Writing and Reading on Paper

Yes, I have been remiss in my blogging. Sorry about that! My excuse is that I haven't had an interesting DIY or cooking project going for a little while, and have instead been busy with things like the water heater not working, the snow needing lots of snowblowing, and similar efforts. The real reason though, if I'm perfectly honest with you, is more complicated, and has to do with this medium, the internet. 

I was just reading a fellow bookseller's blog, and he very intriguingly related books to horses. I think his point was that, even though we have always loved horses and relied upon them, they have been needed far less in the mechanized era, but books have been more resilient in the digital age. That's how it struck me anyway. I enjoyed the post very much, and it got me thinking. I find that once I saw through the glittery show of how much the internet and social media can connect us, bring information to our fingertips, render encyclopedias obsolete, and so on, and realized how thin the experience of digital media is, I am more than ever in love with paper books.

Apple Valley Books in Winthrop Maine

It's not just the books, though. I am more in love with live acoustic music, song from vocal chords, friends to talk to in person, real food on a real plate, and most importantly, love with the woman who shares so many up-close breaths of real air with me. It goes on...chess with Soren at the kitchen table is vastly more rewarding than chess online with strangers. Frisbee or other real outdoor play will beat any online play you can conceive of. Pinterest may show us the most delicious pictures of bacon-wrapped goat-cheese monkey-bread with avocado glaze, or whatever, but the finest thing to cross my palate lately was cooked by my Honey in a real pot on a real stove, and was not shared or liked online. For those who want to know, it was sweet potato and brussels sprouts baked with herbs, bacon, and chevre, but it could have been ANYTHING and beaten out pinterest.

Back to the books though. What I've been doing with my time hasn't been something that shares well on a blog, at least not yet. I've been fine-tuning my song collection with the goal of recording, for one. I have about a half dozen songs that I think are as good as any of my favorite recorded songs, within my musical taste, and will find a way to get them out into the world. Also, I've been writing, a novel, on paper. It's moving along nicely, and I am happy with it. I'm writing in pen on lined notebooks, then revising it just a bit as I type it on the computer. I found my old typewriter, got a ribbon for it, and when I can type out on the porch so as not to deafen everyone in the house, I'll switch to that for my first draft. The relationship between our dreams and imagination, and the physical act of writing down words, is a magical thing that I believe will survive the digital age intact. In this age, it may well be an e-book at least as fast is it can be a paper book, but the book-lover in me hopes that paper copies will be kept and loved for years on good old-fashioned bookshelves by people who live most of their lives away from glowing computer screens.

I'll be back into the blogging, I promise. There are many projects waiting for spring, waiting for the workshop to be warm enough to do carpentry in, waiting for winter to loosen its hold on those of us who live under the snowdrifts until May up here in Maine. In the meantime, get off this computer thing, and go play, write, cook, read, be with your loved ones, eh?

Last Child in the Woods? Not Yet.

When I was about ten years old, my family moved from a small suburban home to a couple of dozen acres of freshly harvested pine forest. The land was littered with branches and huge stumps, with smaller trees leaning in to fill the empty spaces overhead left by the fallen pine giants.Even so,  I found those woods to be magical, and we were surrounded by plenty of undeveloped woods. Until then, my idea of "forest" had been an acre or so of woods tucked between our neighborhood and the nearest main road. The reality of a couple of square miles of trees, trails and streams was amazing.

I just love trees!

I learned to go deep into the woods, far enough to hear nothing but birds and rustling critters. When I wrapped my arms around the larger trees, I could feel the earth and wind through them. The rough bark on my cheek, the constant whispering of the leaves, the ankle-deep moss, soaked into me, made me a country boy in no time. Inspired by Robert Frost's poem "Birches," I climbed leggy trees until they bent to let me down. I felt that call to climb into the heights of the branches, and beyond, but also the pull of the earth below, so eloquently described by Mr. Frost nearly a hundred years ago. As he wrote, earth's the right place for love, but also, one could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 

Beeches in winter

Inspired by the Tarzan novels, I made pathways among the trees, lashing cedar logs between the upper trunks with nylon baling twine. I would run along these balance-beams, hanging onto branches, from one tree to the next, and the next, and never fell. I know that my father, who grew up with a forest too, not far away, knew the importance of giving his children such an opportunity. Those seasons among the trees impressed me deeply. Years later, when I was at last able to build my own home on that same acreage, using some of the trees that I had known as a boy, it felt like I had never left.

Among the hemlocks that I cut, peeled, and dragged out for floor framing was one that had grown around some knotted nylon baling twine about twenty feet off the ground. When I discovered it, I realized it was the only remaining trace of those treetop trails I had built. Those days of playing Tarzan came back to me in a rush, and I gave that particular log a place of honor in the house. I know exactly where it is under the floor-boards now. I think of how I've come back to a new beginning, and how a new generation is now held up by that log as they follow their own youthful, dreaming paths into the world by way of these acres of woods.

