In Search of My Mother’s Garden

28 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in writingdownthestory in Blog, writingdownthestory in Essay

Tags

farming in the 1900s, gardening in the Pacific Northwest, legacy writing, letters from World War 2, living in my childhood home, living without my mother, Mary Alice Arthur, my mother's garden, restoring a garden, searching for my mother, Story the Future, winter garden

The house is not the only place that needs to be cleaned out, or where I search for my mother. The hillside garden—that was grass I sometimes mowed, before I left home in 1970, with the Toro Flymo hover mower to avoid having to be on raking detail—is the only outdoor area my mother really tended to in the past couple decades. It was a glorious riot of colorful perennials and flowering shrubs all spring and summer: heather, rhododendron, Shasta daisies, lavender, yarrow, iris, allium, dianthus, sweet woodruff, my grandmother’s lemon lilies.

Emma and Wynne’s 2012 wedding; the last time the garden looked good.

I’ve been here seven years this summer, and have paid it only cursory attention, pulling blackberry vines and cutting down dead stems—nearly wiping out the Canterbury bells in my zealous outrage at having to do the task at all after my mother stopped hiring people to care for it, and stopped caring about it herself. I don’t like working in other people’s gardens, and even my own interest me much more in the creation than the maintenance. It lost all its variety under my watch, only the most hardy survived.

One day last week, though, I walked past it on my way to somewhere else and realized that in the barrenness of winter, before the weeds take hold, it doesn’t look as daunting. I could just rake out the moss, I thought, kicking it up easily with the toe of my rubber boot; bring in some top soil.

Nothing seems as daunting to me in winter, when all is stripped down to its bones. I see more clearly when there are neither flowers nor weeds; potential rather than obstacles. I’m embarking on a new writing project, diving into the lives of my father and his siblings before I knew them through 1200 letters written during WWII and boxes of photographs, hoping to record their legacy and put it between book covers. It’s easier to attend that project at the desk by the electric fireplace while the rain splats against the window and patters on the roof, occasionally thickening with fat snow flakes, than when sun and warmth beckon. But where to start? How to move forward on this epic idea that right now is hair thin?

Last Sunday, as the wintry mix came down outside the window, covering the moss and weed garden, I dozed in my father’s recliner with my sister’s cat—on loan while she was away—while half listening to a rebroadcast of interviews on “Story the Future.”

Mary Alice Arthur said something that woke me from my snooze: “Start with the crack, not with boulder. You know,” she said, “that’s where the light is.” Oh, I thought, kind of like don’t look too far ahead.

What can I do toward getting the letters and the stories my father and his siblings have written of their childhood braided together? How can I bring my mother’s garden to new life as I am doing inside the house, moving out unloved possessions to spotlight those that mean something to me? Where is the crack?

My dad on the left. Donald at right. The sixth child not yet born.

I can read the letters and the stories, study the photographs. (Thank you to my cousin David for scanning and sending 50 photos I’ve never seen before from albums rescued from the farm after our Uncle Donald died at 106.) I can figure out what I want to have learned about this American mid-west farm family at the end of the book. That’s all I need to focus on right now. What comes in the middle can be left for later discovery.

And I can strip the garden down to dirt. Those cracks are all I need to focus on right now.

When February’s snow and rain took a one day hiatus last Thursday, I skipped my weekly yoga and Olympia day and got outside while the ice was still formed on the puddles and fog still filled the valley as the sun rose promisingly above it.

I cut down the dead stems of last year’s daisies and rudbeckia, raked out the moss, dug up clumps of grassy weeds, pulled out rogue blackberry vines, and finished extracting the dead branches from the rhododendron thicket. (And, as always, tried to avoid getting sucked down the rabbit hole of all the other tasks that need to be done. One crack at a time.) For the first time in these years here, I started getting curious about what the garden could be. It will always be my mother’s garden, but it’s time to put my own touch on it.

Before.

Headed toward cleaned out and ready for what comes next.

As I sat at the dining room table eating my lunch during a brief break, I wondered if my mother is pleased that I’ve finally taken an interest in her favorite flower bed. Just then a bald eagle glided down the valley and swooped over the house and back into view, making several passes. A few minutes after it disappeared, a red-tailed hawk took its place. I only rarely see these birds of prey here, up close enough to see the white head, the red feathers. When I do, I imagine they are my mother and father checking in and, hopefully, approving what I’m doing on this property they loved and nourished for most of my life. I took their appearance as a sign that all is well; though I suppose it could as easily have been a warning to back off.

My body aching, I was grateful for the return to rain, snow, sleet, and wind the next day. I buried myself again in my aunt’s letters to her parents from a dirt-floored tent in Italy in 1944 with the 36th General Hospital, where she washed her clothes in her helmet. When favorable weather returns, I’ll give my mother’s garden one more pass with hoe and shovel, then bring in topsoil and fertilizer. I will let it sit this summer to see what was deep enough in the ground to escape my decluttering. The daisies and rudbeckia, the heather, a clump of daffodils remain above ground. Hopefully the Canterbury bells, alium, and lilies will come back and I can mark their positions. Next spring I will plant around the enduring presence of my mother’s hands.

These are the cracks. This is what I can do right now to find my mother’s garden and to make my own mark. I will be with my writing tribe on Whidbey Island for the next week, diving into whatever opening I can find on my ambitious writing project; striving not to run into the boulder of self-doubt and the magnitude of that adventure.

