I don't keep count any more. The physical experience is all that matters. It is just something we do now, like breathing. Its a heave-ho, do it or stay out of the way lifestyle, definitely not for sissies. Every single day, especially weekends, the Fireteacher leaves at sunrise and comes back with his truck spilling fat logs all over his ruts in the dirt drive. This is not exactly what you would call a landscaped property although it has its charms. My brother has called it idyllic. An appraiser would call it messy. But its mess is like an art studio, projects are going on all over the place in various stages of "becoming". All of it necessary if we are going to stay on top of our game.
If we lived in a housing development like some of those alien gated communities I've seen all over North America, we'd be in prison for violations, we'd have too many rooms and not enough space, we'd be tied up in court battles with an HOA for sitting on the porch doing nothing, they'd call the men in white coats for the amount of time I spend outside studying the galaxies, that is IF they could afford to nab wondering skywatchers. Perhaps they've overlooked a tax opportunity there...
The Fireteacher has lots of deals going on in the region, as a finish carpenter that needs firewood, the surrounding mountain communities are always interested in his deals. So here we are, in the thick of trading services for goods, locally, and its gotten us through the winter far better than I'd imagined. We're already into next winter, sawing and stacking and using what we've learned over the past year to polish our style for the next and the next after that. I'm not allowed to use the chain saw. "Its too dangerous." My job is to pick it all up and put it somewhere, which was going well. Now he's gotten into patterned stacking systems.
I was stacking expertly it appeared, but he decided no, he's got a better way which should eliminate the unsightly broken tooth appearance possessed by our logpiles of the past as portions are removed indoors. His new method seemed to me to be "cross hatch" stacking. But that isn't all. Its now cross-hatch stacking divided into subsystems according to species and age.
Young Oak is cross-hatched against the outbuilding farthest away to season for a year or more. Older Pine is cross-hatched closer to the primary dwelling. A mixture of seasoned Oak and Pine stays on the deck within immediate reach in the ever-changing temps that come with our altitude and those unpredictable out-of-season-surprises. We have a lot more of those surprises lately, I would even go so far as to say the timing of the seasons has been pushed up, wildflowers and lush long grasses lay under the weight of February's snow. You'd have to have seen it to believe it. Even the Hibernators were out looking for love and nibbling greens. Its not natural.
Look for yourself. Take a long look. At this very moment, hanging over the valley below us, are massive dark snow clouds. Shall we debate reality? The debate over global warming you'll notice bears all the hallmarks of the debate over Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. There is nothing to debate. Your senses are being toyed with as usual. More perverse, petty hallmarks, crafted to keep you from figuring out the truth so you stay behind the apartheid wall where
you are supposed to remain groveling, increasing in weight, decreasing in sensibility. Toying with our senses is debeaking to keep the caged chickens in line, a widespread REPREHENSIBLE practice. They love that word, don't they, maybe almost as much as they love CONDEMN, HARSH and GROOMED.
Okay, I really want to say that the good feeling in survival labor is that wonderful feeling of freedom. Do you remember what that felt like? I feel as close to my wheelbarrow as I feel to my brushes. Had it not been for some cruel twists of fate so many years ago, I would not have known this freedom today. Cruel twists of fate are actually doors of opportunity disguised in tragic costume. You have to come to this realization on your own and it usually comes around only after great suffering, neither of which anyone else can do for you. You have to be all alone on the highway to complete annihilation with no remedy remotely possible to see the beauty of the situation. The beauty is on the other side of the door.
If you make it though, the most obvious thing you'll notice is the absence of fear. That in itself is one key to the kingdom. Survival tip: Any time you lose that key, and there will be times it appears as lost, you can find it again right away through humility.
hu-mil-i-ty – noun
the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance
10 comments:
"Lightshow"--Deja Vu, very inviting in a cool clear swimming pool sort of way--better yet, turquoise waters in the bahamas with the fish swimming around the coral reefs--
yep, that's it--like goin' home--
and your latest is calling, beckoning-
Jj
Jj, you bastard, you stole the words out of my mouth! Give 'em back! -grin-
Did you paint this while standing under the heavens, gazing up at them and swimming in them with your eyes? Because that's what it looks like ... that you spent so long with your head tilted back and up and the flashlight turned off that stars we don't have names for revealed themselves to you ... I wish I had that sort of patience and I'm the one who'll be studying astronomy, soon....
