Long Time Coming

Check out my (at last!) recording at bandcamp.com

I guess you may have noticed, if you are a regular reader of mine, that I have been absent for way too long. Sorry about that! Here's what's going on...

A long-time friend of mine, James Lindenschmidt of Bardic Brews and Crafted Recordings, offered to help me with some recording. I have been a musician for my whole adult life, playing folk harp, fingerstyle guitar, hammered dulcimer, and an assortment of other instruments, but in the recent past my songwriting went into overdrive, fed by the life changes that came with falling deeply in love. Happily, my musicianship has kept pace with my heart and my writing aspirations, and I have a steadily-growing collection of really good songs to show for it! 

I went into overdrive, consulting with my Honey about which were the best songs to break out with, practicing like mad, making sure I had the words just the way they should be...and new songs kept intruding! But eventually, just a couple of weeks ago, Jim came to Ironwood Hollow, toting all sorts of esoteric equipment, and Honey left us to our own devices. He told me that he has always wanted to try recording in our home, with its very unique acoustics that come from the cordwood masonry, the high ceilings, and the curved walls. 

Long story as short as possible, we had about three hours of good recording time all to ourselves, and in that time we recorded six of my songs. For each of them, I played my solo arrangement and sang at the same time, then went back and recorded a harmony track and a second guitar track in some cases. The one that sticks in my mind the most is when I said, "Jim, let me just hear the tune, and I'll play through the lead guitar, and see if I remember how it goes..." When I was finished, he just said, "Oh yeah, I was recording; that's great. What's next?" 

Six songs of spiritual love recorded in a cordwood masonry meadhall!

It was that kind of session. Jim's knowledge of recording and innate calm made it a pure pleasure. Followed by many hours of his skilled time mixing and mastering, one of the finest gifts I've ever received, this session has turned into an EP of a small sampling of my recent music. (An EP is an extended play, several songs, but not long enough to be called a CD). I have been working my way through the process of making the songs available, now that Jim has declared the tracks finished. Actual CDs are in process, and I'll post details about that when it's all set up. In the meantime, harpermeader.bandcamp.com is where to go to hear them. I hope you will purchase all or some of them for download! Bandcamp offers music affordably, with the option of paying anywhere from a minimum up to what you feel the music is worth. They will appear in the other usual venues shortly (itunes, amazon, etc), as that process does its thing. 

The changes in my life and my heart that my Honey has brought to me are only hinted at in these songs, but I am so pleased to be able to share a bit of that joy with you. There will be more, since I've determined to make songwriting a major part of my future. Stay tuned. Among these songs you will find a steamy celebration of midsummer loving (Magic in the Moonlight), a rousing sailing song (Snapping Sails), the perfect tune for when you're storm-stayed with your love (Snowdrift Love), a partial-capoed pattern-picked epic-love-song for the guitarists among us, with a nod to the great love-poet, Rumi, (The Glassblower's Breath), and more.

I hope that you like my work. My hope is that this project will fund the next recording, and that my love of music, words, spirit, life, and my Honey will become something more than a hobby, that it will bring a piece of that joy that is my life into the homes of many.

Okay, a final note...anywhere else you find my songs, they're likely to cost about the same, but at bandcamp, you get the lyrics for free, and you can hear the whole song right there before you decide to part with a dollar or two. Also, just sayin'...as one of my blog-readers, you know where to find me. If you play, and want to know my chords, or get a hint about the picking patterns that I use, you know where to find me. 

More on Wood and Men

Blowing the sweat-lodge fire to life at Ironwood Hollow

In my last post I speculated about some kind of workshop that would bring men and boys together to learn/share/grow in their experience with wood. I don't think gender is a defining point in this, but my own experience is based in being first a boy and then a man, so that's coloring my thinking. After I wrote that piece, I found this photo in my camera, and there's so much in it. Please allow me to ramble.