Notes from Three of Earth Farm: They Left Us Everything

07 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Notes from Three of Earth Farm, writingdownthestory in Essay, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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#konmari, #notesfromthreeofearthfarm, baby boomers, cleaning out my parents' home, Coats and Clark, dostadning, KonMari Method, Margareta Magnusson, Marie Kondo, Notes from Three of Earth Farm, Plum Johnson, the great depression, the greatest generation, The Spool Cotton Company, They left us everything, time capsules

I could have titled this post “dostadning,” but not many would know what it meant. It’s a hybrid of the Swedish words for “death” and “cleaning.” A close relative of the thus far better known KonMari method of “tidying up,” dostadning advocates the proactive and mindful clearing out of possessions before death, thus saving the children the onerous task of making decisions about what to keep and what to throw or give away. You can read all about it in the book, “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning,” by Margareta Magnusson, which I haven’t read yet.

It’s what my parents didn’t do. They weren’t classic hoarders, but disciples of the Post Great Depression Method of Keeping Everything. Ev-er-y-thing. I did the KonMari clean-out with my own belongings before I moved across the country in 2012—way before the Netflix show—and I’ve done it a couple of times since then, including this week in my own closet. Yet now I’m stuck with my parents’ accumulation. It’s a classic Baby Boomer nightmare.

One thing leads to another in this old house, sometimes in reverse order. The first week in March, hardwood floors are replacing a patchwork mosaic of dirty beige carpet, green carpet, water-spotted tired oak, and red shag.

Before that happens, there are three rooms and six closets to paint. And before the closets could be painted, they had to be cleaned out. (I painted the last closet this week. If a snow apocalypse happens this weekend as predicted, and I can’t go to number three grandson’s fifth birthday party—which likely won’t happen anyway—I will be sad; and the last room will get painted.)

To be fair, my mother was aware of the burden being left to her daughters. She wanted to clean out, but at 96 when I arrived on the scene, it was far, far too late. “I thought,” she told me one day as I was standing in the open doorway going out someplace, “you would help me clean out the house. And then there was Emma and Wynne’s wedding and it didn’t happen.” The wedding was two weeks after I moved across the country.

According to a formula I found online—square footage of the house times average height of the “stuff” gives you cubic yards of treasure times .8 to 1.5 (wo)man hours per cubic yard to dispose of it—it was not going to happen in two weeks, even if I hadn’t been acclimating to a new home and roommate and preparing for a wedding. And one of those women was 96 years old and hadn’t been able to part with an overload of paperclips. We once spent a morning cleaning out two small dresser drawers and all that got thrown away was what I sneaked out unnoticed. Enough said.

Marie Kondo’s signature question is “Does it spark joy?” One of the important questions Magnusson poses in her book is: “Will anyone be happier if I save this?” And there lies the question. Will someone?

I loved a memoir titled, “They Left Us Everything,” by Plum Johnson. (It’s in transit between libraries so I can read it again.) As I recall, when all was said and done after completing the overwhelming task of cleaning out their parents home, Plum Johnson and her siblings were unexpectedly happy. They didn’t want to keep the stuff, but holding the bits and pieces of their parents’ lives and their own childhoods in their hands, did spark joy. (I guess that’s mixing the two theories.)

Does dostadning sanitize the real emotions following the death of a parent by erasing too quickly the evidence that they walked the planet? That the original family unit once existed? That the parents existed before the children? Even as I make space for my own life in this house—which I have to do or go mad—my sisters and I will log light years of time travel exploring the corner of the house where I’m stashing everything. It’s about to explode. If a bowel blockage killed our mother, I hope the constipation in the storage room doesn’t kill us.

When I cleaned out the last closet, I found another large box of slides to go with the other large boxes of slides. I wonder if there will be time before we die to look at them. Or will we leave them to our children to deal with?

I can’t begin to imagine what my parents set aside to put in the canister labeled “Time Capsule, Open in 2025.” The whole house and its two outbuildings is a time machine, covering almost a century. I’m trying to imagine them choosing what to include more than 20 years ago. Was it their thought that everything else would go before they did? But no, they left us everything.

Here is a tiny sampling of what I found in the closets.

The dress my grandmother wore to my grandfather’s funeral in 1952, the year I was born.

Keys labeled “Granny’s, obsolete.” She died in 1988, years after she moved into nursing care from any apartment these might have gone to. Perhaps when they became “obsolete” would have been the time to get rid of them?

But no, let’s keep these too.

A button from Sunday school; blood donor pins?; two pieces of copper?; high school music audition pin?

Someone had big plans for darning. I’m guessing my grandmother.

The needlework book, dated 1941. The Spool Cotton Company became Coats and Clark.

Letter opener from the Fuller Brush Man.

Just the dress box top.

Four TV trays.

I need to open a museum.

Of Apple Trees and Books, and Missing a Generation

31 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Notes from Three of Earth Farm, writingdownthestory in Essay, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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"Becoming", book list, Carol Decker, childhood memories, Delia Owens, Educated, letters from World War 2, living in my childhood home, Marie Condo, Michelle Obama, moon and venus, Mt. St. Helens, picking apples, setting intentions, sunrises, Tara Westover, the greatest generation, Three of Earth Farm, Unshattered, Where the Crawdads Sing

The two old apple trees on my property are difficult to harvest—growing on the side of a lumpy hill. Six fall off the tree and bounce down into the underbrush for every one that lands in my apple picker basket. They need to be pruned, but the same lumpy hillside makes that task difficult too.

