Post and Beam
““When are you going to build that barn, dad?” she said. “Oh, I dunno, when I get around to it, I guess”, he said. “Well... I’d love to get married in a barn ...” her voice trailed off. So goes the story, and I walked into the barn today, a magnificent post and beam structure hand crafted by a builder I know, living on his family’s land for generations since it was a Morgan horse farm. I suppose you’d say, we’re of “the same generation”. We’ve both worked with our hands to spec as well as according to our own intuition, seen maples planted along the road become towering patriarchs. He took me up to his sawmill, on the back forty. Another post & beam shelter, elegant, useful, made to last, just large enough to cover his equipment. It was his suggestion, that I could continue to walk on his land, up to the height of it, to catch the view. I had my snow shoes in the truck, and said so, but he pointed off to the right, and drew my attention to a melted track. He was off to a meeting, and I was blocking him in, so I backed up the Chevy to let him out. He waved out his window, and I rolled mine down. “When you get to the top” he gestured, “ there’s a pine grove off to the left. Look for the cabin in there”. I smiled, waved him one last time, and headed up on foot, excited to be bounding along on my spring legs, not the winter ones. To the north, his firewood operation. Having seen his wood shop, I wasn’t surprised by all the neat rows, and the lack of anything extraneous on the working portion of his tree farm. The people we don’t get to know well, the ones who suddenly appear, having lived, evidently, parallel lives, of hard work and loss, alternately aggrieved and philosophical as old Vermont lays dying, it’s maybe a benefit of aging, or not, depending on your slant. One day my slant goes this way, the next day, the other. The truths we’ve relied on can be warehoused on short notice; the loves we’ve known, traded out for something inferior but adequate. “I could sell it all now, and make a killing”, he’d said, in the dusty stillness, surrounded by his life’s work of craftsmanship. “But I’m not ready”. I pushed some sawdust around with my foot, looking down. “The market will still be good in ten years”, I said, sort of lamely. After all, it was South Woodstock. But you wouldn’t know it, not here. Not amidst old draw saws and chisels, blended with the functional entry of contemporary tools. Always an eye towards frugality, but constantly dealing with folks with too much money. What that does to someone like him, or like me, over a lifetime, is to forge a kind of resignation. Aware that we’re mostly more alike than different, chasing dreams one way or another, riding waves we have no control over, bumbling in ignorance, until maybe kindness or superior wisdom topples our cart. Thank god for that. “They got married”, he said, and pointed to a place I couldn’t quite see, beyond the crest of the hill. “It’s a Torii, a Japanese arch. It’s quite a view from up there”. I hoisted my camera bag, with determination. To have a father like that, who built you a barn, then a Torii: “the transition from the mundane, to the sacred”.”