Cup of Bliss and Snapping Sails

I have heard it said that a danger in songwriting is when your songs become too personal, too autobiographical. I can understand why that could be; I have written some songs at low points that, while very good, I'm not ready to share. When you're a sensitive songwriter-poet, one rocky spell, one terribly sad day, can send a song onto your pages that doesn't really represent your life. Some day I will share those songs, but not now. The "Wow. My Honey!" songs actually do represent my life, and I'm sharing those now. 

Cup of Bliss by Harper Meader

My song, Cup of Bliss, is an exception in a way, because it alludes to having trouble together. The line, "I don't know where we'll be tomorrow" really needs to be there, if only because it's true (and I know people deeply in love can relate) that my greatest fear is losing my Honey. What is also true, but couldn't be worked into the song, is that I know with my whole being that I can only be with Her going forward, or alone. More than anything, the song is about how as a poet I feel the depth and mystery of the world moving within me, demanding that I write it down somehow, that I sing it. Finding love has woken that side of me up in a way that I'm still coming to grips with. For me, the most powerful line, referring to a transformative dream that I will never forget, is "I'll keep my seat, the tiller-handle tightly held while the current rages."

The title, Cup of Bliss, is in fact a deliberate echo of Amos Lee, who is a major inspiration to me. My song is not really on-topic with his song, Cup of Sorrow, but that phrase has worked into my head far enough that it has become an important inner symbol of mine. It's hard to put into words, but the way we experience our world with those close to us is a cup that we drink together, and what kind of cup it is becomes an essential part of our shared experience. I'm truly blessed to share a cup of bliss.

For the musicians, I play this in standard tuning with the capo on two. Chords are Amaj7, A, E, Asus2, A7, and Ddim. I very much enjoy working with clustered chords that move together easily, and this set is very good that way.

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Snapping Sails by Harper Meader

When I first started playing mumblety-summat years ago, the music I most wanted to play was that of Gordon Bok, Stan Rogers, and Gordon Lightfoot. Whales and sails, hauling nets, hardened tars, schooners, clippers, sea-foam...oh, the language of sailing is so evocative, gut-level imagery for someone like me, with sailing in my genes! 

One day when I was practicing my way through all the love-songs that have come to me me recently, my Honey said, "You know, Harper, you really should write a sailing song since you love the sea so much..." I just nodded at the time, but one day at work, maybe a week later, Snapping Sails came to me, all in one sitting, and I like it very much. Of course, true to form, by the end of it, it's another love-song; I just can't help myself.

For the musicians, this one is dead easy. Standard tuning, using Am, F, Dm, G, and C. At the end of the chorus you'll need to do a little "add4" to the C chord with your pinky, and that's it. I play it two-fingered, but it strums well too.

The Glassblower's Breath and Magic in the Moonlight

"The way the scent of wild roses makes me want to pull her down, down by the ocean..."

Rumi, that seer and poet tormented by love, wrote often of the consuming power of ecstasy, the ecstasy sometimes of love, sometimes of simply touching the universe. My very favorite Rumi poem, The New Rule, has a couple of lines that have stayed with me my entire adult life. One is:

"Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
And fall toward the glassblower’s breath."

The other is right at the end:

"Only love.
Only the holder the flag fits into,
And wind. No flag."

Don't worry, I'm not going to interpret mystic love poetry for you; I know what it means to me, and that's enough. My own song, The Glassblower's Breath, in comparison, is more accessible.  In it I'm simply reaching for the words to say adequately just how much my Love has changed my life, rescued me, brought me closer than I believed possible to that ecstatic love that Rumi knew. For her I'd surely smash the glass, and fall toward the Glassblower's breath!

For the musicians, I play this in standard tuning with a capo on only five strings at the second fret. The low note remains an E. I discovered partial capo-ing this year and have already written four songs that use it. You get the benefit of almost completely normal chords, with the added benefit of a dropped bass-note, really much cooler than it sounds! Chords are mostly variations of D, G, and A. One of these days I'll try to write up tablature for it. The bass run on the D chord is easier if you can fret with your thumb.

