47 Days of Gratitude and/or Thanks, Week 5

Here's this week's round-up. For what this is all about, go here and start at the bottom.

‎47 Days of Thanks, Day 29: I'm grateful for aaaaalll the laughter about changing the clocks: "I turned all the clocks back!" "But I did some of them already" "Did you do this one?" "I don't know, what does it say?" "Well what time is it?" Etc. Note to self: next year, this is the job of ONE PERSON.

‎47 Days of Thanks, Day 30: I'm grateful for a day with some chunks of time to put toward projects, as opposed to the slivers that have been more typical of my days lately.

‎47 Days of Thanks, Day 31: I'm grateful for the ongoing warmish weather, which is allowing us to clear the trees off the camp roads in shorter sessions, a couple of hours a day, instead of in two or three backbreaking days. We're maybe 1/3 done. Good exercise!

‎47 Days of Thanks, Day 32: I'm grateful for the wee aches and twinges my body shares when I do real work outside instead of an approximation of work in a gym setting. It's a nice grounding in the physical. (Also nice to get trees off the path.)

‎47 Days of Thanks, Day 33: I'm grateful for those who speak their truth about their experiences so that I learn what their sacrifice was like.

‎47 Days of Thanks, Day 34: I'm grateful for days that bring a variety of tasks. If something isn't going well, I can move to something else for awhile.

‎47 Days of Thanks, Day 35: I'm grateful for today's lesson in the meaning of the term "exponential." As in, two grandsons cause exponentially less mayhem than three.

This week brought a nice mixture of ceremonial gratitude, with Remembrance Day, and solitary gratitude, with opportunities to work outside. It started with the companionable laughter of the two of us bumbling our way through life's tasks, and ended with a more boisterous family time, when two grandsons spent a night and a day and reminded us again that learning the right way to safely cut your sandwich with a sharp serrated knife is really fun.

As my husband is wont to say, "Life is good."

How Much?

Here's what it looks like around here today.

This is just one tree, too.

There will be firewood! And yes, it also looks like this sometimes, or it did a few weeks ago.

Living here is definitely worth the work.

Hopes for the Summer

This summer is different than previous years in lots of ways. For one thing, in the cosmic sense every year is different (to me) because I'm different. For another, every year is different because the lake is different. Also the trees, some large number of which reach the end of their lifespan and fall down, usually in an inconvenient spot. And this year, we have unrelated people living next door.

It's also a different year because our projects are different. Except for the trees, which never seem to get tired of falling down.

Anyway. See this picture? Speaking of trees and some falling down.



See the green thing on the tree? That's a piece of tape. That indicates a trail. A nascent one. Call it a trail-to-be. For skiing. For walking on. For admiring views.

In previous years, the projects here have been focused on the camp, and seriously structural to boot: shore up the foundation. Put on a new roof. Re-roof the bathroom. This year, knock on wood, we don't have those--just painting, but I suspect that will be like the trees, never what you might call "finished."




But in the distance (like the corner of the "it may be a shack but it's our shack," above), I can see a time when NOT ALL the projects fall into the "because the place will fall apart if we don't" category. We'll be doing things like cutting the deadwood (and junk brush) out of those trails.


When we're not sitting on the beach, of course. (The spots in front of Caribou are kayakers. This is also one of those photos of a loon.)

It will be interesting, come September, to take stock and then to make our new resolutions for the fall. Resolutions being, like trees, never quite finished.

Before and After

Last November, this happened.


Last week, some other stuff happened and now it looks like this.


No, one of those things wasn't a paint job. The woodshed looks greener because of the quality of light. (It's fabulous this morning. The wind is really fierce off the lake, though, and it's chilly.)

Now, after the birch spent all winter bent over the woodshed holding up two other trees, its reward is...what? Being cut down--on purpose. No, it's not fair (as my mother used to say of life), but in spite of its service, it's leaning toward the structures, and we want to try to manage its descent.

And the corner of the woodshed is making Mr. Roofing Man rub his hands together in eager anticipation.

Now, if we could only figure out what is doing this:

We would think "bear" except no tracks anywhere, and likewise no scat. Our next thought is "bird," because the ravens are known to do weird things with wood, and the pileated woodpeckers have been around.

