Home

There are five massive screen doors in the open living area of what has been our off-and-on home here in Maine.  On a clear morning, the warm glow from the maple trees on the lakefront and the ethereal, bright rays of dawn pour into this glass room in yellow and green shards, beginning at the earliest hour and somehow continuing to channel prisms of light deep into the evening.  Even when I am right here, asleep on the very couch I sit perched upon now, I dream of this room. 

In reality, this cabin is made up of about one third glass, with the remainder composed of v-match, vertical pine panels with a slightly tinted polyurethane finish.  It is bright and open and is life-giving in the way of an enormous, tight hug.  On my first night back here in early June, what must have been hundreds of insect wings beat frantically against the dark expanse of wire window screen and the resulting sound was that of a pounding torrent of rain, rather than the quiet presence of the still, cool evening breeze that moved into and through the room where I sat. 

Home. 

I dare say it is the single most comforting thing on earth.  It is as soothing as a lullaby, as essential to our souls as oxygen to the lungs, and as impossible to pin down as an easterly wind.

I’m realizing more and more that home isn’t a specific place, a particular building, or even an individual set of circumstances.  Home is like a rhythm that only your soul will recognize, like a melody that you hear with your ears, and only upon its hearing can you identify it as the song which has always existed somewhere inside of you.   From the very first note, you feel your footsteps fall into place with the beat, as if the music was born at the very same instant that you were.

This past Saturday night, after putting Milo to bed, I found myself, as usual, doing a late night exercise circuit:  walk; squat; pick up a wooden car; repeat.  When I had finished, I stood in our open living room, did a small, but very stylish wiggle, and declared myself the LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.  You see, on this particular day, one of my very favorite friends, Jenn, entered into her new big wedded adventure, and it all took place in my seasonal backyard.  It was a day full of frenzy and running from place to place like a sugar-pumped six-year-old in a room full of puppies, and yet, also a day of incredible beauty and peace and – you guessed it, my favorite buzzword – community.  It was community at its best: purposeful and hilarious and exceedingly life-giving.  Saturday was also, as Craig said multiple times throughout the weekend, a terribly frighteningly day to be a spore-producing plant, but since we only eat ferns in the spring, and I only occasionally make my bed in the moss, it was nothing other than an enchanting day sandwiched between two very magical ones, filled with greenery from the forest, and I cannot imagine anything on this natural earth more perfect than that.

Due to our relational overlap with dear Jenn and her husband, Jacob, it was also an opportunity to welcome a number of friends back to camp.  I think of this group of people as something like our own personal traveling circus, like the band getting back together.  Every individual falls into place amongst the rest, and we each become a unique part of what feels to be one single working body. 

In this community of people, I hear my melody.  They sing my song.  They beat out my rhythm, and my feet follow suit.  But they aren’t the only ones.  This isn’t the only place.  The expression of home has a wild, wandering voice.

During my first trip to the red rocks of the dry southwest, I heard it.  Hidden amidst the mossy pines nearest the southern shore of Heald Pond, I sense it.  In the tiny embrace of my son, I recognize it.  In the gaze of my fellow adventurer, my husband, I am enraptured by it.

As much as this particular room, with its bright warmth and its air thick with joy and memory, would beckon me to label it the ultimate definition of home, I cannot.  I am afraid that if I give in to the notion that home is one certain atmosphere or one specific structure, I will lose something precious.  I will have surrendered myself to the unnecessary reality of loss, to the weight of grief at a house sold or an empty nest, or as I know it, a little cabin in the woods seen from the rear-view mirror.  I will attempt to turn my ear, rather, to listen at each fork in the road, because the sound may come drifting as a working collection of feelings and faces experienced in blueberry pancakes, or mist on the river, or the giddy chortle and short-bitten fingernails of my sister.  I will listen for it in the daunting truth that for each of us, our best and most dear friendship may still be yet to come.  I will seek to embrace its elusiveness, it’s mystery and it’s unpredictable nature.

Our move-back date occurs next week, and I know that I won’t be ready for it until it’s happened.  Or rather, until I’m back in New Hampshire, and have gotten a large enough quantity of hugs to remind me that it is a place that is also good, that it is also mine, and that it is also home. 

The expression of home is as impossible to pin down as an easterly wind.  

This room is not the only room. 

My sound of Home:

Artist: Sleeping At Last
Album: Atlas: Space II – EP

Listomania

I like lists.

Like this:

Laundry

Write

Library

Post office

Optician

Store: skim, yogurt, veg.

Get eggs @ Margie’s

Dinner

Clean up brush

Family bike ride?

Chase a naked Milo

I'm waiting for Chub Scout Retrieval to become an Olympic event.

This is just a sample.  I write these almost every morning, or in the evening for the next day.  When I’m really tired and/or lazy, they are extraordinarily short or include things like brew coffee (which, is actually done by the coffee maker - check, check!) and eat lunch, and only sometimes include showering.  

