope of a secondary walking path through the meadow framed by well-established mulberry trees that toss their fruit to the ground in alternate seasons, turning the bottoms of our feet purple when we impulsively take off our shoes to feel the soft feathery grass between our toes.

Where did my 30’s go, and my 40’s, followed quickly by every last minute of my 50’s? By some deep and mystical agreement, I handed them over willingly to the rhythm of a life lived by and with so many relatives, human and not, two-legged and winged and some with no legs at all, until our respective boundaries ceased to matter. Lines of existence blurred beyond care and recognition, we are forever intertwined, fused and growing older together. The steady hum that vibrates just beneath our shared skin is what wakes us up in the morning, pushes out buds that unfurl into the most gorgeous of leaves in every shade of green Crayola has yet to copy. I know exactly where the tiny snowdrop bulbs live just at the feet of the majestic silver maple out back through the mud room door and isn’t it sweet that there are twice as many blooms this year? I can rearrange the bird feeders hanging from shepherd’s hooks on the ridge all I want but the raccoons living in mysterious places down in the meadow will still pull them down every spring when the night’s temperatures soar past 55 degrees. Branches fall, we pick them up for sweat fires or the burn pile, then toss the ashes onto the composting shreds of spent coffee grounds and salad greens gone all slimy until it’s time to shovel that into the soil of this year’s raised beds where we’ll grow salads for this summer’s dinners. It. Never. Stops.

There’s a bend in the creek where one year’s heavy autumn rains carved an island surrounded by rocks that carry the laughing waters down a jumbled staircase on the way to a distant river beyond our sight. The music is exquisite and almost too much to bear. On my morning walk, I stand on the banks just below a towering black walnut tree, pull off my head wrap and whisper “Hello, constant”, listening as she adds a new verse to her never-ending song. Whatever was weighing heavy on my mind crashes and tumbles and dissolves on those rocks and I step forward into my day, all clean and renewed and wrapped in the reassurance that the heartbeat of this place is shared between us. No matter what happens or how we change in the days to come, we will always know each other.

That’s something I can count on.

With Dignity

This morning’s walk was more of a lumber as I coaxed my bones and their companion muscles to make the seventeen-acre lap around the field and back to the woods. A week’s worth of more physical activity than I’m used to landed me in the mosey mode as I turned the corner down the path to the west and stepped over frozen deer tracks and mole tunnel speed bumps (I try to look up and around when I walk but find I’m more about minding my steps one at a time, head bowed as if reverently contemplating where my foot lands next. I wish I was that mindful but it’s more about avoiding a hard face plant on that frozen ground).

Rounding another turn on the path that runs along the western edge of the field, a young doe and I startled each other and she leapt over the bordering thicket into the neighbor’s sleeping cornfield, disappearing into whatever magical ether protects the wild things in their encounters with us two-leggeds. Peering through the gaps in the tree line, I saw no sign of her and got to musing if she had even existed at all. When you start your walks before the sun’s full face has even crested the other neighbor’s 80 acres of spent soybean stubble, it’s easy to give your imagination free reign over your senses. I trudged up the steep slope we still call “The Hill” and felt my heart settle into non-climbing rhythm as the path flattened out between the woodsy jumble of slender sycamore saplings reaching across the sky to shake hands or do their best arboreal impression of DaVinci’s “The Creation of Man” over my still-bowed head. In full summer, it’s a cathedral ceiling that has me bent-necked and enchanted as I trust my feet to stumble me forward across the exposed tree roots. I’d trade a skinned knee for that view any day of the week.