The second song on the CD, Magic in the Moonlight, is another of my favorites. I seem to write a lot of music late at night, sitting up in bed with my guitar, just barely touching the strings, while my Honey sleeps smiling. She tells me this is magical, that the music filters through into her dreams. All I know is that on a hot summer night, with the moon reaching through the window to light up the center of my world, words of love come to me powerfully, and that's where this song comes from.

"Oh, there’s magic in the moonlight,
When lovers sleep
With just a sheet
And a glass of water sweating by the bedside"

For the musicians, I play this with a two-finger pattern, standard tuning, capo on two. The chords are Am, Dm add 9, Em, G, Asus2, and F. It's a nice chord sequence, and not hard.

I hope you enjoy my music, and pass it on if you know anyone else who might appreciate it. My hope is to finance the next recording project by selling enough from this one. The songs waiting to be recorded are at least as good!

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?

Men and Wood

If you have been reading right along, you already know that I have an affinity for wood. Trees are metaphor-rich, and I love metaphors. Some of my best childhood memories are about wood, from watching Dad build first a gunning float, and then a sailing dory, in our suburban basement when I was little, to building my teenage muscle by carrying anything I could of the trees he cut down for firewood, to earning minimum wage splitting enormous elm trunks by hand during one long and memorable summer. The memories are many, and powerful. 

Half your wood, and half your hay...

This winter, having a newly-enlarged family in the house, We've been going through more firewood, and that means cutting more firewood. That work has been lightened by having boys to help, and I am so very conscious that this work is my chance to help them gain similar memories, metaphors, and strengths of their own. Just as I remember my father teaching me how to spot cherry in a woodpile by the orange color of the heartwood as it seasons, how to measure out four feet quickly by waving the chainsaw over the log a certain way, how to bring down a snagged tree safely, I hope they remember decades from now these days of learning some of the same "guy-stuff" knowledge.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all on board with women doing heavy lifting and using power tools. It's just that working with wood is one of those few remaining arenas where men can almost always find common ground and a sense of shared humanity. In the last week three different men have stalled at the store, clearly not wanting to get back to their work or errands, because we got to talking about wood. Just today I spent a full hour talking about thermal mass, drafts, recirculating masonry-stove heat, and the relative merits of pellet stoves, with a man who obviously was thrilled to talk shop with another guy. Last Friday I spent a similar hour with a man who shares an interest in music with me, but who had never stayed so long to talk about guitars even though he is in the store nearly every week.

An ironwood sprig on the woodshed when it was new.

Last summer I spent one day with friends helping them cut and carry cedar logs for their planned cordwood masonry building project. It was gasping, back-wrenching, sweat-soaking work, and I felt like a dishrag afterward. But those few hours of grinning at each other through the flying wood-chips and mixed-gas smoke, joking while carrying logs too big to be exactly good for our backs, conferring about which way to drop a particularly tricky tree, all brought Ben and me much closer than we had been before. I eagerly await a next time, even as hard a day as that was. 

I wonder if there's something to the idea of a wood-centered workshop for men and boys, where those who know, share what they know, and those who are new to tools, trees, even to varieties of wood, can learn, and build their connection to nature and to their own manliness, which is really just one of the kinds of humanity if you think about it. Cut down a few trees, learn what it is to carry a tree-length log through the woods, get the smell of bar-and-chain oil in your hair, split a bit of firewood by hand, learn to identify the most common trees in your area, and then bask in the afterglow of all that work, leaning on the result of your work, still talking wood, trees, and stoves with the guys.

Guns by a Gun Guy

Okay, I have been wrestling with my initial promise to myself not to blog politically here. I believe that we all have much in common by virtue of our humanity, and that politics, and political discourse, makes us maintain inflexible walls. I believe that people all over the political spectrum can share views and advice about very meaningful stuff, homesteading, living a loving and respectful life, making do with little, being creative, loving life, beauty, song, stories, and one another. With that in mind, I really really do intend to leave political discussion to other people. I want to write here about non-divisive aspects of living in a positive way.


