Back online and waiting for spring

I’m am back with a cell card attached to the laptop. As it turned out there were no viable internet options for our house, so it took some time to work out an option that would work.

There is much to tell,  over the last couple of monthes that I have been absent.  We have moved officially onto our land and into our house although there are still many small projects on the inside that are waiting to be done.  The Pacific Northwest has experienced its 7th snowiest winter in recorded history.  The mayor of this small town who has lived here since the 30’s said she had never seen so much snow.  For the last three weeks I have been taunted with receding snow patches that reveal the grass and warm days followed by days of light snow that reblanket the ground with white.  Then the snow begins to melt away and the weather warms, and the again more snow.  Its only hard because I am so anxious to begin work on the outside of the house.  There is an acre of blackberry bushes to remove.  Piles of trash hidden amongst them from the previous owners to be discarded and a goat paddock to fence and goats to buy. 

Dylan spent a brave day out in the most strange and varied weather yesterday repairing and rebuilding the rotted chicken coop on the land.  It hailed, snowed, sleeted, shone, and blew gusty winds on him.  But he insured that the four pretty ladies that we have brought into our family would have a nice warm and safe place to stay and lay.  For a man who has little experience working with tools or building the last few monthes have really given him a step up and he pieced together that coop with no problems at all.  I was very proud.

The biggest news of course is that I am pregnant for the first time.  I am now just about 13 weeks into it and grateful to be out of that first trimester.  I wasn’t plagued by throwing up but I sure felt awful, sick, nauseous, depressed, you name it.  My energy levels have started returning and I am noticing the first signs of a protruding belly.  I had written a blog post noting that I was hoping to conceive a new energy and a new head space on the solstice.  It seems that I took that literally and on our first “try” found myself gleefully pregnant. 

My sister spent the whole weekend with and it was so wonderful to get so much time with her.  We did lots of house work and she did more then her fair share of chores for me, which was so nice.  On Saturday we engaged our roots of Indian cooking and made an Indian feast of Cauliflower Kofta  with a tomato/piima sauce, whole wheat chapatis and cilantro/coconut/almond/yogurt chutney.  It was a process but it was sooo worth it.  We did a bit of spinning and troubleshooting with our wheels, went for walk up the Sauk river even though it rained/snowed on us and had fresh egg omelets from our new hens it the morning.  It was a wonderful weekend.

Still no internet

I’ll be back soon, I promise.

OMG! This is pretty amazing!

Its 18 minutes but so worth the time, if this sort of thing interests you.  Thanks to my incredible Aunt Nancy for passing it on to me!

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

A little bit of Texas in Washington

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.

Although I’ve said it many times that I no longer really miss Texas,  there has been one thing that I will always appreciate about that state.  There exists down there a sort of hospitality and friendliness that I haven’t experienced in other places I have lived.  In great contrast to the warm smiles and easy, welcoming conversation one encounters in Texas, Washington showed itself to be pretty well the opposite.  I remember running out of gas on my  way back to Port Townsend one day with Mira and Shyam in the truck and waiting for sometime on the side of the road as countless cars drove past.  We were three twenty something girls stranded on a back road and no one seemed to care.  I eventually decided to go and knock on the door of one of the farmhouses nearby and explain my dilemma.  The woman who answered the door stared us down with incredible suspicion and begrudgingly called over her husband who sighed and finally offered to give us some of the gas he had out in his garage for his mower.  They trudged along and I apologized profusely as they made it clear to me what a trouble I was causing them.  He filled up a half gallon or so and walked back into the house without saying a word. 

In Everett I sat in my front yard with the truck pulled out into the road holding jumper cables and watched as every car pushed its away around my truck.  I knocked on my neighbor’s door and they said they were too busy  to give me a jump and preceded to step outside and smoke a cigarette while they watched me wait.

Its not that I think people here are mean, just not as thoughtful when it comes to helping one another.  They are suspicious of strangers and let it be known.  In the city everyone takes their sweet time to let you get to know them or open their “circle” to you.  I always wondered if the attitude simply comes from a a century and a half of hard living.  I would guess that pioneers in  this area had to greatly fend for themselves and saw newcomers as competition in an already trying environment.  Just the act of getting to coastal Washington was quite an affair and eking out an existence in the wet and ancient woods must have made one feel frightened. 

