Sunday, August 30, 2015

Dogs of Little Horse: Hop and Belle

“Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?”
― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

One of best parts of living most of the summer here on the land is the chance to take walks with my “canine nieces”, Hop and Belle. I love being an auntie, as it’s been more than 25 years since I’ve had a dog of my own. I’d like that to change someday, but it’s not likely to anytime soon, given my still-nomadic ways.

Hop, a 10 (or so)-year-old Pembroke Corgi, and Belle, a 3-year-old Border Collie mix are Linda’s dogs. Both are rescues who have found in Linda one of the best human companions on the planet. During summer months, they also have me, a sure provider of treats and mini massages on request. These two photos are their formal portraits, taken last summer by Georgianne Nienaber during her visit to Little Horse. They show something of each dog’s character: Belle, the focused hunter, and Hop, whose charming expression suggests she knows her breed is the favorite of the Queen of England.



Both dogs had difficult beginnings. Newborn Hop was reportedly payment in a Commerce City drug deal. The parents of the woman involved visited the Cripple Creek casino where Linda was working at the time and asked her to take the purebred pup. Linda was reluctant at first, as she already had two dogs then.  But she agreed after she was told, “Well, we can’t do much for our daughter now, but we can do something for this dog.” Years later, Belle arrived through the auspices of a local vet, Dr. Shannon, shortly after Linda’s elderly lab had died. A pregnant Belle had been found wandering in rural New Mexico and brought to Colorado through ARF, a local rescue group. Homes had been found for her puppies and now it was Belle’s turn for a new life. I believe it was something like love at first sight for Linda and this very sweet dog.

“A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.” --Mary Oliver

Belle is what one vet’s assistant called “a soft dog”. She’s so gentle, leaning against my leg or taking a treat between her teeth. When she jumps up on me (a practice I discourage with all other dogs), she’s light as a feather, and looking into those soft eyes, what can I do but scratch behind her ears? When her hunter’s instinct kicks in, however, she’s off and running, quickly out of sight or just a blur on the horizon. Then she's impervious to human commands or bribes--or, okay, entreaties. She’s a champion digger. Linda and I joke that she gives the yoga pose “the downward dog” a whole new meaning. Every muscle group is engaged. In this photo she’s exploring a hole she had dug in Linda’s rock garden during an unsupervised moment earlier in the day. (Hop, meanwhile, keeps her eyes on the prize—the treats in Linda’s pocket.)


Despite the frustrations, Linda’s feelings about her youngest dog are very clear in this photo. A soft dog and soft-hearted human companion.


Belle leaves no ground squirrel or rabbit un-chased. She can tree a squirrel, staring motionless, in a manner worthy of a bodhisattva. Surprisingly, I’ve never seen her actually catch anything. Rather, Hop, usually focused on cadging pocket treats rather than chasing small animals, is actually the more skilled hunter. For example, last year it was she who dispatched the pack rat that had gotten into the greenhouse, decimating many plants. Recently, she caught a fluttering bird in the grass during a walk—one of those moments you fervently wish you could have prevented. Like others of her breed, she likes to work, always grabbing the leash in her mouth as a walk begins, ready to herd all in her field of vision. The only exception came three years ago, when Linda and I tried to get her to encourage of herd of 30+ wandering burros to leave the land. They had been around a week, and well, the piles of “burro gold” were mounting. Hop joined us in the field, but then just stood still, turning her head as if something utterly fascinating had appeared in the other direction. (The burros, as is typical of their breed, were the ones who decided when to leave.)

"They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward.” ― Mary Oliver

Though both Belle and Hop are leash-trained, they can run unleashed in many places in this rural area. They are most completely themselves when free to run and splash in any available pond.


In writing about her dog Percy, Mary Oliver offers still another on-the-mark insight. It’s one that reveals my own heart when I’m on a walk with Hop and Belle, watching them race ahead, alert to every scent and sound.

