Chaotic Terrain Press
Stories everyone should read. +News & thoughts.
Monday, March 17, 2025
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Thanksgiving Then and Now
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Tim, my Grandfather Dear, and my Aunt Ann on Thanksgiving Day, 1953, which also happened to be my first birthday anniversary. |
My memory of Thanksgivings in Camas or
The classic. Imagine this at the lovely little brick house on the right overlooking LaCamas Lake, the house above Leadbetter Road just as you turn off State Highway 500 north of Camas: The men, say, an uncle, my dad, and Tim (Grandfather Dear—we never called him that) and us boys sitting on the couch and cushy chairs on the western end of the front room (it was one space that contained both the living area and the formal dining table) while the women are preparing the meal and setting the table. This is how it was and nobody imagined that the men would help in the kitchen, and it never occurred to the women that there was anything wrong with the arrangement. They were happy to serve and to impress us with their culinary prowess. The adult men being the primary “breadwinners” and us to follow someday in their footsteps, our sole job was to come to the table promptly when called, which was hard enough as I recall, because it usually took several insistent attempts to convince us to end the flow of conversation and move ourselves.
Tim sat at the end of the table with his back to the windows, he probably carved the turkey, and Grandma Dear sat on the opposite end to be nearest the kitchen. We never said grace or a prayer or blessing. I think when all the dishes were in place on the table and after Grandma seated herself, probably as the last person, she likely gave a signal to begin. We began. The only controversial topic discussed at the table was whether to pass to the right or left. The only other topic was food. There was a lot to say about food, apparently, because Grandma Dear was the most amazing cook you’d ever meet. Whenever the conversation threatened to flag, she’d insult her work, knowing that somebody would chime in to compliment her and the masterpieces.
Her name was Blanche, but this was not French cooking. The turkey, steaming and tender and browned to perfection. Mashed, whipped potatoes loaded with milk, and if my Aunt Ann were there, laced with garlic. (But maybe I’m thinking of roast beef with garlic.) Gravy, thick, but not too thick, and salty. You’d make a crater in your potatoes, and pour the gravy over it, the turkey, and the sage dressing that actually was cooked inside the turkey. Seems like there was a vegetable like string beans. Then of course cranberry dressing, both the delicious sweet jelly kind from a can and the homemade of ground cranberries, orange peal, and other sour unpalatable things that adults crave. Don’t forget some kind of biscuits or rolls, scratch made. Jam. Naturally, the conversation became lively—to an extent even threatening to overturn the table—when the highly divisive issue of dark or white meat arose.
As you know, cranberries are grown in bogs and harvested by
means of rakes. What you don’t know is that some of them grow tall and
are called High Bush Cranberries. Our daughter in
Lastly at that classic meal: dessert and coffee, the latter in tiny cups on saucers. You’d likely have three choices for dessert: pumpkin pie, apple pie with flaky Crisco crust, or my favorite: both of them. Whipped cream sweetened with sugar for the pumpkin pie, vanilla ice cream for the apple pie, and half-and half-for the coffee.
After dinner, the men would retire to their well-earned chairs to tell biographical stories while the women put the leftovers away and washed dishes. It’s possible, just possible, that one of the men would help with the dishes, but as far as reality is concerned, this idea is merely theoretical. I know for a fact that we boys helped put the leftover pie away; it in glass pans was kept untended and neglected on the kitchen counter and any time you liked you could slice a piece and eat it out of your hand.
The featured photograph is of Tim carving a turkey with my
aunt Ann looking on. This photo came from a roll of film that contains pictures
of my Great-grandparents, the Toners, at their family home in
“Especially are we grateful this year for the truce in
battle-weary
My dad was in
My brother sent me another old family photo of one of my granduncles, Vick, wearing an apron and selecting kitchen utensils from a drawer. In the background is a turkey in a pan. I can’t tell you anything more about the photo without digging around. Regardless, the photo is proof our men did wear aprons on some occasions.
The dinnerware shown in the photo on the left below is
an heirloom set from my side of the family, but I’m not sure now who it
belonged to. I always thought it had been a wedding present to my
grandparents, the Dears, but certain expert sources on the internet, that
infallible authority, sources like sellers on Etsy, suggest that it was made in
the earliest 1950s, which means it could have been a wedding present to my
parents! We never used this set. Nobody ever used it,
perhaps. The labels on each piece identify them as “Franciscan Fine
China, Acadian Gold, Made in
Members of our family on Tim’s side played a historical role in the turkey business. His brother served as Secretary of the Oregon Turkey Improvement Association. You can thank us for the Butterball. My grandparents the Dears had good friends who were turkey farmers. The Schmidts. I think I have a memory of them carrying about their persons the acrid smell of turkey manure. We visited their house once. Every flat surface, including 90% of the floor was piled with stuff. There were pathways down the center of each room. It was fascinating. I used the Schmidt’s house as a model for the house of the main character of my short story, “Ms. Thurman’s Intervention”, she, a hoarder who, it seemed, “studied the angles of repose.” You might enjoy the story. Plot twists and a surprise ending. The story is on this blog somewhere.
