We spent 4th of July week on Cold Mountain, working mostly on wiring the cabin. While we were there, a turkey visited us, as well as  Eastern Phoebes, a nuthatch, a male scarlet tanager and several red-bellied woodpeckers. Occasionally butterflies fluttered by, and at night, those magical fireflies. Our little mice did not show up this time, but we were impressed with the "gift basket" they left in the basement. They had chewed off some of the purple polyester fur from our little parrot's cozy tent as well as several green and yellow strands from his blanket, then carefully arranged the material into a very colorful round nest. We gave it its due admiration and then promptly destroyed it.

When our workday was done, we spent several lovely afternoons cooling off in our neighborhood's mountain lake. With temperatures climbing above 90 degrees in the cabin loft, the cold clear water was a welcome relief. The first time we ventured in, several dozen curious bream swam right up to us. There is no fishing in the swimming lake, and the bream seemed to know we were no threat to them. It was like swimming in an aquarium, and the fish followed us everywhere.

The next day we returned with bread.

Standing waist-deep in the water, I felt like Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places...you know that scene  near the end when they've cornered the market and start to cherry-pick who they're going to buy from? I pulled off a small piece of bread and chose a fish to give it to. Each fish chosen took the bread and came back for more. Even a 3-foot-long catfish, swimming slowly like a great white, came over to investigate.

The thing about feeding fish, though, is that they do enjoy a good meal. And emboldened with the realization that we were absolutely no threat to them, many began to explore my white-bread belly, nibbling on it and outlining the button part with tiny red incisions.

OK. Time to go, I told PW. I do not want the headline of my obituary to read, "Bream Swim Turns Grim." We dried off and sat in the Adirondack chairs for a spell, enjoying the sunshine before returning to our construction project.

The next day, I realized I should have stayed in the water and taken my chances with the fish. The Adirondack chairs were full of chiggers, which is what we East Tennesseeans call red bugs. Red bugs are very small, very insidious little creatures that love the warmest, most moist places of the human body. They are experts at seeking them out, and they found all of mine. And me with no nail polish--supposedly the best home remedy for relieving yourself of those pesky little mites. Who knew I would need nail polish for stringing electrical wire?

But wait. It gets better.

PW had entrusted me with tacking up wire and coiling it in the receptacle boxes, unsupervised. I was getting pretty good at it, feeling as if I was actually making a meaningful contribution. I was in the kitchen--or where the kitchen will be--when a big black carpenter ant crawled up on the board in front of me. I was planning to tack to that board, so I tried to swat the ant away.

Did you know that, when threatened, the black carpenter ant has a pretty handy defense mechanism? It can shoot formic acid out of its rear end to deter a predator.

I did not know that. And I took his defense mechanism right in my left eye.

Burned like a mother. Apparently he did not appreciate my carpentry skills.

PW poured water in my eye to flush it out and then doused it with contact solution. The next day when we returned home (READ: "to civilization,") the doctor gave me an antibiotic ointment to prevent infection. I'm fairly confident my eye will recover, but that ant is toast, believe me.

So the take-away lessons from our week of work is just this:  1) There is a very good reason why electrical wiring should be done by a licensed professional.  2) Respect nature. It's their world, homies. We're just living in it. And 3) Take heart in the words of Madeline L'Engle, who so aptly put that, "It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter."

Laughter, after all, is the best medicine. Even for formic acid.

Lately we've taken a vacation from working on our vacation home. (That's an oxymoron if ever there was one.) Other trips and several flights of house guests have kept us home for a while. It has been a nice hiatus, not having to go to our get-away spot to do manual labor, but now it's time to get back to work. I dread the thought of what those industrious little spiders have been weaving in our absence.

We're headed back up there this weekend to begin stringing electrical wire. I feel I already have experience in this department since I was allowed to single-handedly nail up the outlet boxes. (To clarify, I was allowed to nail them up after PW showed me how to do it by nailing up half of them himself. I did the other half though, and got the distinct impression that I had done most of them correctly...)

We'll also be moving rocks. When the excavation for the basement was done, we suddenly found ourselves with a great big pile of boulders. We rolled, dragged, and even lifted some fairly good-sized ones down to the back of the cabin and wedged them up against the dirt as the beginning of a retaining wall on each side. Next we chose flat rocks of approximately the same size and shape for easy stacking. PW was in charge of putting together the vertical rock jigsaw puzzle. My dear friend from Asheville came down and offered the best idea: she suggested that we plant ferns and mosses and short ground cover in the spaces between the stones and it will look as if we meant it as an accent piece, not as erosion control.

I love her.

But back to PW and his quest for perfect rocks.

He chose each flat one with great care. I could tell it was with "great care" because his tongue was stuck in the side of his mouth, which is what he always does when he's ciphering. I brought him a rock. He and his tongue evaluated it as if I was a bowerbird who had decorated an elaborate panoply with my rock, hoping to attract a mate. He either accepted my offering as suitable, or he soundly rejected it and told me to go get another one. Just like the bowerbird, I was justifiably elated when he liked my rock, and equally deflated when my offering was rejected. And still, I kept bringing those darned rocks, hoping for approval.

