The Darkness

Down in the dumps today/tonight. Not really sure why but I do know that I have been experiencing an almost crushing loneliness lately, an almost debilitating alienation. I have no one. My mother is immersed in grief and her own issues, my sisters have their families, my father is dead and gone. I’m living up here on this farm by myself and well, it gets tough some times. I don’t have anyone to share life with. It’s all wake up>feed the dogs>facebook>go to work>come home>feed the dogs>facebook>sleep…over and over and over again. What’s the point? I’m blessed to live here on this land but I don’t have anyone to share it with. The longing in me becomes so painful at times…a physical and psychological paralysis. I have a darkness inside that reappears and makes itself known from time to time. I’ve lived inside this darkness for so long sometimes I can’t even recognize it’s there. When I notice myself becoming angry a lot…that is when I remember this darkness inside me, this sadness, this dis-ease. I have to confess to being resentful and jealous of other people, couples, families, etc. I see people posting on facebook about going on vacation and bbq’ing and doing all sorts of things and I feel like I’m missing out, like I’m on the losing end. For me the summer and any holiday is just work work work work work work. Christ I hate myself sometimes. I realize how completely immature and full of shit I am. I try to be better. I try to be grateful. But then my mind goes off on me and I feel all small again. It really is crazy. And I wonder why I don’t have someone. Is it because I’m a self-centered narcissist? Is it because I’m not ready to love or be loved? Fuck if I know.

There are times when I make friends with my loneliness, when I make nice with the pain inside. When I pretend it’s just a part of life, just a part of growing up and getting older. Maybe that really is the deal. And God knows I have a lot to be grateful for…but there is emptiness inside me, a hole in my heart that’s reserved for a woman. Fuck if I know who she is or if she even exists. What woman would sincerely want to come live with me out here on this farm anyway? The closest Target is nearly an hour away! (Still cracking jokes through the tears.)

Well, day two (or three) of the darkness. Stopped writing last night cause I was sick of my own bs. I’m sitting here wasting time in the morning before work. Hoping someone will comment on one of my posts on facebook. So embarrassing. So sad. And then this raw honest vomiting of it all out onto the flickering laptop screen. I don’t want to go to work today. I want to disappear. I want to drive out to the open wastes of Wyoming, park and just start walking towards the horizon. Once you’re bitten by the bug you’re never the same; the insanity bug, the got-to-move bug, the restless bug, the dis-eased bug, the ambition bug, the never-be-satisfied bug, the-gnawing-scratching-emptiness-inside-that-blacks-out-all-joy bug. It’s an infection that lasts forever. It gives a person good stories but it’ll also drive you fucking bat-shit crazy if you let it.

So today, write schedule, take inventory, lead kitchen staff(s), put on a good face and pretend you don’t feel like you’re dying inside; the great masquerade, the great charade, the ego parade. Some days it feels like you're waiting to die, waiting to be snuffed out, waiting for the breath to stutter, gasp and expire out. You feel like a ghost, like a spirit wanderer, like a gypsy soul trapped in this flesh and bone cage. I can’t tell you how much of my life I’ve felt just like that. And it ebbs and flows like a tidal creek, like a low country inlet, like a rising and falling sound shallow against the sea. I’ve gone months, YEARS it seems with little relief and then POOF! out of nowhere the sunlight shines down once again, the waters recede and I again feel comfortable and content in my skin of flesh and core of bones and tissue. The light lasts for intermittent periods of time, sometimes just a day, sometimes weeks and months go by with blissful ignorance of the blackness festering inside me. The times when I am the happiest are the hardest to take. I forget the depression. I forget the black stains on my heart. I laugh and am easy-going and kind. I am selfless, kind, and generous. Along the way something shifts (it often involves a woman) and the light begins to be slowly blotted out by the darkness, like a planet being eclipsed by its moon, the shadow creases the face and spreads exponentially faster until the entire sphere is enveloped in the absence of light. It seems to stay that way for a punctuated moment in time before the light begins peeking back in from the other side, the light burns the darkness away and I feel alive once again. I feel at home here on these fields of green, under these baby blue skies, beneath this canopied earth.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

