There is much progress to report on our little cabin on "Cold Mountain." As I think back over the last few months, I am struck by how LITTLE we have to show for all our hard work. This is a good lesson to me:  there is a lot of "behind-the-scenes" activity that is required to do most things, and I should never assume that, simply because the advances I see with my narrow vision seem small, there has not been a lot of sweat and toil expended to get there.

I offer the basement as Exhibit A.

When the track hoes arrived we watched these skilled men digging into a granite rock face--at a hand-sweating angle--to carve out our basement. Several times I feared the heavy machinery was going to follow its center of gravity right down the mountain, flipping end over end until some large tree came to the rescue. They made short work of the rocky hillside, though, tugging up one very large tree and moving boulders up and out of the way. When they were done, there was a perfectly cut wall where our basement will go, and footers for our porch which will rise close to 20 feet off the back. Standing at the top of the driveway--now with a clear view--we looked out over the mountains and got our first real confirmation that our dream is going to come true.

But back to the basement.

We decided to go with a modular system, which means the walls, (made of precast concrete) are built to specs at the factory and then shipped to the site. The walls go up and the plumbing goes in. Then slag is dumped and spread to the four corners.

The building inspector requires 6-mil plastic on top of that. North Carolina building code also requires one-inch green board to be laid down around the edges where there won't be any backfill. When that is all done satisfactorily for the Building Inspector, the concrete man comes with 2 trucks carrying 10 yards of concrete and pours to a depth of 4 inches, making the darned thing impenetrable as a bank vault.

Everything depends on the basement. It is the foundation of the house. The company we used went so far as to say that it will be "the best room in the house," because it stays so dry and well-insulated.

Sounds great. But not great enough for my husband, lovingly nicknamed "T.H.P." (Total. Home. Package.) He had some "improvements" in mind.

Three exterior walls (the ones that will be back-filled with dirt) had to be rubberized. Not once. Not twice.

Three times.

Then some sort of landscape fabric was rolled around the periphery.

And 6-mil plastic is for sissies. T.H.P. decided on 18 mils. He doubled up on the green board too.

So I can safely say that we no longer have a basement. I'm not even sure we have a bank vault any more. It's either a bank vault or a fallout shelter, I can't decide. Until the subfloor goes up, it might even be a swimming pool with no water in it. I'm working hard at my visualization exercises to not think of it as a tomb. But if it is a tomb, T.H.P. and I will be safe and secure in there, until someone digs us up centuries from now. Probably to build a cabin.

My husband and I have been looking for mountain property for years, off and on. Our treasure hunt has included the Landrum, SC area, Campobello, Weaverville, Gowensville, Lake Bowen, Lake Hartwell, Lake Lanier (particularly a parcel off the Blue Wall Preserve bordered by Nature Conservancy land), Flat Rock, Hendersonville, Lake Cherokee, and, the jewel of them all--Lake Joccassee. (A girl can dream...) There was the 7-acre trash pile land we walked which resulted in two very sound decisions: One, covenants and restrictions are a really good thing, and Two, 7 acres is a really lot of land.

As Frank Sinatra said, "We've been up and down and over and out, and we know one thing:" Exploring is fun. Chasing our dream has been a hoot down every holler, and has helped us refine our wish list until we found that perfect place.

In October, 2015 we found that perfect place. By December, we owned it.

Of course, I got busy immediately putting the cart before the horse, looking at floor plans.

My husband got busy too. And when I say "him" I mean "us". We have cleared the overgrown gravel driveway which was cut many years ago but then left for nature to reclaim. With at least a foot of accumulated debris, it was nursery to all manner of vegetation and small trees, making it impassable.

We have dragged our unwilling daughter up there on numerous occasions to help clear the area where our log cabin will sit. (Perhaps you can hear me, in your mind, saying, "Look, this will all be yours some day so get off your butt and help us.")

We have cut, dragged, trimmed, sawed and stacked many harvested trees for railing and spindles.

We have erected a small storage shed that looks like a mini-log cabin with flat logs, chinking, and a simple A-frame red tin roof. (Personal Note: chinking is a lovely look, but it's sort of like make-up...way too much trouble to justify the end result. I ran through 6 large tubes of the stuff just on one side of our tiny little shed. It stuck to absolutely everything, including the rubber gloves I wore. I decided the "chinking look" was highly overrated and became comfortable, quite quickly, with the notion of just putting it on the front side.)

We planted a rhododendron, graciously given to us by dear friends as a lot-warming gift. It died. We also planted 2 cherry trees and an apple tree. We lost one of the cherries. We transplanted a peach tree and the jury's still out on that one. It does make me wonder how that driveway grew over so healthily though, without any tending whatsoever. I think it's the color of my thumb.

