LITMIR.BIZ

      Let me lead you into a house where you climb trees instead of stairs, a house where toads, salamanders, newts, frogs and tiny ring neck snakes live and they aren’t in cages. If you find a cricket outside you can bring it in and the frogs will eat it right out of your hand. You’re in a house where you’re elated if a katydid finds its way in through the window because night after night it’ll lull you into a deep sleep with the sound it makes. You’re in a three-story house with no inside staircases, where instead you zip up and down on tree trunks from the forest that grew on themselves firm, knobby handholds and foot rests. You’re in a house where deer and a half-wolf once came in and out like people, and at least 17 species of wild animals have dwelt, both the invited and the uninvited. I haven’t counted species lately.

      I once knew a person who lived on a secluded beachfront property. She had had some serious medical scare and survived. I remember she said each morning she would go for a walk on the beach and make an effort to see something new, a new seashell or a bird or a flower growing in the dunes.

      Life here is similar but it doesn’t take much effort. From the moment I hear the first bird I perceive and sense change. My first duties take me outside, and opening the door is something akin to a surprise package. You don’t know if you’ll be screaming at deer, backing up from a bear or chasing a possum out of the chicken coop. All you know is that something new is gonna be waiting for you.

      I’m usually up before Kathy, for two reasons. I maintain a drop-of-a-feather level of alertness all night, so I don’t sleep soundly and she hasn’t the option to nap at a whim during the day as I do. As day breaks I like to turn the news on low, softly rattle a few pots and pans and set the coffee water to heating so the stir of life coaxes her up to get ready to leave for work.

      Most of the newness that enters my senses is both pleasant and subtle, but there’s always a vague foreboding that keeps me from floating off into bliss. “What could go wrong?” to me is like a constant background noise that my ears don’t see fit to call my brain to attention. It’s much like a productive haunting that keeps me watchful and grounded, but it doesn’t interfere with or dampen the enjoyment I get from a multi-colored columbine that has just flowered out of nowhere in some strange place. A brand new patch of painted trilliums that just blossomed can take my breath away. The other day I noticed a cluster of albino bluets amidst the large patch of common sky blue ones growing above Wayne’s World (the summer kitchen).

      The other morning I was on my way up there to the propane fridge to get the soy creamer we use in coffee and the smoothie I made for Kathy the day before, when a gentle breeze coming down the mountain filled my nostrils with the scented bloom of the Canada Mayflower, wild Lilies of the Valley.

      I’ve usually un-bear-proofed everything at first light, a little before Kathy gets up or the dogs even stir. I hang out the bird feeders and set out the cats’ food dishes, but I leave the chickens for Kathy to deal with because she likes to. If the dogs kept us up half the night howling and barking they’re at the door before I get my shoes on. Their noses tell me every step the bear took whose smell wafted through the window at 2 am. That means I also walk out back to see if another wall of a shed was ripped open or a door torn off its hinges.

      I used to let them out to chase the bears at night until I saw Bethany grab “Cousin Vinnie’s” right back foot and saw him reel around to grab at her. Vinnie was a very, very large male bear with a big white V on his chest. He may have been the 900-pound one shot the past season a good distance from here. It had a V on its chest. Vinnie just wouldn’t scare. He’d walk toward you even if you were screaming at him and he cost me 400, the price of the 357 Magnum I bought to shoot in the air and send him running.

      Sometimes, as the dawn is just awakening, I water the outside potted plants, check how ripe the fruit is getting or just walk into the garden to see how much things have grown or been eaten by deer. My favorite mornings are when the Concord grapes and kiwis are ripe. They taste best when they’re night-chilled.

       Kathy in the kitchen

       Our living room, with Kathy’s favorite rocking chair and sleeping dog

       A cozy sitting place

       One of our critter family

      Mountain mornings are brisk on into early summer, so on my way back to the house I sometimes grab a handful of logs for the cook stove and fire it up. I don’t mean to heat the house, just a little bubble of radiant warmth where Kathy can pull up her mother’s rocker, drink her coffee and read something. I catch the radiance from my throne (the heavily pillowed left side of the couch). Then in perfect synch, the sun comes up, the air warms and the stove goes out on its own. Of course in the winter we shovel the paths and tend to the wood-heating stove first thing.

      After our customary kiss goodbye I usually read or write a little before I get to my work of keeping up the homestead. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I do two-plus hours of morning yoga. Kathy goes to the Y to swim or workout sometimes before she punches in and sometimes after work she goes bike riding. She’s an avid triathlete.

      As you’ll learn in this book I’m a stickler for doing what needs to be done. So the first thing I do to warm up my work machine is to look for small tasks that need doing and I complete them (complete is the operative word). I might bury the kitchen scraps in the sunroom so the red worms can turn them into our fertilizer. I might take the recycling back to the shed and sort it into categories. When I say recycling I’m not just referring to the numbered plastics, tin and aluminum cans and colored glass and paper. I’m talking everything from plastic wrap, worn out pens, cigarette butts and chewing gum – in other words everything that’s not buried in the soil of the sunroom. The sunroom is the most important “organ” in the body of the house. It’s strangely beautiful and one of the reasons people call this place magical. Much more about the sunroom as we go along.

      This time of year I might siphon water from one rainwater storage cistern to another, or pump up to the main cistern uphill that pressurizes the house taps. If it’s raining hard you often see me running around like a madman, dressed in a Western slicker and one of my wide-brimmed Chinese rice paddy hats that I picked up at the flea market for a paltry sum.

      We live on a mountainside, so the main cistern works like a water tower,

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