Dude I’m really just high on life today. I woke up late this morning to a stupendously gorgeous day outside here in southern West Virginia. We kicked ass yesterday at the resort for Mother’s Day Brunch. I got to share a visit and supper with my mother. It’s the month of my birth, spring is in its full glory, I’ll turn 39 years old in a few weeks which also marks 7 years in recovery from alcoholism and one year living on the farm in West by God Virginia. I’ve spent the past 3 hours completely dicking off…went for an atv ride with Rudy, laid out in the meadow together with the sun shining on us just digging life and looking at the clouds float by in the sky. A little inner conflict about being so “lazy” today. Why is it that I feel like I must always be “doing” something, getting something accomplished, striving, reaching? I think a lot of people are like this, not just me. Can I just shut it down for a minute and enjoy the blessings of life?

Gotta write something about the craziness of the video I shot last week going viral and creating a shit storm of controversy. The negative feedback I’ve gotten about the video has been at times hilarious, confusing and sad. I like the way the media outlets covered the bit. I dug the jokes the late night comedians made about it. I’ve enjoyed the positive feedback from people who like the video simply for what it is. But it seems my little antic brought out all the egotistical blowhards and their self-important quasi-informed hot air. Honestly I’ve avoided people like you my entire life, you holier-than-thou types, you pseudo-experts, you sniffing down your noses, you arrogant, self-important cry babies, you humorless, self-aggrandizing trolls…I’m glad I pissed you off. I’m thrilled I got under your skin. Because you see every single thing you wrote about me and my little 49 second video says everything in the world about you as a person and literally nothing about me. You don’t know me from Adam. You don’t have the slightest clue what I’m like as a human being here on this planet. I said “Jump!” and you said “How high?” You got played, served, PWNED.

So tell me…howww does it feeeeel? Awwww, how does it feeeeel? To be on your own….with no direction home…like a complete UNKNOWN….like a rolling stone.

Me? I feel fine. It’s the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine.

Fine.

A Blood Letting

I hardly know where to start writing. There’s no telling where this will go. I’m just gonna peel back the top of my noggin’ and let it rip. I’ve been under a tremendous amount of stress lately. I’ve put it on myself. Here comes the raw, honest scoop regarding what’s been swirling in my head these past few months. Not many people know the true nature of my living situation. Let’s start with the water in the cabin. The water comes out of the mountainside and is collected by a series of pipes running into a spring box. The spring box has a crack in it. Luckily this crack is near the top of the box so it still holds a good deal of water. When I first arrived on the farm last Spring the water was not running into the cabin. The spring box was empty and surrounded by briars and lots of other unfriendly brush. With a chainsaw, weed eater and branch loppers I cleared a wide swath around the spring box as well as a trail leading to it. I found the pipe that feeds into the box buried beneath the crushing weight of fallen tree branches. I sawed up the branches and moved them out of the way. I repositioned the pipe and staked it into place. Water began flowing into the box. After it had filled water flowed down the mountainside and began filling the pipes in the cabin. But when I turned the faucets on only a slow steady stream of water came out. I lived with this meager water supply from last summer until just a few weeks ago. The non-existent water pressure made taking a shower impossible and filling the toilet tank frustratingly slow. The toilet tank wasn’t a big deal since the septic tank was clogged and not draining water off. Long story short, I have not had a usable toilet for most of the time I’ve been living up here. I went outside and dug holes to crap in. I bathed in the river. This wasn’t a really big deal when the weather was warm. Once it got cold it became a problem. I cut a siphon pipe from an old garden hose and used my shop-vac to start the siphon. I began siphoning the water out of the septic tank regularly. Miraculously this must have loosened something in the tank or field lines because sometime around the beginning of winter the tank began draining itself. I was then able to flush the toilet! However due to the lack of water pressure filling the tank was still a problem. I filled the tank and flushed the toilet once a day. Twice the bowl was so full it overflowed onto the bathroom floor. This was really disgusting and discouraging. Still I figured out a way to work around it. (Instead of flushing the toilet paper I burned it in the wood stove. Washing dishes with a just a slow steady stream of water coming out of the faucet has also been a pain in the ass. I began boiling water on top of my wood stove for washing dishes and taking baths. This was a laborious process. Getting the water temperature right is tricky. I would pour the boiling water into the tub and let it sit for 30 minutes to an hour to let it cool down enough to get into. I lived like this all winter. Towards the end of winter something must have broken free because one day I turned on the kitchen faucet and water came flowing out under pressure. At first it was muddy but it soon cleared up and ran clear and strong! Hooray!!!! This victory was short-lived however. Days later the pressure went away again and I noticed water bubbling up on the ground where the water line enters the cabin. It flooded beneath the cabin and collected around the foundation. I hand dug ditches to drain the water over a hillside. This helped but it soon became apparent that most of the water coming down the hillside from the spring box was not staying in the pipes. I decided to turn off the valve allowing the water down the hill. It’s been off for over a week now. I’m trying to let the ground dry up somewhat so I can start digging out the water line and finding the problem. So I went from a slow steady stream of water to gushing water to no water. Now I take my atv up the hill to the spring box with empty gallon jugs and fill them manually by dipping them into the spring box. This is the water Rudy and I use for drinking. Bathing outside hasn’t been feasible due to the cold weather. It’s been raining and snowing a lot still so the ground isn’t exactly drying up. The other night I stood on the front porch naked in the pouring rain and took a shower. It was the first time I had bathed my entire body in months.

