I stop to pose on the Appalachian Trail, (Photo looks South towards GA) Shenandoah NP,VA; July 1999 November 1999 Cabin Diary |
 Mailing address: bo@bo-hemian.com |
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4 November 1999 -- The inevitable is coming
The greater part of the leaves are now down from the trees and blowing about in the clearing, as well as piling where they can against the sides of the Cabin. A day like today contains in it the full suggestion that snow could be coming any day. It's always a transition I need to make at about this time of year, when the stores start dusting off the Christmas decor for its 2-month shift. "The Holidays" is no longer an abstraction mentioned in passing during long-term planning.
As I look out the front window today upon the scene of increasing grey, I feel something similar to that change in retail and social emphasis in my real-life city rounds. The trend now is towards the deeper parts of winter, and no longer away from the warmth and full expression of life in the summer. It is like the story of the astronauts who stopped climbing from the Earth and started landing on the Moon, once they passed the place where gravity zeroes out. There is a certain satisfaction in no longer living amid woods that protest their forcible removal from splendor. Now, the landscape out there has accepted the truth of the coming snow and ice; of the change to another mode, making preparations the way the faithful might during the weeks of Advent. Of course, attributing all of this "feeling" to the forest is not accurate, since what I'm sensing is for the most part my own reaction to the environment. I know how subjective and changing that can be.
There is no room for interpretation, however, in the matter of how cold it has been the last few days up here. I'm at the point of needing to break out my heavy parka, even with no snow. Gone is the freedom I had to walk around out there, up the river and along the trails, without carefully guarding against the cold. I'm passing into the "shut-in" period of the Cabin year, a time I spend looking at the fire, at the walls, and at whatever I happen to be cooking on the stove. When I resume my other life in the suburban sprawl, people will be out more at parties and the shopping malls than before--there's no stopping the inevitable. I wonder at times what life is like in the southern hemisphere temperate-zone countries, like Australia, Argentina and South Africa. Christmas must be harder to celebrate, in the peak of summer, since it competes with the distractions of outdoor activity.
It is not that any of this really has much importance in the small, private world of "my" hollow, which by definition keeps me pinned pretty well where I am until it comes time to drive out and back, through the interface with real life. In the 2-1/2 years I've been visiting the Cabin, I have found repeated comfort in its permanence of place, in what I thought in 1997 was the ideal counter-presence to my urban irritations. It is as though I were uniting myself with some sort of crystal lattice or coordinate framework. It has control over me and restrains my activity, to be sure, but it is also free by definition of anything that would make me want to resist such a loss of mobility. This is a slightly distasteful notion, since it resembles a command economy or one of the many bungled utopias attempted in recent centuries. If I look too long at how I "froze" the design of this small world, I might eventually see it as a shallow substitute for even the real life I currently know.
I realize, as move a bit closer to the fire in response to a draft from the front window, that I do not need such a high level of introspection when I come here. It is not as though anything particularly important hinges on my success in this exercise. Besides, I have the unfortunate need for some small quantity of discontent while I'm here or I'd never be able to leave and carry on where I must. Central in the premises of the Cabin is that it has no practical way of becoming my real life. I only hope that I can reduce the number of objectionable constraints to a more manageable number in what I must accept on the "other side". I see so many people "celebrating" life, rather than "enduring" it with the grim resolve that is mine.
"Bo"
8 November 1999 -- No more work for today
Though I had to use up practically all of this day hustling about town to keep the creditors at bay in my real life, I found time just before sunset to come up for a visit. I am always amazed at the colors of the sky, once the sun has disappeared below the horizon, which in this case is at a point on the ridge that is advancing to left as solstice approaches. There is that wonderful form of green-blue that develops in the sun's wake, and tonight I see two distant jetliner con-trails lit from below to make the aircraft look like comets. We're into the cold, clear nights now; there's no doubt about it. This might not make a bad night to sleep under the stars, except for how cold it is--I need to rig one of those bivouac bags someday.
As I made my way from city obligations this afternoon, my mind was barely capable of conceiving of what it is like, now that I'm finally here. The contrast between the streets and the woods is so strong that one pretty well obliterates memory of the other, once I'm in it. After the last of the glow has passed from the ridge crest, I turn to head in through the wood-plank door. Until I get some fire going, I need to keep my coat on in here. With the lights out and my eyes fully accustomed, I am able to see well enough to avoid tripping over things in the living room.