In Texas,  I have walked into restaurants or parties and been immediately greeted by others seeking friendship or friendly conversation.  This extends even to my generation.  Children wave at you and strangers in the checkout line start up conversations.  This is not an exaggeration, it is just simply the truth.

When we decided that we would be moving out into the mountains and not merely the foothill suburbs of Seattle we knew that we might have to lower our expectations about what we would hope to find from our local community.  Many of the mountain towns we have visited seemed dreary places with a kind of “redneck” I’d rarely seen even in Texas.  Some of the towns are so overwhelmed with methamphetamine use that they have been called the “Meth Capital of the world.”  Many seemed so depressed economically and energetically that we just thought it was a reality we were going to have to accept if mountain living was what we wanted.

Then we found Darrington,  the valley between Arlington and Darrington rather.  The Stilliguamish River Valley seemed to offer everything we didn’t think we could find in this area. There were healthy homes and small farm holdings near the river, none of which were full of abanded cars.  The land itself felt vibrant and in relative good shape, as you cannot expect it to be perfect in the PNW due to years of logging.  The salmon run strait up the river.  The small community at the valley opening boasts a Vegetarian restaurant and even has African drum lessons and Belly dance classes.  It has an awesome intact old fashioned hardware store and a little healthy, but not touristy main street.  Keep going down the road and you come across numerous CSA’s,  Highland cattle farms, Organic dairies and the home of the Evergreen Land Trust, Pragtree Farms which started the Washington Tilth so many years ago.  Follow it further and you can definitely tell you are heading into back country.  Eventually Whithorse mountain and its “lowest altitude glacier in the the lower 48″ loom magnificently above.  Only six miles beyond our land you enter the town of Darrington.  It is an old lumber town with history that used to be mining.  The road deadends there.  There is a path up, which leads to the North Cascade Pass,  but that road is closed for six months of the year.  Or you can head south in the summer down the dirt road called the Mountain Loop Highway,   it not really a usable thoroughfare ,but a recreation pass for summer excursions into the mountains.

     It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual

The first weekend we really were able to work on the house we stopped by the little burger shack in the town.  We expected rigid people who would be suspicious of us “city” newcomers.  But we walked inside and were greeted by a sweet woman who had lived in Alaska and had a nine year old boy at the small school where all grades share one building.  She asked our names and our stories and told us some local information about weather.  She even remembered Dylan’s name when he went back there two weeks later and she asked after me. Then entered another man, somewhere in his late 30’s, getting a to go order.  He started talking to us directly about how he played Santa every year for the grade school and how hard it was breaking the news to his sons who were getting older that he was actually the person whose lap they’d been sitting on for the first number of years.  They were upset but reasoned out  that dad was only the pretend Santa and that the real one would still come on Christmas.

Another day we stood in line at the local IGA, and the cashier and two women in line behind us welcomed us to town heartily and stated that “Darrington needed some young blood.”  Last week a little child at the post office walking with his dad lifted his arm and waved to me in the car.  The woman at the corner store, who we had only met twice asked if we needed her to check on our house while we were away for Christmas.  Our nearest neighbor trudged through the snow and offered us the use of his snow shovel, knowing that all the local stores were sold out due to the recent storms.

And yesterday Dylan called a man to see if he could plow our Driveway,  I had got stuck in the area Dylan had cleared and the car battery died at the same time.  The man was on his wayhome because with all the snow melting his house was liable to flood.  Dylan told him my dilemma and he said was passing right by us and came to the door and spent ten minutes jumping the car and helping himself to the shovel and digging the tires out.  Later they returned with their plow and I went to get cash for them.  I came back and just to be nice they had shoveled off the whole awning over the porch.  They came inside and warmed their hands on the stove and told me some gossip about the past owner.   They talked about their kids growing up there and playing Varsity sports on teams so small they were lucky to have one alternate for each sport.  I gave him a bit extra just to make sure he knew I appreciated all of his help.  He left by saying, “Be sure to tell Dylan we’ll meet one of theses days.”  All that pleasantry from a man and his son in law who were meant only to plow the driveway.

I am not saying it is a Utopia, there is a giant lumber mill in town and I suspect some possibly “no-so-liberal” ideals from much of the population.  It is not a hippie-town like Port Townsend, but  then again I never met a single person this gracious in all my time in Port Townsend.  Yet it really feels like a miracle to have found this quiet little oasis of neighborly kindness in this state that seems so wanting of it.