We cleared a little spot for our picnic table and installed that.

We cleaned out our driveway culvert--I personally climbed inside the claustrophobic space to chisel away years of collected silt, dirt and rocks. We also widened the driveway entry, which involved a truckload of slag and a whole lot of shoveling. As part of that exercise, we needed to remove a sequoia-sized dead tree that had fallen and partially blocked the driveway. That involved a chain saw, a small bulldozer, and a whole lot of prayer.

We did get around to looking at floor plans. (Good thing I got a head-start...) We knew we wanted a small, airy, open cabin--roughly 1100 square feet--with 2 full bathrooms upstairs and down. We knew we wanted a laundry room and a basement for a theatre, and we knew we wanted a very simple roof with porches on three sides. We knew we wanted a wall of windows on the side overlooking our gorgeous view. We knew we liked the flat log with 2-inch chinking, although we now know there are ways to get the Chinking Effect without the Chinking Bother.

We decided on a stock Satterwhite Log Home, and made some modifications to better suit the land such as adding a basement. Our acre-and-a-third has a gentle slope that just makes a basement a no-brainer. There we can indulge my husband's audio/visual addiction with a full-blown theater room complete with a car (for sitting in at the drive-in, of course) and a concession stand.

Every night before I go to sleep, I put myself on our mountain, looking out at the view. I hope you'll come with me to that mountain via the blog. (I won't make you work, I promise.) There is much to tell about our little cabin on the mountain. "Where’s the trail to our mountain?" you ask. "Well, you won’t get there following me," I answer. "If your heart is like mine, you would already be there." (Adapted from Cold Mountain Poems by Han-shan)

Thanks to my dear friend Karen who suggested I begin blogging about this experience. Check back when you can to see where we are, and please share with your friends and family.

 

When I suggested the topic, Death of a Dream, to my writing partner, I think I thought Dad would die soon. I think I thought it would be interesting to look dispassionately at his life, evaluating any dreams that were unfulfilled in his almost 85 years on Earth. I think I thought it would be therapeutic to write about that.

Instead, it has been repelling, in the way two like poles of a magnet cannot bear each other’s company. I sit down to write, and some unknown force pushes me away.

But I knew at some point I would have to write about it. Today I am ready to try.

Let me begin by stating the obvious:  Everybody dies. Death is an inevitability. It may be the only inevitability. No one escapes it and we all know it’s coming, yet we choose not to think about it. Instead, we put it in a box labeled “one day,” much as we would store away baby clothes, dishes, or knick knacks. We have the best intentions of dealing with that box eventually, but somehow, One Day never rolls around. Until it does roll around, catching us absurdly off-guard and enigmatically shocked.

My dad is gone. Whatever unrealized dreams he held for himself died with him.

I believe Dad’s greatest dream was just to be happy. I believe that everything he did—from marrying Mom and raising a family, to excelling at his career, forging friendships, buying cars and homes, and traveling—was designed to bring happiness. But happiness was difficult for Dad. While he found pockets of happiness, he was never quite able to sink his fists down deep into those pockets. He could not crawl inside and rest there—allowing it to be enough. His chemistry constantly fought him on this issue. He died without fully realizing this dream.

Ironically, I know that in dying, his dream was realized. That is a great comfort to me. My father has no more need of dreams because he now exists within them. He is in a place where dreams cannot die, and love is palpable, and joy is a constant state in which the soul is at perfect peace. He waits for me there.

William Penn said, “You have told us that You are preparing a place for us. Prepare us also for that happy place.” God is doing his part in heaven, and we must also do ours. This is a rallying cry to me, urging me to develop the habit of living in the moment—finding the happy, the good, the genuine, the holy—in the spaces between each tick tock. It means making that exercise a habit—an addiction, really—that spills over into every aspect of my life.

I am my father’s child. He and I share the same pockets. But I have learned from Dad that I want to be ready to be happy when I get to heaven. I want to have shown other people what happy looks like, so they can be ready too. I want to thrust my hands into those pockets and discover enough in there. Sweet, beautiful, satisfying enough. So much enough that it spills out onto others.

I miss my dad very much. It is hard to remember he’s not here. But just because someone dies, it doesn’t mean that someone’s gone. Penn said, “Death is only a horizon, and a horizon is only the limit of our sight.” I will see him again. Until then I will suffer the happiness I feel for his soul, and I will celebrate the grief of his earthly passing. That is the price for something so valuable as love. And I will keep expanding those pockets of happiness, cultivating the discipline of in-the-moment-enoughness, and I will keep dreaming, if only because Dad would want me to.