I don’t know when they were planted. I only know the family lore, that they weren’t planted years sooner because, my father said, “if I’d done it ten years ago there would be apples now.” But finally he planted them anyway and they provided applesauce to my mother for decades.

When I started keeping a list of books I have read or listened to, I almost took a page from the apple tree playbook. I had read so many books in my life—going back to the Boxcar Children and Island of the Blue Dolphins, and the other many pages of words that filled my childhood—and didn’t keep a list, what was the point in starting so late in the game? It will never be complete, I reasoned. But choosing not to get sucked into the apple tree vortex, start I did. Nineteen years later, there are 905 books on my list; evidence that I am a reader. It’s never too late to start a thing.

Four of the last few books on my list are color-coded “favorites.” It’s been a bumper couple of months. For the record, the four are Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover of growing up with hard-scrabble fundamentalist parents who didn’t want her to become anything, but she did in spite of them; Becoming, Michelle Obama’s memoir of growing up poor with parents who taught her to reach for the stars, and she did because of them; Where the Crawdads Sing, a novel by Delia Owens about a girl abandoned by her parents who raises and educates herself; and an inspiring memoir, Unshattered: Overcoming Tragedy and Choosing a Beautiful Life by Carol Decker, who left the hospital months after giving birth to her second child, blind and with three amputated limbs due to sepsis, and learns to appreciate what she has rather than grieve what she lost.

It was sheer coincidence that the last books of 2018 and the first ones of 2019 have been about resilience and strength to do a new thing. Now I’m left to figure out what I’m to take from that.

I’ve been reading my aunt’s letters home from her years as a nurse in the European theater during WWII. As I was when I read those my parents wrote to each other, I’m anguished that I never knew to engage in conversation with her about her life before I knew her. I am knowing her now, through the letters, and I’m grateful they exist. Like my mother during those years when she was making a life on her own, my aunt’s independence and sense of adventure back then doesn’t match the person I knew and loved. It’s like reading about someone else. Who were these fierce women?

I want all of them back. I have questions. I want the stories I wasn’t told. I want to know the mother—known only to me as an old woman—who inspired my aunt and father and lived so deeply in their hearts, the love and admiration and concern and gratitude flowing from their pens onto paper that took weeks to reach her. I want to know my mother’s mother, whom my mother came to appreciate only in hindsight. Two daughters raised so differently, yet—like Tara and Michelle—with much the same outcome.

I want back the years when they were here. But we don’t get years back.

I went for a frosty morning drive this week and stopped at the cemetery for my first visit since the date of my mother’s death was added to the marker. I miss them so much.

I made a list on the last day of the old year of my accomplishments in 2018. In the face of all that begs to be done in a year’s time, of intentions set and not realized, it feels important to dwell on what did happen. I keep it in my desk drawer and pull it out when I feel overwhelmed by the present to remind myself that much is accomplished, even when much stays on the to-do list.

On my current list, before the winter cold and wet turns to sun and warmth, is preparing the upper floor of the house my parents built for new floors. It’s more than just moving furniture out and finding a place to put it for a week (I’ve not yet figured out how I’m going to manage those tasks), but painting rooms and closets and cleaning out the last vestiges of my parents’ 55-year occupation.

I will hold things in my hands and, if I don’t love them, thank them for their service, acknowledge the beloveds who left them languishing in the top shelves of closets, and send them to a new home. (In most cases, the new home is the bloated, constipated storage room downstairs. Cleaning out that room is another task, when my sisters want to give up some of their lives to help me. Right now I just keep the door firmly closed.)

One (small) closet down, five (large ones) to go.

Yesterday I filled two boxes with items from the shelves of the kitchen broom closet so I could put clean color to the marred formerly white walls and shelves. I think I will not add the three yard sticks to the box of yard sticks in the storage room, printed with the names of hardware stores and flooring businesses; they feel like kindling to me. I will hold each of the other items in my hands and carefully choose what goes back in. I will return to the broom closet the tiny cabinet I loved in my childhood that was relegated to the basement at some point—still full of odd tiny things.

When I feel snowed under by the tasks—clearing trails, finding someone to prune the apple trees, cleaning out a closet, reading wartime letters, revising my memoir, starting a new writing project, planning for my upcoming writing circle, moving toward the next phase of my business venture, a new website, picking up my ukulele, going on an adventure, or sitting still and reading a book—I will remember not to look too far ahead. The sunrise over the valley reminds me that every dawn is the beginning of a new day, the one day I have. Whatever I do in it is enough.

When I get to longing for the missing generation of my family, I look at these letters; hold the stuff in this house in my hands; feel my parents’ love for me, my sisters, and each other; offer gratitude; and write about all of it. They are here with me and in me. Their time is past—a long time in the case of the four women and two of my other aunts, with a median age of 97 years—but mine is right here, right now.

Notes from Three of Earth Farm: Epiphany Storm

10 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Notes from Three of Earth Farm, writingdownthestory in Essay, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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#notesfromthreeofearthfarm, #seminaryhillnaturalarea, Abbey of the Arts, Constantine E. Scaros, ephiphany, epiphany storm, Notes from Three of Earth Farm, Seminary Hill Natural Area

It was a calm evening, with a faint rainbow and a sunset that took me off my route home to bask in its beauty. From home, it was showier to the east than to the west. Maybe I should have had a clue that something out of the ordinary was coming.