I seriously doubt I'll come across any great revelation up here at the Cabin tonight. This mind-numbing sameness, in comparison to working an ever-moving job, is what would make full-time life here rather counter-productive. I suppose I could try to move some sort of information-based work up here via satellite telecommunications, but there isn't enough of that yet to do in the late 90's. There is no substitute for my making my showing. It is amazing to me at times, the amount of business that is successfully concluded in face-to-face meetings, without even saying a word. It is almost the definition of work, I think at times, to subject one's self to a collective having particular expectations. But this definition is too broad, since it includes all manner of human interactions except for the rarest, most tolerant ones.
Maybe I'm alone in seeing social contact as simply a different form of labor. It could very well be that unconditional acceptance is a rule so well understood that no one even talks about it any more, since such talk would be immediately labelled as "trite". Well, I've looked under that stone of "polite society" enough times to know better than to strain my back picking it up again--they aren't talking, if they do know anything. Maybe they don't know what to say. Such things as life in the fullest are probably only a myth anyway; one of those truly "urban" legends.
After kindling up a small flame in the stove for cooking purposes, I sit on the wooden stool in the kitchen, under the flickering kerosene lamp that leaves much of the room in shadow. The exertions of working, no matter how it's defined, have been lifted. I try to accept who it is that I am; this rather unusual man who sits near the top of a river hollow, willingly, and without regret. It probably isn't really "me" who's here most of the time. I have pretty well determined the existence of an "authentic" latent self that could engage in social commerce with the best of the "normal". It's all one enormous defense against pain, or so those analyst-types might say, when I put the four miles of dirt track between me and my "neighbors" in the village.
It is indeed dark up here tonight, now that the last hint of the sun is gone from the front window, but there is certainty in it. I shall sleep well under the down comforter in my bunk, once dinner is complete.
"Bo"
11 November 1999 -- A temporary break from my feelings
I feel nicely settled for the moment as I sit in the living room, looking over the back of the sofa into the clearing. I find myself needing to stay back from the glass, since it is near freezing today and my breathing fogs the window. The cloud cover is substantial and uniform, with that look it has prior to precipitation. Finally, around noon or thereabouts, the snow flurries begin. At first, it takes a sharp eye to spot the flakes, but soon it grows difficult to see much further than the tree line on the upper side of the clearing.
I enjoy having the clearing outside the Cabin because it allows me to get a good look at events like the first snow, the sky at night, and the rising and setting sun. The ground looks like it's still warm enough that there will not be any lasting accumulation. Still, when I was outside earlier, I felt how cold the air itself had become. Once such cold has joined forces with frozen precipitation, the outdoor atmosphere takes on a different character, one that seems less hospitable to the life that happens to be in the way. The forest that begins beyond the woodshed and outhouse was quiet and non-responsive; it just sat there.
Ordinarily when I approach a setting like this, I am unable to shake completely my residual real life despair, since the diversions of the media are taken away. Today, however, the mechanism of my mood has not behaved as it normally would--it is most puzzling. I recognize that I am dealing here with the great and mysterious "black box", the one with the handle on its side that transforms my experiences into feelings. I suppose it really shouldn't matter how I "feel", since I rarely get much of an outlet for doing anything constructive with it. I must admit that Dr. Laura is right about "feelings" being a rather frivolous and selfish luxury. Still, I have to contend with all of these reactions, and I am glad to see that the ordinary "gray mood" has not asserted itself as default on this visit.
As I sit here watching the tops of the nearby plants collect their delicately balanced loads of snowflakes, I cannot help but worry about the conspicuous lack of output from my personal facility for judgment and sorrow, which ordinarily wanders the streets of my mind like one of those proponents of doom who prays for tragedy so as not to look like a complete fool. I know "it's" out there, waiting to unleash a new round of condemnation. I turn from the window and look to the rest of the living room. It is on the dark side, on account of the snow, so I light the lantern in the kitchen wing. It adds its warm yellow glow to the atmosphere created by the fire. It is difficult to describe this current feeling because it is so benign in comparison to my usual resentments of city-life irritations. If I sit long enough listening to myself, I begin to feel the uneasiness of the speaker within, who must give a speech for which he has no prepared text. It does not feel good to be put on the spot like that.