“Emerson, I am trying to live,
as you said we must, the examined life.
But there are days I wish
there was less in my head to examine,
not to speak of the busy heart. How
would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not
thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.” 


Thursday, August 27, 2015

Folk art hideaway on Ranger Station Road

They’ve been living down the road from Little Horse since the mid-1980s, when they bought a beautiful piece of land here in Park County. They started with a log cabin kit, and in the decades since, have made their home into a model of sustainability and beautiful art. I’m talking about Barb Lane and Reed Arnold—the same husband-wife team saluted in my earlier blog, With a little help from my friends. They apply the same work ethic to their creativity with folk art, which graces many spots around their cabins, greenhouses, and other small structures on these wooded 40-some acres. I’ve visited a number of times over the years, each time enjoying newer pieces along with their older work.

Today I joined Linda and Jane, a visiting friend, in taking a walk through the land with Linda’s dogs, Hop and Belle, who of course had their own priorities, most filtered through their sensitive noses. Ours were focused on casual strolling and gazing at the art—beautiful, often playful, and arranged with care. Barb and Reed were both off the land today, so these photos will not include them, but you’ll have a chance to enjoy their work as you stroll along with us online.

Near the gate, you’ll see this sometimes-kinetic structure: two bicycle wheels adorned with painted wooden animals.


With these driftwood birds, nature does just about all of it. They reminded me of the Deborah Butterfield horse sculptures, which I saw last week at the Denver Botanic Gardens.



A few yards down the road is their newest addition, the still-incomplete spider web, made of stripped and varnished aspen branches. A spider piece may be added soon.


Off in the distance, if you glance right, this structure appears in the trees. Walk closer and you can enjoy the fantasy critters. Barb and Reed use recycled materials as much as possible. The painted curvy wires hanging from the log are bed springs.


Approaching the house, you’ll see one of two porches draped with mobiles, antlers, artfully-placed stones from the artists’ many collecting excursions. The chicken wire structure hanging in the back was done by a friend.



More stones, arranged with a practiced eye.


In back of the house, off to the right, is my favorite structure—a bottle house. The light and warmth are amazing, and I know if I lived there, I’d make it my morning meditation spot. In the door window photo, I tried to catch the painted horses behind the coyotes, but managed to capture only some reflected colors.



And of course, there’s a bottle tree, which caught the mid-morning light today.


Walking past the bottle house and down an incline, we reached a clearing. To the left is another bottle-enhanced aspen-branch structure. There’s a bench in front, which Jane found was a perfect spot for reading, as Linda and I strolled on, keeping an eye on the dogs.



Nearing the main greenhouse, we stopped taking photos, as we decided to take up Barb and Reed’s standing offer to help ourselves to produce in the greenhouse and raised beds. To give you an idea, here are two photos from a 2014 visit. We left with a modest helping of peas, chard and a few carrots. 



We walked back to the entrance. The dogs, panting and looking a bit tuckered from their adventures, joined us in the car, and minutes later we were back at Little Horse. Wanting to relive our tour, I uploaded these photos and wrote this blog. I hope you enjoyed the stroll.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Gardening as delight and folly

Gardening is ultimately a folly whose goal is to provide delight. Deborah Needleman

This morning I started the day by picking salad greens, chives, mint, squash and a few cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse. Then I dug into my raised bed for the first potatoes of the season. It’s an almost-daily pleasure when I’m here at Little Horse, as I am most days in the summer. Here’s how the harvest looked today after I brought it inside, washed it off, and had it pose for a photo session. The lettuce and tomatoes are now history, having been part of a tasty lunch.



For the last few years, I’ve been helping Linda with her greenhouse, an 8 x 10 structure that she and her sister, Barbara, built. For Linda, who lives here year-round, the gardening year starts in the dead of January, when seed catalogs start to arrive. By early spring, in March, the focus is the weather: When will the time be right to prep the soil and plant the first cold-hardy crops. Timing varies dramatically year by year in this mountain climate. This year spring came late, with little sun and lots of cold,hail-peppered weather through May. After the watchful time came the buying of seeds and transplants and imagining the season to come. 