"When the whole world is behind fences we'll all be in prison" ... forget who said that but it's stuck with me and seemed appropriate here. Never did like fences. As a child roaming this landscape of trees, lakes, and broken glacier-chewed granite, any fences that some farmer or logger or other property-owner had put up always attracted my attention as an obstacle to be overcome with the same determination others might bring to standing up to the schoolyard bully. It never occurred to me that I was thus regularly trespassing and I when I found out that all of the property back here was actually owned (that wasn't until Uni) I actually felt betrayed.
But fences are only necessary so long as we're worried someone will steal our potatoes and pee in the rosebush. If people weren't like that, if instead when they came across something another had built their only instinct towards it was 'Can I help?' and not 'Can I get?', well ... that would be a different world, wouldn't it?
Keep at it, Nina. It's a hard life and we all know you had a rough time of it at times this winter but the more you put in the more you get out and ... you know? it'll be interesting to see what comes of this, in the long run. If what you're building might not become the nucleus for something you never imagined....
A quick note on the climate change issue. That's a real ongoing process, of that there is no doubt. I don't myself think CO2 plays a significant role and the efforts to make it seem that way strike me as so much more damage control by our lovely elites but in all other respects ... well actually I think I'm quite a bit more pessimistic in that respect than so-called 'global warming alarmists' because really, when you look at those charts of ΔT vs t, what sort of jumps out is that temperatures sort of spike and then meander down into a deep, cold valley. And you see the same thing over longer timescales, too so ... guess which fun future I think is in store.
On the one hand it means that a lot of what we built will have to be abandoned, as those glaciers advance (and that might be very fast indeed, on the order perhaps of years), but on the other sea levels will drop and new lands will open that have been flooded for 10,000 years or more so ... there's always balance.
JJ, did you see this?
Psychegram, I think we all have lots of patience, but patience goes against the grain of immediate gratification.
When you start looking at certain coastlines that will vanish with rising sea levels, it puts things in a more realistic light. Existing nations will attempt to move inland. The result can only be panic and chaos. More so than it already is.
JJ (is that your name): Great post. I discovered your wonderful blog not too long ago.
I've discovered over time that the people I really love to hang out with and bond with are almost ALL artists of some sort: painters, visual artists, filmmakers, musicians, etc.
I think I'm an artist at heart, and actually have tried painting and song writing, and had some good results. I need to head back in that direction.
But what really caught me was your view of suffering, and how it can be a key or door to a better life of freedom.
How true! I went through the most amazingly awful episode two years ago. I won't go into the details - it involved being kicked out of grad school for political beliefs (despite just winning a prestigious fellowship).
I was wondering why, recently, I've felt freer than ever before in my life. I realized it's because "the system" spit me out, and that was, contrary to popular belief, not a form of death or banishment, but a liberation from a great burden.
I'm in the process of figuring out how to pull my wife and child with me to a new life that is as little entangled with the system as possible. The preps have begun. The land is there, in our family.
Mr. Survival Acres admin has been very helpful with his encouragement, by the way!
Love your art... do you sell through a gallery, or elsewhere?
Best of luck.
Publius, welcome back. I'm nina, this is my blog. We can only wish Jj would get a blog, he'd have a lot of traffic. I don't operate in the money economy, my work is shown here as a gift to anyone wandering in. I'm honored you like it.
I have not been moved lately to post something, mostly because I'm involved with a watercolor series of early galvanized freight depots which require Zen concentration. I will be back tonight when I have more time and can put that focus on your comments.
Nina,
Ooops... you're Nina, of course.
Well, your art is wonderful.
If you are ever willing to part with something for a donation, or barter, or something, let me know.
I can be emailed thisaway:
tojala at gmail dot youknowtherest
And if you are able to find the time, I'd love to hear from you via email. I suspect you might be able to give me a few insights into the new life I need to find and explore.
All of life comes with disclaimers and warnings, treat them as you would an appliance which is to say, there will always be other brands that suit you better with less hassle and better product. Are you in prison?
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