GETTING RID AND WRITING

A Cathartic Short Story

 She ran the hot water to get it boiling hot. Hot water will bring it to the surface, she thought as she folded a washcloth up tight and soaked it in the blazing stream. If she popped it now, it would not be angry and red by the time she visited her boyfriend.

These things have to be thought through.

It was a good thing she was a Forward Thinker. Imagine the horror of leaving it another day or two—allowing it to get larger and more inflamed. At that point it would be too late to take care of. It would be a pustule-filled wet blanket on the weekend. She had waited too long to see her boyfriend. And she wouldn’t be able to see him again for a while. She could feel the stress of a perfect weekend making her skin more oily.

He was a freshman at a college upstate 2 hours away; she, a junior at home. The age difference might mean something now, but when they were old and in their 30s no one would even care. She packed a few outfits she looked good in and her laciest panties and bra, put her bag in the AMC Hornet and got on the road. She planned to arrive when his classes were out at 2pm.

That night, fumbling in the dark in a drunken fog, he was having trouble getting the key into the dorm room lock. “I can’t find the hole if it doesn’t have hair around it,” he said, and it had taken her a minute to get the joke. She was drunk too, making everything witty and so much more funny. She laughed, feeling included and popular, and part of something inside and dirty. The best. Included is absolutely the best thing to be. She was having fun. This is what people do. She was so glad she had come.

After more beer and a joint, her boyfriend crashed on his dorm bed—not enough room to even turn a phrase but she was fine on the floor. Everyone crashed around 2am in varying places and positions; his roommate passed out lying in the wrong direction on his own little cot. Her head—spinning like a tilt-a-whirl at the State Fair and that constant cottony ringing in her ears—just finally turned off. She dozed for an unknown amount of time.

When she awoke, she wet her lips and rolled off of her numb hip. The floor was cold and hard. The blanket was thin, inadequate. Above her she heard voices.

Her boyfriend’s roommate was whispering. She could hear soft little kisses, saw the shadow of his hand push away a lock of hair from her boyfriend’s sleepy face. She felt sick. 

Hemingway said, “Write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” I can finally write that sentence now.

We are the sum of our scars, and it’s the scars that make us beautiful.

I have vivid snippets of memories from my early childhood education: singing in kindergarten chapel at Kingsport, Tennessee’s Episcopal Church; dreading recess because no one would play with me or even let me on the jungle gym; a very large deciduous tree in the far corner of the fenced-in playground that dropped wildly interesting nuts; something about Three Blind Mice in the basement of that ancient stony place; naps on a mat in warm, filtered afternoon sunlight. 

But these strong memories pale in comparison to the time I insisted on wearing just a shirt and leotards to school. And my mother letting me. 

Oh J. Alfred Prufrock, if you only knew.

In your “Love Song,” you ask if you dare disturb the universe, noting that there is time in a minute for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. That’s one minute I might wish to reverse. I can still feel my awkwardness: the realization dawning on me that I was only half-dressed in a room full of laughing boys and girls, and tugging at that shirttail as if I could somehow stretch it enough to cover my embarrassment.  

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?  

The memory of my own pinning and wriggling—standing in line to go to chapel, and art, and recess, and myriad other activities that day that required me to stand up and be caught not with my pants down, but with my pants completely absent—is forever burned into my frontal lobe where personality hides. There is no spitting that out. There is only living with the scar from the pin’s incision. 

Oh but it’s the same tired tune, J. Alfred--the one all inwardly-driven types sing--quietly, and to themselves so that no one else can hear. I made a bold choice that morning, and I stuck to my decision. My mother allowed me that autonomy, never realizing of course that it would scar me so deeply. Who can know these things? Certainly not my five-year-old self, who, knowing what I know now, might have done as instructed and put on a pair of britches.  

But looking back on my kindergarten experience I realize I learned—or rather, taught myself—that God’s crayon box contains primary colors only. We are free to stay the color we are born. Or we can allow our experiences, decisions, and sometimes sheer will to mix in a neighboring color. Although the boundaries between the three basic, pure colors cannot be breached, we are free to experiment, to soften our edges. We can choose to mix in experiences that change our hue within our primary boundaries. This is our limited palette; there is no changing that basic crayon God wields on each of us. But some change is possible, if we choose to change. How much is entirely up to each individual, and the experiences they draw. 

That early event was scarring, but it moved me—for better or worse—just a nudge along my color wheel. I’ll always be an introvert, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I must always be a pure, primary introvert. I chose not to wear pants one day when I was 5, and it affected me. But I lived through it. I could have retreated into my shell like ragged claws scuttling, but instead I chose to poke my head out and move forward. My choice. My palette.  