By the time I arrived in June, the beginning of the gardening year for me, tomato starts had gone in along with peppers, onions, beets, peas, “toy choy” (a very cute mini bok choy), a few flowers (including sunflower, seeds) and those cool-weather standbys, lettuce and chard. I added beans, herbs (parsley, cilantro, mint and basil), more flowers, and made still another attempt to grow French breakfast radishes. Outdoors, Linda had planted potatoes next to the greenhouse and in my raised bed. These cold-tolerant plants were already 6 inches high.
If you judged the harvest economically, the folly of it all would be apparent. Neither Linda nor I keeps a tally of our costs. Who cares? For both of us, the goal is less to provide food than to provide delight: beauty, freshness, and the pleasure of seeing things grow. Here’s how one of the beds looked in early July. Greens did so well in this relatively cool, humid summer. So pretty.


If there’s one thing I can say about my garden, it can always surprise me. David Hobson, The Mad Gardener

Notice the plant on the lower left in the picture above, the one growing through the gravel path. One day I yanked it up, not sure if I was weeding or harvesting. Here was the result—a beautiful turnip that became part of a roasted veggie platter that evening. It was a reminder that sometimes nature does it all without any coddling on our part. Yes, very humbling.


Sometimes the surprises are disappointing, of course. This year, once again, I got lots of greens from my radish plants, but no radishes. The cilantro went to seed early. Aphids arrived to devour the spinach and bean plants—and developed colonies, which neither Linda or I noticed until it was too late to save a number of plants.  The beautiful heirloom tomato plant I put in in June never did fruit. Something started nibbling on my potato leaves—unbelievably, as the leaves are toxic and even the numerous ground squirrels left them alone. No critter invasions in the greenhouse this year, luckily.

Fortunately, we can fill the gaps in our harvest thanks to the Woodland Park Farmers Market, held every Friday throughout the summer. One of my favorite stands is run by the Mauro family, who have a farm in Pueblo (warmer and much lower in elevation). They show up every week with buckets of seasonal produce—buckets of beans, zucchini, onions, beets, and tomatoes; cantaloupe and melons too.  Many other vendors are there as well, with Palisade peaches and a variety of other produce and/or prepared foods. My absolute favorite booth usually sells nothing except information. The Harvest Center booth is there bi-monthly, with flyers about workshops and local food events. 

Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are. Alfred Austin

I think Linda and I are a good team. She does the lion’s share of the work by getting everything organized and planted in the spring. After that, she proves her diligence and loyalty everyday. Even on work days when she leaves at the crack of dawn, she first opens the screen door and window to get air flow moving inside the greenhouse; she waters regularly, and monitors the weather so she’ll be ready to cover cold-sensitive plants overnight. She hates thinning plants, so I take over that job, showing my cool willingness to pluck out tiny shoots of life (great microgreens!) to let others grow. I also pull plants that are past their prime and take care of succession plantings. We have canine help as well. While Belle prefers to dig holes in the potato bed to forestall any burrowing rodents, Hop is ready to assist with watering, as she did in this 2014 photo.


Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination. —Alice Morse Earle, 1897, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden

Linda is fond of sunflowers—the tall ones—and plants them every year. Once grown, they seem to provide an Alice-in-Wonderland feeling in the greenhouse, which makes me feel, well, more imaginative. At the beginning of the season, the focus is on imagining how big things will grow and how they’ll look together. By the end of the season, we’re looking at the gap between hope and result, beginning to imagine next year. So far we’ve discussed planting fewer marigolds and less lettuce, and more peas and beans. Forget the zucchini. Maybe move the mint to my raised bed, where ground squirrels are constantly prowling in search of tasty shoots. Try protecting the summer squash that didn’t make it in our stacked-tire planters outside, most likely due to drying winds. OK, the melon plant was worth a try, but….Still, the sunflowers remind us to imagine all the possibilities.