But recently, in the wake of the school shootings at Sandy Hook, it seems that everybody is talking about guns. That's not political in the sense that arguing about teabaggers/libertarians/Maddowites/Foxdrones/Feminazis, etc., is political. America's gun culture is unique in the world. So many factors in our history have brought us here, from the oddly phrased second amendment to the cowboy culture of the Victorian Age in our western states and the hunting and trapping that was so significant to the development of our groundbreaking ancestors, just the grandparents and even parents of many of us. When people say that guns are inseparable from American culture, they are right. 

Before you change the channel on me, let me set out my credentials on the issue. I grew up in a gun home. My father was a riflery coach in the local high school when I was young. I learned to shoot at about age five. I have been duck-hunting, partridge hunting, rabbit hunting, deer hunting, skeet-shooting, oh hell, shooting anything I could call a target for as long as I can remember. I own four guns, and am honestly considering another. All four of those guns are quickly accessible to me, and loaded, when I am home. I have a valid concealed carry permit in two states. 

Here's the kicker. I revere life, love, and peace. Unlike many of my fellow gun owners, my reaction to the Sandy Hook killings was not, "Oh boy, now Obama is gonna take my guns, I knew this was coming," but rather, "Oh, those poor families. What has gone so wrong with humanity that anyone at all could ever actually shoot one defenseless child after another? And what can do to prevent this from happening again?"

I have a great deal of respect for the frontier culture, the hunting culture, the history of successful rebellion, that have brought us to where we are. I hold much of that close to my heart. But listen. We don't have unpoliced frontiers any more. We are not rebelling against the king any longer. Almost anywhere in the country, if you have a shotgun with two rounds in it, or a small handgun, and a triggerlock, in your bedroom, you are adequately prepared for just about any possible criminal incursion. And I don't understand why anyone who hunts in American needs a gun that shoots more than a handful of rounds at once. I don't understand why anyone who leads a normal life in ANY city in America needs a handgun that shoots more than five or six rounds. We don't live in the movies. We live among humans. Nobody, and I mean nobody, in our country, has a need that I will accept, to be able to fire more than a half-dozen rounds in a minute. If no weapon that could exceed that were legal, we'd have fewer gun-related deaths. Simple as that.

The argument that there are just too many guns out there, that regulating them wouldn't keep them from the hands of those who might do harm, is just baloney. I remember when it seemed ridiculous to stop drunk drivers, because it was so much a part of our culture, or to prevent people from smoking in restaurants for the same reason. Looking back, I'm glad that legislation was passed to move both of those issues in the right direction. We can do the same thing with guns. Here are some possibilities. 1. We make ownership of high-capacity magazines, and automatic-fire weapons illegal. Yup. Don't need them to hunt, don't need them to protect your home, don't need them at all. You want to have that kind of killing power? Join the army. 2. Require liability insurance for gun ownership, with rebates for safety procedures, same as we do for moving motor vehicles. Tell me why not. I'll insure mine, no problem. 3. Require training, certification, and registration of all gun ownership. Tell me why not. We already do it with cars, and they actually provide a non-violent service on a daily basis. 4. Charge anyone whose gun is used in a crime with negligent manslaughter or whatever else is appropriate. If you have a gun, and someone else can readily find it and shoot it, you are irresponsible with a deadly weapon. Tell me why not.

I'll get back to how-to, building, crafts, creative writing, etc, now that I have this off my chest, I promise. Thanks for listening. 

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.

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.

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.

How to Clean a Chimney

This is creosote build-up (photo by Honey)

I skipped my annual chimney-cleaning last year, partly from laziness, and partly from faint rationalization. If you have some idea that it's easy, just because it's called "sweeping," think again. Some chimneys may be easier than others, but mine requires numerous repetitions of crawling into the basement, pulling really hard on a rope and breathing ash and creosote dust, then climbing out and up to the roof to pull really hard on a rope while trying not to fall off the chimney. It has become what I think of as the hardest scheduled task of the year, since putting the firewood by is spread out over so many days.

Soren reaches deep...(photo by Honey)

 The rationalization comes from my having talked myself into thinking the chimney was clean enough. It wasn't, and I began to suspect as much this past spring, when the stove started to smoke after no provocation at all. I mistakenly believed that the galvanized-steel trick (more on that below) let me off the hook for cleaning.