Its a strange thing to re-imagine community.  I grew up in a place you would call a intentional community.  It was a large Hindu ashram that had 70 permanent residents and about 20 kids.  We lived on 250 acres, with a pond, a hill, and a creek with beautiful swimming holes.  We dined together and worked together, and from the outside it might have seemed like an amazing place to live and grow up.  It did have its benefits, but people were constantly looking over one anothers shoulder, ego got in the way of everything, all of our attempts at being self-sufficient were utter failures,  and EVERYONE seemed desperate to establish which area they had authority over.  I moved as a young adult from one idyllic town to the next hoping that within these places I might find a “place.”  I hoped that thier might exist somewhere a community of like-minded people that contributed and worked together.  I hoped for a community of people that supported each other and welcomed differences.  I now feel that I was searching for a dream, at least in the big picture.  I feel blessed now to live in a community where people are kind to one another.  Why ask for more?  What else does one really need?  And besides, what could be better than living in a town that has a “Funeral Dinner Committee.”

Perhaps, in the end, community isn’t something a few individuals create, but something that occurs naturally given the right circumstances.  All my hopes in the past of finding  a community of open-minded and kind individuals has to start with my willingness to be open minded and except all the facets of my community.  If I were to try and merely surround myself with a bubble of “like-minded” folks then I would be discounting the reality of true community.  I would have to discount the lumberjack, the cocktail waitress who works the bar at night and the hardware store by day, the suburban expats and the sport hunters,  the farmers who still use chemical pesticides and the kids who never left their home town.    And despite everything they are my neighbors now and with their simple acts of kindness I can look forward to years of working with them.  I look towards years of  joining in to lay sandbags all night when the river floods and theatens neighbors house’s, of helping to dig them out of the snow, of sharing vegetables from my garden and fruit from my trees, of joining with them to commiserate on foul weather or rejoice when it is fine,  of supporting the schools sports and share in the happiness of new life and give comfort when life ends.  If I do all this I can only hope for the same in return.

Homecoming

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

 I am so sorry for the long absence.  We spent the holidays in Austin and were gone for nine days.  Then next week we worked more on the house and spent New Years Eve in a fancy condo in downtown Seattle with the voucher Dylan gets from his work.   And then it was back to work.  This month of January should be a bit trying as there is so much work on the house to be done yet and moving to be done at the same time. There is still three feet of snow at the land and it says there will be more all week.   What a winter to move!

Last week I set out for the land.  The roads were clear but there was a ton of snow on the ground.  Up ahead something stirred on the shoulder of the road and from the ditch flew a bald eagle so close to my car that I had to break a bit to be sure not to hit it.  A few minutes more up the road a mottled juvenile eagle flew overhead.  The last week we have seen so many eagles landing in our trees and flying overhead that we have quit keeping count.  I suppose that there increased presence is tied in some was to the massive amount of snow that  lays even on the valley floor.

 

It seems unbelievable in a way how at home I feel here and how my original home now seems foreign and strange.  I suppose trauma could have forced some loss of memory but I found myself in Austin a total stranger.  I never could tell where I was at, even the plants all seemed strange and unrecognizable, and I used to feel to confident in my ability to recognize the flora in central Texas.  The air was the  only thing that held any memories and luckily they were mostly pleasant.  The smell of BBQ mixed with the scent of the vaguely cool air of a 75 degree, overcast December day brought a flood of nostalgia.  The moist air at night, so heavy with water that you become damp on a though it is rainless, had me recalling nights of wandering down the pathways of my childhood land by full moon and by starlight.  But that was all that could still draw a memory for me.  What ever it was that held me there is long gone and I find myself here, in the wet Pacific North West.  I suppose there was a transfer of the emotional concept of home from Texas to here.  After all, when I was growing up in Texas all I did was daydream about the two years I spent living in the Seattle suburbs.  And now that I am here I feel inexplicably tied to this place.  Even the thrill of crossing the the Cascades and experiencing the dry air and ponderosa forests of the east side pales in comparison to the buzz in my body that I feel the minute I again see the overwhelmingly green forests and that first bit of mist in the air,  The trickling waterfall. 

I often had thought that I would move more.  I used to think New Mexico was calling me,  even when I was younger and living in Arizona I had thought that New Mexico would someday be my home.  But after spending a month there late last Spring,  I realized how much I needed water,  and not just a lone river that painfully makes it way down the high desert, sucked up at every chance.  I needed water that veritably bleeds from the ground. 