Fates willing, there will be certainly be another garden, possibly more prolific, possibly not. It doesn’t matter, because we both know we'll enter the cycle again. as Karel Capek reminds us, “Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.” 

Sunday, August 16, 2015

To the top of Pikes Peak via the coolest train ride ever

Although I’ve visited or lived in the Pikes Peak region for about two decades now, I had never been to the top of Pikes Peak. For most of that time I lived at sea level in Japan, and when I could have gone up during summer vacation, I figured it would give me a huge headache—if not worse. Pikes Peak, reaching 14,115 feet (4,302 meters), can easily induce altitude sickness in the unacclimated. Now that I’ve been back in Colorado for a few years—much of that time at my cabin (altitude 8,800’)—I knew I was ready to take the trip. The perfect opportunity arrived August 3, when I joined the Cosmic Cacao Cog. What, pray tell? It turned out to be not only a beautiful journey to the top of this National Historic Landmark, but just about the coolest train ride ever.

Our 3-hour trip on the Cog Railway, which departs several times a day from Manitou Springs, was organized by Kat Tudor, yoga director at the new SunWater Spa in Manitou. Participants, many of whom were her yoga students and their friends or families, piled into our reserved car, along with holistic healer/artist Juan Pablo, sound healer and singer Shivani, and a small ensemble of musicians. I was delighted to be with these cheerful gentle lunatics and got into the spirit of it all as easily as they did. As the 90-minute ride to the top got underway, Kat invited us to set an intention—common practice in yoga classes. “Joy” was the word that first came to mind, so I went with that. Hopefully this photo communicates the joyful mood I enjoyed at the top, as clouds gathered and parted, revealing patches of sky and terrain.



As with all journeys, it was the process that counted. During the ride, we gazed at the valleys, patches of snow, tiny alpine flowers, and huge numbers of rocks made of the special pink granite characteristic of the mountain. As altitude increased, forests gave way to treeless slopes. The last 3 miles of the ride was above timberline--the point at which trees can't grow due to environmental conditions. I hiked above timberline once during my younger years and still remember the feeling of excitement and a sort of vague anxiety. This time I was glad I wasn’t hiking, biking or running to the top, as some do. The altitude gain on 13-mile Barr Trail, which leads to the summit from the east side, is about 8,000 feet.

Shortly after we left the station, Kat handed out small seed-filled balls, which made soft rattling sounds as we chanted Tava which was the name of the peak among the Ute tribes who once lived here. Tava means Sun, and Ute legends says their first ancestors were created here by all of the animals and living spirits. An alternate name used by the Arapaho was Heey-otooyo, which means Long Mountain. We chanted that too. We did not chant Pike—the name of a man who never made it to the peak’s summit.

Juan Pablo and Shavani are pictured here with participants and the official tour guide (center), who happily turned the program entirely over to us.



Later Kat passed out colorful scarves, and we waved them out the windows as musicians continued their magic and returning trains passed us by. Regretfully, I have no photo of the expressions on the faces of the returning tourists, expressions ranging from surprise to delight, to puzzlement, and sometimes stoic indifference. It’s the closest experience I’ve had to being in a flash mob, something that remains on my bucket list. Still, audience or not, we waved our scarves, shook our seed balls, danced in the aisles, or just sat back and enjoyed the changing views on the slopes of Tava.




It got steadily cooler. A warm summer afternoon in Manitou (low 80s) became a chilly one at the top (upper 40s/low 50s).* Jackets covered cotton tops and hats appeared on many heads. We were prepared for the weather as we piled out of the car at the terminal and decided how to spend our allotted 20 minutes.

