Sheltering on the Mountain

Need I say it? What a strange, strange time. So many of us are grasping for understanding, for expression, for daily supports to our sanity. I keep feeling I ought to be reading and writing more, but as all of you will know, low-grade stress distracts, and to be honest, doing three meals and day, the dishes, the house-cleaning, the laundry, the firewood, and a bit of work? That’s about all I have capacity for. I thanked my mother recently because I realized I’d never thanked her before for that non-stop labor of a household. I don’t even have children. It still never stops—not if you are eating well and lack a dishwasher and a maid! For me, it’s pleasurable labor, but it takes everything I’ve got some days.

Here on the mountain, it’s almost impossible to feel anything is wrong out in the world if I don’t look at the news. The trees are leafing out. The daffodils bloomed, then the plum tree and the apples and sarvisberries, now the lilacs. New lambs fill my farmer friend’s field. Rabbits and deer roam my property, and stereophonic birdsong is a constant companion. Things are pretty quiet. Except for the absence of the dinner parties my people up here are so fond of hosting, everything feels pretty normal. It’s about a month now I’ve been back in my little white house. I can’t recall the last stretch this long… Too long ago, whatever. I have settled in for who knows how long. I only mind when I think of how long it might be until I can see my family.

Rain falls on the tin roof here as I write in my unfinished attic. The wind whips outside. It’s foggy down the gorge below me. Radio 3 natters and sings and swells away in the background, giving me a particular sense of comfort and a misleading (but lovely) sense of place. I am grateful for the feeling of peace and relief I feel here. I also feel guilty that so many are suffering while I am effectively in paradise, home on my mountain at the beginning of three beautiful, easy seasons (winter, too, is beautiful, but harsh). Before this I was away three months for work, moving rather unwillingly about the greater DC area, fighting angry traffic, toiling completely indoors, being utterly removed from anything resembling my element except for the hours spent in my welding helmet. I made a lot of money in those months, but I already owed it to 2019. Just when I thought I was getting ahead, a lot of my work for the year has disappeared. Welcome to the club, right?

I find myself taking comfort in the routine—morning coffee rituals, evening drinks, tending the stove. Little moments of beauty are everywhere, and I try to lean into them. I take the dog out first thing in the morning and the scent of the fire coming back to life in the wood stove catches my nose as it trails up and out of my crooked chimney. The damp grass smells divine under my feet as I gaze up at my little house from all angles on the property, in all light and all foliage. I watch the buzzards play in the wind as it swirls its way up and over the ridge, some days sounding like the jet engines that are so few and far between now.

I wanted time this year. I didn't want others to suffer and die for me to have it, but I do feel this sort of slower pace and home-orientedness is the way people are evolved to live. It’s easy for me to say that living in a beautiful place with land and freedom around me, I know, but I feel like everything about the way I have lived my adult years has pointed in good, useful, beautiful ways to now… The skills I’ve worked to accumulate, the pleasure in self-sufficiency where possible, the ease of my own company, the smart choice to buy a house with a bit of ground even if it isn’t near major employment centers. I have room to be outside and alone. I have room to grow food. I have very low living expenses. I have bright stars and spring peepers and am counting the days til my fireflies fill the field each night and it’s warm enough to sit out with them, barefooted and unshivering.

I don’t like feeling scattered and rushed like I do so much of the time (or like I did in the pre-COVID-19 days, to which I’m not certain we will return)—just running from one thing to the next and always staring down the balance of bank account versus bills. I have never wanted a life driven by thoughts of money… And in fact I am not thinking of money, per se, but fearing never having enough and being able to relax.

It doesn't feel every day of anyone’s life that they’ve made the right choices—this I know—but the last year or two has had me questioning even more as I continue to struggle financially. I look at friends and family with coherent careers and the accompanying financial gains or at least level of focus and professionalism that go along with spending years on something. Me? Always spread thin and interested in so many sort of related and sort of unrelated things, and lately, beset by government shutdowns, contracts that fizzle, tax surprises, tax refunds that the British government is trying very hard not to give me, and now a fucking pandemic. None of it feels personal but the taxes, but I am weary now. I don’t know how much more financial fight I have in me, and I keep wanting to know when it gets easier and what I have to do for things to feel easier.

And yet now, in this moment, I feel proud of choices I made. All the manual labor, the cooking, the building, the fixing, the traveling and building of strong networks that already existed for months on end without in-person contact. I’ve been lucky, too. My parents gave me the downpayment for this house where I now shelter in place. I was born and have remained healthy. I haven’t been a victim of any significant violence in my life. It’s not all just personal agency. It never is. For now, I have all the things and skills I need. I think humans actually need more skills and fewer things. I think I just am not the kind of person who is going to thrive in a massive, cruel, debt-based capitalist system that feeds on poverty and cheap labor and obsessive consumption driven by incessant marketing of Shit We Don’t Actually Need™. I knew years ago living with Jack in Wales—in the countryside for the first time in my life—that I was a homesteader at heart. I am happiest with a diverse collection of things to tend: plants, animals, buildings, walls, stoves and root cellars. That is the root of my satisfaction… The endless demand for creativity, for figuring-out, for making do and make-shifting and improvising… Being in touch with all of the seasons and their distinct personalities and rhythms… Being deeply aware of my surroundings and with intimate knowledge of the flora and fauna here.