I didn’t know there was a storm brewing—”worst of the winter so far with wind gusts of 50-80mph causing massive power outages”—until I saw a Facebook post just before I headed to bed. Great.

It hit at midnight on January 6, Epiphany, the celebration of the climax of the magi’s quest. It was thunderous. Fir cones hitting the roof sounded like bowling balls. The lowest branch of the fir tree outside my bedroom window waved wildly—the branch I have regretted not including in those I had removed to open the view. At 12:25 a BOOM had me upright in bed; coinciding with the eerie silence of a power outage. Not a tree, I know that sound. A transformer, I assumed.

Branches hit the roof with a thud, then skittered off when the next gust wailed across the valley and over my hillside home and into the grove of trees on the other side of the house. Loud crashes had me clean out of bed twice, but there was no where to go. I desperately wanted to be in the basement where maybe I wouldn’t hear every cone and branch that hit the roof; but I had a guest in the Airbnb.

I wasn’t terrified, but I was anxious. I felt vulnerable, and desperately wanted it to end. I was at the mercy of nature, and there was nothing I could do about it but wait it out. When it finally stopped ninety minutes later, I prayed it wasn’t the eye of the storm. It’s not a hurricane, I told myself; there is no eye. Please, please don’t let this be an eye.

Epiphany: a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.

It was the end and I fell into fitful sleep some time later. There was no reason to get up before daylight; it was dark and cold. And there was no coffee.

The power finally clicked on shortly after 8:00—just as I was lighting a fire—with Alexa informing me that my WiFi was disconnected from a power source. She knew the power was back before I did.

I pulled up a chair and sat by the fire until I ran out of wood, then reluctantly dressed and headed out to clean up the yard and driveway. It took all afternoon. I hauled a loaded wheelbarrow full from two sides of the house up the driveway to the collection point. I threw that much more from the other two sides over the retaining wall into the DMZ on the east side of the house. A large branch—big enough for firewood—was probably one of the crashes I heard as it hit the overhang and fell into the narrow space between the house and the carport. I dragged it down the steps to the firewood rack to cut up later.

Another loud crash was no doubt the stepladder falling off the side of the shed. I returned it to its place, and left the strewn plastic plant pots—that I keep meaning to take to the transfer station for recycling—where they lay for now.

The driveway debris was daunting. I didn’t know where to start; but, as always, I just began. It had to be done. It was one of those times I wished for a partner in this adventure.

Epiphany: an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking.

The storm debris doubled the pile of rhododendron prunings I had stacked last month in my driveway’s turn around/additional parking area. There will be more before the winter is over, and I know my limitations. I can’t pitchfork it all into a trailer and all back out at the transfer station. Besides, I don’t have a trailer. I would have to ask for help, and that’s hard for me. And it needs to happen before the next storm makes it overwhelming.

It was a lesson in doing what needs to be done in the moment regardless of other plans. I wonder how the hundred acre wood got along—there are always trees down in there—but trail and meadow clean-up can wait for another day.

I hauled a load of firewood from the grove at the edge of the meadow down to the wood rack by the house, then went back up the driveway for the rake and saw. Returning to the house, the eagle caught my attention. It glided back and forth behind the fir, coming close then moving farther back, then close again. I’m doing it, Daddy. Thank you for being here.

Epiphany: an appearance or manifestation especially of a divine being.

When I got back to the house, I sent Chris—the generous man who mows the meadow for me and for my mother before me—a text message to see if he and/or his son could haul it off at their convenience. He wrote back immediately. “Yes! Sooner rather than later.” I do have partners.

Epiphany: an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure.

I checked in with my elderly neighbor. He said I was next on his storm report list. He was fine, without his hearing aides during the night he didn’t hear the three large trees that fell in the woods right behind his house that would have scared the daylights out of me. Without people with chainsaws, his access to the trail he walks with his dog several times a week—still, at 92— is cut off.

I emailed the president of the Friends of Seminary Hill, of which my parents and my neighbors were founding members, asking if the Friends could help. He wrote back immediately. In the meantime, I will invite Robert and Gracie to accompany me on another route to his familiar trail.

I continue to live on this wild piece of property, caring for it, sharing it, loving it as my parents did. And following the star wherever it leads.

“Without the quest, there can be no epiphany,” Constantine E. Scaros.

A friend shared a newsletter from Abbey of the Arts. I think this storm and its aftermath touched on each point (detailed in the newsletter) of the lessons of Epiphany.

Follow the star to where it leads.
Embark on the journey, however long or difficult.
Open yourself to wonder along the way.
Bow down to holy encounters in messy places.
Carry your treasures and give them away freely.
Listen to the wisdom of dreams.
Go home by another way.

Weyerhaeuser: It’s a Family Thing

18 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in writingdownthestory in Essay

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1960s, George R. Staebler Forestry Research Center, growing up in the 60s, nostalgia, Weyerhaeuser

My sister Rebecca and I attended the open house for the newly renovated Weyerhaeuser Research Center building today, where our dad worked down there on Pearl Street next to the currently non-operational swimming pool where I was a lifeguard the summer I graduated high school. It was conveniently located to ride my bike down the hill to go swimming in earlier years, then throw the bike in the back of the Chevy station wagon and hitch a ride with Daddy back up the hill for dinner.