From that classic Thanksgiving dinner in Camas I jump ahead
to another more contemporary classic at my wife Edie’s family home on the
mountainside 180 acres above
I’ve posted a link here to a YouTube video of the canon reproduced by an electronic simulation of human voices. The reason for this odd idea is because I don’t like any of the human performances I’ve found on the internet. Most of them feature an arrangement adding instruments and placing the last note of Part A an octave up, presumably for children’s voices. I prefer the original version that lets the basses rumble.
Moving on. One year when all our adult children were home we moved the dining table outside onto our 500 square foot deck and bundled up against the cold. Another year when all of our children but one were occupied elsewhere, we, three of us, stuffed our fulsome, traditional Thanksgiving dinner with the trimmings into backpacks and carried it all up to a high mountaintop bald, and then finished the day with an exhausting long hike along a ridge and down a steep trail deep with a layers of slippery leaves until well after dark. Most of the time at the end, I either scooted on my backside or swung from rhododendron trunk to trunk beside the trail. As that daughter says, there are two kinds of fun. Type One fun is fun while it’s happening and fun in memory. Type Two is terrifying, painful, or grueling, and fun only in memory. The dinner was One, but the second half of the hike, Two. (There's another kind of fun, Type Three, and that's when the natural world around you has gone wild with wind and rain, you fear the roof might blow off, trees are falling everywhere, you suddenly live on riverfront property, the long-distance views are much improved, the power is out, and all the roads are blocked. It's fun while it's happening but not so much in memory.)
Now I jump ahead to this present week of 2024 when we
actually have no plans for Thanksgiving. Nothing firm whatsoever.
One child is in
We will have a nice meal on Thanksgiving, just the two of us, and then maybe we’ll hike up into the tornado zone through and around the hundreds of downed and broken hardwood trees to the ridge above our house, and then if possible make our way up to the Blue Ridge Parkway that has been closed since Hurricane Helene, due in part to the road having been obliterated in some sections. I love the natural universe, especially wilderness—the wild places of the world where humans may visit but can not live for very long. With Helene, wilderness came to us, to just outside the doors, windows, and walls. So, despite all the destruction and the continuous work of cleaning up and restoring order to our home place, I have to be thankful, and I am. We witnessed up close an amazing natural event. As I write this just after 5:00 in the morning, it’s dark and rainy outside.
Last Sunday we listened to some ancient Russian Orthodox chant that was notated in the 1400 and 1500s. Much of it was different musical settings of Psalm 135. I quote one small section.
“Praise the Lord…
“The Lord does whatever pleases him,
In the heavens and on the earth,
In the seas and all their depths.
He makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth;
He sends lighting with the rain
And brings out the wind from his storehouses.”
So, that’s Thanksgiving then and now.
*My Hunt grandparents lived in Portland.
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Koselig Then and Now
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Photo: A scene in my mom's hutch. |
Edie and I rented a $50 a night AirBnb “suite” in Palmer,
Being in
(The interweb says “KOS-e-lee” with a long round O, and a fast long E.)
Everything I read about it so far says it’s almost
impossible to translate, at least not with one word. It has to do with how to thrive
psychologically and emotionally when the winter weather outside is cold and
harsh and the nights long, very, very long.
It relates to enjoying the outdoors and then taking refuge with good
company, food and drink, warmth and beautiful cheerful surroundings. This
description is only for a start, I’m sure there’s more. If you want to read a fun article, I’ve
linked in the comments to one by Lorelou Desjardins in a promotion of her book
“A Frog in the Fiord: One Year in
Forgotten Camas Washougal as a title fits part of the
process of writing this weekly column because I spent a few hours last night
trying to remember, or unforget, when and how I experienced koselig while growing up in Camas. Our winter nights
were not as long and cold as they are in
Cloudy. It didn’t
always rain in the NW, as such, but it would be cloudy with mist falling down
all day and night long. July and August were often
dry, but the cold came in October and then it seemed it would “rain” November
through June. I remember one fall in the
early 70s when it rained every day in November, except the last three or
four. A friend of mine from
Bleak. Yes. Camas, and Washougal too, I suppose, was bleak, as I remember, for four months of the year. The cold wasn’t the nice, clean, sharp cold that you can protect yourself from with wind breaking and insulating layers, it was the insidious damp cold that penetrated whatever you might wear. It sucked the heat from your body. Then, working the swing shift at the mill was bleak. You leave for work just before everyone else in the world is arriving home. You work when it is dark outside and you arrive home when everyone else is sleeping. By the time you arise in the morning, everyone else has left the house on their merry ways. And the graveyard shift was even worse. It’s called graveyard for a reason.
I think that instances of koselig in my life in those days were not rare, but they weren’t common either.
When we were children and visiting grandparents, our grandmothers would tuck us in bed every night and we’d say that prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
The prayer was always comforting back then, and it might be now, too, because I'm older. As I look back it might have fostered in us children an unreasonable fear of dying in the night. I confess I don’t know why this would have been a concern of our grandparents and I’d like to know. As active and adventurous as we were, I wonder why she didn’t have us pray in the morning when we woke up that the Lord would take our souls if we died during the play or school day when the danger of a car accident, falling from a tree, drowning in the river, or dropping dead from embarrassment was much greater than, say rolling off the top bunk that had a safety rail or a meteor hitting the house. But I risk being unserious. It was comforting at the time.