I have to wonder, as does Jack Nicholson, if the ability to dismiss my internal judge is "as good as it gets". Is the "normal" person most different from me in not having the ongoing "voice", the one that emphasizes evil and personal wrongdoing? I know that soon enough this present state will pass, leaving me open again to the fury of my generally-resented rounds in real life. I feel it coming already--a sort of visceral storm developing on the horizon and approaching rapidly. It will not have the softness of the snow out there today, once it is with me. I can only hope that my defenses against despair will hold out.
As I sit at the dining area table, sighing, I know that the better times are moving on down the line for now--I just hope they'll be back. Hope is a hard sentiment to maintain when I am confronted with the "reality" of a person I do not care to be. My best preparation for the onset of such wrath is none, since no "feeling" ever ends up being a solid indicator of long-term reality. I will take what I get; God brings the weather to rest upon the good and evil alike. True glory, if there is any at all that lasts, is in what I cannot see--or hear.
"Bo"
15 November 1999 -- Free of ties that bind
The sun is now low enough in the northwestern sky that it is time to begin heading back down the trail from the ridge top, which I decided to visit today while the weather was still good enough for hiking. I am glad to have worn my waterproof boots, since the snow that fell and melted down at the elevation of the Cabin, 3765 feet, has pretty well persisted above the 4000-foot mark. It is not a heavy covering by any means; just enough to make me want to keep my eyes on my feet and where they're stepping as I find my way around the high trail to where the descent into the hollow begins.
Starting downward, I am glad to have left the fairly stiff wind that was blowing across the ridge, and it is a good bit quieter in the rather still neighborhoods of sheltered trees. I gain occasional sight of the Cabin through the breaks in the now-bare branches, and if there were enough snow down in the area of the clearing and the out-buildings, it might look like one of those turn-of-the-(last)-century Christmas scenes. Yes, I'd be heading back down to meet with some circle of loved ones, sitting near the fire to lose the chill in my face and hands. At least that's how the fantasy was sold to me as a kid. I suppose I've seen my share of those settings but they never turn out in real life like they do in the paintings.
I continue down the switchback path, which is barely visible at points except for the stone marker cairns, thinking of how easily I have been able to have a life so devoid of those "close" times. The costs of commitment and involvement have always seemed too great. I can be as derisive as I choose towards myself, I reason, but drag another person into it and it becomes injustice. This afternoon I have freedom, or so the reasoning goes, and this typically outweighs the dilute and marginal satisfaction I get from making myself sit still in a crowded room full of friends and/or relatives.
I have to wonder sometimes how the value of interpersonal contact ever got so solidly codified as to be the "law" I so often break when I come out here to the woods. Is this some sort of majoritarian rule; a tyranny of the 70 percent of the population I see in the lump called "normal"? I can't believe it's so simple as just going down there to my real city life meetings and reunions, to let it soak in. If I have any interstices that could be permeated by the goodness of life among the many, they have long ago been filled with various hard-to-remove residues of my own personal hardening. The image of my boots, newly sealed with wax for the winter, immediately comes to mind as I watch my feet begin to hit the lower-elevation mud.
No, there's no one there at the Cabin. I can collapse in a heap and not offend a soul. I reach the clearing's northern edge and begin following the wet grass and gravel that leads to the dooryard. The lights are out, just as I left them. Since the sun has now passed below the horizon, one of my first duties upon getting inside is lighting the lamps and starting a fire--at least I can have the fireplace part of the fantasy. I slowly remove my somewhat wet and sweated outerwear from the hike. I am so tired, I tell myself, as if I didn't already know it. I'm so glad for this stretch of unassigned time, if only to possess it as some sort of gratifying curiosity or toy.
The fire is gathering momentum behind the iron grating, tossing sparks as the wood crackles to its single use for tonight. I have seen enough change in my life that I know I cannot see today as exemplary of the rest of my years. Someday, I tell myself, I'll have what it takes. On that day, whenever it is, there will be no more struggling to keep my place at a gathering. I will be content with myself and finally be able to sit as still as I now sit on the sofa, leaning up against the overstuffed arm. No, I say in my continuing internal dialogue, I'm not disappointing anyone else tonight, and that's all that currently matters in my own sense of values.
