3 September 1998 -- Behind the defenses, peering
out
In contrast to the others down the hill, who head off to their various
evening gatherings to further their ties to the "community" and to each
other, I have chosen to come to the Cabin and try to think about "what
to do". It is growing dark fairly early now. I have already set aglow
my living room kerosene lamp and adjusted the wick for good brightness.
It is hardly the glare of overhead floodlamps in a conference center meeting
room, but then, there is no conference being held.
Often times, it seems I can live a pretty good life when I get so busy
I don't have time to reflect--I simply must do the next thing, or
else. Indeed, the majority I call "normal", with their dependent
families in a constant state of crisis, also thrive under such a wartime
footing. "Wartime, that's right," I think, picking up a copy of Life
from 1943, one of the many in the rack beside the sofa. "War is Peace,
Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength"--the mind that is too much its
own will soon become an enemy of the rest. So all America was there,
thinking together, acting together, working together, and...hating together.
Here's a photo showing a merchant ship, battling the icy seas to make
its way to Murmansk and Our Russian Allies, as we joined to defeat the
East Asian Empire. I have to wonder how many people were like George
S. Patton and really didn't go along with the idea. Likewise, in
today's culture, there must be a fair percentage who loathe the constituency
they have joined out of convenience and fear of reprisal. Even those
who claim to be "independent" have become part of a camp, and a large one,
too, with vocal leaders.
The chill has started to get a little deeper these nights, so I find
myself wearing my fleecewear before finally going to bed. My woodshed
is now ready with its provision of seasoned fuel, from that fellow in town
with the hydraulic splitter. You could tell he was waiting eagerly for
the start of deer hunting season, a time to be out with his buddies from
the Tavern and with his sons. Oh, what a life it must be, to be able
to act and not have unending doubts about what one has done! I have
had a life of hesitation and thus, have become lost.
Here's a spread on the valiant defenders of Stalingrad, continuing to
defy the armor of the Nazis, who were so reckless as to rely upon those
tenuous supply lines. An old woman pours sand into bags, as the young
children pile them into an enormous barrier. Yes, I can see
the wisdom of being dug in, as opposed to being exposed and vulnerable.
This Cabin, I would think, is where I practice my own "bunker mentality".
Fortunately, I am not currently under attack, though the defenses are indeed
well laid.
It makes no sense. I do not draw fire! From time
to time I climb the parapets and look out, at the puzzled mob who quietly
passes, staring for a moment, then continuing, towards their various assemblies.
Still, it seems like it would be surrender, and humiliation as well, to
come out right now and take up fully with those social factions.
I have no idea, the theatres of conflict into which I might find myself
marching with them. I let myself sink back, with a sigh, into the
stuffing of the sofa. I am really and truly to myself now, and wonder
when the siege might ever be lifted. It wouldn't even take an army...just
a change of viewpoint. But that has been a very long time in coming.
RB
6 September 1998 -- Trying to explain my hesitation
I've taken the metal chair from the front porch again and set it up
out in the open, amid the grass, gravel, and occasional scrub near the
scorched stone fire ring in the clearing. I look in, at the fine
white ash from my last carefully tended campfire, remembering how intensely
it had glowed. The sky is a brilliant blue overhead, and the sun
is starting towards the west-southwest, casting a stark shadow from all
that stands in it. I realize that another summer is on its way out,
but there is still today, and I try to make what use I can of its opportunity
to be outdoors. The green leaves are still intact and the brush remains
full of insects, whose sound suggests they are oblivious to the changes
to come.
I would like to live as much for the moment as these insects and those
leaves, but I am reminded of the exact parameters, terms and limitations
of my social contract; my license, as it were, to occupy a place in humanity
and its social order. I look around and see the tall, bent-over green
blades of grass, continuing to grow. The grass would see this as futile,
if only it knew that its days are numbered in its current form; that it
will be driven back to start over again when the freezing weather finally
arrives.
In my real city life, submerged among men (and women, too), I hear the
puzzled voices, wondering why I don't follow along with them. I look
at them and say, "if you only knew where that path leads; if you
only knew I'd just have to turn back." At that point, they
think I'm giving up, when I choose not to be stopped at the threshold of
possibility once again, for attempting to pass one gate too many.
Well, today I'm out here in the clearing. It will post no social
sentry in my path, restricting my further forward motion because of the
experience of my past and its artifacts in the present. It will simply
get cold out here and I'll start spending the days indoors, building a
fire if need be.
Many find it funny when I claim to be marginalized. "You?",
they ask in amazement, "why, how I wish I had your problems!"