Friday night high school football games were koselig. It was dark and cold. Everyone breathed out clouds of steam. Cheerleaders and cheers. Excitement. The ad hoc tag football game in the end zone. Bright lights. And home games usually followed by a dance in the cafeteria. One night returning from an away game on the rooter bus, I didn’t really know anyone. I had gone by myself. The kids were not in my extremely limited social circle. They were in fact the cool, sociable kids. I was a loner back then, basically, because I was unaware of my value as a person and had no skills at conversation, and not a lot of social courage or confidence. I’d never been to a summer camp of any kind, nor was in a church youth group. But that night probably for the first time I experienced a feeling of being part of a group other than family. They sang camp songs. One or several of the kids, girls, I think, led in singing, and I sang along, the best I could not knowing them. I’d never been a part of anything like that. Traveling home in a bus on a cold fall night with a bunch of young people singing cheerful and inspiring songs. It sounds like a poignant scene from a movie. Koselig.
I can cite a lot of examples of long solo walks at night or on a cold winter day around Camas and Fern Prairie and returning to a warm comfortable, bright house. I’ve written here earlier of a Christmas eve at my grandmother’s and later, an evening in high school where I lit a fire in the fireplace at the abandoned Leadbetter mansion with two friend-girls and we shared from a bottle of wine. There are countless tiny examples, but it was never a conscious practice, and I think life would have been richer back then knowing how important it to cultivate a culture of koselig, which in raising a family we did so every day without being aware of the concept.
One story that encapsulates our approach. In the summer of 2002 we travelled with our
six children across the
The next morning we found that the mountain just a few yards above us covered
in fresh unmelted snow, below the line the new snow had melted. It was unbelievably beautiful, with the
pure white and rocky Shuksan prominent and close by to the east. That day we hiked up to the top of
Once we travelled the northern section of the Bartram Trail.
William Bartram was a late 18th Century naturalist who explored much
of the
When I talk about moving to
One of my sons hiked 300 miles last summer on
When Hurricane Helene blew through a month and a half ago we were without on-grid electricity for two weeks and longer. After we got an inverter generator we ran it mostly to keep the fridge and freezer cold, but every night I ran an extension cord to one single table lamp in our main room. Later after bedtime, I kept three of those battery powered flickering votive candles burning all night in the bedroom, and several more throughout the main room in the house, for navigation in the dark.
Now that I know about koselig, I’ll be looking for ways to practice it more and more, and not only in winter. Seems like it would made a good subject for school or a club. Like, you know, Feng Shui, Ikebana, or even Jiu Jitsu.
***
PS: Below is the concept of a short story I started writing.
Working title: “The Long Night Awaits”.
A sleep therapist who began studying the subject because of his own insomnia has a successful career and helps hundreds of patients. But there one patient, his most difficult, who had what’s called Endless Night Disorder (END). It’s a belief and sensation that those hours awake in the middle of the night in the dark last forever, or at least as long as a year.
The therapist asks the patient to begin a journal giving an account of his insomniac periods, which as it turns out is usually between 1 and 6 AM. The patient tells of how he often goes outside and walks in the dark for days and even weeks. How the moon seems to never move and people out and about are like frozen statues cool to the touch. As an experiment he touched a girl on the cheek with the back of his hand and it gave her a blister. Only the nocturnal animals move and carry on like normal, which the patient finds terrifying.
An odd thing is that the patient says he sleeps during these endless nights, but when he awakes, it is still night and the clock has barely registered any passage of time. This supposed sleep explains how the patient is not seriously debilitated by his insomnia, the main problem is he is so alone.
So, treatment
ensues and it emerges that patient was traumatized as a child by realistic
nightmares of Norse monsters when he and his family lived in northern
The therapist is sympathetic and professional in his quite natural skepticism until one session when patient brings in a box of unpublished manuscripts—one box of dozens, the patient says—which the therapist finds immensely disconcerting. Most are handwritten and edited, and a few typed. He wonders if the patient had much deeper problems than insomnia or loneliness that he would create and even believe such an elaborate hoax. On the other hand, what if the patient is actually telling the truth? He begins reading one of the manuscripts, a comic fictional travel guide, and it’s actually well done, perhaps even publishable. The therapist does not consider himself an expert and thinks of sending it around to some of his colleagues who are more literary than his is.
But the therapist
doesn’t get far into the book, because during this time he's distracted when
he wins an international award not just in his own specialized field but in the
world of psychotherapy. A huge cash prize. The therapist is so humble, and
devoted to work (he isn’t married or have any children) he doesn’t have any
idea what to do with the money and feels such a failure because he hasn’t yet
helped the one special patient. The patient then suggests that the therapist go
to
CH is an idea that people who have suffered traumatizing loss or abuse can find healing through overwhelming opposite experiences and life situations to neutralize and counteract the damaging effects of the injury. For instance—and this is relatively trivial example—if an ill tempered neighbor is hateful and curses out a patient because of an irrational grudge, the anger and self-doubt that the patient feels and keeps him awake at night can be made to disappear if another neighbor or two, or a whole team of neighbors, comes over and helps the patient with some chores or throws him a birthday party. (Note, I don’t know if CH is a real recognized therapy because I made it up. I made up END, too.)