I don’t check the weather app most days before I walk. I just open the front door, inhale whatever the air is giving and arbitrarily count to six before hazarding a guess at the current temperature. I layer up accordingly, topping off the whole mismatched ensemble with a snug knitted head wrap sporting a large unicorn face on each of the ear flaps. It’s thick and muffles most sound (blessedly, the morning rush hour traffic a mile away and, regrettably, most woodpeckers’ persistent tapping and the sweet trill of an early-rising Carolina wren). A steady wind had been blowing all night and continued its blustery dance, gusting now and then, picking up speed as I followed the curve of the path away from the western edge of the property line and headed northeast. Five, maybe seven yards forward and I heard it: a stilted cry of an animal injured or trapped, just on the other side of a thorny thicket patch. It faded and then repeated, stronger this time and mournful. I stepped off the path and followed the sound upward, wondering what kind of help I’d be if something was hurt and hiding way up in those blue beech that offered no lower branches to get a leg up. Pulling off the headwrap, I heard a stiff creaking sound and realized it was the wind pushing the branches of a black walnut stand into each other, the slender cold wood of their leafless fingers rubbing together in the cold. I stood still, listening as they groaned like I do when I get up off the couch after sitting for more than an hour and thought I get it, sister. It was at once eerie and reassuring, to find kinship among such sentient beings who spend their winters taking it on the chin, whatever comes, and still have the grace and dignity to sprout leaves and keep us cool in the hot weeks of July. Will I ever come back from a walk without lessons in my hands? Oh, I hope not…

Last Thursday night I took my 6-month-old hearing aids to a live performance of the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine and soaked up each note, each thundering boom from the timpani player’s well-aimed mallets. I adjusted the volume up and left it there, no regrets for the full body symphonic experience. Pre-hearing aid existence, I doubt I would have wondered what I was missing and, in some settings (rock concerts, movie theaters where the sound tech has the speakers on full blast), I’d even put in earplugs to soften the audio assault. But when getting older gives you the gift of volume control through an appliance so small it’s nearly undetectable, it’s fun to experiment with the variances in sound. Thank you, reader, for tolerating that “step out of the woods for a moment” tangent. It’s connected somehow.

As I collect more morning walks (moseys, lumbers, stumbles, whatever…) and add them to a growing cache of Life’s Memorable Moments, there’s a promise I make to a few select trees I stop and visit in the woods. I don’t know how I picked these particular ones out of a forest of thousands, but we do meet up most mornings and I breathe my thanks into their grooved or smoothed bark (black walnut or ash, respectively), telling them “as often as I can, for as long as I can”, and walk on knowing that we both understand what that means. Tomorrow isn’t anyone’s guarantee (certainly not mine) and too often I’ve chosen a warm bed over wind-chilled cheeks and fingers, regretting it instantly and always. But with that promise, there’s an elastic amnesty that allows for the unexpected, without judgment or guilt. And I’ll cherish, revel in and be enchanted by whatever the land shows me on a given day. She is beautiful always, come hail or mud or crocuses peeking out defiantly through the snow. She’s older, I’m older and we’re both dealing with it.

Sometimes, you’ve gotta slow the walk down to a measured mosey to see what matters most.

Lost

I was behind him for three, maybe six traffic lights, watching to see if he’d make good on his right turn signal which had been blinking for at least two miles, maybe longer. Other drivers slowed and gave him openings, a couple of gentle honks but he didn’t change course, just kept flowing in the stream of cars heading east and onward, right taillight blinking as if irritated for being ignored. From my assured safe distance position looking through his back window, I could see him gesturing forcefully, his head swiveling and nodding, snapping in one direction, then another to punctuate whatever point he was making. There was a mobile phone mounted on the dash, no one in the passenger seat. I wondered what he cared so passionately about and how he was using some Saturday windshield time to work through it. Just west of the outer belt on-ramp he finally changed lanes and I pulled up alongside him on the left, glancing and gathering a few more visuals to satisfy my curiosity. Still gesturing, head, hands and upper torso fully engaged in relaying his message to some invisible recipient, he slid into the rolling pack of cars on their way to wherever they needed to be. I wished them all safe travels with an extra bit of peaceful resolution for this brother and his listener.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been swallowed whole like this, in the company of others or not, so completely focused on a singular happening that you forget to eat, you don’t change positions in your chair, you miss your exit ramp. Can you recall precisely what captivated you so, to the exclusion of every other bit of stimuli floating in the data soup we swim in all day long? Give me a minute and I might be able to come up with a blurry memory of something, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I missed because, well…I missed it. Let’s call it Extreme Mindfulness bordering on the slightly dangerous and indulgent, depending on the particulars of your circumstance and while we’re describing here, add a slice of Escapism (determined by intent, of course).