On its face, what's happening is that the boys have decided to build a sweat-lodge. They found saplings that they could bend into shape, hunted down an assortment of tarps, old blankets, and plastic sheeting, and scoured the area for rocks to build a fire-pit. In the picture they are nursing a fire to life, to heat rocks and see if their sweat-lodge can be made sweaty and smoky. Right there, just that, is the kind of thing that I know in my heart is more good for them than a thousand hours of TV or computer time.

My own personal overlay of this picture adds so much more. That hammock in the foreground? I put that up last summer, thinking that, with my Honey and the kids moving in, I would surely need to wander out there with a frosty beer and a good book more than once in a while. You know...still my mind, commune with nature, let the kid-thing fade for a few minutes a week...

I've lain on that hammock exactly twice. For no more than ten minutes each time. The reason I bring it up is that the reason is so great; I don't ever have the impulse to go hide from this new life of having the house filled with my Honey and the kids. If I'm out there lost in a book, pretending there isn't a handful of lives closely connected to mine within a frisbee-throw, then I'm missing so much that is incredibly important. Those kids will grow up and move out into their own lives before we know it, and while they are here, I'm not going to miss it! Also, back to the picture, I find a sweetness in the way the boys thought that right next to my getaway hammock would be a great place for their sweatlodge. How cool is that?

Okay, there are even more layers to why this is such a rich photo. Just to the right, out of the frame, is where I have my shrine to the spirits of place, the magical energy that is unique to our little patch of forest. When I made it, years ago, I envisioned a life before me of settling quietly into an increasingly solitary life, mellowing under the aging trees that I know well, fondly remembering my youth of climbing those trees...I'm reaching for, and can't find to my satisfaction, the words to express how incredible it is to me that I had that vision all wrong. That saplings growing under the protection of my limbs would grow right there, reaching for the sun, that another generation of boys would scrape their knuckles wrestling chunks of stone out of the ground and dragging logs around, finding a niche of their own in the forest that provided my own growing-up space not so long ago. The spirits of this place have new ears to whisper into.

The more I realize how insidious the influence of technology in our lives has become, the more I want to listen to the trees, the soil, and my own heart, the more convinced I am that "Go out and play" may have been the wisest thing our parents ever said to us. Let's say it more often, to our kids and to ourselves.

Mud Season Musings

I'm going to start with a confession. My mom, a dyed-in-the-wool Mainer, moved to Florida quite a few years ago, and stayed there for most of the year, only coming home for Christmas and a little bit of the summer. My confession is that, among all the kids and step-kids, I'm the only one who never went to visit. My sister went, and even found parts of Florida that she liked. My step-brothers and step-sisters all went, and more than once. I even sent my daughter down alone on a plane, and she had a nice time. For myself, though, I just knew I would hate Florida.

As an avid reader of mystery novels, you'd think I would love it there, the home of not only Clinton "Skink" Tyree and Marion "Doc" Ford, but also of the father of Florida Tough Guys, Travis McGee. Nope, even that's not enough. The reason that I knew I wouldn't like it is that having a frost is so crazy there that it makes national news. That, and the fact the you could throw a frisbee over its highest point from its lowest point with little effort. Sorry, but this Maine boy likes his seasons, and his hills.

Ironwood Hollow Awaits Spring

Eventually, and sadly long after Mom gave it up and moved back home, I went to Florida for a weekend, and was completely vindicated. It's terrible there, or at least it is for me. The weather was mild, in the fifties, and people kept apologizing for the cold, as though their state was in breach of contract. There are no hills, neither up nor down, and that flatness applies to the weather as well. I couldn't wait to get back home, and will never go there again. That doesn't mean, of course, that I'll stop reading Randy White and Carl Hiaasen! This morning, snuggled in bed with my Honey and watching a drizzle feed the thriving crop of mud that is taking over our dooryard, we were talking about this, and realized that we both have the same prejudice.