When the
therapist returns from
At that time the
therapist’s off-site secretary of the kind that works from home, calls him and
says she has received a registered letter from a bank. He says to open it. And
it’s an accounting of tax-paid millions of dollars in publishing royalties from
multiple companies that are held in his name, and always have been. When the therapist receives the bank’s detail
listing of account activity by email attachment, he finds among the many
charitable contributions, one large sum from late last year donated to the
professional psychiatric society that gave him the award, the money he used for
his
Epilogue: over the next couple years the therapist makes inquiries into the whereabouts of the patient, but he finds no one who ever actually saw him. It’s if he never existed. So, in honor of the patient and his generosity, the therapist always takes a month off once a year and with his new wife explores a place in the world when the sun never sets.
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Firewood Then and Now
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Our woodshed ready for new green wood from Storm Helene |
Though my parents’ seven acres, which was surrounded on two
sides by the
One firewood memory is slicing up Presto-logs outside for my
great-grandmother’s Monarch trash burner that she kept in her kitchen in
Washougal. My dad did the work and I
might have picked up the pieces and put them in a box. Or I might not
have. I don’t remember, but I was
there. I say “slicing” because the
“logs” were like sausages and one little hit with a hatchet was all they
needed. I have that same trash burner in
my possession now. I bought it from the
estate for $35 when I was in my early 20s and brought it to
My grandparents the Dears owned the beautiful little red
brick house that once stood on three acres at the top of
Another NW firewood story:
Dave and Bonnie Deal are Raku potters.
You may have heard of them, and if not, I’m posting a link to get you
started. I visited Dave many years ago
up on
In the 1980’s a couple years after I got married, we moved
to
Our next wood stove was a few years later in Swannanoa in another rental house. It was, however, not a woodstove, but for burning coal, and had a tiny chute. You couldn’t “build” a fire in it because you could neither place anything or even see inside. You just stuffed in paper and kindling, dropped in a match, and hoped for the best. Likewise, you just dropped in small pieces of firewood. Once, one of our children dropped in my car keys. That may have been the time when I perfected my searching process skills.
We lived in that house for four years and two of our children were born there, in the bedroom.
We at last bought our own house a few miles from Swannanoa and moved the Baby Bear into the basement, the stove being our primary source of heat for the next 30 years. We cut and hauled most of our firewood and bought some as well. When Y2K rolled around, we had enough for two winters. I still have the Baby Bear, and the house as well.
Splitting firewood by hand for me is a spiritual exercise, a non-combative martial art.
Which brings to mind those “Kung Fu” experts who would break bricks, wood, and other building materials with the sides of their hands. I’m pretty sure it’s pretty fake, however, because I’ve never actually seen this done on real construction sites. I can imagine it happening though. A guy calls down from the rafters, “Okay Bruce. Next one, 14 feet-2¾ inches.” Bruce carefully stretches his measuring tape, pulls a pencil from behind his ear, makes a V mark, takes the hand square from his belt to flick the V into a clean line across the board with the pencil. He then cracks his knuckles, rolls his head around to loosen his neck muscles, stands back, concentrates all his focus, and WHACK! The task is done. He passes the perfectly cut board up into the rafters. Saves dragging a saw power cord all over the place or recharging those batteries. If this is a real thing, those guys should have their own labor union. But I’m positive Karate Chops working up a really well-seasoned chunk of ash is not even remotely plausible.
But seriously, splitting wood with a maul and wedge is an
art form. First surveying the chunk of
wood for knots and checks to learn the obstacles and splitting pathways, I look
for checks to see where the wood is already splitting naturally. Then the lift and swing. It’s not easy hitting a round of wood in
exactly the right places, over and over.
Nor is hitting a wedge of steel with a four square inch target. (And sometimes you hit the side of the wedge
and send it flying at your ankle.) My
children and wife have wounded or broken many a hickory or ash handle. You use both gravity and centrifugal force,
keeping your eye on the target. Once
after I had some professional tree people take down an enormous Tulip Poplar
tree for me, we, I and the children, held wood splitting races. The competitors each would have their own set
of tools and we’d compete on who would split their rounds the fastest. The trick was to split pieces completely with
one swing, stepping around the work as you went. Somehow 14 seconds sticks in my mind. Tulip Poplar, by-the-way, is easy to split
when it’s green. They’re thinking about
making this an official sport in the 2028 Summer Olympics in
A proper stack of firewood is also an art form, especially a free standing one with the “log cabin” criss-crossed ends of a row that’s expertly tied into the main stack for stability.
Now. Now after Hurricane/Tropical Storm Helene our five acres with a house we finished building a few years ago is a firewood farm. At this point about half of the lost trees are safely flat on the ground thanks to help from three of my sons, some Eco-Forester volunteers, and a chainsaw crew of eight young Mennonite men from Ohio, who came under the auspices of the non-profit Plain Compassion Care Response. Half the trees are still “leaners” (caught in other trees) and thus require technical assistance, like tree climbers with ropes. We saved out 17 foot logs from the best of the larger trees, like mulberry, hickory, and wild cherry. I wish we had a black walnut go down, but alas. Someday I hope we can get a portable sawmill in here.
In the meantime, after the insurance settlement payout, I
could afford to buy a mechanical, gas powered wood splitter, which in my mind
will assist an aspect of “Debris Removal.”