"Bo"
19 November 1999 -- Relatively content for now
Standing as I am in my real life city rounds on the precipice of the Holiday Season, I realize that I'll be swept through the next 6 weeks or so with a fury that only increases as the years go by. On today's visit to the Cabin, I try to cultivate whatever might remain of the effortless capacity I had as a child to drink in all the decor, the songs, and the merriment. With no hardened experience of what the next day would bring, it was all wild and wondrous. For a man who professes no great desire to be in the middle of crowded human activity for long, this might seem a rather strange pursuit. I really don't hold out much chance that I'll ever get back what all these years have worn out of me.
There was a way to that life, however, that I still recognize on rare occasion. These are the times when my participation, usually more in a "place" than with people, finally becomes its own source of sustaining occupation. On those sparsely-scattered occasions, I am no longer scheming as to how I'll get back to one of my various hiding places. It is so hard to predict just when this miraculous "lifting of the curtain" will occur that I have little incentive to endure a lot of expensive emulation of extroversion, just in the off chance I'll be in the right place at the right time. That might explain why such moments are so rare.
Up here in the woods this early evening, I try to immerse myself in the content of the moment. I'm stretched out on the bunk, listening to the wind on the clapboard siding and roof. I ask myself how I can know so well that tomorrow will bring more of the same misery as today. Have I really made myself that stable, through all these years of play-it-safe living? Well, I'll let tomorrow take care of tomorrow, as it says in Scripture--there is enough concern for today. I move about some and sink in to the softness of my down comforter, covering up with a GI poncho liner. I am here, right now, and not feeling any particular distress that is so great as to cause distraction. All I have to do is stop loading up the hopper with more of that negative fodder that continues to be the mainstay of the trough in my wallow. The process, by design, will take place spontaneously if given a chance, I remind myself, for that is how God created us to be.
This very day, yes, I can claim some small form of victory, just by hanging on and not giving in. But such victory is so commonplace that it doesn't stand out. There I see another vestige of my childhood--the need for attention. Maybe all of this glorified written-out "whining" is nothing more than acting-out. I make a terrible scene, expecting to find sympathy or be reassured, then sit around puzzled for days about why I'm so often alone. It becomes a matter of deciding what the fundamental "bent" of my life on this earth will finally be. I seem to have found personal solace in misanthropic grumbling, but there is no advantage to witnessing the evil among certain men, since this is all-too-present but better left alone. Taking the higher road, however, is a major challenge with pain all its own. It is a walk on a tightrope and flying by wire, where the slightest upset can bring down a newcomer like myself with a strong dose of shame.
I suppose I should just be here, and aspire to nothing more. Being a being is an interesting practice of life, all in itself. I shall draw no hard conclusions about things that may not be true when I wake in the morning. I will discourage extremity in my behavior, except where I must do so within appointed and recognized roles. Just letting things go, I feel the small parcel of peace that I have gained, residing with me in this place where provocations are fewer. I am aware of my modern-day tendency to scare away such contentment, but what is the point of worrying about those other times to come? They, too, will be upon me with no particular effort on my part.
"Bo"
22 November 1999 -- The day's activities begin
There is the usual November cold in the Cabin sleeping area as I wake this morning, slightly before dawn. I find my various fleecewear and thermal items, so that I might get about and start the day, rather than hide under the covers. When I get to the front window and finally have my glasses in place, I see the results of this season's first significant snowfall, which must have gone on a good part of the night. This snow is deep enough that few but the largest outdoor features are not softly rounded by the accumulation, which looks to be about six inches.
The snow continues on in its methodical operations as I go through the morning routine I have up here, which centers about getting the heat back up and finding a decent breakfast. While I might skip that meal on days off in real life, I always assume there will be situations soon at hand up here where I'll be glad to have something "across my terminals". As I get the fire going in the stove, keeping the fireplace damper shut for now, I step out the back door and note the arc of snow that is swept aside as I push open the screen door. The air certainly does have the "feel" of snow in it, and I figure it to be cold enough that some drifting might occur if the wind picks up any time soon.
I close the back door, since I don't have the footwear I'd need to be out there now, and proceed to the bench in front of the stove, which is currently the warmest spot in the building. I take the coffee pot, filled as it was from the cistern near the door, and place it over the lid I judge to have the right heat. I end up making a breakfast that is a favorite from real life, oatmeal with walnuts and pecans. By the time this work is finished, the stove-heat has spread nearly to the far corners of the living room, so I step away, after stoking the firebox with another big piece of oak.