Our dad, George, was the director from 1966-1980 (of Weyerhaeuser Research Center, not the swimming pool), and in the early 1990s the building was renovated and named for him. Now it’s been renovated again, bringing new vitality not just to the building, but to his passion for research.

1960s

1990s

2018

It was nostalgic to be in the building. We took our picture sitting in what used to be Daddy’s corner office. It hasn’t been an office for some time; now it’s part of a beautiful conference room. But that is right where I sat behind his big desk (it’s at the house now), playing with the stuff in the top drawer when I went there after school in third grade, before we had moved to Centralia. (Some of the stuff is still in the drawer too. The drawing tools were my favorite; well, and the rubber stamps of course.)

Rebecca remembered we would stop there after church after Jo Ann left for college and call her from the big room where all the secretaries worked. (I don’t think there are even any secretaries any more, certainly that is no one’s title.) We could call long distance for free from there. I don’t remember that. Perhaps they called me from there too, after I left for college. I don’t remember being on the receiving end of those calls either. It’s good to have sisters with different stuff in their memory banks.

I felt like a rock star being there on behalf of my father, with STAEBLER on my name tag. I wanted to write it really big. I wanted everyone to know I was HIS daughter. And many did.

The Vice-president for Strategic Planning from the corporate office in Seattle, responsible for the renovation of the Center and the vision for revitalization. “If we are going to be in Centralia, we need to BE in Centralia.”

I wish my mother could have been there. She did know, though, that the renovation was happening and the Center was thriving again. And she was glad. We were a family back in the 60s. My mother threw a luau in the yard for everyone at the research center. My father cooked a salmon over the open fire. And Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon that sailed overhead.

In an intentional honoring of the past, the halls are lined with large photographs of logging before my father’s time, and a display of photos of my dad are in the entry.

Note the conical Mt. St. Helen’s in the background. It blew its top right after he retired.

The Center declined at some point after that dedication, perhaps with a diminished interest in research by the corporate mucky mucks. I was pleased to meet the new mucky muck, and thank him for his commitment to the research my dad was a part of to “Make trees grow faster. For the future.” Daddy would be so pleased.

Part of a national ad campaign. This is on the wall above his desk in my home.

The Centralia office is thriving again, and the new open work space, full of wood, is beautiful. Young employees are bringing energy to it; employees who weren’t around in its decline. And they are doing it under the legacy of my father. I hope their families are family, like they were in the 60s when I was a child in the midst of it.

I couldn’t be more proud.

Camp Gigi: Year 3, Day 1

01 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Camp Gigi, writingdownthestory in Essay, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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activities with grandchildren, Camp Gigi 2018, grandchildren, summer with grandma

Camp Gigi with 4-1/2-year-old Elliot began at 9:30 this morning. Several major activities on the list have already been checked off, with four days to go. 😳 Year one, when he was just 1-1/2 his heart was broken when his moms left. Last summer he was very brave saying goodbye to his moms and baby Adrian. (We skipped the year between: two was a tough year, Gigi was not feeling brave.) This year bravery was not needed, he didn’t even wave goodbye. But he was happy to see Adrian, who was missing him, by Facetime at the end of the day. Bath, pizza/movie night, games (I was declared “incredible” in my ability to match his ColorKu marble pattern), four books in bed, and out in two seconds at 7:30.

8:00: I’m in bed too. Tomorrow is going to be really long.

It’s a wrap. We forgot to write in our journal. Oh well, morning activity.

Notes from Three of Earth Farm

26 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Notes from Three of Earth Farm, writingdownthestory in Essay

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airbnb, airbnb guests, airbnb super host, Centralia WA, Chehalis WA, Lewis County, locum physician, Notes from Three of Earth Farm, Salzer Valley, Seminary HIll, SW Washington, Three of Earth Farm, winter in the PNW

We are in a full-on, two-fisted grip of the rainy season here in SW Washington. As a true Northwesterner, I love it. The sunbirds leave for warmer climes, but I am content to wait for it to come to me. The winter rains foretell the verdant greens of spring and summer; indoor projects get done so I can spend summer outside.

I’m less crazy about the wind—living on the side of a water-saturated hill, surrounded by old trees—and it has been windy. A tree fell the other day (the only one that has fallen, at least since I’ve been back here). I heard the crash just before I was to leave for Seattle for time with the littles. (Have you ever heard a tree fall? It’s very loud. I often wonder what the rain forest and mountain forests sound like during a winter storm.) I envisioned something across the driveway, blocking me in. I donned my rain jacket and rubber boots and pushed my way through wind and rain to investigate.

It was the deciduous tree that fell two or three winters ago and was caught by other trees on the way down. It’s been leaning at a 45 degree angle ever since. It wasn’t endangering anything, so I had let it be. Nature will do what nature does. And now it’s down, and available for firewood, should I want to pay someone to cut it up.

Meanwhile, my Airbnb is hopping. Thirteen nights booked in January. The twin cities are a popular destination even in the dead of winter! I got the loveliest review in my in-box this morning from Alex, a young doctor from Madison, Wisconsin who was in town for a job interview. (Through his Airbnb bio, I learned a new term: locum physician.) He interviewed in Chehalis for a permanent position.