I shopped around and settled on an
The mechanical wood splitter will help process a lot of wood in a short time and should be great as a family work project. We’ve done this before, but I’m hoping we can do a firewood splitting-hauling-stacking day at our property over one of the upcoming holidays. With as many of our children and grandchildren as possible.
For me, the machine will never give the physical, mental, spiritual, and aesthetic satisfaction of splitting firewood by hand. One of my heroes, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about how in the Soviet Gulag he would go out in the “frost” of a sunny winter day and split firewood with his shirt off. I tried that once myself. My favorite time to split wood was in the evening before supper as it was growing dark. And at Christmas, while we played the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on the radio live from Kings College of Cambridge (performed every year since 1918), I’d split firewood in the front yard.
Hurricane Helene brought up tropical
You know what? I’ll write about this next time!
Sunday, July 7, 2024
Clouds Fall to Earth, Book Cover Creation
Clouds Fall to Earth is a novel about people who have lived in the air for 1500 years. I started writing it in 2011 and progress has been irregular, but I have completed the rough draft of all 14 chapters and am now upgrading the book some for others to read and offer critiques. The artwork above is the first product of composing prompts for a AI generated cover art. My brother has been helping me on this--I give ideas and course corrections and he talks to AI. So far we have about 30 or so images. None of them are close, yet, but this one, a sort of diagram, presents a level of detail I want. All the other images are more like photographs, somewhat realistic, if science-fiction is realistic.
Friday, September 15, 2023
Recently a bookstore in Sylva,
Fall 2023
Dear Friend,
I released the most recent edition of my monarch migration guide a couple years ago. The plan was to update it every other year or so. As you might tell, I did everything in the book myself, from writing and photography to layout and publishing. As it happens, I’m busy with many things and couldn’t keep up with updating it as much as needed. Maybe next year….
Anyway, when City Lights Books asked me to send them books for this fall I was delighted with their interest, but wanted to include an insert, this insert.
Because the book is a guide, I wanted up-to-date information. Some of the material now is out of date. But much of it—the photographs, the monarch life cycle details, and the better locations for viewing the monarch migration around here are all still good. One of the hiking trails shared, Naked Falls, I would no longer recommend because it is now overused. One of the retail sources for milkweed plants, Mellie Mac’s, is no longer in business. Some of the educational events are different now. There are other things, like recent overwintering counts in Mexico, so look online for what’s current.
The book was a detailed snapshot from the past, still of some value, I hope. I’m not making anything from it, I just offer it as a gift of my time.
The chaoticterrain.com website no longer exists. I do keep up somewhat with chaoticterrainpress.blogspot.com, which covers my writing and projects. You can reach me at anaktuvuk@earthlink.net.
Perhaps I will see you up on the Blue Ridge Parkway this fall. If you observe anyone looking up, scanning the sky, and especially if there are monarchs about, speak to them. If it’s not me, it’s likely another person who is fascinated with this amazing creature.
Lastly, I will share something beautiful. It might appear unconnected except nominally, but beauty in whatever form is universal. Listen to the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto, performed by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra with Josh Bell as the violinist. The piece is based on a Chinese folk tale.
-Mickey Hunt
Thursday, September 14, 2023
Deprescience
(a short, short story)
As a child, our son Timothy told his teachers he was adopted. During adolescence, he wailed in misery, certain that his best friends had moved away. By age twenty, Timothy’s grief sank into glum desolation, and he would lie on the bed all day, bemoaning an imaginary poverty. None of his therapists could free him from his flawed perception of loss.
Saying, “sign up or move out,” my husband Bill and I finally pushed him into enrolling at the community college, where he takes literature courses. Now in his early twenties, Timothy sits at home reading novels or staring into the tropical fish tanks.
One Friday afternoon when I came home from work, I found him eating a bowl of ramen noodles at the breakfast counter.
“How’s your day been?” I asked.
He pushed a paper toward me across the counter. The letter “A” and the word “Incredible!” were scrawled in red across the top.
“You won’t want to read it,” he said in a monotone. “It’s the same stuff about my family and friends who disappeared.”
I had stopped arguing with him years ago — stopped telling him in hysterical terms how we were his natural parents, that his memories were false, that he had not been robbed of a fortune and no one had abandoned him.
“Writing is a healthy outlet for you, Tim,” I said.
He gently cleared his throat. “I suppose.”
“I’d like to read it.”
He just shrugged his shoulders, slid off the stool, and put his empty bowl into the dishwasher.
“Your dad and I plan to see Grandma Ostenson tomorrow at the hospice center,” I said. “She won’t be around much longer. Will you come with us?”
“Grandma Ostenson? Why? I never visit her.”
“You won’t have another chance.”
“I mean, I don’t even know her.”
“My mother was troubled,” I said.
Tim blinked like he usually did before an emotional episode. “She’s barely aware. She’s going to die when we get there, anyway.”
“You’d be keeping us company.”
He looked at me with something like pity for a needy stranger. “Yeah, I would be.”
“Do you have plans for the weekend?”
He whisped air from his nose at my absurd question.
“Well,” I said, “I’m putting my feet up for a few minutes before I start supper. What would you like?”
“Nothing. But thanks.”