Here it is; real, honest-to-god seasons, so that you have to change your wardrobe, either start a fire or open a lot of windows, and adjust to new waves of wildlife that follow those seasons, build character and give a shape to our lives. Yes, of course I get tired of shoveling and snow-blowing, of getting up before dawn to go out and be turned into Frosty while wrestling the old Gravely snowblower up and down our quarter-mile driveway, only to come in and shake life into my frozen fingers in front of a smoky fire. Yes, of course I can't wait for mud season to be over, when I don't know from day to day whether I'll end up frame-deep at the crest of the driveway, needing three men and a come-along to get out. Yes, of course I am ready for fall long before the mosquitoes, blackflies, and deer-flies have gotten tired of bleeding me dry in the hot sun. Absolutely, each season has its time, sometimes more than enough of it, and I keep having to adjust as one gives way to the next.

We can't imagine life without real seasons!

The point of it all, though, is that the process of loving, hating, and adjusting to, each new season is an enormously important part of what makes life interesting. I waited all summer to be able to kick through piles of autumn leaves with my Honey during our first fall season together. Then in the fall we both dreamed of being snowed in together, of watching the trees out the window, sagging under pillows of snow while we stayed snug under covers. Now we're eagerly awaiting that first day that's warm enough to sit on the porch in the sun, maybe with sweaters on. If every week were more or less the same, it would be like living in a house with only one book to read, wouldn't it? The sameness would be stifling. Sledding the car out through the deepening mud this morning, I celebrated in my head, thanking the universe for seasons, for cycles, for the woman who watches just as keenly as I do for that first touch of gold in the willows, then in the forsythia, then for the first north-bound goose, and then...and then...

Happy Mud Season!

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?

The Season of Thankfulness

Welcome to Ironwood Hollow

We all have family stories that warm our hearts, that remind us of the very best part of our heritage. Here's one of mine. It's short, but I still can't tell it without choking up. My grandfather Arnold died suddenly of a heart attack when I was a young boy. He was a formal, intimidating man to us kids, and unfortunately we never got to know him better than that. Shortly after retiring, he and my Grammy Carrie had almost all of the family, kids, cousins, etc., to their beautiful cottage on the coast of Maine, and that's when he went. It was sudden, and the family has never gotten together again as completely as we did for his funeral that weekend. Her name was the last word he spoke.

A few years ago my mother told me that Grammy Carrie, who outlived him by many years, kept his bedroom slippers under the bed until her own passing. She never loved another. That kind of devotion makes my heart swell with hope for humankind. I just can't think of another way to say it. 

Grammie's memory lives, and not just in the Fiestaware!

One of the ways Grammie Carrie lives on in our family is in our dishware, as odd as that sounds; I remember sitting at her old kitchen table when I visited them as a boy, having breakfast cereal in an original green fiesta bowl. She loved her collection of fiestaware. To this day I can't hold a green piece of fiesta without thinking of her, and a varied assortment of fiesta is what we use for everyday dishware, as well as for special occasions. That table, where Grampy used to keep his feet under the support bar so as to catch any of us kids, or our parents when they were little, who might used it as a footrest (against the rules), was laden with a feast on fiestaware for this Thanksgiving. This year our newly grown family sat around that same table, held hands, said grace, and carried the memory of my Grampy and Grammy forward into a heartwarming, wonderful, new time of our lives.

The connection that struck me in that moment is that I finally understand the devotion that she had for him. Meeting my Honey's eyes at the far end of this table, with our newly blended family connecting us along the length of the big room,  I realized that although times change, love is powerful and enduring. May we all find that one perfect other, the one whose slippers could never be taken out from under the bed. May our children and grandchildren learn from us that such a thing is possible.

Almost Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving I will truly count my blessings!

Love songs by nature are about gratitude, and my latest is no exception. Coming up on Thanksgiving, I feel like a kid before Christmas. Much of my family will meet much of my Honey's family for the first time. I will be a puddle of emotion, there's no doubt, watching her make a banquet hall of our little castle in the woods, seeing our parents watching us both finally be arm in arm with the love that we have always needed, seeing generations come together under the roof of our sheltering home.