The animals became eager to explore more of the earth and wanted to leave the confines of the water, but the Ocean knew that the animals could not leave without her.  So the Ocean went with them.

Here,  there is water in the Ocean, only hours away,  the same water fills the lake like Puget Sound.   The Ocean gently shakes off bits of herself molecule by molecule and the sky eagerly collects all the pieces into clouds.    The mountains greedily hold the clouds here and pour the ocean down on the mountains and our faces.  The ocean water cum rain runs off these surfaces and fill rivulets, brooks, then streams, then rivers.  They flood over high rock cliffs and cut massive waterfalls into mountainsides.  The water runs in snake like streams off of melting glaciers and frozen ocean we call snow and fills enchanted alpine lakes that dot every bit of the Cascades.  And then this borrowed Ocean flows back out into the sound.  The Salmon know that all the water is the Ocean and they travel beyond its saltly limits back up these waterways and spawn and die.  They travel up the river by my land and thier bodies feed the eagles and the trees.  And all of creation is fed, like me, by water like that the Ocean so kindly pours upon my land freely.

I am so happy to be home.

The Coming Solstice

Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young— a place near your altar, O LORD Almighty, my King and my God. Psalm 84:3

The snow is really falling, since I began typing I’ve seen an inch of snow added to the railing outside.  Solstice is just a few days away. Its hard to believe that the darkness has already advanced this far.  In just a little bit the days will begin growing longer again opening up to spring.  This year I plan to mark a place in the woods on my land with a circle or an earth alter.  I intend to have a sacred space set aside for reflection and a place to celebrate the changing of the seasons. 

I will unfortunately be in Austin on the Solstice.  The idea of returning there is very difficult to stomach.  I made my peace with the land last May, and thanked it for the time it supported me, but let it know that I had moved on and that my home was now elsewhere.  After this trip I hope it will be a long time before I have to return.  It will be nice to see so many of the people that have supported me and the other victim’s through out this ordeal, but knowing that my parents are so close physically but so far away emotionally, will be trying.  Austin is so small in a way too, there is always a fear that you may run into someone from the cult. When the girls were leaving there after they pressed charges they nearly bumped into the Treasurer and chief financial supporter of the cult as they walked through the airport.  But the fears will be countered by the handful of people who have gone out of their way to support us.  These few people are so amazing.  They were willing to face some very difficult realities and didn’t just walk away from the group, but united in a front to help bring justice to the victims of this groups spiritual and moral fraud. Hooray for those that have courage!

Anyhow, perhaps while in Austin on the Solstice I can recognize it as way to put so much of the pain and struggle behind me and prepare for the gestation and birth of a new era for myself, my friends, and my remaining and adopted family.

Out side a troup of Dark-Eyed Juncos has landed in the Platter Magnolia branches.  They are chirping and rustling up little piles of snow as they land.  I guess they came down out of the mountains to try and get a respite from the cold weather.   They are called snowbirds, I guess because one often only sees them when the snow is falling.  I tossed them a pile of corn bread crumbs that quickly settled into the snow.  I hope they find it.  Its cold outside and the flurries continue.

And Still It Snows, Or Why My Family Is Weird

Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow.

The snow keeps falling and my fear of driving in the snow in a truck has kept me from going out to the land to work.  Its kind of painful to sit hear when there is so much to do out there, but I just have to settle into the situation and enjoy the guilt-free act of doing nothing.  Yesterday Dylan stayed home and we napped, and cuddled, made cookies, read, cooked Shepherd Pie with elk, watched M*A*S*H,  listened to music and watched the snow fall. 

Today I sit with a cup of my favorite tea,  listening to Hildegard Von Bingen and cuddle my kitties.  If I didn’t have so much work to do and was already out living on the land  I would be in Heaven.  But I’ll try to remain present and enjoy this day just as it is.

My family is weird!  This is not a fact that is new to me,  but one that is just consistently reinforced.  Yesterday I was on the  phone with my sister to ask her if she wanted to go to the Skagit County Country Living Expo and Cattlemen’s Winterschool.  It seems like fun thing to due in the middle of winter and its only 45 dollars and includes a rib lunch.  Anyhow I told her how I had learned of a master beekeeper course being offered by the Snohomish County WSU extension and that I planned on taking it. She excitedly piped in that she herself was going to take that class as well.  She lives in Bellingham but had decided to take the class anyhow.  I suppose there are others like us out there,  but it strikes me as strange that two sisters, both in thier twenties ( what? I still have eight monthes before I turn 30 :0 ) eagerly signed up for the same beekeeping class in Everett  Washington.