The US soldiers who climbed Tava in 1806 under the command of Capt. Zebulon Pike would have envied us. On an exploratory mission, Pike and his party never made it to the top, wisely turning back 15 or so miles away. Unwisely, they chose to make the climb in November, in sub-zero temperatures, with the recruits clad in light overalls and wearing no socks. One wonders what they were thinking—whether they cursed their leader’s folly or the stinginess of the Army. They should have taken counsel from the Native Americans who spent winters at lower elevations, in what is now Manitou Springs and Garden of the Gods.

In 1820, fourteen years later, the first European-Americans reached the top when Edwin James, a young botanist, and two friends made the climb. In 1858 Julia Archibald Holmes, who climbed with her husband James,  became the first woman to reach the summit. Julia, wrote later that nearly everyone had tried to discourage her, “but I believed I could succeed….I would not have missed this glorious sight for anything at all.”

Forty years later another woman immortalized the beauty of the experience. Katharine Lee Bates, a visiting English professor at Colorado College, made the climb with other teachers in 1893. She wrote a poem about it, America the Beautiful, later set to music. She reported feeling “great joy” as “all the wonder of America seemed displayed there.” Would Katharine have envied our smooth sheltered ride on the cog railway? Her trip involved a wagon and pack mules—exhausting, she admitted—but perhaps all the more satisfying for the struggle. Reading her story, I thought what a thrill it must have been to have this experience before the era of air travel. Perhaps she would pity us in the 21st century, baffled at how we often turn away from the wonders outside the windows of our airplanes, in favor of napping or watching in-flight movies.

Another view from the cog railway window:



With limited time at the top, we dispersed to walk around and take photos and/or line up for the restroom inside the gift shop. Then came an all-too-brief “cacao ceremony”—perhaps 5 minutes before the train warning whistle blew. Juan Pablo laughed, saying he usually takes 2 hours for this ceremony, which is designed to help us “find connection to your inner self”. Gathering off to the side of the parking lot,** we formed a circle, made sounds and sipped a delicious small cup of intense cacao, flavored with herbs and spices. Though there was hardly time for any journey to our inner selves,  I thought the cacao cleared the slight light-headedness I felt and left me feeling if not exactly joyful, very relaxed and content.

Cacao ceremonies, with deep roots in indigenous communities in the americas, are happening today in New Age circles. Guinevere Short founded Heart Beats Raw Cacao and Dance Ceremonies in 2013. Reading about it on her website, I learned that today’s ceremonies often include forming sharing circles, invoking the cacao spirit with shamanic prayer and asking for our intentions to be heard. Cacao is usually served in liquid form with spices, as was ours. Ms. Short writes that the cacao helps flood our bodies with the many emotions stored in the heart, some of which may be painful, but the cacao “facilitates a deep sense of self-love.”

I’m not sure what the cacao might have unleashed in the hearts of my fellow yogis and yoginis, but our energy seemed undiminished on the 90-minute return trip. Jackets came off as we descended; chanting and music continued, as did our scarf-waving and appreciation of the changing beauty outside the windows. It seemed that for many of us, there was joy--and perhaps other realized intentions as well. I plan to go again next year. How could I not?

*The average daily temperature at the summit in July is 47F (8C)
**Driving to the top is another option on the Pikes Peak Highway, a paved 19-mile (31 km) ride.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A reflection

It was my first year in Japan—1990—and I knew I wanted to be in Hiroshima on August 6. That date was the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing, and as an American I wanted to make my own amends by joining the memorial observance held every year at the Peace Memorial Museum. Arriving on a sweltering morning, I walked among the thousands of survivors (hibakusha), family members and peace advocates, feeling very self-conscious. How would I be viewed by those who had suffered so much at my country’s hands? I remember attracting very little notice, however, as people were there for their own reasons—for the moment of silence (at 8:15 a.m., the time when the bomb struck), the casting of lighted lanterns on the water, the museum exhibits, the speeches.


