“When I moved to West Corinth, VT in the 90s, to a barely insulated bungalow, in October, & found the wood stove door missing, with no back up heat, I found a new use for aluminum foil, and for that I was grateful. Shortly thereafter, arriving home with my two children under the age of six, it was an equally wonderful surprise to find two huge boxes of books, dropped from, we guessed, the sky. As it turns out, they were sent to us by Anne Easton, an elder neighbor up the road, whose daughter was to become a friend, and fellow Waldorf school parent. It was an odd assortment, very much in keeping with those of a fully addicted book collector, which wasn’t that uncommon in the woods, more so than might be generally known, I suppose. It’s common knowledge to a handful, how books insulate, as well as decorate, as well as entertain, where its cold. I’ve carried that idea with me, as even in emotional cold, this rule of thumb is pretty well accurate. And there’s been plenty of that. Yet what color & off-kilter swing, a country life can have, in a four corners town. I often wonder what happened to Fritz, the misogynist furniture muralist, who taught me to paint a chair, who lived in the fabled “Ding Dong” house. I still have a photo somewhere of myself in my fingerless gloves, smiling too big a smile for the occasion, as I stood by my first four-legged canvas featuring the phoenix-like destruction of my home, mysteriously burned down on my birthday the previous year. Happy Birthday, I thought, as I remembered the conflagration now immortalized artfully on its wooden seat. Maybe I have done a good job of wearing wings when I’ve had to, which deserves a nod, at least. Fritz’s studio wasn’t warm; we’d skied to it, to where it sat below the “Ding Dong” house, in a sheep pasture. In fact, our whole furniture painting class was assembled, along with guests dragged through the snow with us, to drink wine from plastic glasses, gawk at our attempts, and then feel stuck there at this, our last formal meeting. It’s a truism that many awkward moments of socializing could have been better spent than on a twisted mutual self-inflation, as one side tells the other how pretty they look. This type of flattery, it’s hard to avoid, especially if no one was ever there to say anything nice to you earlier. Believe me, however, when I admit that I’d have done better eating Italian or praying to the right god or building a doll house for needy children. And it’s why I drive a longer mile like I did today, to sort through old plumbing fixtures, or discarded window sashes, or off cuts of marble, stopping to examine the “Easter Island” Jotul, a stove I have’t seen since the 80s, or stuff I used to need, that I just want to touch again. I really want to touch things again, that I haven’t touched, now, in a long, long time. Maybe they didn’t allow me to, because I’ve been operating in a system they want to suppress. Or maybe I’ve tripped myself up, by going rogue from the norms of society. I don’t know. In former decades, there were sadhus, meditating in caves, for gosh sakes, real ones. There were generational farmers still horse logging, & milking by hand. There were outdoor kitchens, Sunday skating ponds, local celebrity thespians & giant bonfires expected to get out of hand. There were freezer lockers for rent at the general store, schools still based on free-thinking and Townes Van Zandt at the laundromat. When you let yourself get into the mindset of fear, it may help to reflect on the wild west that once attracted you.”