Think how those logs beneath our floor, cut from trees that I grew up climbing, are the foundation for the same kind of magic happening all over again. We're giving our kids the great gift of learning the smell of spring leaves, the feel of a tree beneath you swaying in the wind, the music of crisp leaves underfoot, and the crack of freezing bark in the middle of the coldest winter's nights. If I can borrow a phrase from a really important book, "The Last Child in the Woods" is still out there, and I would say that there are many of them, since I know of so many who are raising nature-aware kids. Not everyone can leave the cities and suburbs, but I am so glad that our kids have this chance, and encourage anyone to find ways to get their children out under some trees as often as they can.

Sneak Preview of Bookshelf Door

The last thing I need to do in order to fully finish the Quest Room, once a guest room, now home to two teenage boys, is to put a door on it. I have always wanted a hidden door, disguised as a bookshelf, and it turns out that the boys like that idea as much as I do! I haven't begun yet, other than to start looking for the right wood at the transfer station, and planning in my head how it will work. 

Along with the door, I need to finish the wall that it will slide over, and that will be done using the reclaimed lumber. We had an impromptu nail-pulling lesson yesterday, and with the boys' help, cleaned enough wood for that whole job! After that is done, I think how I will do it is to use a barn-door rail-type of hanger, with a nice bookshelf built onto a sturdy back. The bottom edge will stay in place when it's moved if I install a couple of small wheels (hidden) that stay in a shallow floor-groove. 

The Quest Room

I'll be documenting that job's progress, as well as some other interior work, over the coming weeks. I just wanted to share the plan, and document a "before" photo of the room. Filled with boy-stuff now, it may not be approachable with a camera for some time (kidding, guys), and the door-project photos might just show the outside. I think I can do this whole project with recycled wood, and will be very conservative in my hardware purchases, so stay tuned.

On Being Alone

I'm reading Weight of Stone, the second volume of Laura Anne Gilman's fantasy series, The Vineart War. In it, the main character, Jerzy, finds himself alone for the first time in his life, just for a few hours. He has always been in some company or other, always working alongside somebody, sleeping in a space with others, told what to do and where to be. The experience of being completely alone unnerves him, leaving him frightened and uneasy.

Apple Valley Books or your local Independent.

This struck me as something to think about. Of course, with my love of the outdoors, there have been times when I have been away from humanity entirely for hours on end, snowshoeing, hiking, motorcycling. But in the more general sense, I grew up in a family that held me close in a fine way. I went to school. I never went more than a month without being in a relationship. I never lived alone.

Until now. For months now I have been alone at home more often than not. Evenings fixing a solitary dinner, nights with nobody to reach for, mornings with only cats to talk to. I don't listen to the radio much, and don't have a television. I don't have internet access at home. By "alone" I mean much more alone than most people think when they hear the word. I am not looking for sympathy here, don't get me wrong. My phone is always within reach, and when it rings it is either my sister, my mother, my father, a good friend, or, best of all, my Honey. I am loved, and have places to go where I will be hugged. My Honey spends all the time with me that she can. We've been moving carefully toward living together, not rushing, so as to give the kids time to adjust to me, this new guy in their life. I know there are people MUCH more alone than I am, so crushing solitude is NOT what I'm talking about.

I find myself imagining what other solitary people hear in their heads as they go through their days. As for me, I'm typically male in that whatever project I'm working on takes up 95% of my brain most of the time. I can be working on the railings for the stairs, and have nothing in my head but "32 1/4 inches, remember to turn it the right way, don't forget to bring the drill bit back up the stairs, that one has a nice twist in it, will be pretty, 32 1/4 inches, are there enough screws left in the box, probably going to have to sweep up after this..." Nothing but all that AND an awareness that my Honey will call sometime before bedtime, that I am doing this work because I want our house to be a haven for the whole family, that soon there will be teenager radio, the thump of a basketball on the porch, the smell of food cooking that I'm not stirring, the give-and-take of floor space, quiet space, bathroom time, that come with a full house.

All that is in my head too, and I don't feel alone. I feel beyond lucky, beyond blessed, to know that even though nobody is in the house with me for a few hours, even though the thrushes sing me to sleep, the chickadees wake me up, and I talk to the cats more than to anyone else, I am in somebody's heart, and that, for a long time to come, there are people I love who need me and love me too. Solitude does not mean loneliness.

Scooby and I talk a lot.

Back to Jerzy in the fantasy novel, what happens is that, right away, he finds an amazing inner strength, a magic that surprises him. In the real world it's not that simple, but I know, right up there on the short list of things that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that truly loving someone, the right someone, the one who knows me fully and loves me anyway, means that I am never alone, that my life is far better than it ever could be without that love. The proof is in where my mind goes when nobody else is here. My thoughts don't go to the Bahamas, the upcoming football season, or whether the fish might be biting, but to the fine constellation of love that fills my heart-space. And that makes me want to write another love-song, which just may be my own magical response to being alone while I work toward our life together.