It would be easy to write this post as an extended metaphor (for keeping your house in order, for not letting the debris of the past clog your present endeavors, for taking on big challenges with support rather than alone, possibilities abound), but I'm going to try and simply describe the process while celebrating this first time of having two fine young men to help. This will free you to read into it whatever metaphors or lessons you like; I only know that it was a rewarding day on several levels, the clearest of which is that we can use the wood-stove again!

(photo by Honey)

First, the thing about galvanized steel. I've heard from some old-timers that if you burn scrap galvanized steel in your fire occasionally, something about the zinc coating affects the polarity of the ions or some such thing that's beyond my schooling, and what happens is that the inevitable creosote buildup flakes off and falls down to your clean-out door at the base of the chimney. I think this works in a way similar to those chimney-cleaning powder tubes that you can buy at hardware stores. Based on the amount of granular ash in my clean-out, I believe it works up to a point. Unfortunately, it didn't work well enough for me to justify skipping a year's cleaning. The whole reason for this exercise, by the way, is that when a woodstove doesn't burn completely efficiently, and none of them do, unburned gases from the smoke condense on the inside of the flue, gradually creating a flammable, sticky deposit of creosote, like heavy tar. This is the fuel for chimney fires, and should be cleaned out regularly.

Here's the process. first, find the clean-out door at the base of your chimney, and shovel out all of the ash that has fallen to the bottom over the past year. That part's pretty easy. This year I found almost ten gallons of ash, which meant that it was stacked high up into the chimney, and I had to loosen it with a long flexible stick. Next, carefully remove the stovepipe from your woodstove to your chimney, take it outside, bang the creosote out of it, and put it back in place. If you don't put it back before moving on, you'll get a houseful of ash!

An ancient skill passes to another generation

Next, assemble your tools. I use a wire chimney brush, basically a bottle-brush made of spring steel that fits my 8-by-8 inch flue, pushed down by several threaded fiberglass rods that connect in a row. They are too springy to push the brush all the way, so I have to also pull it through from below, like flossing. To do this, I tie a weight (splitting wedge) to a sturdy rope, with the other end attached to the base of the brush. Drop the weight down the flue, start the brush down after it, and then go down cellar and retrieve the weight, which allows me to pull the brush through from below.

In a normal year's cleaning, that would be enough. Pull the brush down as far as the stovepipe connection, pull it back up again, repeat several times, clean the bottom of the chimney out again, and put the tools away for another year. This year, though, having skipped a cleaning, we couldn't get the brush any lower than about five feet above the stovepipe connection before it got completely stuck in built-up creosote. After a lot of wrestling, we realized that we would have to clean that section by hand through the stovepipe thimble! After plenty of creative cursing, scraped arms, mess everywhere, and proctology jokes, we were finally able to proceed, scraping away two years' worth of creosote and making the chimney ready for another heating season.

The best thing about this year's cleaning was having the boys help me. With one relaying instructions from me by walkie-talkie, and the other up on the chimney doing most of the pulling, it went faster than usual, even with the excessive creosote, and was far more fun and less frustrating. Now, when I talk about running the stove too cool, and how it can add to our build-up in the chimney, they will have a first-hand understanding. And wherever they go in life, they'll know how to clean their own chimney!

Keeping It True

In cordwood masonry building, one of the challenges is keeping your wall vertical. The load-bearing potential of the structure is dependent upon the wall being aligned as truly up-and-down as possible. A bit of variation won't be a disaster, but letting your wall wander too much will make for weak support. It could eventually buckle, or crack your windows by shifting over a leaning support system.

The metaphor is important to me. If you have a solid foundation, and build carefully and consciously upon it, then the strength that foundation will be present throughout your structure, providing safety, security, and even beauty because you have respected its gift of strength. Don't assume anything, but rather check as you go along that you and your foundation are in sync, that you're working together. Don't stray from it; honor it, and you can trust it with your home, your shelter, your life.