And indeed, to the ordinary person, my particular stumbling blocks look
trifling. That, perhaps, is where I need to spend time, when I finally
have to drive back in the truck to that city life.
I should try to see and understand the day-in, day-out sorrow that is theirs,
realizing that I have spent too long concentrating on a burden that they'd
carry in their pocket as they drag their far heavier loads. But still,
there is something essential in those others, just as there is in the proliferation
of growth about me here in the clearing. It keeps them going strong, despite
what will soon be crushing loss. They know something I don't, but
then maybe in view of the justice inherent in the distribution of troubles,
they should be the ones to have it, not me.
I seem sustainable, although admittedly far from satisfied, in living
a chosen life of deprivation; forsaking things they count as essential,
simply because of the higher magnitudes of pain and discouragement that
go with them. They, on the other hand, live the more daring life,
reaching out with all they have, every day. I am so glad, that God
looks after them and gives them the encouragement they need when trouble
strikes. But I don't understand his deal with me. It is time
to wait awhile and see, doing what is in my own power today. Even
that must have its reward, though it is not much of a life in the here
and now.
RB
10 September 1998 -- The time to make a change
Finally, some cooler weather has returned, up here in the hollow.
I have started using the fireplace again, although this is more because
of its novelty after so long than any real cold. My collection of
woolen, down, and polypropylene garments remained where I stowed them in
the spring. Gradually, the real cold will set in and the leaves will
turn. Very little has really changed from last year to this year.
But, of course, I've changed, and so has my perception of my surroundings.
It is a rather dubious blessing to be a man who knows he has to change;
that "God isn't finished with him yet". Especially difficult is waiting
out such change when it is badly needed, then doing it right and not seeking
quick fixes. This, at least, is the time of year to get outside and do
more foot-exploration of the hills! I do not reach the ridge-crest
with such sweat any more. I am once again amazed, after having just
returned from a strenuous hike today, at the profound sense of settlement
I feel, as I crash into the living room sofa. It is typically difficult
to make myself become so active. At least I can find the time up
here, and I'm not missing any TV shows. I do not wonder what's in
my e-mail boxes or on those posting boards.
This afternoon, I feel my entire weight being pushed upwards by that
slipcovered upholstery. I am reminded of what it has been like on
backpacking expeditions, and how good it feels to lay that burden down
against a tree and just stretch out in the tent, for hours on end sometimes.
Taking such a load upon myself certainly puts me in a mood where I can
more patiently wait for those better times. So often in real life,
I find myself carefully hoarding my strength and not "going for it".
But what am I left with? Tension and more stress throughout than
before!
"Oh, this feels so good," I say to myself, with my head sunk into the
pillow at one end of the sofa. This is one of the techniques I've
stumbled upon for changing my point of view as to things. But with
the complication of career and other obligations, it is so hard to schedule
it any more. The principal "voice" that "speaks to me" in that life
down there says, day after day, "you're behind. Get back to work!"
It has no sense of what I might really be doing to myself, with all that
exertion of the mind, sitting all those hours at that
desk, and poring all those hours over computer CRTs. Most people
seem to know how to put it all away on at least a weekly basis, and perhaps
even keep the Sabbath day holy.
As evening settles out here, I shift about to another position, feeling
those stretched-out limbs, with their slight ache that isn't quite pain.
There's only so much a man can really do, at any given time, any given
place. Maybe my sense of overload lately comes from poor discernment
and too much retention of frivolous, dissipative activity. Misplaced,
though, is the well-intentioned advice that a portion of the "energy" I
spend on ceaseless work should be somehow diverted into activity that would
remove the stress. This refers to the coins of two thoroughly different
realms. The person I am today, sadly, is not one with realistic long-term
sustainability. Changing my identity will be difficult. But
then, I look back at all those other lives I no longer live, and ask "what
is any different about this one, anyway"? I shall get to a sound
sleep, and early, tonight.
RB
14 September 1998 -- Alone, facing the oncoming
wind
The muffled background noise of the river in the ravine behind the back
door remains as always, although reduced considerably from the time of
the spring melt-off. I'm resting in the shade of the Cabin building,
as the sun ascends in its tour of still-respectable height. I sit
against the wall, among the grass and scattered low ground cover that reaches
almost to the very foundation-stones, since this planting is indigenous
and self-selecting. I know there to be poison ivy in there, as well
as various bramble vines, so the terrain under this willow and aspen canopy
is hardly as inviting as the broad and open clearing.
