VALENTINE’S DAY
Backwoods Blog;
in the woods and on the road…
Cabin in the woods…
This week’s post is a journal entry from almost twenty five years ago. I had already been living in the woods for some time when I met Linda in the summer of 2000, and we would spend five winters together in the cabin before we built and moved into our off-the-grid farmhouse in 2005. The cabin did not have any of the modern amenities often taken for granted, but we did have plenty of firewood, propane, food stuffs and ingenuity to make it all work. We used to say, “Summertime, the living is easy. Winter requires a little more effort…”
Journal entry; February 22, 2001 I am sitting at the table in the cabin and the snow is piled up outside the window two-dogs high. The wind has a biting edge to it today that NPR said would make it feel like 54 below (chill factor) in Northern Maine; a good day to stay close to the wood stove and feed its firebox. Unlike the last several years, the overnight temperatures this winter have been consistently sub-zero, which is great for an added sense of severity, as well as stable ice conditions on the stream for snow shoeing, skiing and jaunting about - not so great for fuel consumption or extending the wood pile into warmer days ahead. My coffee pot is simmering in its customary winter spot on the wood cookstove and the coffee is black as cast iron and just as strong. A couple of weeks ago I came across an old diner-style coffee cup and matching saucer in an antique shop in downtown Monticello. They sold for a dollar a piece and I bought all they had in stock (six pieces in all). It’s a Homer Laughlin pattern which is quite common, similar to the Buffalo Ware and Grindley Hotel Ware out of England. I also spotted this great service platter, but it was seven dollars and I had already blown my budget for the day. I mentioned what a fine platter it was to the store-keeper and also to Linda when I got home that night, and then forgot all about the platter until several weeks later on Valentine’s night when Linda pulled out my oblong-shaped present. These are some of the little things that add to our lives, that define our individual style and what we love. When I first came to the woods it was not to escape life in this latter end of the 20th century, but to find a life for myself and to find a few of these little things that give it substance. This was curious to some, yet it was a decision on my part to pursue a mode of living congruent to my own sense of being. I was not doing this for anyone else, or for any grand cause, I was simply doing it out of necessity for my self; to preserve my integrity intact, my sanity, and a vision of what I wanted my life to be. I wanted time to think and reflect. I wanted to build a simple structure that would have a story behind it. I wanted to chop wood and stack it like food in a pantry to get me through the long winter; to smell smoke out of the stack and watch it drift toward the stream hanging low in the north woods air. I wanted to sit at my table and read the Boston Sunday Globe unhurried, drinking coffee fresh-ground by means of 19th century technology contemplating the passage of time, culture and politic. To live an authentic life, in lightness and humor, observant of our lumbering world in all of its interests, oddities and sorrow. In this place, the north woods I connect with what is solid; the land family history and ancestors companions and my spirit. Coming to the woods is my salvation. I would be lost in New Jersey working an office job (which may work fine for some), but for me, it is the woods where I am most my self. Especially on a day in late February like this one when the wind chill can’t help but get your attention and let you know that you are as alive right now as you can possibly get.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.
In the woods,
Dave
February 15, 2024
View of the cabin on February 12, 2024
The backwoods platter…
Bug-eye cosmic glasses for Eclipse ’24 (please note these do not meet eclipse safety standards!)
Dear Henry David Hutchinson,
Absolutely gorgeous imagery. Sets me pinen’ for the fiords.
I wonder how many of us have the innate longing to live life in the woods, unencumbered by the incessant rattle and hum of technology.
As our society becomes increasingly absorbed by the latest trends in computer science, now with complex algorithms powered by AI, designed to constantly heard us in the proper direction, the more I want to run into the woods like you did and just leave it all behind. And just keep running and running until all those angry little ones and zeros are far behind me, finally giving up and returning to their laptop nests.
I would stop to rest at a clear running stream, catch my breath for a minute and slowly begin to hear my own heartbeat again…wait…that’s not my heart, it’s my cell phone vibrating. Crap.
“Yes, of course I’ll be there, give me ten minutes and I’ll have the meeting agenda ready to send over”.
Ok, not today then. But someday…
Maybe…
Once again,
Thank you for this blog. I look for it every week.
Cheers
That’s why Lee and I moved out to the woods and our farm too, not to escape but to embrace and be fully ourselves. In retrospect I think the animals overly complicated things, and then there were children, but we did our best and I cherish it. I wouldn’t trade that life–hard as it was at times–for any well-paying job in a city.
posted by Jere
Your comment, “I wanted to sit at my table and read the Boston Sunday Globe unhurried,
drinking coffee fresh-ground by means of 19th century technology…….” caught my eye. A long time ago, knowing my penchant for simple mechanical solutions, Sam gave me a small wooden crank-wheel coffee mill, which I use when I’m at camp (though Andy’s selection of whole bean coffee has shrunk to one). Of course, I’m writing this on a Lenovo laptop, without which I would not have seen your blog. And I don’t care if those glasses “do not meet eclipse safety standards.” I want some.