We are both keenly feeling the fortune of having our parents still with us, of watching the children move out into the world in their individual ways, of having brothers and sisters who support and love us, whose lives we support with our own love. With all of this swirling around in my heart, I've written another song, one that only scratches the surface of these emotions, but that's okay. It leaves space for more songs, next time I stay up late, lightly playing, while the love of my life, and the kids, sleep peacefully in the Hollow. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

  -Harper

"Satisfied" copyright Eric Robbins November 10, 2012

By the sweat of my father, and the blood of my mother,
I've got no call to be faulting the weather, I'm satisfied...
I see the leaves blowing one way, and that crow flies another.
As long as we two are together, I'm satisfied...

    How could I ask for more than I've got, 
    When each day begins with you?
    Got my head all up among the stars,
    And my feet in the morning dew, and I've got you!

The wind blows the world 'round, see the treetops and the whitecaps.
Warmed by the fireplace, and held in your arms, I'm satisfied...
When I know that you're coming home, I wait by those front steps.
I watch over you, and you keep back the storms, I'm satisfied...

Got a roof to hold the snowfall, heavy blankets for that winter chill.
The two of us are safe against the deep December frost, I'm satisfied...
Your heart is my compass rose, to show the way like the stars at night,
Steering every homeward, though once I wandered lost, I'm satisfied...

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!

Living with Your Mistakes

When I started my house, I was a rank beginner in construction. Truth be told, I had never built anything more involved than bookshelves at that point in my life. I had the great gift of an acre of land to work with, and it was a hilly acre. I read as much as I could about what I was about to undertake, and then I simply dove in. One of the first things I did, after cutting trees and pulling brush away, was to lay out the foundation of the house. This was an ark-shaped perimeter, on a hillside, with irregular bedrock just a foot or two below the surface. I worked out how to use a water level, which is made from a length of garden hose, duct tape, and a couple of two-liter soda bottles with the bottoms cut off of them, filled with water. It sounds like something that should need two people to work properly, and it is, but I did what I could with it. Alone in the woods, I laid out my best approximation of a symmetrical three-cornered foundation with two curved walls and a rise of about eleven feet from end to end.

Pouring the footing...

Later, after I had done my best with the footing, with a lot of help from friends and family, then done my best with the double-width, curved, uphill, cement block foundation, I learned that my curves, as laid out, were not exactly symmetrical. Actually I had several inches of irregularity, and I told myself that if I just built the floor, then built the cordwood walls as best I could, I would figure out what to do with the roof when I got to that point. Nobody would know the difference. 

I expect that an engineer would have done a better job of cleaning up after such a start, but I'm not an engineer. Three years later, when I was closing in on roofing over the curved end of the house, I spent many an hour sitting up there on top of the cordwood, cussin' and figurin', trying my best to make the roof look good on top of the structure that I had made. Ultimately, I would have to say that it turned out okay, but not anywhere near perfect. My placement of the piers for the floor structure brought me similar difficulties. My cabinets in the bathroom and kitchen are enough off-square that I can't possibly buy off-the-rack parts, and must fabricate every last little piece to fit.

Today I find myself reviewing past mistakes, of course wishing I hadn't made them, for sure wanting to find a good outcome anyway. The echoes of those mistakes resonate through so much of what followed, and I have to find my way through my present, all the while adjusting to the course set by what I did back in the day. 

Roofing was so complicated because of mistakes in the foundation!

By now I'm sure you have realized that I'm prone to metaphor and allegory. How does all of this apply to life in general? Well, for one, I have to accept that I laid out my house, and also my life, in a way that would cause me trouble later, and I have to deal with it as best I can. For another, if I can look at that wavy roof, and realize that it works okay, that it reflects the best that I knew how to do at the time, and believe that I truly tried to make it good in spite of a bad start, I should be able to look at other aspects of my life the same way. Sure, I should have done things differently, and I would go back and change things if I could. I can't, though, and can only do better going forward, while doing my damnedest to make better anything that I messed up on my way here.

A difference between the house and the rest of my life is that I had the best intentions when I laid out my foundation. With the rest of my life, I have to admit that selfishness and lack of consideration were a big part of where I went wrong. What can I do about this? Time will tell, but the same answer is there. I can't change the past, but I can damned well avoid making the same mistakes. I can adjust my course, and simply do everything I can to make the rest of my work, of my life, much better, not just for myself, but for those I love.

