Blog #19 She's Back!

After four long months of life busily engaged on the mountain and on nomadic wanderings (four state, multi-city), I finally return to my invisible audience to share the next stages of this Urban Woman’s journey into the wannabe wild.

First of all, why gone so long? Well, I thought you might’ve been satisfied that the renovations to my cabin were 95% done and thus my voice chattering into your computer was no longer necessary. And too some emotional setbacks at the end of the long process made retreat from the world very necessary. I gave in to my desire to retire to the mountain, at least metaphorically.

Actually, I was working hard at other projects: editing, researching, continuing with small renovations. But my blogual silence was inspired by instruction taken from tales of Buddhist monks in their mountain huts, or of Jesus going alone to to the mountain to contemplate his purpose before descending to be sacrificed. These stories and others are found in a beautiful book called Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest by Wayne Muller, describing the ways people across the world and time have answered the need to find refuge and rejuvenation for our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual selves.

This book was given to me by two hard working women friends, Marjorie and Akiyu, when I had finished my doctoral studies and they hoped I would take respite after my own intensive labors. Instead, I helped open a new charter school in Richmond, California, in the most violent neighborhood of the most deadly city at that time. I am still trying to heed Marjorie and Akiyu’s gentle suggestion to incorporate more nourishment for the soul in my Type A, driven life.

To that end, I decided that instead of reporting on I would simply live my busy life over these last few months, but a few of you out there—the Known and an Unknown—have asked me to continue plaguing you with my observations, and so I shall. Thanks in particular to the shout-out from “Anonymous,” calling me to return to my reporting. I sit here again now with you, on my quiet mountain aerie, and let these words tumble out, to be polished and posted.

[Pictured is my work station in the tree tops, in the half of my cabin that serves as dining room, office and living room. Cholo, as you can see, is doing what he does best these days: sleeping (though he does enjoy his two daily sloooow walks).]

Life continues to be fairly intriguing here on the hill when one is both learning how to cope with the demands of rural life and being amazed by what it offers: a grey fox that wandered down the road below the cabin, for example!

Indeed, while renovations to the cabin were my particular focus from mid-April to mid-July, I began this journal of my life on the mountain in early 2011 to recount the larger process of what it means to give up the relative certainty of everything one knows for the relative unknown. Especially going solo, such a change can be daunting. One questions one’s sanity. One struggles to keep the proverbial head above the piles of debris that threatens burial alive. Most of you know such transformative struggles in one realm or another.

In support of my move to a rural redoubt, I’ve been generously given books that narrate related journeys, books I’ll surely share more from: of course Thoreau, not just his most famous Walden (1854) but also his journal and other essays; The Essential [John]Muir (ed. by Fred White); Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974); Marjorie Rawlings’ Cross Creek (1942); and Anne LaBastille’s Woodswoman: A Young Ecologist’s Life in the Log Cabin She Built Herself in the Adirondack Wilderness (1978). I take inspiration to continue reporting from these writers who have gone before.

In my next post, I’ll return with more specifics about what has transpired, including many smaller renovations and clean up projects and lots of wonderful visitors who have helped out over the summer and fall. The cabin has been eulogized by all who visit for its fine craftsmanship. For me, now living in it has been an aesthetic blessing. I share here a few photos to report on some of the 4% of changes that happened to the cabin since I last wrote:


My tiling-talented sister Chris in Tuscon sent me these beautiful tiles she made and that I set into the entry way, with neighbor and tiler/carpenter/craftsman Mike’s help.




Meanwhile, Mike tiled the hearthbox that he had built. It turned out spectacularly. There followed some days of drama about getting double-walled stove pipes that fit and outgassing the new paint while the weather suddenly headed downwards of 50 degrees, resulting in four days of unheated life in the cabin—nothing like living in the cold again to remind me of the beginning of this process in our wintry April here and to make me think of so many who live in the cold on a continual basis with no respite.

A welcome major addition was a fence across the ends of the driveway (with a new entrance further down), built with redwood trees that were crowding around the cabin and came down to allow more solar and satellite); the planks were also milled here by another hardworking Mike. The fencing provides much needed privacy from the road. Even if it’s only one car an hour that passes, I am now less exposed to the world. And I hope I’ll get a little less dust during the dry season. Soon the bamboo will grow into a green fence and create an altogether beautiful boundary. I asked the fence builders if they had ever created a mountain design for a fence (rather than just a straight line across). “Nope, can’t say we did.”

Last to report at this juncture: I can now send you these words via the satellite on my roof, sharing space with my solar panels that help power my cabin and technology, what little I can use with my 1000 watt inverter. I no longer have to drive into town to communicate on the worldwide web. I’ll take up the joys and demands of solar living soon. What would Thoreau say?!

Speaking of the sun, here ‘tis, saying good-night over a clear evening at the Mendocino coast 20 miles across the ridges to the west. The evening show never fails to amaze me.

Blessings be.