In 2010, a few months before I left Japan to return to the US, I visited the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, which was devastated three days after Hiroshima. I took these pictures then, both showing paper cranes, a now-international symbol of peace.



This year, as Hiroshima prepared for the 70th anniversary of the bombing, a BBC reporter approached Jamal Maddox, an Princeton University student, who had toured the museum and talked with a survivor. The reporter asked him this question: Has this experience changed your opinion of the US decision to use the bomb? The student thought for awhile and then answered: "I think we as a society need to revisit this point in history and ask ourselves how America came to a point where it was okay to destroy entire cities, to firebomb entire cities. I think that's what's really necessary if we are going to really make sense of what happened on that day." 

To make sense of what happened....Today as I read stories on the commemoration, I came across this National Public Radio story: “70 years after atomic bombs Japan still struggles with wartime past”. I wondered why it seems the losers of wars tend to struggle with the past, while the winners tend to leave it all behind, except among pockets of remembrance—veterans’ groups, historians, those with a strong connection to the suffering.

Like nearly all children growing up in post-war America, I absorbed the standard rationale for the dropping of the atomic bombs: the bombings were tragic but unavoidable because they shortened the war. Japan formally surrendered the same month.  But I also absorbed the seeds of doubt. I remember my father, always skeptical of the actions of politicians but an admirer of President Truman (who authorized the bombing) saying, “But he should never have dropped that bomb”. Clearly Dad remembered the news reports of the time, of the bombing itself and the effects of a new disease: radiation sickness. Hundreds of thousands died in the blasts and in the following years. 

Yet, like my family, most Americans were probably happy to put the war behind them and get on with building new lives. As a child and teenager, I don’t think I thought much about WWII; it seemed like ancient history—as did all events occurring before my birth. College didn’t help much with my understanding of WW2, as we were then embroiled in a new war in Vietnam. Later, as I came to appreciate history and the importance of remembering the past, I learned more about the the US role in WWII, about the heroism (such as liberation of concentration camps in Germany) and also the acts that would be considered war crimes had we lost the war.

A few years after my Hiroshima visit, I saw how remembering depends very much on who is doing it. For the 50th anniversary of the end of WW2, the  prestigious Smithsonian Institution created an exhibit of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Veterans groups and historians clashed over differing interpretations of the war and the bombings. The show was taken down and a less controversial exhibit ensued, but in early 1995 that one also closed after more protests about self-censorship and the lack of context. 

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum really impressed me. First of all, I had never been in a museum exploring the context of war as well as functioning as a memorial.  This one focused on Japan’s imperialist actions leading up to the war as well as what happened to the country during the war. There were state-of-the-art videos as well as simple, yet powerfully touching, paintings done by child victims. The museum has expanded in the past 20 years and there is more to see and reflect on. Did I think then as I do now, that a part of healing is remembering, sharing stories, taking responsibility for one’s actions?

Today in Japan the average age of the bombing survivors is 80, and people are looking at ways to keep alive their stories and their strong beliefs in peace. A Washington Post story describes the Memory Keepers (denshosha). Through this 3-year-old project, younger people volunteer to learn the stories of a survivor, agreeing to share those stories at events where they can. This year in Hiroshima there was the unveiling of a large public art project, a composite of the work of a thousand young artists. A 5-minute video of this year’s memorial celebration from NHK World News shows the result and is worth a view.

While the mainstream American view of the bombings (“tragic but necessary”) lives on,
historians have challenged it. One of them is Greg Herken, an emeritus professor of US diplomatic history at the University of California. He cites—and then explains—what he calls “five myths about the bombing”: 1. The bomb ended the war. 2. The bomb saved half a million American lives. 3. The only alternative was an invasion of Japan. 4. The Japanese were warned beforehand. 5. The bomb was a “master card” in the early cold war against Russia. Read Herken’s analysis here

Herken's arguments make sense to me, though I have no illusions they'll go mainstream anytime soon. Nevertheless, I believe that we—meaning winners as well as losers—would still do well to “struggle with our war past”, to use memory as part of healing and taking responsibility, and of answering young Jamal Maddox’s challenge: to reflect on “how America came to a point where it was okay to destroy entire cities, to firebomb entire cities.” That’s a moral dilemma that speaks to the future and the present as well as the past. 