One lesson I can take from the way my foundation echoes into my roof and everything else in my house is that when you can't undo things, you can at least do everything you can to make the eventual outcome better. The first step (of many) is to realize where you went wrong, and why.

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.

Joining, Growing, Trusting

Most of my posts so far have been practical. By that I mean that they have been about fitting things together, creating something from disparate parts, paying attention to detail, and so on. This one won't be. It is about intangibles, feelings, magic, belief, and faith. While I have been focusing on the hands-on part of our life in my writing these days, making a room for the girls, cooking with style while keeping it healthy and budget-wise, teaching the boys to build things, and so on, what really drives my life now is less easily defined. 

I can't take a picture of that moment when my Honey's mothering skills wake me up once again to the finer points of parenting, even though I have been raising children for decades. I can't take a picture of the way that a moment of teamwork, her knowing what I need, me knowing that I can count on her, can do for a challenging situation. I can't take a picture of my Honey empowering me to say no to her, unlearning everything I have learned in previous relationships. There's no way to photograph the moment when she trusts me to parent (and that is one of the biggest leaps of faith out there; you know it if you have children), or when I realize that anything at all she might bring to our relationship will enrich my life, enabling me to carry things through my door that I can't even identify.

That last moment was a great example of what I'm driving at. Unloading a few last-minute things as part of our Great Household Joining, I carried a thing that looked a bit like a wrought-iron Christmas tree. Between you and me, I had no idea what it was, and the point is that I didn't care. I would have moved in a zebra-striped llama without question, that's how smitten I am, but don't tell her that, because she might like llamas. I just figured it was a whoosywingus of some kind, meant something to her, and we were going to find room for it.

Balancing that out, and in the interest of leaving enough room to move about the house, Honey is honestly wanting me to say no to some stuff. This is new to me, and I treasure it. This morning I took a deep breath and said no to yet another bookshelf. We have give-and-take going here, and consideration for each other in everything we do. I could say no to the mitten-dryer (not a Christmas tree after all, and great in a place with a wood-stove and long winters), but I won't. She knows very well that I would say yes to almost anything, but will do everything she can to not overdo it.

This is complicated, and a two-edged sword. On the one hand, I trust her to be making the very best decision, and I believe she feels the same way about me. On the other hand, I believe that if I question something she decides, we can sort that out without endangering our relationship, and I believe that she knows the same thing. Neither of us simply caves in, each of us is empowered, respected, in decisions large and small. As I write this I'm wondering if it is as big a deal to others as it is to me. There must be many couples out there who know this intuitively, but I know that it is new and wonderful to me.

Now that I think back on it, when I said that this post wouldn't be practical, I was wrong. It is about fitting things together, creating something from disparate parts, and paying attention to detail. It's the most beautiful undertaking I have ever taken on, and it's practical, essential, crucial in a very real sense. Life would not be worth living without those intangibles, feelings, magic, belief, faith, and yes, Love.

More on the girls' room

I wrote already about the girls' room, how it started as a "library" filled with boxes of books, bookshelves, assorted household spare stuff, etc. How I decided to make it into a bedroom for Honey's girls, using reclaimed lumber, with built-in bunks, hemlock door-trim, and so on.

Since then, the family has come together. Honey is moving in, bringing the kids, the boys into the Quest Room, and one girl for now into the Library. I already knew that the boys loved the Quest Room, and still have plans to make it even more awesome for them, but I had been holding my breath for the girl's response to the converted Library. When they called me, with the sound-track of thumping up and down stairs, the shouts, of, "Mom, it's so cool, there's even..." I could just feel my heart swell too big for my chest. Kids in the middle of major life-changes are so sensitive, so fragile, that I was just hoping against hope that she would just like her space enough to accept moving fairly well.  I'm all choked up right now, days later, just remembering the sound of her voice when she first saw her new room. Life is built around these moments; don't ever doubt it.

