on the second day

It smells good here. That’s the thing I keep noticing—the aroma of crushed fern, living evergreens, and clean quiet air. Last night, K. and I slept in our soft sheets, under our flannel comforter, on a futon with featherbed, in the bed of our truck. We pulled it in under the giant tarp-ceiling, draped the track-rack with mosquito netting, and fell soundly asleep to the sounds of crickets and water falling from the leaves of the trees.

So far: the camp site is set up. And since we’re here for a month, the campsite includes food shelves, pots hanging from clothesline, a stone-rimmed firepit with coal-cooking area, many, many boxes of tools, a work bench, a card table with candles and stools, and lastly, a marble slab on stools with a vase and candles for me, with a mirror tacked to a tree above, acting as a very deluxe vanity. It’s beau-tiful.

That was yesterday. Today, many trees met their ends, and we now have two improved roads (the entrance road and the old logging road we’ll be dragging our cabin trees on), as well as a completely level building site. In case you’re in awe: Harry came over with a bulldozer. On our side of things, K. and I have erected half of an outhouse. The hole is dug, and the structure itself is about half-done. It is also beau-tiful, with a fab view into the green trees and to the blue mountains. Pictures will follow when completed.

Best incident: a mouse ran up my pants. Yep. I was carefully moving stones, and found two little field mice. I couldn’t leave them, as that area is now completely flatted by the dozer, and so I carefully picked up the last stone, their last hiding place. One headed for the wood pile, and one went up my pants. I shook my leg a few times, but nothing came out, so I went about my business until I felt little legs crawling up my lower thigh. And even though I knew what it was, I still hollered and danced around while whipping my pants off.

--- end of cabin building installation

On the interminable drive between DC and Vermont, I listened to an NPR interview with Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian priest. Her story was mainly about why she left her church and began teaching, but she said something that’s been playing on my mind ever since. Warning: it’s about God.

I’ve always conceived of God as a person, despite all the official gender-neutrality thing. The closest I’ve managed to achieving that is having God be female sometimes. Kind of like one of those weird frogs. But BBT said she conceived of God as this infinite web of conecctedness, omnipresent. Maybe I’ve perverted her words in my head, but that’s what I took away—and I really like it. It makes God more like this alternate reality that if you slow down, you can touch.

I think I’m a fan.
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The bulldozer approaches. Until soon!