I think we live in urgent times, one crisis after another paraded in front of our faces and if you and I are at all similar, we try to choose wisely which new forum our attention. I’ve been fully present a few times, but with tinnitus, a third book in the making and more than one kitten in the house, there’s a continuous supply of competition lately. For all the training I’ve done on the merits of active listening, I’m still on the student side of the lectern most days, working humbly to make it a practice rather than a noteworthy pop-up event. You’ll have to ask Patrick and a few of my coworkers about my success; that’s not my call.

I don’t know what had that gentleman so agitated (or keyed up, if that sounds kinder) but in that moment, I envied him his focus, full-body and comprehensive from my narrow view through the driver’s side window of his automobile. And what about his audience? I assume it was someone he knew on his darkened mobile phone propped up there on the dashboard, but maybe he was giving voice to no one but himself, talking filter-less and unedited in a most cleansing act of mind-clearing. Who gets to do that these days without being judged or analyzed, opinions picked apart and scattered to the harsh winds of scrutiny? In the privacy or our cars and bathrooms, perhaps, and doesn’t it feel good to get it all out for a change? But what about those falling inward moments when we’re deep in thought, completely immersed in another’s grand and epic tale of triumph or woe, or at a studio worktable with all our paints or fabric, doing whatever they tell us to do until the momentum peaks and resolves? Many’s the night Patrick has been toiling in his shop out back on the ridge, the only window offering a view of his add-on shed filled with more tools, piles of wood waiting to be Something Else, and I’ve got to fetch him for dinner that’s long since grown cold. I will often take snacks into my own creative space/downstairs guestroom in case the urge strikes in between stitches and PVA glue but have left too many cups of tea untended while I sank into deciding whether leather or cardstock would be better for a newly minted blank journal’s spine cover. To be so lost and disconnected from the rigid framework of time’s passing is a gift like no other, rare as the northern lights in an Ohio sky.

Tink (our youngest feline rescue) has taken to falling asleep on my chest lately at day’s end, after she’s ping-ponged across the small expanse of our living room, upsetting plants and terrorizing her older adopted siblings. I may never know the mind of a kitten in such a playground but she seems to be mastering the art of being in the moment, all chaotic and untethered to any agenda whatsoever. I ease into dozing off with her after a few moments and it feels deliciously all-consuming. Nothing else matters (I’ll right the toppled plants in a minute, smooth back the bunched and scattered throw rugs she used to surf across the painted wood floors) and I sink into a place where seconds and hours are meaningless. When we wake up, it’s time to stand and stretch and think about what’s for eating and that’s enough for now.

In this urgent and scary world, I hope to disappear into the next distraction more fully and more often, hopelessly lost and happy. Just leave me be and send good wishes for my safety. I’ll be back. Maybe.

Pickles, Pralines and Other Acts of Generosity

When they’re still attached, a tree’s branches can’t help but resemble lungs, bronchi and bronchioles and all, and isn’t that really what they are, helping the earth breathe? But when those branches fall and come to rest on the ground, they look more like arthritic fingers, bony and knobby with knuckles and brittle joints.

Strong winds from last Thursday night, continuing well into Friday, helped the trees on the ridge shed what they no longer needed, and after a post-market nap yesterday, I stooped to gather them. We’ll use these to start some future sweat fires and be grateful for the trees’ sacrifice as we carry armfuls of them back to the lodge where they’ll be added to a growing pile of similar kindling. I wonder what our prayer life would be like if we needed to wrestle these bones from the trees before they were ready to give them up? Humbled once again by the way the land has it all worked out. She gives and we stoop to pick it all up, with thankfulness.

