Perseverance

Years ago, I went on a motorcycle trip with my very good friend Johnny Bongo. We were both fairly new to the biking world, maybe a couple of years of local riding under our belts. Part of my own preparation involved trading in my classic beemer for a newer one (still not a NEW one, just not as ancient) because I knew that my wrenching skills had some clear limitations. Both of us planned like crazy. We each packed emergency supplies, plenty of clothes, tire-repair kits, the whole deal. 

Barrier, schmarrier...

Johnny had a new GPS system, and had worked out every turn of the road to get us where we were going. Believe me, we went to some beautiful parts of the country. A couple of days in, and here's where the photo makes sense, we were scheduled to find our campsite, tucked away in the flat landscape of Ohio. The roads there are laid out like graph paper lines across a virtually flat landscape, very strange to JB and I, who live in a wooded, hilly part of Maine, where no road goes more than half a mile without a needed turn. 

So every few miles was a cross-road, and there were no side-roads, no back ways, no diagonals. Not long before dark, we came to a closed road barrier, just five miles from where we were trying to go. We knew that if we let it stop us it would mean going back, and all the way around one of those giant blocks of waving corn, several miles for each side of a square. We looked at the barriers, looked at the big backhoe parked right across both lanes, bucket to the tar, at the deep swales on each side of the road, looked at the sun going down. We were tired. We had sore asses and stiff backs. We wanted to be setting up our tents and warming up some soup. This unforeseen obstacle really sucked at that moment. Then we looked at each other, shrugged, and wordlessly agreed to just try it. 

Around the barriers we went, creeping in first gear, then very carefully, leaning the bikes to squeeze under the arm of the backhoe, over to the other side. Each bike took all of the strength of both of us to maneuver under that arm. One of us bent a rearview mount a little bit, I don't remember who. It might have been that the road was closed because it was totally impassible further along, but that wasn't the case. We felt like such rebels. The point is, though, that we didn't shrug and turn back. The road wasn't impassible. We didn't hurt anybody. And we got to where we were going, almost on time. 

Looking through old photos, I found this and realized that I had not thought of the obstacle, or of our perseverance, for years. In the moment, it felt like a big potential setback. I recall resorting to some choice Anglo-Saxon vocabulary for a minute or so. Now though, it is a distant memory. Much clearer in my mind is the gathering of new friends when we finally got to our destination, the evening around the campfire swapping riding stories.

Here's another, briefer example. My Dad has taken me, my sister, all of his grandchildren, and many others, on a hike of Katahdin, Maine's most spectacular mountain, many times. It's not an easy hike. It's frankly exhausting, much more of an endeavor than most people expect when they first get up that morning and confidently strap on a backpack.

Climbing Katahdin

See how rugged the climb is in the photo? That's Dad on the left. My point is that if you look at the mountain ahead, it looks insurmountable. If you put one hand over another, watch your step, place your feet carefully, and keep your mind on the goal, you get there. Every single person who has attempted that climb among the many excursions that I've been on has finished it. They've seen Maine from its highest point. They've walked the famed Knife Edge Trail. They've seen Chimney Pond from on high, where it looks like a tiny jewel among toy trees. That's what they remember, not the tiredness, the sore knees, the scraped knuckles. They remember succeeding.

That's my message today. Know where you want to go, and don't turn aside. Take the next step. Reach for the next handhold. Pause for a breath, but don't look back. Oh, and one more thing. This one is important. Take the right people with you on your journey.

Update from Ironwood Hollow

It has been a good week here at Ironwood Hollow. The Vanilla Tupelo Honey Mead started a week ago has been bubbling away quietly in the pantry. We've talked with a couple of mead-students who are now accomplished meaders in their own right about some batches in progress and how to handle unforeseen issues (when in doubt, wait for it to get better). We've moved some things around so as to get to the mead in the cellar a little more easily, with an eye to finding just the right bottles for what promises to be an epic Thanksgiving. 

We've had the first snow of any consequence since Honey and the kids have moved in, and we all watched a young buck browsing our blackberry bushes amidst the new white this morning before school. Everyone pitched in with the project of building a rack above our firewood in the woodshed, for all the reclaimed lumber that has been accumulating for future projects. 

The Mellow Hill Dome

The kids have taken to country life in a beautiful way, and we're just getting started. The boys have done nearly all the work of sifting gravel for the driveway repairs and a greywater drainage area for wash-water. All of them help with the firewood. This morning we watched that buck nibbling in the yard before the kids made their own tracks right across his on their way to the school-bus pickup.

We have started to arrange our thanksgiving, first one together. I realized this morning that I will just be a puddle of emotion for that entire day, as Honey's family meets mine, we fill the 'Hollow with more love and kin than ever before, and these cordwood walls (and our arms) embrace the newly grown family that we are bringing together. Tears of joy make the best seasoning, and since I know what a big old heap of sentimentality I am, I think I'll let Honey do the talking while I carve the turkeys. 

We just got our first delivery from Currier and Chives, a new local bakery CSA, and had home-made raisin bread toast for breakfast today! If there is a local farmer who sells any kind of shares in his product, that is such a great way to support the real local green economy. Ask at health-food stores and farmer's markets if there is anything like that around you; we have seafood, meat, vegetable, and bakery CSA's in our area, and support them as we can.

We're looking forward to a big building project next year, and have started pulling ideas together for that. Winter in Maine is long, and cozy evenings by the fire with graph paper and alternative building books will get us through. Watch for updates!

Filling Dad's woodshed.