My good friend Jenn, besides being a phenomenal corn chip eater and artistic wondergirl is a listmaker, like me.  But beyond the daily cataloguing, Jenn is a bucket list girl.  She makes annual bucket lists, and also makes them when she moves a new place or perhaps even visits somewhere.  Her bucket list might include writing 365 letters in a year, eating at every Thai joint in Boston or, more likely, reading a number of phenomenal books and hiking mountains.  I think she’s brilliant.

Why do I think Jenn and I like lists so much?  In my opinion, it's because we are filled with a desire for purpose.  And in a tangible way, purpose means getting stuff done, amiright?  But - and this is a big but -  accomplishing my daily checklist is not the pinnacle of living.  

The lack of adrenaline rush after crossing out Do the dishes is a dead giveaway. 

If my life is composed of list after list after list, with 365 each year for an ambitious 60 more years, that’s 21,900 lists, not including each leap year.  I might like lists, but that sounds… completely terrible.  It is essentially repetitive, it makes my soul feel heavy, and it is – correct me if I’m wrong – totally anticlimactic. 

Here’s my dilemma.  I am not a girl with huge aspirations – perhaps I’m hard to inspire, but I think probably I’m simply too indecisive, passive and easily satisfied, which are a secret Keebler recipe for generally mundane things, showcased by the list I posted above.  So why am I knocking on lists like that, and yet I’m praising the likes of Jenn’s big, bad bucket lists?  

Why?  

First off, despite their monotony, your daily tasks are not qualitatively bad.  Without them, my world might stop turning - certainly the laundry cycle would.  That, said, it's easy to get lost in the rhythm of these familiar, sometimes automatic behaviors.  The problem is, I need help.  I won't remember to go get the eggs without a note, and so I certainly doubt that I'll really go travel the world without a reminder to book the first flight.  I need the benefit of my ink lettering staring me in the face, like a glowing neon light, to beckon me to go get after it.   

I am however, suggesting something a little less explosive.

This is why Jenn’s bucket lists are such an inspiration, and why I need to write a few of my own.  If I finally get down on paper that I want to hike Mount Washington before next winter, and I have to stare at it - stare at it, stare at it, stare at it - every day… you know what?  I might actually get that sucker done.  And what makes those bucket lists so special is that the true success is not simply the accomplishment in checking the items off.  It’s part of the ploy, yes, because we are human and sometimes need a carrot to chase after, but unlike the old illustration, somehow grabbing hold of that carrot – checking off that thing - is not actually the prize.  We don’t feel the reward when we scribble through learn to swim the butterfly or cross out join a traveling carnival.  We feel it while we are chasing after the carnival.  While we are powerfully fluttering our way across the pool.  While we are huffing our reluctant body up toward the Washington Observatory.   The chase is our reward. 

The prize is the thing itself.    

So don’t quit making your lists.  I’m certainly going to keep it up, or I promise you that you’ll never come over to our place for breakfast, because I will 

never 

have 

gone 

to get those eggs.  

But beyond the daily grind, let’s do two things together.  First, let’s sprinkle some bucket inspiration onto our daily notepad, so that we remember to Paint a masterpiece with the Chub Scout or Take over the world in Risk later that day.  Second, let’s get cracking on this year’s bucket list.  There are incredible things in store for 2015 – adventure and adrenaline and hilarity and mountaintops – even for a lazy Susan like me.  So here, as a gesture of goodwill, is the beginning of mine:

1.  Hike Mt. Washington 

2.  Overnight camp with Milo

3.  Grill a really good steak  

If you want to post a couple of your bucket items here, that would be a pretty great encouragement to me.  And when the time comes that you accomplish them, don't flaunt the fact that you checked them off.  Flaunt the story.  Tell it to me, and to your friends, and to your family.  Because that's the prize.  And maybe, just maybe if you can get after it, so can we. 

She's Got An Icy Grip, That One

This winter has contained everything you can imagine: whipping winds, blizzard white-outs, sub-zero weeks, slipping and sliding, and certainly the occasional power outage.  There was a time recently when the temperature, from one Monday to the next rose a full 70 degrees.  And I can't quite remember, but I'm pretty sure that it dropped at least 50 degrees again in the next two days.  The weather has been awesome.

Beautifully terrifying.  Terrifyingly beautiful.

Terrifying as an icy river, while you sit bobbing in your kayak, taking a momentary break to float gingerly downstream, perched just so, knowing that you are always on the verge of catching an edge and embarking on an arctic triathlon (paddle, swim, mountaineer), minus the survival suit.  But beautiful.

Beautiful, like a friend described at lunch the other day, is that moment when you need to venture down from your bear stand deep in the woods. But terrifying, with the nerve-wracking knowledge of the sow and two cubs milling around somewhere beyond your eyesight.  Don't worry though, they can see you just fine.

It is standing at the altar - beautiful.  Or rather, waking up a week later in bed to the realization that you had better get used to the pulsing aroma of that particular vintage of morning breath, because it is a gift from your soulmate, offered to you, forever.  Terrifying.

These are the sort of things to which we pay pretty sweet lip service, in hindsight.  After we survive them, of course.

How cool!  
Adventure of a lifetime!  
You wouldn't believe...!
What a story!

