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Two years, 3 months and 21 days out -- To celebrate, I built a wall (thank you and goodbye)

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Good cooler-than-we-deserve early September morning, all y’all. It was 54 degrees on my porch at dawn this morning, only one or two degrees from being able to see my breath, again, in late August and early September. It is hard to believe that this is one of the hottest summers on record for our planet, as my deep hollow home has enjoyed one of the coolest and least humid summers in memory. Since I can’t afford to go visit my second favorite place on the globe (the mountains of northern New Mexico), my Goddess has brought the feeling of that place to me. Many thanks for that, and for this preview of autumn.

Ah yes, autumn. A time to revel in color and coolness, to work without being soaked in sweat, to be warmed the first time by the act of cutting and hauling firewood back to the house. To begin stocking up the sauna wood for super-hot interludes on quiet, cold Sunday winter afternoons – soon to come. Yes, I am getting ready. Or at least thinking about it. Last week, I planted some fall vegetables (turnip greens, romaine and buttercrunch lettuce, spinach, radishes) and this week, I have planted red, white and yellow onions, red and green cabbage and broccoli. Though most Tennesseans (and farmer’s co-ops and nurseries) don’t seem to know it, the best cabbage and broccoli are raised in the fall here, and spinach planted now will produce both a fall crop and be the first edible green to return for me in the spring. I also need to track down the annual ryegrass seed that serves as an excellent cover-crop (and weed-killer) for my otherwise fallow beds.

The compost piles are growing, with weeds plucked from friends’ yards; no-longer-needed leaf mulch from the potato, tomato and pepper rows in my Garden; and thick, green grass from my yard (that can be harvested a few more times before first frost.) I also need to learn how to cook butternut squash in ways that I will eat, because they have produced a bumper crop this year. (Any ideas, y’all?)

It is good to think about, to anticipate, to look forward to autumn once again. Though our summers are usually hot and sticky and our winters are unremarkable, our Tennessee falls are among the best on the planet. Living among the upland hardwoods as I have been privileged to do for the past forty years – the hickory, maple, dogwood, tulip poplar, black gum, sumac, cherry, persimmon, the many kinds of oaks – is to live in the middle of a painter’s dream-world this time of year. The black walnuts that surround my house are already losing their leaves, preparing to allow the sun’s warming rays to reach my home before the real cold hits. The underbrush is already turning red and yellow and orange and purple – all precious gemstones to me these days.

Yes, autumn is a good time. And celebrating it now has special meaning, as I enter officially into the autumn of my life. Because, you see, I turned 60 last week, so there’s no more denying it. But to keep the infirmities of age at bay as long as I can, I celebrated by building a stone wall. One that should be there for the foreseeable future, one that nothing but earthquakes should be able to move anytime soon.

Because of my idle time (and need to contribute in some way to something), an old friend invited me to help him landscape his side yard. This friend (Lanny) has been building the house of his dreams for a decade now. It is three stories tall, with west-facing decks on two of those floors, all glass and open space and cedar posts and very expensive, almost living “found” marble (from a “magic dumpster” known only to Lanny). The staircase is stepped in black walnut boards milled from trees that grew on my farm, cut to fit and sanded to a smooth and pliable finish, sap-wood facing outward to help define the way to walk, even in the dark. Aside from the rough-cut black walnut and still-to-be-incorporated cherry planks that I have provided, I have also contributed rich compost for Lanny’s flower beds (and they show their appreciation every moment now.) But, seeing my need and the idle time overflowing my hands and frustrating my mind, Lanny offered to let me do “something” with the north-facing steep slope that breaks from his carport to the yard below. A space that was only excavated clay and construction rubbish when I started. But then, that was two weeks ago. You should see it now.

We conceived of two creek rock-lined flower beds, both vaguely boomerang- (or footprint-) shaped, sloping from the side door of the house to the yard and hot tub space below. It took a day to clean up the mess that was there, and then it has taken a steady routine ever since to transform the place. After awakening at home, drinking my quart of coffee and reading the news of the outside world, I have walked every morning bare-foot up and down my hollow creek, collecting stones of various sizes to build the beds. As this process has unfolded, the stones I have gathered have gotten bigger, allowing me to dig a small trench to set their bases into the hillside where they will not shift and then filling in the spaces in-between and on-top with smaller but no less interesting “old men” (as my Indian friends would call these creek-stones if they were used to heat their sweat-lodges). These rocks would likely not work well in sweat-lodges, though they certainly are working up a sweat for me now. There is too much flint and crystal in them, so too much heat might cause them to shatter. Besides, some of them have well-articulated fossils visible on their surfaces that should remain, and one looks like an ancient bowling ball of the Gods, sparkling crystal and muted quartz interlaced with black ribbons of long-ago lava (or so it seems.)