I don’t really expect to become a master beekeeper, certified by the state, but it seems like tricky buisiness and for 50 dollars and 6 weeks worth of education, how can one go wrong.  I do intend on placing some hives on the land and doing what I can to have asmall store of honey and am very excited about this course. I must keep  on eye on the classes offered by the county extension as they seem to have some really wonderful offering, Cheesmaking mastercourse and Cidermaking are also on thier list.  I will certainly keep you posted on what I learn and learnif it is true that one really does become immune to the pain of the bee sting after time.

Alone In Herbal Studies, Fun and failure , Part Deux

There is but One God, Her name is Truth, She is the Creator,She fears none, She is without hate,She never dies, She is the cycle of birth and death, She is self illuminated, She is realized by the kindness of the True Guru. She was True in the beginning, She was True when the ages commenced and has ever been True, She is also True now.

I am currently wondering if another stint, with another kind of mean herbalist is for me.   It was just over a year ago that I withdrew from my herbal shamanic course on Whidbey Island.  It was just past a year ago in September I learned the truth about the cult my family was involved with.  And at that time was forced to take action that irreparably tore my family apart.  My sisters and I finally realized the extent of our abuse and formally pressed charges against the leader of the cult.  My family disowned me an there was a full on assault from from the cult leadership and my family alike.  At that time I was involved with a small group of nature based spiritualists in New Mexico, and I made the decision to go to a women’s workshop and attempt some healing.  My herbalist teacher left me a nasty message saying that she expected me without fail to be at her class that week.  I had already attempted to explain to her my upheaval and peril.  Yet she took it upon herself to act as though I knew less about what I needed in in my own healing then she did.  So I with withdrew.  My background in an Eastern cult with a guru lead me to a place where I was wholly unable to listen to the demands of others that discounted my own needs.  I am sorry that I have missed the opportunity to fully experience what her class had to offer,  but I feel totally secure in my decision to remove myself from another commanding experience.

Onwards,  April of this year I found myself in a month long excursion into the wilderness.   I came to the people  that offered this experience through a circuitous path of seeking.  While there,  the fruit of my dissidence erupted and my family’s guru was arrested four days before my scheduled departure.  I was panicked and scared and my “Teachers”  were removed and hardened to my situation.   I asked to leave to deal with the situation and to give and seek support from the other victims and they wanted nothing further to do with me then to tear me apart an tell me that my life would be that much less ”magical” without connection to them.  They sought to strip me of the experiences I had upon their land land to tell me that life without them would be unfufilling. I had gone there to seek a spirituality removed from dogma and tradition and in the end found that when I did as they said, which was act out my own true self,  they discarded me.  In my most trying hour, they had no sympathy.  They , like my former guru, sought only to make me conform to their set of preset rules.  

I have been to classes with with Susan Weed an though I admire her, I do not believe her teachings are for me.  Beyond her medicine,  I see a propensity for conformity.  It seems she desires people to be as harsh as she is.  And though I admire her harshness in theory,   her harshness is not a world that fits with my sensibility.  At an Oregon herbal conference,  she attacked a young apprentice for referring to a man she had just referenced as “guy.”  She berated the woman,  telling her that it was her fault that the feminists movement had not moved any further because she used a West Coast colloquialism.  What would she have to say about all the girl’s in Texas who say “ya’ll?”

My point is not to discount teachers,  I suppose at points in all of our lives we need them.  And though I will never deign to say that I am beyond learning ,  my experience leads me to understand that I am “past” teachers.  By that I don’t mean that I have learned it all,  for I know beyond measure that is not true.  However,  I feel that the desire to follow one persons prescribed life path is something I cannot and never will again deal with.   I have so much to learn,  but from now on I will look to my original teachers;  the plants, the rains, the watery sound, the hill country, the snow on the mountains, the sand beneath my feet,  the buzz of the canyon, the greenness of the earth,  the islands in the sky,  the paws of cats,  the mole hills, the damp of the leaves,  the cold, cold wind,  the rush of the Stilliguamish, the strength of the waterfalls,  the wildflowers,  my friends, the greening of the trees, the fall of their leaves,  the compost of leaf to soil, and the sod on my feet.