I traveled to the Pacific Northwest for the first time, and Gretchen’s lovely apartment was everything that I hoped for that captured the vibe of this part of the country. I’ll tell you my routine yesterday. I usually sleep poorly, but I woke up well-rested because the bed was comfortable and I stayed warm all night. I woke up before sunrise and ran down the hill that her home is perched on overlooking a green valley. I got coffee at Jimmie’s on Tower (damn good coffee) and jogged back as the sun rose. With the mat she provided, I did some yoga on the bluff and just chilled for a couple minutes…something I forgot do for many months rushing from one task to another. I then ate the absolutely delicious (healthy but hearty) breakfast of a homemade muffin along with homemade apple sauce, yogurt and granola (I now have a new favorite breakfast). I got ready for a job interview in the right head space…and I got an offer just after the interview! If you want authenticity, special artistic touches and the sound of wind passing through firs as you drift off to sleep, this is your place!

Isn’t that beautiful! It made me teary. The summer calendar is now available! You can read about Three of Earth Farm and book dates here. If you are local and have friends coming to town, let them know. (Oh! I have just been officially designated a “super host” by Airbnb! How great is that?)

My Grandmother’s Clock

15 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in writingdownthestory in Essay

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1920s clock, chime clocks, My Grandfather's Clock, old clocks, Seth Thomas mantle clock

I was lucky to acquire my grandmother’s clock when the house where she raised her six children was being emptied this summer, following the death of my uncle.

I remember my grandmother (or my uncle or my aunt) winding the clock every day (or maybe every week) when I visited the family farm in Ann Arbor. It sat on a shelf my uncle had made above the beautiful desk he made in high school woodshop. (The desk is now mine too, when I find money to ship it here from Pennsylvania where my cousin’s son is caring for it.)

The note stuck on the bottom of the clock says my grandmother got it in the 1920s. The note taped on the back says it stopped running the day my grandfather died, not too long before I was born. They got it fixed, but eventually it stopped again and the works were replaced with a battery run quartz movement in 1993 (according to a note inside).

I finally put a battery in it today. According to the note taped inside the door, the battery was last replaced in 2002. I was thrilled to find that it runs! At first it didn’t, and I was disappointed. Maybe fearing that it wouldn’t is what kept me from putting a battery in it all these months. I had the battery in backward.

This afternoon I kept hearing an odd sound, I thought from inside the house, but I wasn’t sure. When I heard it again this evening, I checked my phone, thinking it was an Amber or Silver alert. No. Then I walked into the dining room, following the mellow pings. It was the clock!

I’m sure I knew it chimed, but I had forgotten. If I had remembered, I might have thought the chime went with the original works (at least part of which are in the back of the clock because my uncle never threw away a damn thing).

I am thrilled beyond all reasonable measure that it chimes, reminding me every 30 minutes of the farm and the young lives that were nurtured there. Reminding me of my own time there: playing with the barn cats, climbing in the hay mow, swimming in the lake, exploring the attic, hiding in the corn field, sitting around the big table eating bountiful meals while the clock chimed twice an hour. Seeing my grandmother pick up the key to wind it.

And now I’m thinking of the song we sang in elementary school music class: My Grandfather’s Clock. Listen to Johnny Cash sing it here.

And now it’s chiming 7:00. And I’m smiling.

Adventure Log: Paradise

12 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Essay, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

marmots, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Rainier National Park, Nisqually River, Northwest mountains, Panorama Point, Paradise, Skyline Trail, solo hiking

Dateline: September 11, 2017
Paradise, Mt. Rainier National Park, Skyline Trail

It’s fitting that my final regularly scheduled adventure of the season is Paradise. However I may whore around, trying other sides of the mountain, other mountains, other trails—exclaiming that each one is my new favorite—it’s the Skyline Trail at Paradise that will always be the lover I come home to. Just ignore me when I say otherwise.

I was going to go last week, but the smoke was so bad the webcam didn’t even register that there was a mountain. Next week I’ll be in Seattle with the littles, and besides the forecast at Paradise is “a wintry mix.” I wasn’t really up for it Sunday night, I was tired and a bit grumpy; but the weather looked better for Monday than Tuesday and deteriorated after that. The lesson of the mountain: be willing to throw plans and moods out the window and be spontaneous.

I double check the webcam when I get up. The rising sun is a golden glow on the snowy peak. I’m out the door and at the coffee kiosk at 7:05. A little late for me, but there’s no reason to leave before daybreak this time.

This is the day after webcam photo. There were no clouds the day of.

I’m on the trail at 10, after getting gas, my pit stop in Morton before cell service is lost, road construction near Mineral again, putting on all my straps and guards and ankle brace. It’s already hot. I leave three of my five layers in the car. I always forget the heat index a mile closer to the sun.

I head toward Dead Creek, skip down Moraine a little ways looking for marmots, then back to meet up with Skyline. The first part, up to Panorama Point, is tough going; but I learned from experience to take this loop clockwise. Get the up over with in this first lung-burning charge, after that it’s gentle down until the up at the end. The other way, the gentle down is relentless up. I feel bad for all the exhausted-looking people I meet on the backside, heading toward the apex.

I leave my camera in my pocket, determined not to take pictures of views I have a thousand pictures of already. I’m just going to hold it all in my heart this time. Uh huh.

I can feel a blister forming on my right foot. When I put my shoes on in the parking lot I noticed my favorite socks are worn thin at the heels, and the ankle brace makes my right shoe tighter. I stop on a rock for moleskin. As I’m putting my shoe back on, there is a group of 19 seniors and their guide coming up the trail. I groan and quickly finish my task, grab my pack and poles, and jump half ready back on the trail just ahead of them. I figure they will be slow and difficult to pass. I don’t want to be behind them in line at the hobbit toilet at Panorama.