So now we have built a 4-foot high rock retaining wall, with grandiose plans to finish it this weekend. The good news is that the entire basement is now framed out--not a simple task although it did get simpler when PW bought an air nail gun. We are also gradually moving things up to the cabin from our storage shed(s). So far we have brought the following essential household items: wine glasses and coffee cups.

And a lamp.

We have moved the kitchen bar up there, which provides us a place to lay the blueprints. Our old mattress is up there, wrapped in plastic. Toilets and sinks are sitting in their respective bathroom-to-be's. Also we have a macaw-sized indoor/outdoor aviary for our pretty green bird. Maybe not an essential household item to some, but Cadeau likes it.

I have single-handedly removed all the staples from the interior log walls. I've sucked up pounds of saw dust and more bent nails than the wet-vac can handle. And it is my mission to keep the cabin spider-web-free.

So think of me when you're doing what you're doing this weekend. Because I'll be working. Working on our dream cabin on Cold Mountain, where the lightning bugs still exist, even those elusive Blue Ghosts. Working on kicking the smaller of the large rocks down the hill to PW, and hopefully not hitting him. And sometimes also working, like Butterfly McQueen in Gone With The Wind, at being busy doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before.

Don't squeal on me to PW...

Work on erecting our cabin on Cold Mountain was supposed to have begun several months ago. Seems there are plans, and then there is reality. That's why plans are best laid. Aside, I guess.

After the basement was erected and T.H.P. and I weather-proofed it, we waited for the contractor to install the subfloor. Well, we thought we were waiting for the contractor to install the subfloor. Apparently what we were really waiting for was for bad weather to roll in, since that's what happened. Now we're into February--the rainy season on Cold Mountain. (BTWs, when it "rains" at 2400' elevation in the winter, it's not "rain.")

Only recently has the subfloor gone up, and the basement framed in. With all the precip, though, the basement was more like a kiddy pool, for like, 24 kiddies. Eskimo kiddies. Nevertheless, we began to get our first real feel for the theater room, bedroom and mechanical room that will be on the ground floor.

We were so excited to see the basement take shape. Instead of imagining what the ground floor would look like, we could now actually see how the stairs come down from the middle of the kitchen on the main floor, to a landing with a window right there at knee height, and culminating in a walled-in bedroom with no egress whatsoever.

Hey, wait a minute. That ain't right....

My husband studied on it for a moment, and then seemed to be giving considerable thought to how he would address the issue with the builder. He pointed out that the stairs to the basement were not accessed upstairs from the middle of the kitchen. There was a bit of a friendly disagreement as the builder continued to insist it had been done correctly.

That's when T.H.P., kindly but firmly, went to get those blueprints.

"No, man," he said, physically turning to face the basement sliding glass door hole and pointing to the plans, "the stairs dump out here, in front of that door."

Two grown men stood there, hands on hips, staring up at the very large hole in the subfloor, and contemplating the day's work it had taken those men to frame up the basement backwards. They both looked down at the plans, and then up at the basement sliding glass door hole, back down at the plans, and then behind them at the framed-up staircase. It was synchronized ciphering as they oriented themselves to the obvious reality that someone screwed up.

I kind of liked the window in the stairway.

Thankfully, though, the error was caught and corrected before the logs went up. That would have been a big deal.

Then there was the footer issue. When excavating for the support pads (deep and wide holes filled with concrete on which beams that support the roof and porches sit) the track hoe fellows encountered a rock ledge on the left side of the cabin. New footers had to be dug in something everyone kept referring to as "virgin soil." The result, after much deliberating by the menfolk, was T.H.P. and me making a Lowe's run that night  for 18 bags of concrete weighing 80 lbs. each. The next morning he poured concrete mix into the new footer holes while I made trips with a 5-gal. bucket to get water from a 50-gallon trash can he had rigged up with a spigot. The work crew took a break while Paul mixed and I toted...but they were very complimentary about how well I kept up with my little bucket brigade. 

We're back on track now and everything is progressing well. Knock. On. Wood. Logs. It's really exciting to see our getaway--and one day, our retirement home--take shape. Lincoln logs are being stacked, and we who are easily entertained are giddy with future possibilities. I can walk into a real log cabin shell now and imagine the master bedroom with a bark accent wall and a sliding chicken door (another story ENTIRELY.) I can stand in the kitchen where there is not, now, a gaping hole in the floor, imagining myself at the sink putting up preserves. I can stand in the great room with the great view, even if there aren't any windows yet. As our 3-sided porch takes shape, I can stand out there too, imagining me and T.H.P. perched on high Adirondack chairs and snuggled in blankets, reverently taking in another gorgeous sunrise.

We can picture ourselves there. It's a special thing: to picture yourself somewhere you really want to be. We're finding it's an even specialer thing to have some hand in helping to build that picture. Our tree house picture may have had a few setbacks--from weather, and workmen, and whatever--but we're making a home. And we can see ourselves in it.

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.