 

Sunday, August 2, 2015

With a little help from my friends: Part 1

If you saw my first blog, you saw me sitting on the porch shortly after my cabin was delivered, smiling as if all I had to do was move in, buy a few sticks of furniture, and start enjoying country life. Well, that was by no means the case—not by a long shot.  The real amenities of country life were not yet in place: lights, heat, water, refrigeration, a way to handle sewage. It’s taken 12 years to provide for those things, correct mistakes, expand when necessary, and keep everything maintained. That job would have been impossible without more than a little help from my friends.

Many people—friends along with skilled, hired help—have made life here possible for me. In this blog, I’d like to honor the “A” team. First on the list are Linda Lane, her sister, Barbara Lane,  and Barb’s husband, Sam “Reed” Arnold. Tied for second and third are Duane Zimmerman, who I think of as my solar guru, and LeRoy McCarthy, handyman extraordinaire.

Please note that I’m following in Henry David Thoreau’s footsteps once again (smile). Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond was made possible by his friend, the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who bought the land and allowed Thoreau to use it.  Thoreau built it mostly by himself—being pretty handy with carpentry tools, as so many 19th century American men were. (He and his father had built the family home the summer before.)  However, he too, relied on friends. When it was time to frame his cabin, Thoreau invited them to join the party. A confident (brash by today’s standards?) 28-year-old then, Thoreau says the invitation was more an “occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity”.  However, his group of 8 helpers*, including Emerson, surely did more than stand around and cheer him on; exactly what they did do seems lost to history. Perhaps they smiled at this whippersnapper’s grand plan while lending a hand.

Linda Lane is my Emerson. She got the whole process in motion by driving me to the Cavco store in Fairplay to place the order for the cabin, while offering her land for its home. In the years since Mudbiscuit arrived (2003), she has been instrumental in overseeing projects and keeping an eye on the place during the many months when I haven’t been here. During my first couple of years of living here (meaning 4–5 months each year), she helped me get used to this big change in my life, including crises involving wildlife….I mean, mice—under or (eek!) inside the cabin.**

Equally instrumental were her sister and brother-in-law, Barbara and Reed. Barb and Reed live down the road on a beautiful piece of land they bought and built on starting in the mid-80s. They’ve since created a beautiful home with small-scale greenhouses and additions to their original cabin. They are also artists in the folk art tradition. I’ll write about their work in a future blog.

Work is, however, the operative word here. Both could be called workaholics, given how much they do apart from their day jobs. Over the years, I’ve seen their commitment not only to making their own place beautiful and functional, but to doing the same for others, namely Linda and me. I’ve joked that their idea of a good time on the weekend is to build another cabin, but that would only be half the truth. They are also great lovers of the outdoors and of animals, and are frequently off on a trip to another beautiful place. It seems fitting that I show a picture of them working. Here they are in 2011, repairing Linda’s roof.



A partial list of tasks they were hired to do and have done well and efficiently for me and Mudbiscuit: installed cabinets in the kitchen (following a disagreement with the builder which left the cabin without cabinets for a year), built temporary stairs and a deck, bought a stove and propane heaters, arranged for propane tank delivery and subsequent monitoring of the tank, which later sprung a leak, which the supplier refused responsibility for—at first before Reed insisted they repair the problem; they also fielded bids for a septic system and a water cistern, and paneled the inside of the porch-turned-mudroom. There were also recommendations on problem-solving and problem-avoiding (e.g., staining the wood shingles so they wouldn’t deteriorate under the high-altitude sun). They have my undying gratitude, especially for their work while I was still living in Japan and visiting the cabin for only short periods. Mercifully for them, by 2010, when I retired and came to live here, the important set-up tasks had been done and I was able to take on responsibility for maintenance. 