The snow looks just as intense as when I saw it in the bluish first light of day. If I were in northern Virginia and weather was like this, everything would be closed, and I'd be looking out the window from my home there. That can be an isolated feeling, even with a 4-wheel drive vehicle, since the snow forms even more of a barrier than the one I perceive in all the anonymous faces on the street. It does not seem particularly isolated up here, but then isolation is one of the founding conditions of this locale.
I stretch out in one of my favorite spots, on the sofa, my body reaching for whatever heat it can feel from the stove at this distance. Maybe I should light up the fireplace as well. If this were like the various cabins I see used as hyperbole in advertising campaigns, it would of course be much simpler, and only have the stove. There wouldn't be these large, energy-inefficient windows in the front. The log structure, moreover, could take being completely buried in snow. It's not that way here--I have a certain affinity to the outdoors, even as winter approaches, and don't want to shut it out completely. I figure I'll suit up and go walking about in my snow gear later on, or maybe cross-country skiing, to the extent I can on that uneven clearing.
It is always an enjoyable time when my getaways do not enclose me for extended periods; when I feel I have the run of the place. This, oddly enough, is often easier in busy tourist destinations like Las Vegas or Orlando. This yearning tends to stir another almost-lost childhood memory, of "going out to play", no matter what the season. If the barriers I see now were erected in those days, I never saw them. As in the famous McCartney song, "my heart was an open book". It is hard to know exactly what my "plans" will be when I finally get out there today, but the expeditions we mounted as kids never had a plan, either. At the age of 37, play, like other human activities, takes an application of initiative it once did not.
"Bo"
27 November 1999 -- Reflection in solitude
With the several inches of snow that have not melted since Monday, I am finally accepting the reality of winter 1999-2000. Temperatures have been just above freezing often enough that the cover has lost most of its powdery delight from the first couple of days; it is now just a fact of life that there is snow on the ground. Something I thought of in the abstract for so long and in such terms of novelty, especially during the hottest days of July and August, is now its own source of tedium.
I realize, of course, that I am dealing with the classic envy I have of the "ordinarily"-inspired, who find their joy in whatever the weather brings. They are the ones of absolute certainty as to all matters; I often accuse them of not being able to view every side of every issue. "Why, of course that's true, silly--why do you even think that?" they might ask, giving me that strange look I know so well. Persisting in such deliberations over ordinarily-universal "joys of living", however, is pointless; it is a debate few wish to join, since being convinced to the contrary of orthodox truth means more to dislike in life than before. This must be why I like to come to my fortress of solitude up here in the hollow; I do not see the backs of people running from my ill-intentioned grumblings.
Since I am not so perturbed as to start talking to the pine-panelled walls, I then have a chance to sit in silence and not develop any more of those half-baked theories of why all of God's Kingdom might actually be headed for ruin. I begin to wonder, as I sit in my sitting place by the front window, why I need to lash out at those social constructs every time I'm back down there. Why not just "live and let live"? Are those functions of the "normal" so poisonous to whatever I might hold dear as being authentically "me"?
I suppose I simply have a low attention span limit for those social affairs that look so benign on their face, on account of how I've succeeded in tuning the others out. Quite simply, it appears easier for me to be "bored" with others around than when I'm alone. Still, I end up with a certain feeling of victory upon each encounter I successfully complete, amid the world of the many, once it is over and I'm "freed". It does not seem right, in real life, to sit a whole day doing nothing--there is so little point to it. I'll head out onto the "bounding main" of the world and all who are in it, make my moves in the various social and commercial realms, and certainly endure my share of stress while it's all going on. But then--the retreat to my lair! What a time that is! This is why I always book my own hotel rooms, and why I've concocted the notion of this Cabin.
It seems there is something of a valuable resonance that rings within for a good long time, once I pull myself away from the source of vibration, only I cannot hear it until I'm set apart. Might I be waiting for an eye- (or ear-?) opening experience like that of Meredith Willson's Music Man classic, "'Till There Was You"? I have indisputable evidence of an ongoing set of ringing "bells on the hill", because of what I "hear" when I've run away and passed the experience through the mechanism of contemplation. I need to step one level of analysis lower, then, to be able to perceive the sound directly.
On that day when the second-hand impression is no longer the only one of significance, then I will not dispute what the others know because of what they sense in their everyday rounds in the service and company of others. Thinking to the inescapable presence of God, I note Isaiah's prophecy, "no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you". This must explain the consistent opinion of those who live life fully, as well as the resounding memories I have when I'm not living it.
"Bo"