The most important tool for keeping your walls true in cordwood masonry is a plumb-bob, a pendulum-like brass tool on a long string, used for millennia to line up vertical work over its center of gravity. Mine is somewhat crusted with mortar, and its string is faded by time and weather, but it holds a strong magic, in my mind at least. Except for the first row or three of cordwood pieces, it was used on every single log in my cordwood masonry walls. When I look up at my highest walls, over eighteen feet from the foundation, I remember using it, over and over and over again.

First you mix up some mortar, using sand, cement mix, lime, water, and wet sawdust, along with plenty of back and arm strength with a masonry hoe. Then you carry a bucket of that and some cedar pieces up your ladder, lay a double-bead of mortar with rubber-gloved hands, and squish a piece of cedar roughly into place. Below you is a chalk-line two inches out from the base of the wall. You pull your trusty plumb-bob from your nail apron, along with a two-inch nail for a spacer, and swing it down from the head of the nail. The point of the nail is held steady against the wood, and when you have tapped the wood back and forth into the right position, the point of the bob is true above the chalk-line, making the log true at the top of the wall. Ancient science, the tradition of countless generations of carpenters and masons working through your hands, the magic of a fine metaphor, if you will pay attention to it. 

What's the most important tool for keeping your life true? Opinions may vary, but I believe that tending to your primary relationships above all else is crucial. Always checking that you are treating your loved ones as they deserve, with honesty, care, and consideration, that communication is true, you will know of potential trouble in time to correct it. You will build on that respect for your foundation.

I'm going to loan my plumb-bob, for the duration of their home-building, to Ben and Kissy of Dragonfly Acres, who have already begun harvesting cedar, and milling hemlock, for their own cordwood masonry home not far from ours. The thought of having that ancient and solid tool carry such a metaphor to another home built by people who bring thoughtfulness, love, and care to their endeavors pleases me greatly.

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...

Bean Hole Beans

"...there's always some level of uncertainty."

Decades ago, the hole was dug, and lined with stones painstaking pulled from the soil nearby. An enamel cookpot was committed to rough use, the first of several, as they don't last forever under this treatment. The old metal flyer-sled that my sister and I had almost outgrown was pressed into service as a bean-hole rain-cover. Since then, many times, Dad has gone out and lit a hot fire in the hole late at night, letting it burn through the night, so that the stones and surrounding soil could hold that heat.

Each time, next morning, he'd pull out the coals, replace them with a pot full of beans, water, fatback, and assorted secret ingredients. Then, against everything we learn in modern life about dirt and food, he'd shovel the soil back into the hole, burying the pot, sealing it underground with all of those hot rocks, for at least eight hours. He'd go about his day, often preparing for company, setting out the tables, cutting and jointing some meat, pulling up from the cellar something he or I had brewed, all the while enjoying the sight of smoke and steam rising from the bean-hole site like a rare Downeast fumarole.

Unearthing Bean Hole Beans

Fast-forward to last weekend, the most recent time the tradition was observed, and we have family, friends, friends of family, gathered for a belated birthday, music by yours truly, food by potluck and bean-hole. People share news, admire recent changes to the property and family home. Dad likes to make an event of the bean unearthing, and this time is no exception. 

Wielding a spade, and grinning for the fun of the occasion, for the pleasure of having such fine company, he stands beside the smoking patch of ground and clears his throat, eventually catching most of our attention. Striking a pose with the space, he announces, "I have done it in this same hole many times...but there's allllways some level of uncertainty..."

Smirking, and noting uncle Billy's chuckle, and some smart remarks ("Have you used the same tool every time?"), he begins to carefully excavate the pot, releasing clouds of smoke, while kids look on wide-eyed, not believing that FOOD is going to come from this. Soon there is a respectable pile of dirt, and the pot is revealed, safe under some aluminum foil. Carefully brushing it off and lifting it out, he carries it to the plank tables, and unveils the contents. 

Bean Hole Beans

Something very special infuses traditional bean-hole beans, and I'm not sure if it's the scent of the soil and smoke, the special care given to long-held tradition, an extra flavor imparted by the assembled family and their enjoyment of the ritual, or all of these things. All I know is that I always look forward to a plate of it, to watching how much Dad enjoys presenting it, and to the amazement of the uninitiated, when they see fine, hot, savory dinner being dug up from our bony New England soil.