About the kids and wood...my Dad, right next door in the Mellow Hill Dome, needed help this year with his firewood for the first time ever. He had it all cut ahead and seasoned in the old shed down by the barn, but needed to have three cords of wood moved up to the shed next to the house and workshop. In two easy afternoons the kids pitched in, and we scurried back and forth like an ant colony with wheelbarrows, until he had everything just the way he needs it for the winter. I was so proud of them...I haven't smiled that much through hard work in my whole life. 

So that's life at Ironwood Hollow this week. Family, wildlife, projects, hopes, dreams, blessings, trials, love, life, beauty, and yet more blessings. May your life be as full, and may you be as aware of that fullness as we are!

Coppice Thoughts

I have been mulling over a particular aspect of tree lore for the last few days, trying to find the best way to express it, to find its real place in my world-view. In the middle of this process, we've had a family health crisis that brought my thoughts into focus very quickly. I've always thought of trees and forests as a fine source of meaningful symbolism and metaphor, and today I can't think of a better way to say what I feel.

The roots of a coppiced tree feed the new shoots.

Coppicing is the practice of cutting a tree once, then waiting for numerous shoots to grow from the stump as new trees for various purposes. Trees that are harvested in this way include hazel, oak, willow, and one of my favorites, ironwood. What happens is the root system, unharmed by the cutting, feeds the living tissue in the outer rings and bark of the stump, and new trees grow in a ring from the already-established roots. Eventually the stump disappears under the new growth and becomes just a memory, but the old roots, and the new shoots, live on. 

Some of the shoots thrive, and some don't, but they all get a good start from that parental tree, nourished because of all the years it put in, reaching deep into the soil, finding nutrients, water, strength. I can still remember the day, probably twenty-five years ago, when my father, on one of our many fire-wood cutting days, explained this to me, pointing out a ring of maples, growing closely together, all the same size. He taught me that you can tell the size of the original tree by imagining a circle drawn by the centers of all of the new trees.

Men teach boys a lot by saying little, in my experience, and I'm not claiming that's all for the good. But it's true, and this is a good example. I have no doubt that Dad felt the symbolic weight of coppicing, that image of an adult tree passing on its strength to the new generation, of the shape of the parent tree echoing through the years in the pattern of new growth. He didn't say any of that, though. He just pointed out the plain facts, looking me in the eye, while I, a boy learning to be a man, listened carefully for levels of meaning. 

Coppiced trees show the size of the parent stump.

The depth of the understanding clicks into place later, as life provides more events, more experience, more joys, trials, beauties, loves. Seeing the way that my life, my sister's life, our children's lives, all echo his presence in many ways, no matter how far we may travel, and despite many other influences, I am rocked by the depth of meaning in so much of what he has given us. The tree lore is one thing, the unabashed love for the world around us is another, the wish to appreciate nature in quiet reflection. The humor and affection that he has always spread freely is still more of it. 


When you see a close ring of trees, take a moment to think about the gifts that carry through generations like the shape of that coppice. When you look at your parents, your siblings, your children, imagine them as a coppice, and appreciate the ways that we have been gifted by our elders. Think how we can gift our young with the strength of our roots too.

On Adversity

Okay, I have been slow to write a new entry here.Things are happening at the Hollow for sure, but something about having kids in the house, bringing pathogens home from school with their homework, has slowed me down a bit...but I've decided that I can type and cough at the same time, so here we go!

Before I get to today's topic of adversity, let me throw a teaser out there. For many years I have cleaned my chimney alone,and every year it has been a "dammit" kind of venture. This year I waited deliberately until after Honey and the kids had moved in, so the boys could have a taste of country living...or so I could get some youthful vigor added to one of the toughest jobs of my year, you decide. Coming soon, I'll write about Sunday's chimney-cleaning adventure, but I want to do it justice, so I will work on that when I don't feel like a virus-ridden dishrag with a breadstick for a spine...

My Honey has been unwell a couple of times since we've joined our lives together, and I've been just thrilled to be able to help. There's a funny thing that happens when independent types try to care for each other, and we've hit all the bases. 

"Honey, I made you some valerian tea with a special tincture, and a salad with lots of bacon..." God, I love puttering in the kitchen so I can bring her some comfort.

"What? Aren't you late for work?" Oh yeah, right, forgot that.

"But I want to take care of you!" More than anything else in the world.

"I'm fine...cough, cough...you don't have to do that...is that chocolate?"

The loveliest trees here are the ones that helped each other through adversity.

And so on. It's funny and beautiful all at once; we're each used to being independent, and at the same time we crave being loved enough to be cared for. So my last words before falling asleep last night were (in between coughs and sniffles) "If I'm better in the morning I'll do some bacon and eggs for the kids." Yeah, right.

Honey's last words were, "Harper, you're sick! Stop that!" And eventually I awoke to find the most wonderful woman in the world waking me up with a tray of coffee, bacon, orange juice, pumpkin bread with chocolate chips, and some ibuprofen. All served with that smile that melts my heart.


All I could think was, "When it's my turn again, how will I top this?" I'm thinking, herbal tea, chocolates, flowers, massage, a troupe of riverdancing rednecks, whatever it takes to care for my woman the way she takes care of her man. Is there anything in life better than this? Hard times come, that's just reality. We get sick, we have career setbacks, we have issues with friends, family, or neighbors, but if we take on all of those things as a team, loving each other past the hurt that any of it brings, then we are living a simply beautiful life. We live a life to be proud of, to look forward to, to awaken to with eagerness and a strong spirit. Then, when the hard times ease up, we are still together, stronger, in love more than ever, with even more reason to live in gratitude.