In any case, we want this picture to be the "after." We don't want it to be "before" and have an "after" that includes a blurry picture of a bear, perhaps taken from its innards.

Thermometers Should Come With Disclaimers

The above shows what Wednesday morning looked like. Note the sparkling sun on the water and the blue of the sky. A summer day in June. Right?

That's what I thought. I decided it was the perfect morning to go out in the canoe for the first time. I did think to check the temperature.

The thermometer is mounted outside the kitchen window on the lake side of the house, which receives morning sun. The temperature was somewhere between 60 and 70. Apparently it didn't factor in the wind chill, or the fact that the lake's surface is always colder than the deck in the morning.

I should have done those computations. I should also have worn gloves, a cap, and earmuffs. We froze.

It was beautiful, though.

Later today I'll go back to a leaf-raking project. If I'm lucky and the rain stays away, I'll get to use the chainsaw this weekend to get rid of a couple of trees that have fallen over the roads and the septic field at the bigger camp.

I'll be the one in gloves.

Signs of Spring

Here's how I know it's spring. Nearly. Almost. Sorta.

It's NOT the lush green grass springing up anywhere. What I see is more like this.

Truthfully, that's from April 28 of last year. But we have more snow and ice than that today.

But I do know it's very nearly spring. Yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, my husband put on a coat and his boots and went out to wander around. He came in grinning the grin of a man who likes living and working out here. We have had the first of our "Omigod there's a lot of general BRUSHING that needs to be done" conversations. Full disclosure: the "Omigod" is my line.

Trees are down and need to be cleared up. Trees that used to be saplings aren't anymore and thus need to come out from under powerlines and the edges of driveways.

What he calls "brushing," and I call "work outside" or "yard work" or something else, will occupy much of our energy, both physical and mental, for the next two months. I enjoy it--the talking about it, the thinking about it, the doing it. Fortunately. Because there is plenty of it to be done. Ladies and gentlemen, sharpen your loppers.

Spring may not have arrived yet, but after yesterday's walk and talk, I think we can see it from here. Does that mean we're nearing the demarcation line between winter and spring? Maybe. Ah, the glorious in-between of maybe.

Pollen-Nation

Spring was late this year, and wet. Consequently, it's been long. At least it has seemed so to me.

However, it has seemed far longer to those suffering from seasonal allergies. A normal allergy season starts in early May and ends in the first half of June--about six weeks. This year, it started in early May and has continued merrily for the entire month of June.

I'm learning a lot about seasonal allergies. My husband has them far worse than I do, so he knows things. Trees, for example, dump pollen at 4 a.m. When it's still chilly enough that our heater kicks on in the middle of the night (which it is), the heater sometimes stirs up the house's existing dust and pollen and distributes it along with that day's pollen dump. The consequences can be histamines a-plenty--gunky eyes and nose plus boggy lungs.

As my nephew would say, Not Much Fun.

(One of the things my husband doesn't seem to understand is that he's only human and an allergy specialist could get him on something like mast cell inhibitors that might prevent some of his allergic reactions. However, I understand that phoning his family doctor now would get him an appointment sometime in 2010. It's easier to wait till he gets bad and to go the Emergency Room, assuming he lets me take him someday. Not that it's been that bad. Yet.)

I'm lucky. It's my third spring in the area, so I'm due to develop allergies this year or next year, but so far, knock wood, all I get is itchy eyes when I work outside, and then only occasionally. A little Visine fixes me right up.

In the past few days, yellow plumes have appeared along the shoreline and yellow specks have popped up on the grass. As the puddles in the driveway dry--between downpours--they leave yellow rings on the brown mud. As the porch dries off--between downpours--a yellow film splotches the boards.

Slowly but surely, the pollen is washing from the sky and the trees. Spring and its allergies will soon be gone for the year. It missed the calendar's deadline for summer, but it might yet make a Canada Day deadline.

And you know what season comes after Spring Seasonal Allergy Season? That's right: Serious Mosquito Season. Stay tuned for more whining.

Noah: Stand Down, but Show Me That Off Button Again

I heard on the radio this morning that this is the wettest June (maybe spring--I wasn't listening at first) in the past 27 years. If the statistic was for June, we have another couple of weeks. If the stat was for spring, we get to start over this weekend. Hooray.