I look into the woods below and notice that the vanguard of the
season's change has appeared, in the occasional orange-to-yellow leaf.
The wind picks up now; that rather intent wind with a purpose that is so
often used as a symbol of an approaching new way of life. I rise
to walk slowly around to the front, squinting for a moment as the sun greets
my eyes. There are great, rounded cumulus formations riding with
this wind. Their shadows move past, advancing across the clearing with
unstoppable certainty until I spend my momentary time within them.
I try, sometimes, when I'm down in that real city life, to stand just
this still and observe the similar atmospheric effects that are there.
I always end up feeling strange, though, standing in my tiny yard, with
those unknown neighbors hurrying by. The jets continue on overhead,
along that low Runway 36 approach to Washington National. Instead of the
river, I have the roar of traffic out on the main route. I know that
there must be peace to be found in the city, somewhere, somehow.
I try to close myself up, away and to myself, with the windows closed and
the appliances turned off, thinking this to be the route. But then...there
are the many cues and reminders of my life of trappings.
I've heard the call to "simplify, simplify" for almost 2 years now.
Yet all I end up doing is shuffling about things from one pile to
another. Out here, at the end of the dirt track, beside my sparsely-outfitted
Cabin, I stand, considering a different piling-up of those grand yet benign
cloud formations. I look on up the ridge in front of me from my vantage
point in the hollow, to those hillsides of steady-state tree cover.
There are, predictably, more trees starting to change up higher, 1000 feet
above where I stand. I've noticed that when I stand here for a time
as small as two or three hours, it seems like I have watched very little
happen for a very long time. Then, I think to the truth of that other
life behind me; to those decades of seasons, with their years flipping
past and measured according to human, technological, and social matters.
I sometimes must remind myself of what month it is, as I drive along down
there, creating some of that main route noise myself on my way to the office.
I complain loudly enough that my servitude in the crowd is causing me
to lose the dignity of being human. But in these hills, free of those
confinements and reduced to basics, the scene in front of me is just as
formidable. As I watch the breeze move across the valley, not caring
in particular that I present a negligible cross-section to it when it finally
arrives, I see some of the truth of solitude. I have observed on
frequent occasion the intense, inner spiritual buildup that accompanies
those crushing let-downs in the social melée. I realize that
I shall soon have to go back down and face more of those scenarios of fear,
but should my spirit be stripped to poverty, at least God will be closer
at hand, to bind my wounds.
RB
18 September 1998 -- Disconnecting myself, once
again
I would like to think that real relaxation might be possible during
my time here today, but something tells me I have to keep up the battle
down there or I'll lose momentum and grind to a halt. Stretched out
on top of my bunk-covers this late afternoon, feeling residual stiffness
throughout, I realize how hard it is for me to drop those various concerns
that really only demand a short bit of attention in any given day.
It is quiet up here, and I do not have immediate recourse to the information
feeds and their supporting applicances. I think I need to enforce
the removal of such input and output through physical means, such as driving
up all that road, for they are far too tempting when I'm back in that city
home.
When I think of myself cut off in this way, it is not particularly alarming.
The world will go right on its merry way, with me or not. I have
successfully evaded major interpersonal commitment and remain a free man.
I can hide when and where I want to. But then, that means the world
hardly has real and abiding interest in supporting my continued presence,
either. Even in my place of employment, I am far from irreplaceable.
So I use my privilege today to be in the stillness of this room, with
evening approaching. I suppose I should be up, finding something
to prepare from the pantry soon, but I can even postpone that obligation,
since there is no one waiting over at the table, with place settings before
them. I think to myself what honor it might be, down in that maddening
fray, to have real dependents. But then I think of the mind-numbing
mediocrity of tending to the less-glamourous details of that life, and
know the grass cannot be that green. "No, it is better to be unattached,"
I assure myself. If it is possible for the trifling concerns of just
keeping myself going to become so great as to make me want this escape,
I don't think there's room for many more on this precarious vessel.
My mind will not readily reach a resting point this evening. It
must be that I'm trying too hard to slow it, fearful that there
is no rest I can find that is not of my own making. I am too trusting
in my own weakened faculties and not enough so in the far greater
resources outside of myself. There is compassion down there
in society, and it is probably looking for me right now. People just
aren't that evil. They, after all, are the ones I envy; the
ones who love first and ask questions later. But the minute I drive
back down into the town, there they are, off on what appears to be business
that is mutually exclusive to my own. The key word there is appears,
I remind myself. In truth, when I plug back in to the social network,
there can be no absolute separation.