Once I collect enough rocks each morning for the day’s work and load as many as my old pick-um-up truck can carry, it is off along the back-ridge roads – Tom Rail to Bootlegger’s Lane to Shoals Branch to Pinewood to Spencer’s Mill – across parts of three counties from my home to his. Then the days unfold as a mixture of unloading and toting and digging and placing and re-placing (and re-re-placing) the stones in their uneven circles, working until they fit together well enough to stay put (or so we hope). Working until I am tired and can see what has been done.

Neither Lanny nor I had any idea when we started where this all would go. But it has gone well. The beds are approaching completion, with my days this week spent filling in unstable crevasses with chinking stones, gathering leaf mold from Lanny’s neighbor’s woods, adding peat moss and then hauling two truck-loads of fine sandy, loamy soil from my farm to top them off. We have (and will) use no mortar – this is strictly a stack-rock creation. But, given their slant, I think I will end up using some of the ryegrass bought for my garden to stabilize the loose dirt for the next few months, until we begin planting hostas and ferns, irises and daylilies, and whatever else forms the consensus for those beds from the input of female neighbors and friends who also know Gardens.

In addition to those two flower beds, I spent last Thursday (my 60th birthday) building a first section of wall that will anchor the walkway through the beds and help define the hot-tub space. For that wall, my back and arms had gathered enough strength from the time before to bring in truly impressive stones from the creek – thick, wide and HEAVY. It only took five of those stones (mini-boulders) to provide the first level of that 15 foot wall. Because of their size, I had the luxury of digging them in even deeper than for the flower beds, forming a flat foundation for the wall that will keep it stable. And because of where the wall is situated, I was able to put small spaces between the large old men so that run-off from the flowerbeds and walkways would seep slowly between the large stones rather than rushing unchecked onto Lanny’s basement patio.

After setting the big stones (each of which had to have weighed 100-150 pounds apiece, carried clumsily down the steep, rock-strewn hillside the fifty feet from my relieved to be rid of the weight truck-bed to their final resting place), I roamed around the work-space collecting the next layer of stones – smaller (maybe 50 pounds apiece) but more purposeful because those stones had to fit. Some of my base rocks were wide enough to place two smaller stones side-by-side on them without bracing. Others were rough-surfaced enough to require chinking stones to keep everything level. Whatever was needed was provided. Stone by stone, foot by foot, pausing in-between to assess where the wall was and what it needed next. Although it didn’t seem like I was moving very fast, the basic structure of that wall – and its ton of creek-stones – were in place before the lunch-time break. Of course, since the wall is also a stack-stone structure, it can be added to and shifted (at least the top, smaller layers) for some time to come – maybe forever more. But the base is there, the weight, the muted color, the strength, the spacing, the solidity left behind by virtue of an old(er) man’s back to remain as long as those “old men” shall live. Forever.

I know there may be many lessons from that 60th birthday morning’s process and I may write more later. But for now, I am just thankful for the chance to do something I had never done before, for the raw materials gathered barefoot from a free-flowing creek, for the time to do this thing right, for the freedom to do it as I would like (which included welcoming suggestions from Lanny and others), for the chance to enjoy a noon-time meal while gazing over what I had done and for the other meals that followed, as different as that wall remains the same. For all those thankful things, the ones I most appreciate are a still-strong back and arms, growing stronger by the effort, undaunted by the task, there to serve me and others, always ready for more.

Like many of us, I have never given much thought to where I might be when I turned sixty. Those anticipatory dreams certainly accompanied my run-up to ages 13 and 21 and 30 and even 50. But there is no reason now to anticipate other birthdays because the real joy – from this one forward – is the quiet blessing that each new day on top of Mother Earth brings. There are certainly places I would rather be (e.g., on the other side of my never-ending “troubles” with the feds), but all-in-all, this place that I find myself a part of now is not so bad. I hope it is the same with you.
That seems a fitting place to stop, this message and this diary. I am girding up for yet another dance with federal weasels (see below) and its outcome will determine the rest (or the unrest) of my days. For now, though, my Garden calls. There are weeds to pull, food to harvest, seeds to plant, dogs to hug, breezes to appreciate, moments to pray and be thankful. Thanks for riding along with me on this seven year journey, for the messages you’ve sent back, and the prayers and good wishes that you have scattered like tulip poplar petals in my path. I am ready for something else – another Great Mystery – and I suspect you are too. So let us go forward and have them, building walls along the way, being thankful that we can.

Thank you for being you and for always being there – on the other side of this computer screen, from Northern Australia to northern California, from Windy Croft castle in England to Tree Frog farm in the foothills of New Mexico’s Jicarita peak, from Colorado and Cameroon, east Nashville, Possum Town and all the other places where each of you have ended up since our paths once intertwined. May our paths keep weaving a better world, a more bountiful Garden.

From where I still sit, it is truly all good.

Bernie

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