Do I dare disturb the universe? I do commiserate with you J. Alfred, my wriggling friend. It’s so much easier, and way more harder, to just stay on that primary color swatch. But there really is just one answer to the question: yes. Yes, let’s.

If I had to choose a thing that best described my personality, I would choose a mountain. I am pathetically inert, slow to change, and will remain isolated rather than risk involvement with the human community and its causes. Mountains are quiet things, preferring the sound of wind and birdsong to the cacophony of human voices. 

This does not mean I am a dispassionate mountain. Perhaps it means quite the opposite. I see so much wrong with human kind that it is utterly overwhelming to me. I feel the weight of inertia, of complete hopelessness, dragging me down. I want to retreat into my shell like a snail in defense of a man’s boot—knowing it’s just not going to make any difference. Too much is wrong, and even if some things can be reversed, where in the world do I choose a starting place? 

The older I get, however, the more I feel convicted to advocate for our environment. I openly cry when a bird is hit by a car. I dread spring because too many young animals are vulnerable to inattentive or uncaring drivers who are late for work, juggling a cup of coffee in one hand and their cell phone in the other, and steering with their knees. Development of almost every kind is dreadfully sad to me. I worry about the desecration of open spaces, the filled-in wetlands, the loss of habitat. I do not even know what to pray for, and so I depend on the Spirit to intercede with groans that words cannot express.

We humans have a responsibility to protect all life below us, not only for the sake of the plants and animals in our care, but also for the sake of mankind. We, as stewards of the planet, must be deliberately cognizant that we share this world. Actions that negatively impact life beneath us will, inevitably, come back to bite us. Our fates are connected.  “There, but by the grace of God, go I,” as John Bradford perspicaciously noted in the 16^th century. It is in our own best interest to make difficult, long-term decisions now to insure a healthy planet for all forms of life.  

Mountains are symbols of immovability, but sometimes the fact that they just won’t budge is a powerful force for change. There is a collection of poems by Gary Snyder called “Cold Mountain Poems” that sums up my passion, and how I feel about the big blue ball. It puts words to the emotions my soul cannot say. One poem in particular describes beautifully the nature of wild places, and their value. I may not know what I can or should do yet, but like any good mountain, I have a quiet voice that resonates across the valleys when I am adequately nudged. And who better to speak for the trees than we mountains? 

The path to Han-Shan’s place is laughable.

A path, but no sign of cart or horse.

Converging gorges—hard to trace their twists

Jumbled cliffs—unbelievably rugged.

A thousand grasses bend with dew,

A hill of pines hums in the wind.

And now I’ve lost the shortcut home,

Body asking shadow, How do you keep up? 

In a tangle of cliffs I chose a place—

Bird-paths, but no trails for men.

What’s beyond the yard?
White clouds clinging to vague rocks.

Now I’ve lived here—how many years—

Again and again, spring and winter pass.

Go tell families with silverware and cars

“What’s the use of all that noise and money?”

“Is a life most virtuously spent working for the betterment of humanity, or is it enough to have     some fun, do some work, love a few people and try to be good?”  

This is the question Rose Curtland posed in The Book and the Brotherhood. My family has debated this question off and on for some 25 years. It's been an interesting insight into each other's opinions, core values, and personality traits. My writing buddy and I took up the assignment recently, putting forth an argument for the answer we believed to be the most virtuous way to approach life.

The question implies that there are only two answers. But when I began the writing assignment (50 words or less….ouch!!), I noticed for the first time that the question is neither mutually exclusive nor mutually inclusive. A life can certainly be called virtuous when lived for the betterment of humanity. But a life can also be called virtuous just as truthfully when someone "meets expectations."

I understand the premise. We should not squander our singularly greatest gift: the uniqueness that is each of us, embodied in a corporal shell--our soul's home here on Earth for some undetermined number of days. But who gets to define "virtuously spent?" Who gets to decide if it is “enough?” Will we trade papers? You grade my life and I'll grade yours?

 I believe the question itself is fallacious. All paths, if lived genuinely, have the possibility of leading to the same goal. Simple, unremarkable lives might not make headlines, but that has never been the litmus test for a life’s potential for influence.

So the answer to the question above is Yes. All of the Above. One answer does not preclude the other, and there are no “wrong” answers, except no answer at all.

 

When I leave this realm, I can honestly say I’ve had some fun, which I have tried to share with others. I’ve enjoyed meaningful work, which I did competently and with respect for those with whom I interacted. I’ve loved a few people, and I am hopeful my feelings helped them on their path to becoming who they are. I’ve tried to be good by making honest, rational and caring decisions, keeping in mind we are all on this ride together. Will I have "bettered" humanity? Maybe not. But I'm not grading the papers. None of us is, Rose, not even you.