However, it seems that people, by which I mean "people other than I," are learning to deal with it. At the gym yesterday, the ladies were comparing notes about gardens. (Yet again.) One woman said she'd put her annuals in over the weekend, dodging the rain showers to do so. The whole "planting a garden" thing is a future event for this household.

However, the same entity that gave the stats on the 27-year record (Environment Canada, I think) also said that July will be warm and dry. I think they're just trying to make us feel better.

Regardless, I have decided it's also time for me to learn (in the words of my nephew) to Just Deal With It. I'm not like one who doesn't have a rain jacket. There's plenty of work outside to be done, even if we never get around to putting in a garden. And I am definitely not so sweet I'd melt (southern joke). So, time to hop to.

Besides, I can't stand staying inside any more. It makes me do stupid things. Yes, I even watched The Maria Show (meet the Marias!).

My excuse is that I'm still new to reality TV, since I didn't keep up with the ur-Reality Show, MTV's The Real World, except in re-runs; I have completely eschewed all Survivor/Eat Bugs and Jump From Airplanes/Show Off Your Talent Shows. I was a fan of the home improvement/reality shows but in my own defense I hated the reality parts. I watched only for the decorating parts. I realize that it sounds like getting a porn magazine "for the articles," but I swear it was true.

Until last summer's Canadian Idol, that is. Midsummer, emotionally drained, needing mindless entertainment--well, Canadian Idol was the perfect outlet. What can I say. I didn't vote, though, and I wouldn't joke about a thing like that.

Since then, I've been indulging in reality shows, even when I should have been doing things like downward dogs, or organizing my bank records, or throwing away the odds and ends of plasticware that accumulate in the kitchen.

But I know that's an excuse, not a reason. Even I'm embarrassed about Maria, especially after going on and on about how stupid the concept is. Now that I've confessed (Hi, my name is Marion, and I watched the first two episodes of Maria and secretly dreamed of attending Maria School [just kidding], but I've been abstinent for more than 12 hours now), I am back on the wagon.

My theory is that physical exercise in nature will remind me of my own better nature. Also, there's no TV or internet out there. Also, if I do get wet, perhaps I will return to my normal ironic and oh-so-serious self. Like getting smacked in the face after you've fainted.

So I'm heading out for some face-smacking brush work, rain or no rain, forecast (mixed clouds and showers this afternoon) be damned. Wish me luck.

Ruminations

I should make it plain upfront that I don't actually chew a cud, like cows and even deer do. However, my repetitive tasks often become contemplative tasks, and eventually thoughts, um, surface to be chewed upon. Metaphorically.

Here's one: Take BEFORE Pictures, Dummy. Working on our property is an extension of the work my family did in Stillwater after my father died--remember the Crapture? This is the outdoor version of that. Another indoor setting will come all too soon--I suspect some stuff has been in the attics here since the bigger house was finished in about 1950.

What I've been doing is the equivalent of 30 years of yardwork. It's not even gardening, at least not yet--it requires fewer fine motor skills and far less mental energy. It's bigger stuff. I'm removing trees (OK, I just help), picking up brush, and raking leaves.

Yes, I'm raking leaves in the woods. Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus and sometimes I feel just plain garden-variety nuts. So far, I have successfully drawn imaginary lines beyond which I will not rake leaves. As I have said before, "indoors" and "outdoors" are mental constructs here, and that extends to cultivated outdoor space and non-cultivated outdoor space.

Anyway, none of this actually shows because I keep forgetting to take BEFORE pictures. As we learned while clearing out the family home in Oklahoma, I must focus on what I've done instead of looking for evidence that I've made a difference. Because I'm raking a forest. Nuts. And since I don't have BEFORE pictures, why take AFTER pictures, when the response can only be "After what?"

Here's my second thought: taking care of places like this involves a whole lot of repetitive, contemplative tasks. No wonder lots of teenagers dream of leaving the farm--there's a crapload of work involved in living the country, or even vacationing in the country, as my parents did. We don't even have animals that need to eat regularly, except ourselves.