I cook three real meals a day because I have time to, but also because I have to. I walk in the fresh air with the Blue Ridge Parkway mostly to myself. I’ve started herb seedlings, knowing I will finally be here for the foreseeable future. I ferment vegetables and share jars with friends. I bake bread. I’ve been re-seasoning some old cast iron I inherited from my dad’s side, watching the slick black accumulate. I hang my laundry out on the line, smiling. I bring the daffodils inside. I prune away the wild raspberry canes that have taken over my beds. I prune my lilacs (after several years of wondering why they’ve barely blossomed since the month I bought this house three years ago). I’ve ordered a climbing rose (Teasing Georgia) from David Austin after years of drooling indecisively over the catalog, and two fruit trees arrive sometime soon to start a little orchard now that I am here and able to truly get things settled in. Job two, just after planting, will be to get them all fenced off from the deer that prowl my property, drink from my spring, and eat anything they fancy. I look around this old place knowing that these buildings won’t pay my car insurance, but they will benefit from my having time to maintain them this year with paint and repaired windows.

I have a lot to look forward to.

And yet I know what is happening elsewhere, and I am powerless to stop it apart from doing my bit to stay home. That doesn’t mean I won’t be touched by it. People I know—here or elsewhere—will be sickened. Some may perish. I try not to think about it more than is healthy, but what is healthy? What is that balance between being informed and empathetic and self-protective and ignorant? Perhaps it is always individual. I don’t want to be a person with my head in the sand simply because I am lucky, but my mental health has sometimes been shaky even in sunnier times, so I try to pay attention to my needs… sleep, baths, walks, healthy food, occasional news blackouts. Jenny used to tell me not to invent worries for myself—to wait and see what needed my worry when it actually happened. In other words, don’t borrow trouble.

I am so interested in how humans are coping, what kindnesses are occurring (rather than what hoarding and stupidity is going on, governments included), how people are keeping busy. So much of what is happening is sort of unfathomable. But nurseries are sold out of plants. Bean and flour companies struggle to keep up with demand. Hardware and building supply stores are buzzing. Does this sound familiar? People want to feel productive, nourished, creative.

Friends have shuttered their businesses, but so many are finding creative ways to cope, and those who still have income are supporting them as best they can: ordering books, ordering take-out meals, donating to funds for furloughed restaurant workers… all sorts.

Passing drivers are always pretty friendly up here in the mountains, but even more so now. Strangers wave in passing. (Pick-up truck people have always exchanged a friendly finger nod from the steering wheel; now others join.) Friends honk as they drive down my hill and see me outside.

Surprising characters are popping up in the mailbox and the inbox, wanting to chat, or put to bed old grievances, or have a drink on camera with each other. It’s all been gratifying.

I have space and time to think about lives I might have lived elsewhere, with others, in different jobs. It’s fun (fun? intriguing? romantic? pointless?) to think how those might have played out, especially in light of life’s latest challenge to us all. I’m glad to be able to say that I am happy as I am. I have grieved a lot of possibility in the last four years, though even in the midst even more possibility cropped up. It alway seems to. There are some bridges that burned (most of which others set on fire) that I still feel sad about, but I can’t control anyone but myself. I only wish I had known that earlier. There’s one letter I still feel I want to send, but knowing how it might be received even in these extraordinary times gives me pause. I yearn for peace. I wish for reconciliation, but knowing it may be permanently elusive, I don’t know if I’m brave enough to try again. It was only ever me who tried. It may be still.

But I don’t need anything. It’s nice to be reminded of how little I need to be truly, truly content. I hope despite all of the horrible shit happening out in the world this will be a time for those of us who survive it to touch base with our core values, to reset our priorities, to think about what truly matters and what is just busyness for the sake of not facing various realities about self/world/systems, what is just frivolous consumption, what is just and fair and kind. Let us not have Stockholm syndrome for the most ruthless possible versions of capitalism, for failing economic and social systems. And let us refuse to settle into an utter lack of adequate systems (health insurance/systems, social safety nets, etc). This is a moment of truth (unless you are listening to presidential briefings).

I hope you are all staying safe out there. Look out for your more vulnerable friends, family, and neighbors when you can. I’m not alone here at home, and I realize how lucky that is. Some folks are relieved to be alone, but some are really struggling. Check in. I am regularly in contact with friends in the UK, New Orleans, France, Wyoming, Italy, North Carolina… Most of that has been text or video conferencing, but I’ve pulled out all my old stationery, and it’s time to start putting pen to paper in then way I once did so frequently.

Lastly, for those of you in other countries, please know that not all Americans are as stupid as the “RE-OPEN” protestors screaming in the streets in awful-looking costumes with misspelled signs. Actually, most of us aren’t. But as a funny tweet my brother shared with me the other day asked (paraphrased), why is it the people who have spent years stockpiling guns and ammo and dried beans have reached the moment they all prepared for and dreamed of, when they’d have to shelter in their bunkers and be self-sufficient, and all they do instead is take to the streets and cry about not being able to go to Olive Garden or some such shit? Ugh.

The rest of us, though, are trying, and we’ll keep on.

Love,

Whitney