I was a solo act at the market yesterday, from loading up to setting up, bantering in the most friendly way with our sweet customers and then dismantling it all before hauling it back out to the car for the ride home. Patrick had a rough week at work and needed the rest so I kissed him on the forehead before heading out in the dark, my heart gladdened by how this side hustle of ours can easily be managed by one. I pulled up U2’s “Magnificent” on YouTube and sang my way to work, honking only once to keep a trio of young does from crossing the road in front of me and changing my plans. On impulse at a traffic light in the first small town I passed through, I texted my sister Peggy to see how she was feeling. She and her husband Rob had returned home from their holiday trip to Tybee Island with head colds that were lingering far too long into the new year. If you know my sister, you know that she pushes through the hard times with a determined grace, so I wasn’t surprised by her near-instant reply. The worst of their symptoms in the rearview mirror now, they were thinking about coming out to the market and would we be there? A few more texts and we’d be seeing each other at our booth down the way from the pickle vendor in a couple more hours.

Let me insert a small public service announcement on behalf of the good people of Savannah and Tybee Island. A candy shop on the Savannah river (aptly called “River Street Sweets”) concocts the most exquisite pralines and I’ve grown far too fond of them from our previous visits to the area. When Peggy asked what she could bring back, I answered before she even finished the question (and might have mentioned something about the chocolate ones), and if it wasn’t too much trouble, would they be making their customary stop at Chu’s gas station/quick mart on Tybee across from the condo rental office for a large styrofoam container of Cajun boiled peanuts, that delightfully messy-to-eat but oh-so-salty-good southern road trip snack? Another smiling “yes” and it was all arranged.

When they arrived at the market, Peggy was carrying a small canvas tote bag and that same knowing smile. Hugs all around in between our first customers and then she started unpacking. First out was a pair of copper earrings etched with a rustic tree design, then a large plastic container of boiled peanuts which she’d made herself and the family had voted—they like them a bit better than the gas station ones (apologies to whatever employee at Chu’s has the honor of taking the 5lb bag of pre-seasoned peanuts from the freezer and putting them in the heated crock on the counter between the chips and the soda for customers to help themselves. When we visit Tybee again, I’m sure they’ll do just fine as an end-of-the-trip snack). I spied the red plastic bag at the bottom of the canvas tote and knew what was coming next—a pecan and caramel treat fit for the gods.

It didn’t stop there. Peggy offered to get me coffee from the vendor a few stalls away, and when she brought it back all steaming and cozy, asked if I wanted cream or sugar and she’d go back and get it for me (which I did, so…she off she went). After a rush of customers and more catching up, she asked me if I wanted pickles from the vendor down the way whose lines tend to wrap around the market hallways (yep, they’re that good) and after I’d hedged a bit, said “garlic, or anything dill”, and she was off again, returning with the goods that would later add flavorful crunch to my tuna salad lunch back at home. Another rush of customers, two lines at one point, with Rob swiping the credit cards and Peggy bagging up the purchases.

If you look up “hospitality” in the dictionary, you’ll see our mom’s picture. Peggy learned this trait at her knee and infused it with her own deep commitment to generosity (look up that word and there she’ll be). She married in kind; Rob’s heart is consummately cheerful and his genuine desire to be helpful enters a room before he does. In their almost forty years together, they’ve raised three children into adulthoods marked by humor, food and thoughtfulness without limits, and these young ones plucked for themselves spouses who keep the domino effect of kindness unfolding into the futures they’re building. I can only imagine the lives they’ve touched with this good spirit of helpfulness, an ember that warms strangers and friends alike with its inclusiveness and unassuming bent toward just making someone’s day a bit better.

All of these feelings and realizations came to me Saturday afternoon as I bent over to pick up the next tree fingerbone scattered by a fierce wind’s hand. The land gives constantly. My sister and her generous family give and it’s impossible not to be changed by it, inspired to pay for the next person’s latte at the drive-thru or give a coworker my undivided attention and not hijack their story with one of my own. For the better part of a weekend morning, I was wrapped in this most tender of gifts, a lesson worth repeating day after day after day.

When I wake up tomorrow, I’ll be looking for a chance to do the same.

May the circle be unbroken indeed.