They aren’t slow. Their guide is acting as a pace car, setting both the speed and the record for conversation. I pick up my pace. I need to rest, but I don’t want them to catch up. I keep glancing back, but I haven’t put any distance between us, like a car on the interstate with cruise control set at the exact speed mine is. I keep thinking they will stop to rest at one of the large areas with sitting rocks. But they keep coming like the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.” I really need to rest.

I pass two more guides telling someone the group is attending a camp and they will climb the mountain later in the week. Then I notice they have packs. I have a new respect for them. But I still don’t want to be behind them at the hobbit toilet.

I pass another large group resting on a snow patch, younger people. They are gearing up to take off again. The elders exchange places with the youngers, while I get ahead. I know they will go faster, so I do too. I don’t want to be in line behind them either.

There’s a marmot on the trail, grazing just a few feet ahead of me. I stop short. The boy guide for the youngers practically plows into me. “Marmot,” I say, pointing. “Oh, yes, it is a marmot.” I tell him I was pointing it out, not asking for confirmation of its identity. He doesn’t hear me. “I work here (la di dah); I see them all the time. They’re filling up for winter, they’re everywhere.” My point was not that it was a rarity, or that maybe he didn’t know what it was, but that I was going to stop and watch and he would have to wait. He acts like he’s going to try to pass me. I don’t think so. I wish I had pointed out that maybe his group would like to observe, even if he was snobbishly uninterested. What an ass hat. I’m forced to move on.

Somewhere after that, I lose both groups. I figured they would continue to the High Skyline above Panorama and then take Pebble Creek trail toward Camp Muir, but later I realize there was a lower entrance to the trail. I see another group below me and guess that’s where they went.

I don’t spend time at Panorama, I’m eager to get to the higher viewpoint. There is a group of four women, well into their 70s, at the hobbit toilet. As I climb up the trail, I think it’s them breathing down my neck. Impressive. I step aside to let them pass. Turns out it’s two fairly fit 30-something men. “I dunno,” the one in front says breathlessly, leaning on his pole, “you are setting a pretty good pace.” Damn, nice compliment.

Toilet with a view.

There are a lot of people up here for a weekday after the traditional end of summer vacations, but I don’t come to Paradise for solitude. I have discovered other trails for that. Usually it’s a babylon of languages, and a variety of shoe fashion. Today, though, it seems to be a sturdier crowd of people hiking through. Though there are some young folks (and no families), most are my age. I like it!

It is a spectacular day. I know I say this every time I go, but is this the most beautiful day ever up here? I don’t know where the smoke went, but the Triple Crown is standing in stark relief against blue sky. Adams, Hood (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Hood from here), St. Helens. Baker can’t be seen, it’s behind a ridge. And there is a plume of smoke rising and shape shifting in that direction, a reminder that Washington is still on fire.

The Triple Crown: Mt. Adams (left), Mt. St. Helens (right), distant Mt. Hood (not really visible in the photo, halfway between).

Smoke.

I have a passing thought that maybe I could hike to Camp Muir some day—with a guide. I’m feeling strong. Maybe when a certain hiking friend in Colorado comes to visit. At the top I find a small group of young Asians with a white-haired guide (volunteer, according to his name badge; also a bit of a prick. Maybe it’s a job requirement). They ask him about Camp Muir. He points out where it is, and informs them that it’s a very difficult climb. “More people die between Paradise and Camp Muir than anywhere else on the mountain.” He tells them there is a 5000 foot elevation gain in five miles, the last 2.5 on snow and ice, which is soft on a warm day like this one, with lousy traction. And, at 10,000 feet, it’s hard to breathe. Okay, never mind. Someday, though, I may go to the edge of that snowfield.

I spend a good bit of time at the top, drinking it in. I put another layer of moleskin on my right heel, the first blister of this epic hiking season. I’m disappointed not to find this promontory covered with inukshuks. It was just that one time, the first time I was here five years ago, when a crowd of them populated the rocks. Today there is not a single one, except mine.

See the top of Mt. Hood to the right? Smoke has begun to obscure it.

The other thing about doing this loop clockwise is that the hard part is over and my favorite part is yet to come. I head down through the barren talus slopes toward the creeks and meadows looking into the layers of view: the valley below, the Tatoosh, the triple crown of peaks in the Cascades, the cerulean sky. And behind me, Herself. Though seriously, the imposing mountain is not what I love here.

Off to my right an unkindness of ravens suddenly lifts off with an audible whoosh from a snow field, dozens of them twirling upward together before splitting out in small groups on private sky paths. Their shadows on the snow as they rise, multiplies their number. (I wanted to call them crows so I could say “murder of crows,” even knowing they were probably ravens. But who knew a group of ravens are an “unkindness”?)

I cross paths several times with the group of four women. I learn they are from various places in the northeast. Three of them are sisters and they have visited many national parks together in their “elderly years.” I’m envious. I tell them they are living right to have lucked into this day at Paradise.

Right here: my favorite spot I have ever been. This is my heaven.

The chipmunks are very fat here.

I take a new trail on my way down: Paradise Glacier. I’ve dawdled so long getting there, though, that I only go a little way down its length. But I get to where I was hoping the trail went. It doesn’t, but I see a spur up the hummock when I turn back that may or may not be a real trail. I am hoping for a view of Mt. Baker, but she is still out of range. I do discover the source of the gushing, rumbling, falling water I have been hearing. I’m guessing it’s the Nisqually River far down in the ravine. A new view, after all these years.