However, in that moment of the thrill, as you float down a river at 11PM with the sound of an upcoming rapid pounding against your eardrums and a full moon illuminating the surface foam, you can't decide whether it is literally-the-coolest-thing-you-have-ever-done or if it will literally be the last thing you ever accomplish in this lifetime.

The weather is that sort of deadly mistress.  My husband was in a car accident recently, and for me, the most alarming feature of the incident was not the rolling of the vehicle (no), the speedy launch into the woods (no), or even the potential for strandedness on an what used to be an old logging road to Canada (no).

By now, you are likely questioning what kind of wife I am.  Unnerving, isn't it?

What was most terrifying to me was the -15 degree evening temperature, plus windchill.  That fact, combined with the others is what still gives me a sour feeling in my stomach when I recall the day.  Would he be able to make the one mile walk to our driveway, then the three mile hike home?  In the dark?  In the biting, snapping cold and the snow?  This is the kind of cold that wraps its icy hands around the base of your neck and threatens to squeeze out your last breath as lightning fast as falling out of a tree knocks the wind from your lungs.  It's so cold that you gasp instantly as if you were standing naked in a shower of ice cubes.  You blink often because the mucous covering your eyes tends, like every other liquid, to freeze.  Your cheeks don't sting at this point because the surface nerves have stopped functioning, and you can't zip the neck of your jacket because the dexterity in your fingers is reduced to what would be playing the piano with ten blocks of cheese tied to your hands.

Thankfully (miraculously), C arrived home unscathed, thanks to a humbling amount of timely provision (friends, emergency personnel, kind sheriff, snacks), but the occasion serves as another reminder of the awesome dual nature of our weather:

it's terror, it's beauty.

This is precisely why we love the river.

Being in nature.

Living in the woods.

Taking risks.

Why exactly? Because, simply put - we cannot control these things.  The river, nature, the woods - they exist outside of our reach, and the moment you or I think that we have them under our thumb - the second the paddler lifts that blade out of the water and relaxes her grip - these things will level us with the strength of a thousand man-made engines.

And why on earth would this be good?

Because it reminds us of the greatness of what we've already been given in relation to the smallness of what we try to please ourselves with.  It reminds us that there is a great symphony being played around us all the time, but that we are busy banging on a piano with cheese block fingers.

And it promises that we will hear that beautiful music

if only we would stop making such terrible noise.

Paradise Found

 So, I'm a bit ashamed to share this with you, but here goes.

We live in the woods.  

That's not what I'm ashamed of.

We do live in the woods, and this is an incredible gift, a gift I'm certain that I don't deserve.  My shame stems from the fact that I don't take advantage of this gift the way that I should.  We live on the doorstep of wilderness, and though every single day we could be out snowshoeing, hiking, whitewater kayaking, flatwater kayaking, canoe paddling, road biking, mountain biking, trail running or rock climbing - almost all from our front door - I have discovered that far too often I find myself in a lifeless and unholy union with our living room couch... like herbed butter melting over a grilled steak, my arms and legs drip sluggishly off of the cushions.  Limbs that are also increasingly composed of butter, my diet would suggest.

If you are feeling any pang of empathy for me at this moment, keep reading.  The following glimpses of forest life should shock you into proper rage at the grand injustice of my slothful existence.  I guarantee that you'll be gearing up to hunt me, armed with envy and a pitchfork, in 90 seconds flat.  And I, in true form, won't be running, so it'll be easy for you to find me and fork me to death for my crimes.

So here it is.  This is life:

We wake up to this view from the front lawn (during summer, that other season).

We get to go down giant slip'n'slides with our friends,

and play in the mud.

We can canoe,

or go whitewater rafting

[at night].

We can paddle rivers,

or sometimes just look good standing next to them.

  

We can snowshoe,

and take snowy, flannel-y Christmas photos.

But I don't do these things very often.  Instead I seep into the furniture... like a spilled drink.

Miraculously, despite my persistent attempts at shameful lethargy, yesterday was a day that gives me hope - hope that maybe... somehow... I'll collect my drooping limbs a little more often with aspirations of grasping the wealth of adventure found in our vast backyard.  About this time yesterday afternoon, along with a group of friends, C and I took our snowmobiles part-way up a nearby mountain.  From there, we strapped on our snowshoes so that we could hike the remaining distance to the peak on foot.  This was a day to employ what I believe to be a crucial life practice, which is to recognize the incredible nature of what you are actively doing, in the moment that you are actively doing it.  It is when you whisper quietly to yourself or shout to the birds, "this is awesome", and you know it to be true, right down to your bones...

right then...

         as you live it...

as you do it.

So now you can see why it is such a shame to let the smallest opportunity for adventure pass me by.  Because at the end of the day, what story have I written?  What awe have I experienced?  What risk?  What reward?  What part of this incredible created world have I let soak deep into my being and stir my spirit?

Here, where I could throw a rock from our deck and unintentionally kill a brook trout, there is no excuse.  Only opportunity. And as I strive to take hold of mine, I will also hope that you are out there, searching, finding, and fully discovering yours.