Linda and I both have off-grid cabins, meaning we rely on the sun for all electricity—basically light, water pump, and more recently, satellite Internet. (Heaters, refrigerator and stove all use propane gas). In the first year of Mudbiscuit’s existence, Linda located a young solar installer, who set up two panels and storage batteries so that the cabin could have lights. He later left the area, and then Duane Zimmerman entered our lives. Ah, what a gift of fate! Duane has extensive solar engineering experience and has been willing and able to share it with us. Duane and his wife now live in the area in a self-sufficient manner that might put Thoreau to shame. 

For years, Duane has educated Linda and me about solar technology. At first, he tended to give too much information. Sometimes, starting to explain something which seemed overly complex to me, he’d stop, commenting that I had that “deer-caught-in-the-headlights look”. Thanks to Duane, I think I have that look less now. One year, he convinced Linda and me to buy a trimetric device, which is affixed to a wall inside our cabins. It displays some very useful information, such as how much charge remains in the batteries and how many amps are coming through the panels. When problems occurred, I could phone him with this info and he could diagnose the problem over the phone. Although I remain a slacker in my solar studies, the process did make me feel a little more confident.  His visits are less frequent now, as my solar system has been upgraded and I’m less clueless than I once was. The batteries, replaced in 2013, are housed in an insulated, expanded water heater cabinet on the side of the house. Two panels have been added to the original two. All upgrades were done with Duane’s guidance and labor. This picture shows him on a visit two years ago. 



Rounding out the A team is LeRoy McCarthy, whose business I discovered from an ad on a lumber store bulletin board. Another gift of fate! LeRoy is anyone’s dream handyman. He knows his stuff, enjoys teaching it, has reasonable rates, and always stands by his work. He returns phone calls promptly and has a cheerful approach to work and life. Problems are “issues”. “Yes, we have an issue!” he’d announce, in a hearty voice, leaving no doubt that it could be taken on successfully. 

LeRoy’s first project here involved replacing the temporary stairs with new ones connected to a fenced small deck. Here he is with his assistant, his son Brandon, upon completion of that in 2011.


LeRoy’s specialty is plumbing, and plumbing has been one of the knottier problems here at Mudbiscuit. One difficult summer, when either the water pump or the tank or the connectors presented "issues", he responded to each one, each time bringing us closer to a solution. Ultimately, the pump issue turned out to be a leak, deep underground, in the pipe between the cistern and the house. In this picture, LeRoy is supervising a crew of young men who dug through the rocky soil and found the problem. We see them taking a short pause in their work and hamming it up for the camera.


As with Duane, visits from LeRoy are less frequent now. Barring the unforeseen, I will not see him until fall when I close the cabin and he comes to supervise the winterization process, ensuring that all water has been drained from the pipes. In spring, he’ll help get things pumping and flowing again.

There you have the story of Team A. Cheers to them all! My appreciation grows as I write about their work, and I’ll do the same for Team B in another post.  With more than a little help from my friends, my life here in the country has been not only possible but relaxing and fun. 

*According to Harding, editor of my annotated Walden: those acquaintances—all male—were the well-respected educator Bronson Alcott, philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, and 7 others, including Edmund Hosmer and his 3 sons, who lived on a neighboring farm. After he moved in, Thoreau got other essential assistance from women: his mother and sister, who did his laundry; and Mrs. Emerson, who often cooked for him.

**My “mouse issue” continues. I’m not sure how much progress I’ve made with that. Unbelievably, just as I wrote this section last night, a small mouse caught my eye, running along the wall—first I’ve seen inside this year. Eek! Subject for another blog.