I took Timothy’s paper upstairs, thinking that I’d fall asleep during the second paragraph, but I didn’t. Instead, I moved to the window for better light. Ever since he was little, Tim had communicated his delusions, but never with such realism, and never with any rational perspective.
The prompt had been, “Your fountain of joy.” Tim had written about a wife and children, a career as a novelist, acclaim from intelligent readers, pleasure in research and storytelling, satisfaction in hard physical work, and purpose from sharing life with others.
But the ending of the essay… The last paragraph said, “Only recently have I realized that the memories exist merely in my head, fixed there forever, as if a malicious scientist planted them to torture me, which means they will never give joy, but will always burden me with the pain of separation. My hope is that someday the pain will subside.”
#
When we arrived at the hospice, Mom was propped up on pillows; her eyes were open and her breathing was labored. After a while, she said, “It’s nice to see you.”
I babbled on as if she understood every word. Between her cat-naps she appeared to enjoy our company, especially Timothy, who sat next to her. When I mentioned his paper, she said, “Read it to me, please. Read it all.”
“Sorry Mom, we didn’t—” Bill said, but Timothy was pulling a copy from his pocket.
As Tim read, her mind seemed to open like an evening primrose and when he reached the end, she said, “I remember that story… I’ve seen it before.”
“What do you see, Grandma?” Tim said.
She fumbled and took his hand. “Timmy?”
“Yes, Grandma.”
“Dear child, it’s a gift. Those people and experiences you feel are gone—they’ve not come to you yet. Your memories aren’t memories. They’re visions of your future. I had the same condition.”
“We’re clairvoyant?”
She nodded faintly. “Until I resigned myself to loss, real or not, I couldn’t be thankful for the present… for the people in my life. I prevented my joyful future. Accept your losses, baby, even self-inflicted ones. Give and receive love.”
She drifted into unconsciousness again and then stirred enough to say, “I wish I’d known you, I could have told you before. But, I’m glad… you came to visit.”
Timothy looked at his grandmother and blinked rapidly, her words working in him, maybe re-forming his life as we watched. He then gathered his father and me into his arms and cried unashamedly. We wept with him. At last when all this new grief was purged, we saw that my mom was gone, her breath stilled, her face serene.
We watched in silence until Bill said, “Tim, go tell them at the desk, okay?”
After Tim rinsed his face and left, I asked Bill, “What do you think about the family gift?”
He touched Mom’s hand and sighed. “I’m not sure. You don’t have it.”
I walked to the door. Down the hallway, Tim was leaning against the counter at the nurses’ station.
A minute later he returned, his face wearing an allusion to a smile. “They’ll be here soon,” he said. “No hurry.” Another silent moment passed until Timothy said, “What’s the name of the duty nurse? The young one. Brunette.”
“Margaret,” I said. “She’s vivacious, isn’t she?”
“She looks familiar.”
“She likes good literature, Tim,” my husband said.
Timothy blinked and said, his voice caught between a sob and a laugh, “Yeah, I know.”
END
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Nose Prints
Glowing nose print clearly seen at night with headlamp. |
It's fascinating how vacation rental guests seem to be unable to calculate where a window is and mash their noses into the glass as they gaze at the lovely scenery outside. Children love to decorate the windows within reach with their personal oil of palm. Anthropological psychology questions acide, in this insecure world, we have made it a secondary business to assist law enforcement in the surveillance of our citizenry by collecting these prints of every type, along with the oils for DNA samples, for identification purposes. Surprisingly, it pays well.
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Two Wildness Adventures
The florescent orange, highly venomous Araneus marmoreus orb-weaver trekking across the |
We are, however, separated from wildness by the protections and aids of what we call civilization. Civilization is valuable and now even essential for our survival, but it also is a hindrance to experiencing the most direct connection to the natural world. Civilization has helped us, but also made us dependent, and thus not fully what we are meant to be.
When wild, non-human creatures, especially those considered endangered, are injured or as young ones, orphaned, caring people sometimes take over, providing for the needs of the creature, with the goal of reintroducing them into the wild, of possible. If not possible, then the creature remains in the care of humans, often serving to educate and inform about the needs of the species, and even to install awe and wonder in seeing that creature up close. Zoos, for example, still serve these purposes.
Humans dwelling within civilization are like the inhabitants of a zoo. We are dependant. Different organizations like National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) and Outward Bound serve to initiate the reintroduction of humans into the wild, their original environment. These days, we can only visit the wilderness for short or for some people, longer periods. We are visitors, no longer natives—perhaps we are exiles. We carry civilization on our backs in the form of dried food, fuel and stoves, and high tech clothing, shelter and other gear—maybe even a satellite telephone and solar charger. Perhaps a weapon. In some ways, like an astronaut, but lower tech.
This craving for our original natural state may be behind our, or I should say, my fascination with observing wild creatures. I watch, listen, and even smell them living their lives and I see how it’s done. I enjoy wildness vicariously by contemplating those who are still native. I appreciate their beauty and deceptively complex simplicity.
Today I was outside the Brown House, a place we built on five acres, taking a short break from cleaning for the next guests. Long ago I developed a habit of what I will call, outdoor situational awareness. It involves an almost unconscious perception of wind and weather, and changes in them. Anything new or in motion catches my attention. I am aware of the topography and flora. Same as a wild animal, I often look up and around and survey my surroundings.
