Change of Season

It’s stunning out today. Sunny, clear, temperature edging toward the 80’s, buds coming out on the trees, green coming out on the fields. We’ve earned it! My God! Richard’s outside finishing up hemlock siding to the new chicken coop - the coop I shingled I’ll have you know; I can hear his hammer blows echoing out up the hill. All our poultry are thriving. Tops on the list are our 2 baby Geese, Ginger and Mary Ann, who are so delighted by the sight of either Richard or me whenever we walk into their room. They’re immediately up, talking, craning up to be held. Oh my God, they’re adorable with their tiny yet enormous webbed feet and their wee wings flapping uselessly at their sides. We’ve read that they will gain a pound a week for the first ten weeks and then taper off, so we’re enjoying them while they’re young and handheld size. Amazing, amazing, amazing how cute they are. When they were first hatched, Richard was shoving me away from the incubator window making sure they were imprinting on him and not me. I think we have equal imprinting here.

This morning I feel equal parts Garrison Keillor and Dr. Doolittle. Surrounded by, tended to and taught by animals? Yes. Woebegone? Not I, not here, not today. I do find, though, that when I check in to give the news from here, oftentimes a spiritual storm front has just passed through and cleared the air. It’s been an interesting few days of internal bumps and bronco rides. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s caused them. Maybe I don’t need to know. Maybe upheaval of any sort is simply a sign of the times. All the energy of change going on in the world, all the resistance, all the willingness and fearfulness mixed up in equal measure, all the old ways and new ways slamming up against one another. I think we can’t help soaking it up from the air, even when you’re “away from it all.” Yeah, who says? I think I’m never away from it all. I may choose to try to think or live that way, but I’m always near it all, in it all. And no matter where I am, however I’m living, whatever I’m working on within or without, whatever I’m thinking and feeling is felt, matters, has consequences. Fascinating times, inside and out.

Last evening around 6 or so with plenty of light left to the day, Richard and I went across the road and began clearing a wooded area around our pond badly in need of sprucing up. It was fun. We chain sawed dead branches and teams of new maple sprouts; we snapped and scissored undergrowth; we dragged and toted and tossed logs. The exertion felt great. There’s something appealing to me to jobs that have a spiritual symbolism to them, where I’m doing something on the outside that mirrors or parallels a process I may be going through inside. Clearing the land so we can see what’s there, so we can sculpt it the way we intend, so we can blend our intents harmoniously with nature’s pure and potent growth. I think it’s the first time I fully understood the phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees.” I had “gotten it” before to a certain extent, but there was always a part of me asking ‘What do you mean forest for the trees? Isn’t a forest made up of trees? Aren’t they both trees? You can’t see the trees for the trees?! What so you mean?!!’ Last night it was different; last night I felt I was living “can’t see the forest for the trees”, I was inside it, in the midst of it. And this morning to be treated to a view of the once hidden old stone wall across the way and see the beginnings of the shape that piece of our land will have was so satisfying. I can’t wait to work on it some more.

Speaking of this morning, I woke at 6 am to the dissonant sound of a dog bark honking up the air. It was muffled, but strident, out-of-place. I got up and went out onto our front screened porch where I was instantly enveloped by bird song, enwrapped by it. The male Canadian Goose was out on the pond checking out the dog bark too. It turned out to be Ron and Tabitha’s dog from down the road, stirred up by something, it doesn’t matter what, I just found it funny that a dog bark down the road in the country served as a clamorous equivilant as a car alarm going off in the city. What a different world it is out here.

We had a group of actors and designers up from Project Playwright on Sunday and what a grand group it was. So fun feeling our place filled with new energy. It’s been a dream of mine to have this place be an artist’s retreat of sorts, a place where friends, actors, directors, writers, painters, what-have-you can come up here to work on a new piece or just recharge, retreat, refortify. It was good feeling that energetic take some sort of form, even in the form of a party. One of the group was a young writer/teacher, Carla, born in Puerto Rico, raised in Chicago, an expansively confident, jovially creative presence, and being a city girl she spoke of her split at being out here in the boonies. In one respect, she loves it and is so grateful for the new experience, while in the other, she goes stir crazy with the lack of SOUND. She said she e-mailed a friend of hers recently, a sound technician, and BEGGED him to make her a tape of traffic and send it to her so she could play it when she went to bed and finally GET SOME SLEEP.

We’re looking forward to a lot of visits from friends and family this summer. We love sharing this place with others and seeing the affect it has over them. We’ve created a beautiful place and we’re looking forward to planting our garden, to planting new trees, to post-hole digging a new fenced area for Richard’s new chickens, to building and insulating a new room up in a portion of our attic/old hayloft, to constructing a little pier to go out into our pond. We’re feeling Spring.