“Sleeping in is not my thing, but I think I slept a little extra this morning, in my dreams avoiding the possibility upon waking, that my electricity would be gone. This is sort of a new twist on an old phenomenon I’ve lived with - well, most folks in Vermont have lived with it too - forever. But my last two houses were off-grid, spanning almost three decades, so I’m most familiar with a power outage that signals generator breakdown, or battery failure. Now that I’m back in civilization, relatively speaking, on a mountainside in Lincoln, I’m a captured customer of power lines. Trees down, rivers flooding, ice accumulating ... all that can affect me, and my businesses, and my sanity, terrorizing me with new threats such as lack of water & lights, but never, no, not ever, warmth. My fire wood supply may be wet, due to lack of a place to stack it under cover while the studio has been under construction, but I know how to finagle that. An ample supply of lumber scraps assures that I can coax heat from anything, with a little patience. A few people teased me, about installing wood burning equipment in all of my four buildings, & teased me again when I had to enlist the same, dedicated friends and family, to move those heavy, remarkably stable objects, off my truck and into place, which is never easy. I’m feeling so much gratitude tonight, for every joke made at my expense, that oddly, also seemed funny to me at the time. Love involves frustration, it involves doing things that don’t make sense sometimes, & even facing a little good natured anger from those close to me, is something I’ve come to accept. Bottom line is, that the community around me, has kept me alive. And I don’t always know how to thank anyone, from the depth of my feelings, how I might do, if life were easier, if I was not struggling as hard as I do. Comfort has not been my go-to, just as sleep has not always been easy, or predictable. What seems to motivate me, and correct me if I am delusional, is making beautiful places of human connection, and creativity, and home. For me, the bar is high, and I push those around me, to help me do hard things, that we all will enjoy, eventually, where we can be safe from raging storms, of every description. The hand painted sign, featured in this post, for me, says it all. Originally painted by my youngest daughter, then repainted and decorated with pressed flowers by me recently, this simple sign hangs in my entry, amidst piles of snow dusted logs piled high, and construction materials, extension cords, skis, and empty sheet rock buckets. This morning the whole mud room was awash with slush, as no door has yet to be hung to block the winds. My shovel, the cheap kind from the hardware store, is cracked & falls apart, which is par for the course these days. I think a bit, each time, about which broom might deal with the type of snow I’m trying to remove. A sponge mop, paper towels, and my bare hands are often part of the mix. To hopefully get things dry enough, to dry some more, over the course of a temperature shifting day. Whether or not ice cleats, that just barely fit on my insulated rubber boots, will be needed, to have traction enough. When I’m ready, I shovel my way up to the guest house. The folks who’ve just departed, have left a sink full of dishes, dirty sheets, trash, and depleted the kindling supply. And while irritated that this clean-up is going to take me a couple hours, I pick up the guest book, idly flipping through it, to see if anyone has left a message. Reading quickly, my heart engages, as I see a few, final words from last night’s entry. “He proposed”, it reads. How could I be so crass, so ignorant of others, to have forgotten what goes on here, on my property, while I’m otherwise preoccupied. The slog up to the yurt, later, just before dark, is colored now, as I use ski poles to make my way through 2 feet of wet stuff. The yurt deck is a mess of downed branches, and snow that has slid off its roof. On a clear day, you can see the high peaks silent & imposing, thru the cold, smoke of your breath. Here, water runs on the land, for as long as it can, well after it should be frozen. I duck inside to check for damage. I don’t know why the shelters of the north hold so much sway over my imagination. I keep building them. And in the world I see coming, I aspire to be as strong, to protect & defend, and never give way, or bow to capricious forces.”