And no wonder taking care of the places quickly became too much for my folks. First, they retired late--when they were coming up for full summers in the late 1980s, they were already 70+ and not used to physical labor. Add in the fact that they didn't really know how to care for the places and weren't particularly interested in it, and suddenly I can stop asking "how on earth did things get this run down?"

Fortunately, I am finally coming to understand that I live here. Like, all the time. Forever. (Yeah, I know; that's been the plan for nearly four years now. I'm slow.) I have time and health and energy to undo the years of neglect and perhaps even improve the condition of our properties. Unlike my parents, I don't have to cram in physical labor during a few weeks or months of what is supposed to be vacation. And unlike my parents, I like doing this stuff.

Lucky me. Living here, forever. Imagine that.

Yang Deux

Here's another element of Yang Time that I'm coming to terms with: sending words out into the world again, where they may influence others. (Or they may not even be read--and I'm OK with that!)

For the past year, I haven't actively sought paying work. My semi-retirement started when my father became ill. Since his death, paperwork has multiplied in stacks on my desk(s) the way wire coat hangers breed in the dark of the closet. We as a family are sorting our way through to the bottom of it, though.

It's been a full year, "full" both in the sense of "more than 365 days" and "eventful in a quiet way." I haven't been actively mourning all that time, but I've needed the inward-focused time. The routine. The consolidation. The stock-taking. I have had to, and have had the opportunity to, consider who I am now that I no longer have elderly parents to worry about.

In the past two months, a couple of work-like projects appeared on my horizon. One of them is for pay; one isn't. Both involve writing words for someone else. In their own ways, both projects have reminded me that words "out there in the world" have potential power.

One of the projects I won't be discussing. The other is a series of columns about hearing loss that are appearing in my local newspaper this month. This week's column is about coping with hearing loss--yours or someone else's.

Wednesday, at a meeting, a woman who is profoundly hard of hearing shared that this particular column had appeared at exactly the right time. Her family, who was as sympathetic as most families are to those with hearing loss--which is to say, not nearly enough--was visiting her. She pulled out the column to show them. The column gave them all a way to talk about how difficult communicating is--for all of them. They had a pleasant few days together, the most pleasant in some time.

I'm happy that they had this experience. It's nice to hear nice things after you've worked on a project, no matter how pleasant the work was to do in the first place. But in no way do I take credit for smoothing a family's time together--they did that themselves.

Note that above I said that words have "potential power." Like a hatchet, language is powerful tool, but someone has to wield it. This family used the hatchet to chop through years of miscommunication and resentment. They could have hacked each other to bits with it just as easily. All I did was tie the sharpened rock to the stick.

I work with words because I believe (because I must believe) that most people don't create conflict lightly. Most people are curious and generous and want to understand each other. If they're unsympathetic, it's because they're busy, not because they're malevolent.

That's why I find much political discourse , on both sides of the border (and on both sides of the issues in the U.S.), increasingly difficult to take. Pundits and many politicians grab their language hatchets with the philosophy, "Cleave or be cloven"--and so create that reality.

But back to Yang Time: It is nice to have my hatchets floating around in public again. May they all be used to cut through dead undergrowth, and other crap, to let the light shine in again.

Yang Time

When you grow up in an academic household, you tend to be comfortable with books. Whether you're comfortable with the out-of-doors, or other actual physical objects like motors and pulleys and whatnot, depends somewhat on the particular niche of academe you're affiliated with.

My parents' fields, mathematics and history, gave me the ability to suspend disbelief and attachment to the present to live mentally in many times in the past and future. I can solve puzzles and predict storylines and am not intimidated by cosmology (though not fascinated by it, either). I know my way around bookstores and libraries. When I'm sufficiently rested and motivated, I can even find something to talk about with damn near anyone. I also appreciate silence.

However, I don't consider myself an outdoor person. Or I didn't until moving here. In previous lives, I didn't garden or mow the grass or really do much outdoors other than lie around in the sun, hike, swim, or sit in the shade drinking cool drinks. I have always enjoyed being outside, sorta, and I'm not icked out by bugs, though snakes are another story and don't get me started on rodents. But I never had an urge to be outside.

Except when I was here, of course.