What was that lyric from those glorious 60's, for which I was too young
to have complete appreciation? "The love you take / is equal to the
love you make." If only trying to "take" it didn't have to be accompanied
with so many heart-rending games and formalities in the process of "making"
it. Then I might play more of my rightful part. I am reminded,
at least, of God, who gives his love without strings or veiled expectation
of repayment. If only I could see him, down there in the mob, in
the fundamental decency that underlies the majority of souls.
RB
22 September 1998 -- Maintaining control over what
I can
I felt the true cold arrive this evening, as the sun set over the ridge
beyond the river. The wind is now prying many leaves from the once-green
of the hillsides, where I took a short walk earlier today. My surroundings
there were moving more or less in one direction, down, to join the deepening
layer of bio-mass. I came inside, finally, wearing my fleece shirt
and woolen trousers. I know I'll soon be needing thermals as well
to be out there for very long.
The twilight is now growing very dim, so I use what visibility is left
to light up the kerosene lamp near the sofa, which I hang on its stand.
Then, I attend to kindling and building the fire, which soon restores a
sense that I have somewhere I can be for awhile. I look in my almanac
and see that the Autumnal Equinox will occur at 5:34 UTC tomorrow morning.
I should be asleep by then. The sun has now started braking, in its
trip away from us here in the North; this is the point of inflection.
But it still has plenty of momentum to lose, so it will surely be getting
colder. This should be no surprise to me by now, having lived out
many, many autumns in the northern latitudes.
The room now begins to take on significant heat from the fire, and I
can leave my huddled position in front of the hearth, to stretch out on
the sofa, in the secondary lantern-glow. It seems shameful to rest
this evening up here at the Cabin, since I know how soon I'll need to plunge
back into the non-stop overload of the city, my job, and my home.
But experience tells me there is only so far I can be driven before I start
reaching diminishing marginal returns. It occurs to me that I could
be living one of those lives I've heard of so often; the kind with predestined
failure, where effort only serves to lessen the severity of the inevitable
crash. But such absolute fates are rare. More common is the life
in which it is the sum total of free will judgment and action that determines
whether or not catastrophe is avoided.
The question, then, always concerns how much control is really there
and how much is simply not worth the battle. Just as I have no defense
against the sun's continued departure, and must factor in as a given that
it will be cold, there are limitations upon me in that urban life that
I cannot escape. For the moment, this unstoppable opposing force
looks far greater than it really is, so I find myself acquiescing under
a cease-fire, trying to gain a more objective sense of what I'm up against.
But I always seem to have the drive to get up and get going again, which
can be annoying when I know it is not in my best interest to do so.
It is now fully dark outside, and the warmly-lit wooden interior of
the Cabin has become a larger part of my reality. I am staving off
those hounding reminders; that I have this and that and that to do, tomorrow
and the next week. It is time to slow down and become centered in
my immediate reality, and not someplace I see reproduced on a cathode-ray
tube or in a magazine photo. I am powerless to do much about that
larger world as a whole. It is in motion and it will do what it will
do. But I can keep the proper size of fire burning in that
fireplace and make sure there is enough water in the cistern until I am
able to go back down in the daytime to the river bank. I can reassure
myself that life has yet to leave me completely and that I've seen this
all before.
RB
26 September 1998 -- Staying clear of the fray
Yes, the summer and its heat have decidedly broken, and now as it grows
cooler, the trees advance onward towards their color-peak. It is
no longer the world of green that I spent so many hours in, trying to escape
the heat by finding a shady resting place. During those months, I
began to take the warmth for granted, and passed into a sort of complacency.
But now, the scene out here is one that makes a man wish to brace himself
for what lies ahead. When I think of the net effect of the coming
winter, it is one of being confined to the indoors, and limited in one's
range of activity. It is indeed a good metaphor for growing old.
Granted, I do not always suffer punitive incarceration, being kept inside.
From last year, I recall the greater appreciation I had for the cozy space
within those pine-panelled walls, with the fieldstone hearth radiating
heat, as the piercingly-cold wind and snow blew all around.
Today, the sun is out, and it is warm enough yet to go for a walk on
the periphery of the clearing, getting that wider perspective on the Cabin,
the woodshed, and the outhouse in the distance. I have seen a fair
number of rabbits today, making their way through the growth. They
always look like creatures with knife's-edge nerves like my own can be,
from city life. But they have good reason to be ever at the ready.