Anyway...I just wanted to add a post here with a couple of pictures of the room right before she moved in. Not shown is the second bed for whichever sister or friend might want to be here for a time, or the inevitable teen posters, or all the stuff that makes a teenage girl's room personal. If you're parents, you can imagine, and I hope the thought makes you smile...

You can see the bunk, no longer looking like a two-by-four and scrap project, made up pretty, the colors (my sister the florist tells me these are the big colors for weddings this summer), and the chalkboard panels.The pictures were taken in the middle of the night, because that's when we finally put the finishing touches to it, the painted balcony floor being the final step.

The last view is the doorway showing the main hall, with the recently-added balcony railing, and the deck-painted floor that was a last-minute marathon, just before the kids got to see where they were moving. I will never forget that phone call, when she first saw the room, loved the colors, loved the bunk, the balcony view, and made me, once again, a very, very happy man.

The natural building/frugality content here is that these walls are entirely made from reclaimed lumber, the whole room being finished for just the cost of the screws, nails, and paint. Home renovations can be affordable and still give beautiful results. The emotional content is that money doesn't build a family; love does. It takes time to do work like this, but if you turn off the TV, put down your cell-phone, stay off facebook, and choose to do something meaningful, you can have as many moments like this in your life as you can handle.

On Uncertainty

I first thought of home-building as a metaphor many years ago, when my Dad, talking about how there seems to be more to do in his home all the time, things left unfinished, early work needing to be rebuilt before planned further work is even started, said there is proverb about that.

"Confucius say, 'Man finish house, man die.' I don't know if he really did say that, but he might have..."*

Floor plan from years ago...updates needed!

Musing about that has taken me very far into what I know about my place in the world, as it relates to my home. The structure is an extension of me, all parts built for a reason, to shelter, warm, hold up, express, comfort. If it is ever fully completed, I can only imagine the great sigh of satisfaction that will whoosh out of me, but...then what? I hope that there will always be more to do, new needs to meet, adjustments to make so as to keep up with changes, in the house, in my life, in the needs of my family.

When I was building the cordwood walls, more than a decade ago, I would take my lunch and a beer, sit on the highest point of the foundation, and imagine the fully formed home that was taking shape so slowly in front of me. From that vantage, the curved walls of the house reach out and downhill, like your arms when you are reaching for a hug. I came to think of those walls as my arms, aware that they would shelter, welcome, and comfort the people that I bring into my life, family and friends. That visualization is very powerful for me, especially now, as I ready myself and the house to welcome my Honey and the kids, and occasionally all of the new people in her extended family, parents and siblings. My grown daughter is on her own path, and those arms/walls have been empty except for my own presence for enough time that I know I am ready, the house is ready, to fill with laughter, footsteps, rattling dishes, cooking smells, brother-sister arguments, frisbees...okay, the frisbees will be outside, first rule.

Furthering the metaphor, my style of working on the house is a reflection of life, at least to my mind. I'm looking at the stairs in this picture, and seeing so much as I contemplate the logistics of getting that railing to turn a corner and go down to the first floor, sturdy and attractive.

Without going into too much detail, I'm working out how to fasten, support, and shape an armload of wood so that it has rigidity carried up from those heavy hemlock logs on each side of the treads. It's complicated, and involves trusting that a little support and strength from each piece will combine into a sturdy whole, and that little flaws here and there will become, when all is said and done, not problems, but character. I'll trust my experience, trust the materials, trying to foresee potential errors, not borrowing trouble, but looking for the way to proceed that makes the best use of the situation. When it's done, the girls will have support to hang onto as they climb to their rooms, unaware of the work and care that went into it, but with a sense of security that will serve them well. The philosophizing that is going into this may escape them as well...

Where does the work on the stair end, and the metaphor for good work in my life begin? I have made plenty of mistakes, done things poorly that I can't undo. I can only try to make the most of the result, and try to do better going forward. I have also done things well by blind luck, like having an extra room or two planned in, long before I knew that I would have this incredible woman with her beautiful family joining me. The "study" in the floor-plan above, is now going to be "the boys' room," and the "library" will be "the girls' room." Metaphor or simple reality, I only know that it is all meaningful to me, and that I will bring my best to it with as much awareness and heart as I have in me.