Now that I'm here all year and loving it, I find my relationship to the calendar changing. We're coming into the Yang Time, the outdoor season, the time for visible growth and reaping what you've sown all winter. Deer gambol, squirrels chatter, and the birds sing as if they've been composing all winter.

I like it. I like being more in synch with the outside world. I'm completing those nagging inside projects (hanging pictures and figuring out what the heck to do with my jewelry) so I can get to the outside projects full-time. I'm still an introvert and a writer. Every day all year must have quiet time and time with fingers on a keyboard or at least pen on paper.

But soon, most of my quiet time will come while drifting in a canoe or rowboat. I'll stare at the sky while walking down the path to the camp. I'll muse while hacking at undergrowth with loppers and my muscles. And I'm liking that a lot, too.

Increments

I took this picture last week--Saturday, to be precise. It's now, what, Tuesday. And this view looks quite different. No "after" photo, sorry.

Yesterday afternoon I was on this beach clearing brush. Only two small ice floes drifted, disconsolate, near near the shore. Everything else winter-esque in this picture has disappeared. All in a few days.

I've been waiting for spring to arrive, and I guess even I would have to say that this is it. Yesterday I was able to be outside for a couple of hours doing what is basically glorified yardwork (but oh, what a yard). I was still wearing a long-sleeved cotton tee, a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt lined in waffly thermal underwear fabric. I wore work gloves. I was working pretty steadily for the time I was out there. Still, my ears and the tip of my nose were cold. But yes, folks, this is spring.

I've been waiting for spring since oh, about March. Some internal clocks are easier to re-set than others, and crocus in March is normal in the southern U.S. So I've been watching every day, looking to see evidence of warmer weather. But spring incrementaled in when I wasn't watching.

The same thing happens when I monitor sunrise time. I'm not a morning person, so I depend on the sun to help me get moving in the morning. At midwinter, sunrise is about 9 a.m.--not much help if I have a full day. After the midwinter solstice, I anxiously watch to see if I can tell that the sun is rising earlier. Daylight Saving Time messes with that, and did so even earlier than usual this year, and that's about the time I've given up hoping to feel a difference.

But at some point recently, I noticed that the sun was coming up about 7:30. Not only was it rising earlier, it's rising farther north along the horizon. Then this morning, it was shining directly into my eyes before 7 a.m., making the bedroom extremely warm and bright. The sun, too, has incrementaled on me.

No wonder spring is exciting for all the birds and mammals that hang around here. Something is different every day, now--the ponds in the driveway are noticeably smaller after just one semi-sunny afternoon. Soon, the pine trees will be putting out their candles.

I do love this place at every time of year. But I am ready for some spring. And even though we may still see snow (it snowed on May 13 last year), I'm finally able to see it as an aberration for this time of year, not as a given. By increments, I'm learning to trust the sun. This year, at least.

Twixt Seasons

It's officially autumn. We received more rain in September than normal, but it was warm. We've had the odd day of cool sunny weather and even warm sunny weather, but gray and rainy isn't normal for September. I hope it's an aberration.

But somehow, the trees still know what season it is. The island in our bay is covered with balsam and birch, and the birch are starting to turn yellow--ever so slightly, just around the edges, but changing daily. The birches along our private path are dropping occasional golden loonies. Later, the path will look as if it's paved in gold. The pines are dropping extra needles, too. The grasses are yellowing, and the scrub brush has gone riotous red.

It's easier to be patient now, while watching the year wind down and preparing myself for winter, than it is to be patient while waiting for spring. Fortunately I have a beautiful place to wait--both seasons.

Dumb or Daring?

Today, let's play a game. We'll call it "Dumb or Daring?"

Taking a chainsaw to the flooring in a family heirloom structure: Dumb or Daring?

Sawing through timbers that hold up the floors, walls, and ceiling of said family heirloom structure: Dumb or Daring?

Crawling around in the dirt and sand under the floor to set cement blocks that will hold up new timbers, which will serve as supports for said family heirloom structure, possibly for 80 more years: Dumb or Daring?