The flowers are long gone here, even the old man on the mountain is past prime. I’m surprised to discover that autumn color has not begun, other than the orange berries of the Sitka mountain ash. I wonder if I can get another visit in before the snows come, when the slopes will be awash in red, orange, and gold. First a trip to western North Carolina to visit the bigs, then I will keep a close eye on the web cam.

Back at Myrtle Falls at 4:00—the end destination of the majority of visitors, just beyond the Inn—I find the flip flop wearing, purse and iPhone camera toting crowd that was missing earlier this morning. There is a mix of Asian and European languages punctuating the alpine air. I love this place. Even this. It’s part of the gift. All are welcome in Paradise.

I stopped on my way up to the Park to see if Basecamp Grill is still open. The last time I came in autumn, I was disappointed to discover it was not open everyday late in the season. It hadn’t said on the website, and there was no definitive signage. I’m holding my breath as I approach Ashford. It’s open! It’s closed on Tuesdays until the end of the month when it closes for the season; I am so glad I didn’t wait until Tuesday.

What a perfect day. What a Paradise. And only 203 photos.

Adventure Log: Camping at Mt. Hood, part 5

08 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Essay, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Columbia Gorge, cute animal photos, Eagle Creek Fire, Hoodview Campground, Mt. Hood, Mt. Hood National Forest, Mt. Hood Scenic Loop, Mt. St. Helens, Multnomah Falls, Oregon, Sunrise, Timothy Lake

Not My Mountain, the last day

I coax myself out of bed before the first hint of dawn on my last morning; the coldest of my four days here. The first two mornings were veiled in smoky haze, the third was overcast. This morning, though, I can see starlight through the trees from my tent window.

I slide into my flip flops and zip up my jacket. Wrapping my blanket around me, I slip through the trees in the dark to my chair by the lake. Pinpoints of light dot the sky. I identify the Big Dipper hanging right above the silhouetted mountain, but find nothing else familiar. I look for Orion, but can’t spot it. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the night sky. Even on my hill above my small town—unlike when I was growing up here—there is too much light.

I sit and breath in the silence and wonder until a weak glow begins to blot out the stars around the horizon, then return to my bed to get warm, reading by the light of the lantern.

At 6:00, I return to the lake. Only the bright planet remains visible in the still-dark sky. Owls call from the forest as dawn come; the mergansers fish. One dives suddenly, and comes up with a tiny forage fish. One of its mates fights for it, while the third floats on, looking for its own. Each time a fish is caught, the duck stands up in the water, perhaps to lengthen its gullet for the fish to slide down. I hope for an eagle or an osprey, but they still don’t show up.

Upright wisps of mist float across the far side of the lake, like a heavenly host of skaters silently gliding on an ice-covered pond. I imagine them to include my father and his brothers and sisters on their Michigan farm lake, and I weep for longing of those bygone days when they were young and I was not yet here. I feel embraced by their presence, even as they remain distant from me. Do they know I am here? Watching? Perhaps my tears are for my mother, the last (wo)man standing. I wish she could join them, released from the bounds of her own darkness here in this world.

The sky brightens, and suddenly the glow of the sun—no longer the red ball of the first smoky mornings—peeks above the tree line. The chipmunks scamper out of their nest to greet it, pausing to honor the new day. As it quickly rises into place, they move on to find breakfast.

With a sigh of contentment, I rise too as the camp begins to stir, to make coffee, then return to the lake edge to bask in the sun’s warmth one more time before I make my last breakfast and take down camp. The ghost skaters have left the lake and so must I.

Every place on the planet is beautiful at dawn.

These folks were engaged in some sort of photo shoot, sans the drone that annoyed me the previous afternoon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen four adults in a canoe before.

Found this guy under my tent. Not all of nature is pretty, but it’s all interesting!

I return home around the east side of the Mt. Hood Scenic Loop. I am glad to see “my mountain” across the river.

Mt. St. Helens from the back side; her gaping hole invisible.

I visit Multnomah Falls with a throng of people. As it turns out, we are one of the last throngs to visit for now, due to the wildfire engulfing the area. Three days later the interstate the Falls sits beside closes, along with the Bridge of the Gods crossing the Columbia River to Washington (which the fire jumped). Today, the fire is only 8% contained, and the highway remains closed pending removal of some 200 unstable trees in danger of falling on the roadway and to check for loose boulders.

The Eagle Creek fire is thought to be caused by teens throwing fireworks into the Gorge. I am sick and horrified, sad and angry at the resulting change in this wilderness; even as I am reminded that it is wilderness. It will return, different, as happens in wild places subject to mischief of nature and of humans.

Mt. Hood is not my mountain, but I’m grateful I was there last week (and not this week).

Writing Down the Story

Category Archives: writingdownthestory in Essay

In Search of My Mother’s Garden

Notes from Three of Earth Farm: They Left Us Everything

Of Apple Trees and Books, and Missing a Generation

Notes from Three of Earth Farm: Epiphany Storm

Weyerhaeuser: It’s a Family Thing

Camp Gigi: Year 3, Day 1

Notes from Three of Earth Farm

My Grandmother’s Clock

Adventure Log: Paradise

Adventure Log: Camping at Mt. Hood, part 5