I, on the other hand, am trying to subdue some of my similar "fight or
flight" reactions to occurrences of little real significance. I still
don't understand why it is that clearly non-threatening situations still
evoke those same responses from the earlier days of humanity. I make
it a point to steer a wide berth from scenes of real danger, by
my reserved lifestyle and preference to stay to myself.
So it will not be so bad, spending that time indoors this winter, I
tell myself. Enclosed dwellings have an inherent effect of isolating
potential combatants, as in the earlier days of warfare, when the men simply
camped out until spring. But no one ever heard of a "winter of love",
either. This must explain our insistence upon placing the lion's
share of our holidays during those months.
I stop, out by the main trailhead to the ridge, to look into the broad,
shallow bowl of the clearing, remembering the few times I've come out here
in snowshoes and would not dare stop for so long. There are no others
here, so I have created, in effect, an enclosure in the outdoors, with
only that twisting link down the river to the world at large. I would
suppose there is a certain pathology one can identify in this preference
for solitude, which I seek more often than most.
It is not the most attention-holding of stories for the mass media market;
a lone man pondering rocks and trees and rivers. Rupert Murdoch would
never buy it. But what do we end up seeing on our screens and in
those modern-day equivalents of the Dime Novel? We see heroic characters
who are driven by a sense of duty, or mission, to situations of life- and
heart-endangering peril; various tableaux of people whose questions are
related to immediate personal safety or surviving stunning blows of romantic
misfortune. Well, that is not how I'd seek answers to the
larger questions of long-term purpose and self-worth. Yet, somehow,
I think those literary figures are aware of a wisdom that would do me some
good. Yes, when that sense of mission arrives, it's time to "go for
it" and "just do it"--God will bail you out.
RB
30 September 1998 -- Looking back, from a safe distance
I've driven up again in the truck, through
the 1800-foot vertical climb along the far-from-improved dirt and gravel
track that reminds me of many lesser-used fire roads I've seen. I
come to a halt in the dooryard area in front of the woodshed and note the
trip odometer, which I had set to zero down by the main highway turnoff.
It reads 4.1 miles. That would have been a strenuous trip on foot
with backpacks, but the downhill hike out in an emergency would be much
easier. I climb out and down from the cab, looking at the number of wet
leaves that have landed on the hood and roof, as I drove along next to
the river. It looks as if quite a rain came through last night, since
even the hard-beaten earth of the yard has a layer of surface-mud.
I make a brief trip to the outhouse, recalling the experience of motoring
in the 1960's with my family. Even the waysides on the Interstates,
Eisenhower's lasting legacy, were no better outfitted than this.
This reminds me of my long-term plan to sink a well out here, since it's
quite a haul bringing water up in buckets from the river. But I've
seen how that goes. First comes the hand-pumped well.
The well, of course, is highly amenable to an electric pump, which means
that I'm running a generator somewhere and soon installing outlets for
the TV, the PC and the microwave. Then, I'd be setting up the satellite
dish.
I suppose I'd want all of that if I were really living and working in
a place like this. Oh, but what disruption it would be, having a
communications setup here like the ones at my city
home or my office! I would be sitting
in front of the screens at all three places then. But up here, the
link is severed. I sometimes wonder what it would be like, to drive back
down the road into town and discover a state of total mayhem, from something
that never reached my eyes or ears. It never gets to anything like
that, though. The social and economic systems are incredibly adept,
especially in these "industrialized democracies", at seeking and holding
the steady state. Though my own mind might pass daily along a wild
trajectory of internal emotion, I still find it generally possible to return
to familiar old settings and ways of knowing them.
The sky is clouded over fairly evenly today, I note, as I carefully
step across the mud of the dooryard to the front porch. I step inside
and remove my boots, setting them to dry on the mat next to the door.
It will be good to be here for this night, I remind myself, as I check
to see if the woodpile next to the fireplace is sufficient and that the
kerosene lamps are filled. Everything is where I left it before,
and there are no new messages; no further indicia of irritation or concern
to appear on a screen.
After lighting the kitchen lamp and starting the fire for the evening,
I can actually hear myself thinking, as I sit on the sofa.
With the out-of-reach objects of my envy no longer dangled and displayed,
tauntingly, before me, I let myself grow a little older in peace.
I do not deal for now with the painful frustration of those unmet desires.
Yet while I rest, I know it remains my duty to develop realistic solutions
to my mess down there, or I am simply practicing avoidance, a dangerous
downward spiral. So I think, cautiously, of the turmoil I just left.
I try to see it in a different, more truthful light, and slowly pare away
the extreme and temperamental reactions I have so often associated with
that scene.
RB
Ahead to October 1998