So far, the correct answer each time is Daring. I know that in my head. I know that to get to the rotten stuff, you have to take out what's covering it first. I've had cavities since I had baby teeth; I know about drilling out the crap, stopping the rot, cleansing the wound, blah blah blah. I know that we couldn't begin to see what was wrong with the foundation of the back part of the house without going through the floor, which, by the way, was seriously rotten in spots. So my logical brain said, "Hey, let's do this. It's best in the long term."

Meanwhile, my gut churned. Somewhere deep inside, I know that the sound of a chainsaw inside our family camp (heirloom! handed down through generations!!) can't be good news. I fight panic. I take deep, cleansing breaths and remind myself of all the logical stuff in the previous paragraph. And the non-logical part of my brain, the reptile part, which apparently is also verbal though it has pre-verbal roots, shouts "Dumb! DUMB!! The answer is DUMB! Seriously dumb!"

Often, I have to find something else to do while Roy wields the saw or lays the concrete blocks. I have made serious inroads in clearing out the brush that obscures the view of the lake from the front windows. I have several other projects in mind if the chainsaw comes out of its case again.

Also, time is a great teacher. Now that we're into the concrete block phase, I have hope. It's easier to believe that soon, fresh treated timbers will take the place of the cedar trees my grandfather felled and used as the foundation of this house. New joists will help bear the load of the floor, walls, and ceiling, which won't swag, sag, or leak. New plywood, in layers, covered by flooring of some kind, will make the back room strong and beautiful for the next 80 years.

Even my reptile brain sees that the danger is past and the good stuff is just around the corner. It's not quite ready to change its vote to Daring from Dumb, and I don't want it to. I like having a warning system that won't let me tie rubber bands around my ankles, jump off a bridge, and call that fun. But my reptile brain is willing to admit that maybe the line between Dumb and Daring can shift a little. At least for the next construction project. Maybe.

Sisyphus

This post really has nothing to do with Canada except that I live here and that's where it happens.

Today I was thinking about Sisyphus, the poor guy in Greek mythology whose eternal task was to roll a huge boulder up to the top of a hill. Of course, this being a myth, the boulder came crashing down at night. Every night. Each morning, he started over.

My task today was at least fun. I was clearing the edges of the driveway into one of our camps. Roy, my might-as-well-be-husband, lets me use his loppers, which he keeps sharp, so the work is easy. I was taking out some small balsams and a couple of spruce, as well as moose maple, tag alder, and mountain ash.

Once you lop off branches or take out the tree, you have to dispose of it, so a lot of the work is dragging trees and branches into brush piles. You're supposed to take them to the dump, but eventually, the brush decomposes and fertilizes the next generation of trees. (Decomposition happens more quickly than you'd think, too, especially with wet weather like we've had for the past six weeks.)

And as is true of many sisyphean tasks, the work feels so good. When the trees come down and the brush pile grows, you really feel as if you've done something substantive. See? There it is.

That satisfaction, of course, is deceptive. Those suckers grow back--not overnight, but within a few years. A wee balsam that you overlook one year can be knee-high the next year. So along the paths to our two camps, there is always brush to clear.

At Roy's house, the full cycle has required a couple of decades. The original builder first took out all the trees, then built the house, then landscaped by planting red pine, spruce, and balsam in neat rows. Now, nearly 25 years later, those trees are huge and block the view of the lake from Roy's deck. So we're taking them out, a few each year. Trees were there, then they were taken out, then they were planted, and now they're being taken out again.

Even this version of the cycle isn't permanent: each tree we take out of a row gives the other trees in that row room to spread out. Last year's "view" disappears next year.

At least I can laugh at it. In other settings--business, for example--sisyphean tasks aren't funny. In the 1990s, I was part of the reorganization of U.S. two national laboratories. I recognize the sense of accomplishment you can feel when you successfully draw an organization chart that makes sense to you.

But the real problem is this: you can't organize yourself out of a problem you behaved yourself into. If behavior is the problem--the sales force has no power or the marketing team is targeting the wrong demographic or the product is shoddily made--then no organization will make the company work well. That doesn't even count the fact that organization charts are all theory, and people sitting around in a room drawing new ones isn't selling or making product.

Compared to my prevous life, today's job was easy. Yes, trees grow. That's their behavior. They won't learn not to grow in a path. You just have to keep whacking them out. Fortunately, that's my idea of fun. Life is good.