*On random coolness (serendipity?), I did a search for the phrase, and found it quoted by Bryce Black, who seems at first glance like somebody I have a lot in common with, and really interesting! I guess my Dad didn't make that one up after all...

I've Learned the Answer is Yes

I've Learned the Answer is Yes

by Eric Robbins

I'll never forget that first night

When we came to each other,

A heron in flight

And a harper fleeing the night.

In darkness the longing, the pain

And our fiery need,

For once unrestrained,

But then a question remained.

To love in the daylight we need

To be clear about whether

Relationship's seeds

Are something we'll water, once freed.

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.

Nesting

I am nesting. Have been for months now, and the whole process is culminating in a way that makes my toes curl and my stomach get the best kind of butterflies. I've been building my house for the last 15 years, raised a daughter in it during much of the process, and often look around when I am alone here, unsatisfied, seeing unfinished edges everywhere. Things like ceilings not painted, doors not trimmed out, floors still only exposed plank in some places. Everything has changed now, though; I am in love. Crazy in love, in the kind of love that fills my heart to overflowing, that has me writing love-songs unabashedly on a weekly basis. The kind of love that always used to make me sad when I saw it in a movie, read it in a book, heard it in a song, because I knew I didn't have it, though I wanted it more than anything. 

So here I am, a grown man feeling like a teenager in some ways, alone in a very unconventional unfinished home, with the woman-better-than-my-dreams moving in, bringing her kids, her cats, her enthusiasm, her own hopes and dreams. Am I excited? Oh, Hell yes. Nervous? Well, of course. Prepared? Oh, boy...

Some of that reclaimed wood.

For months I have been making room, hoping against hope that she would say yes. Several unfinished rooms had become, over the years, floor-to-ceiling storage areas. The "utility room" is simply mounds of tools, scrap wood, totes, motorcycle gear, with just enough room for a litter box and a bowl for cat food in the middle. The "library" was, until not long ago, simply filled with boxes of books, the mismatched shelves stacked with rugs, photos, paperwork, unwanted nicknacks, camping gear, and the like. The "balcony" was blessedly hidden behind some stapled-up batik fabric and overflowed with mead-buckets in various stages of production, books, lumber, junk, empty boxes. We're not talking about clutter here, but about whole parts of my house that couldn't be navigated without a flashlight, a duster, and some climbing skills. 

I'll be coming back in detail to some of the specific projects, but for today I just want to touch on some of them briefly. The bathroom, for years mostly finished, is finally getting its corner trim, small slats of cedar customized from cedar closet-paneling. The outdoor shower, long a fond dream, came together in two days of intense soldering and drilling, and now needs only some enclosing and floor-surfacing. The balcony and stairs are getting a complete make-over, railings made of peeled hemlock saplings. Watch for that entry; for the cost of some screws and just a handful of three- and four-inch boards, I am building what would cost hundreds to build conventionally. Saving lots of money, at the same time as conserving natural resources, is great when you can do it, and I'll talk in detail about how this works for me.

Almost ready to tame the wild railing risers.

The library is empty now, and I've been surfacing it with reclaimed lumber from the transfer station, my goal to finish the room with only the cost of screws, nails, and paint. One wall is surfaced completely with cupboard and other doors. A built-in bunk and a secret cabinet are further signs of nesting, wanting so much to have two girls find it beautiful and magical as their new bedroom.

What once was going to be a study for me, then morphed into a guest-room, can now be home to two teen boys. Since I made it from my boyhood dreams of "the perfect bedroom," I have some reason to hope that they will like it, secret shelves, hanging chair, curved walls, and all. Am I prepared? Not yet, but working on it is indescribably satisfying.

This journal will be about much more than my nesting, this process of making my home suitable for my Beloved, sweeping, fixing, improving, building; today that is my focus, but as my new life, OUR new life, grows, many other facets of this love-filled path will find their way to these pages, and I will try my damnedest to bring you inspiration, motivation, hope, beauty, song, art, and goodwill.