So, during my break from cleaning as I stared out through the leafless trees and brush to the east, I caught the motion of something big, almost frightening, moving at a fast pace, bounding across the front yard of the white modular home up the hill. My first thought—that it was a large dog—quickly morphed into “deer,” and the way it moved, head erect like it carried a heavy crown, a male deer with tall antlers. It sprinted down the hill into the field before me. Then it ran frantically back and forth, fervently sniffing the air. My instincts tuned me into the breeze touching me on my left, so I knew the animal could not smell me, so I watched it run back and forth, up and down, following a scent, until it vanished straight back up the hill. I was in awe, and blessed to have witnessed this brief demonstration of abundant, passionate wildness.
Later in the day, in the afternoon, I was staining the side of the new woodshed of the Brown House. As usual and without thinking, I glanced up to survey the long view, in this case north on our property. You never know what you will see. And I saw something. Tall, dark, and moving back and forth side to side into a bush like it was dancing. It was a bear doing something I had seen more evidence of than I wished, but had never observed in person: Rubbing and reveling in the fragrant foliage of a Carolina Sapphire Cypress tree up in our fruit orchard.
The Carolina Sapphire Cypress was developed by
As the years passed, the CSC trees thrived and grew, but so did the bear population, and I began to see damage to the lower limbs. Chewed, broken, twisted off, piled up. It was strange. Then when two of the trees died from unrelated causes, I replaced them with new CSC trees, and smaller. Those trees got special bear treatment and were continually abused, and it was clear they would never grow tall like their older brothers, who now stand at 30 feet or more. I didn’t know for sure bears were the varmints, but what else could it be?
An old friend and former colleague of mine was a plant buyer
and customer guide at BB Barns Nursery in south
So, today for the first time I saw a bear bathing himself in the foliage, as much as a bear, or anyone for that matter, can take a bath in a plant. He was standing up on his hind legs, walking in and out of the poor shrub (only about 5 feet tall—and it would be much taller if not for the abuse) and generally rolling, snuggling, adoring.
We can only guess why the bears have such an
attraction. Their powers of smell are
about 100 times stronger than ours.
Maybe the aromatic volatile organic compounds have some insecticidal
properties. Maybe the transferred scent
is an attraction to the opposite sex.
As I stalked closer and closer to the bear, keeping the blueberry fence between me and him to conceal my form, I was aware that the breeze was to my back and it was only a matter of time before he would smell me. I moved when he moved as he was distracted, not looking around. Then he froze for a minute. He couldn’t see me, but he knew I was close-by, and slowly, stiffly he strutted away—that’s what male bears do when they are scared and about to run. They are trying to scare you, but it’s a bluff. Suddenly he bolted and was gone, just as I saw one of our elderly neighbors walking down the road to the right.
If you are staying at the Brown House, and if you visually survey the horizon now and then, you might catch a glimpse of wildness. It might be anything. Hawks, woodpeckers, the grand vista of the skyscape rolling by in the south, a cloud of nearly invisible insects overhead. It might be deer and bears. Or, if you are even mildly brave, you can walk up to the orchard and breathe in the scent of Carolina Sapphire Cypress and imagine for a moment you yourself are again a wild uncivilized native of the forests.
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Thanksgiving Thoughts
Re-arrangement for the Holidays |
So, we sold the rental house (The Grey House) to the tenant and paid the debt off, leaving something extra to invest. After many years, finally, we are now drawing a positive income, and this is one of the things I am most thankful for this year. Though it is a lot of work, especially the cleaning.
To me, clean is clean. There are no grades of clean. Humanly speaking, however, we can only bear so much tedium. So far we have not been able to find anyone who will clean to my standard. At this point, it doesn't matter who cleans, I will always check afterwards and find "things". I don't want to get distracted here, because I only want to say I feel we are not so much in the hospitality business with cleaning as a required sideline, but we are in the cleaning business with a hospitality sideline.
It was startling to realize and admit that we are a part of the tourist industry. But for us, that specialty of the industry—hospitality—is more than providing a roof for an impersonal out-of-towner as much as it is sharing what we love, our home, with a fellow creature, who in turn helps us afford to share.
Some weeks ago a woman booked the Brown House for a full Thanksgiving holiday, and I was happy that we could provide the setting for their special get-together, that we would become a part of their permanent family memory. All of our guests so far had from zero to, maximum, 10 reviews. This person had about two dozen perfect 5-star ratings. Royalty. So, I wanted to roll out the red-carpet, or specifically, the fall-themed table cloth.
As the house construction had moved to the end phases, our plan for the main room furniture layout was to place the dining table in the prime location—the window corner—and, as where we live (the Red House), have the table reach into the kitchen. But with the furniture we bought, it wouldn't all fit how we liked, so we put the comfy sitting furniture in the prime spot. It was nice, but the table had been pushed into the less-than-glamorous, relatively dark space of the room that remained. Back to the present: I asked the upcoming guest beforehand about switching it all around and extending the table to make it the hub. The key to setting all that extra work in motion was if she was going to cook a Thanksgiving meal, or just go out to dinner? I received the answer when she sent me a list of cooking tools and asked what we had and didn't have. She was thrilled about us switching it all around, and yes, it took a couple extra hours.