Herbal Studies, Fun And Failure

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth

My journey back to the wild begun with an intense desire to reconnect with the natural world.  A place I once felt at home, and a place that in my late twenties I began to realize I was losing touch with.  I began by looking around my natural surroundings which were rife with green life and trying the waters of nature based spirituality.  I found initially that by delving into herbal medicine I could immediately connect with my natural surroundings.   My search for spirituality lead me to many writers on the subject, some of which I still admire and some that I subsequently found are better writers than teachers.

Another issue I encountered in my studies is my own reluctance to self medicate which seems to be the way most herbalist learn their trade.  I have never been one for medication,  and that reluctance to medicate , I admit, may be a fault.  I have, at heart, an inability to  go out of my way to treat issues I feel sure my body can handle on her own.  When I was down in New Mexico earlier this year I developed a strange inflamed, ichy rash on my toes after walking a space barefoot in a sandy enchanted canyon.  My hosts were so kind and quick in offering me a foot soak which I am sure would have hastened recovery but after two days of soaking and no further recovery I left it too my body to deal with the irritation it was fighting.  The unexplained rash disappeared and the heat and itch resided and I was left with a guilty feeling about not utilizing the magic that the plants would surely have given me.

I cannot explain it,  it is not a resistance to helping myself nor a inability to commit,  but I seem unable to to utilize the gifts of the plants when it comes to “minor” issues.  In some ways I feel that it is a affront to my body to suggest that it does not have the ability to heal itself in its own time, in it own way, especially when dealing with minor irritations.  A one day bought with diarrhea does not prompt me to drink blackberry leaf infusion,  but to try an notice why I had diarrhea in the first place.  Was it an inconsiderate meal choice, or a massive emotional issue I am not dealing with?  For me,  feeling and noticing my bodies issues,  is one of the many things that bring me back into my body.  In this sense I do feel that I am an avid Susan Weed’er.  In her seven rivers of healing her first and most vital step is “first, do nothing.”   I am still a major believer in herbal medicine and love the gifts the plants give me, however, I do initially try not to fight what ails me,  but let my body deal with what ails me.  If something persists and gets worse,  then I act.

I only note this reluctance to medicate to speak of my comparative failure as an herbalist,  for though I can tell you many of the uses for local plants I cannot attest to many of them merely because I cannot seem to to utilize them in in the situations they are most useful.

I can however tell you of nettle.  Nettle most seriously has changed my life.  A lifetime of sluggishness and fog rapidly went away after a six week stint of drinking nettle infusion.  I was able to stay up with the routine of the nettle infusion, after finding that upon waking I craved the green, creamy taste.  I am not healed but massively improved and now find that the process of brewing an infusion seems to come naturally when I most need it.  My body seems compelled to rise from bed and boil the water and measure the dried herb that I  gathered earlier in the year and set it rest on the counter overnight.    I also effortlessly strain and simmer the tea and drink it eagerly in the morning without pause.

  I have found that, for me, herbal medicine is almost akin to muscle testing.  When I need it my body seems to compel me to nourish myself as needed.  That may not be the words that many herbalist will teach but it  is my experience and therefor my truth.

Stack Wood, Sand Floors

 Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water.

So much work to be done yet, but so much done already.  Its still a bit hard to believe that after all the struggle to make the purchase we finally have the land.  On  the first day we went in with a vengence and tore out the carpeting and banged out a few walls.  We then went after the “nico-patina.”  Layers upon layers of paint.  I then reworked the kitchen.  I scrubbed and stripped and sanded  the kitchen cupboards and reworked the design.  And one day I tore up the countertops and replaced them with pine.  Its all looking good and slowly coming together.  

This weekend  a very cold bought of weather came in, unfortunately, because we were so late in finalizing the purchase we were unable to gather our supply of wood for the winter.  On Saturday morning we had a cord of wood delivered which Dylan anxiously stacked later at 1:30 in the morning.  Saturday we layed pine floors in the bathroom,  and worked until nearly 3 in the morning.

The work has been  sooo incredibly satisfying.  Its created a stytemic change in both Dylan and me.  And though  is late in the year and we will have to wait until the weather improves before we can really begin work on the land itself.  We are happy to be doing what we can to begin our life,  in the shadow of Whitehorse Mountain  on our little homestead we’ve dubbed Sky Island Farm.