Since the guests would be arriving well after dark we also "left the light on" and that's a post for the future. Hint: we have 116 LED lights associated with the Brown House, not counting the night-lights.
So, after hours of driving, the guest and her family got in late last night. And here is what she sent me just before midnight: "I forgot to text at 10:15 when we arrived bc we were so enamored with your place! It's so incredible...sparkling clean, wonderful array of antiques and other gems, and such great workmanship and artistry. We just love it here and are so amazed at what you created!"
And this is what makes the extra work worthwhile.
Sunday, November 13, 2022
The Artwork at the Brown House
Appalachian Writer James Still's Cabin on Dead Mare Branch |
Friday, November 11, 2022
Eleven Essential, Big Rules on How to Earn a Coveted One-Star Review from Your Vacation Rental Host
Sample of artwork in the Brown House |
1. Don’t pay attention to any of the material your host sends you. This is essential to achieve that one star review for several important reasons, which I will refer to in the list.
2. Remember, a vacation rental in a private home is exactly like a cheap hotel room, which means you can treat the host, staff, and the rental itself with as much disrespect as you can muster. If you see the host, just keep walking and say something, brief, meaningless, and insincere. Never thank them for their beautiful place and hospitality.
3. Don’t bother writing a review of your stay. It’s a waste of your time and no one will read it anyway. And if you do happen to blow it and write a positive review, it will mean the host can raise the rent for next time. Better even is writing a bad review, and especially complain about things that the host told you about in the material they sent you. Like if they say upfront they don’t have a large TV, you complain about not them having one.
4. Show up at least a half hour before the stated check-in time without asking and stay at least a half hour after the check-out time. This will be fun, as the host will be in a muck sweat to clean while you are in the way.
5. Leave all your trash scattered here and there throughout the place, as it suits your convenience. You’ve already paid a huge amount of money for the rent and the cleaning fee, so you are entitled make life easy for yourself. If you clean any of your nasty messes, the cleaners won’t earn their money. For extra points, bring your smelly food garbage from home and stuff it into one of the inside garbage cans.
6. Be sure to bring your pet to the Pet Free rental—they are always cleaner--then when the host later finds animal hair everywhere and asks if you brought a cat, tell them you left it at home with a sitter. Don’t tell them you brought your ferrets. Hosts are sensitive to bad reviews, so you can lie and bully them into submission.
7. If you accidentally or purposefully cause damage, never tell the host. They probably won’t see it until it’s too late, and then will not know exactly who did it.
8. When you make your booking, select dates that begin on a Saturday night or end on a Saturday. You will save money because Friday and Saturday nights are more in demand and hosts charge more for them. This keeps the host from making more money. Another trick is to check out on New Years Eve day, or otherwise cut any holiday season in half, thus preventing someone else from enjoying the whole holiday and the host from making a fortune.
9. Lie, and lie, and lie about everything. Or tell them nothing. Whatever they may say, hosts love not knowing what is going on in their place.
10. When you make a booking, always ask for a discount, inventing a sob story about how you are only trying to have a family reunion with your brother and mom for the first time in 10 years, and everything is so expensive, and that you might have to borrow money to afford the fees. Or make up your own stories. For extra effect, flatter the host. Hosts feel guilty about being rich enough to own a second home, or an extra room, so they always cave.
11. Ask the host all kinds of questions, especially ones they’ve answered in their online literature, and get them to invest considerable time with you. Treat them like new-found friends. Then later on cancel the reservation at the last moment while you can still get a full refund. The downside to this is the host can’t write that one-star review. The upside is that they will never let you book their place ever again and you will save a ton of money.
12. Leave all the lights on, inside and out, even in the daytime when you are out and about. You are bringing light to the world and inspiring the climate activists.
13. Attempt to break the world record for how many full-garbage-bags/poundage/per day of trash you can leave behind. Extra credit for whole watermelons and such. Hint: recyclables add to the bulk, so don’t separate those.
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
When Public Reviews & Private Remarks Are Switched
It happened this week. A guest new to AirBnb loved our place and wrote us a stunningly rave 5-star review. Problem is: he posted the review as a private message only we can see. And at the same time, he posted private embarrassing remarks in public so everyone can see. Oops. What do you think?
Public: 'The owners are such a great assets….awesome. They know what they are doing. Awesome, awesome owners is all I can say. They know what they are are doing. This place is the s**t. If everyone on here were as detailed and attentive as these owners then there would be no need for hotels.'
Private: 'This was the best. The cabin was absolutely spotless and stocked with things that I would not have thought (TP, paper towels, shower gel, shampoo, coffee etc) would be there. I definitely cannot say enough about they cleanliness and beauty. The views are awesome and it is literally @8 miles from grocery stores and places to eat but is far enough to put you off the grid and feel tranquil. The “Brown House” is such a nice place and I will 100% book this house again. If anyone is looking for a place to get away and relax then you need to book this place without a doubt. Mick and Edi truly know what they are doing and they carry it out with this place.'
Discussion: I think the first review was intended for the Airbnb administrators, as a report card. He did try to fix this reversal, but Airbnb doesn't allow editing once reviews are posted by both parties, except to delete the whole review. And he did book again for a future stay.