Winter is a very slow season business-wise so I haven’t earned much money since around November. My landline phone has been cut off, as well as my satellite tv. The power is still on and miraculously the internet is still working. I’m driving completely illegally. I have no car insurance, registration or valid driver’s license. This has all been very discouraging but I have no one to blame but myself. All these things are what they are. It has begun to get overwhelming though. I have big dreams for my life here and I will make them come true. But I’m ready for something to break in my favor. The solution to the water/septic problem is either a) spending thousands of dollars I don’t have to have someone bring machinery in and dig everything up and replace it all or b) dig it all up myself by hand and get my neighbor and friend Curt to help me fix everything. I wear my clothes over and over again due to not having a washing machine or dryer much less water to wash with. Curt’s wife has taken pity on me and done my laundry for me several times. Other times I load everything up into my truck and spend half a day at the Laundromat getting my clothes clean. Cooking at home isn’t feasible without water for cooking and cleaning up afterwards so I’ve been buying tv dinners that I can just microwave. The packaging and tray then go into the wood stove. It’s really hard to know where to begin getting all this stuff straightened out.

I moved up here because this is where I’ve always thought of as home. I know it’s not constructive to compare myself to other people but it’s hard not to. Almost all of my friends from high school have wives, children, homes they own, etc. I’ve lived a reckless, albeit exciting life since I graduated high school. I made lots of mistakes. I have no money. The only thing I own of any value is my truck. Last year my father died and with him went my biggest fan and supporter. No matter what happened to me I knew my dad was there to help out, both financially and emotionally. He’s gone. I’m all alone. My mother has had the worst year of her life and (as she puts it) I’m the only one of her children that has been giving her emotional support. It’s the very least I can do as far as I am concerned. We talk once or twice a week. Sometimes she sounds okay. Other times she breaks down into hysterical sobbing. I listen to her. I let her cry. I try to sooth her. All the while I’m also thinking of my own life, my own circumstances. I moved up here because I want a HOME, a place to call my own. I’ve been pouring what little money I have been making into this cabin but when my mother dies it is to be split equally between my sisters and me. This gives me an uneasy feeling. I don’t exactly feel like my investment in this place is on solid footing. One of my sisters will probably be cool with me about the farm but my other sister is a total wild card. I could see her pulling some fucked up shit down the road and it worries me. There is an opportunity to buy another home nearby. This is what I’m planning on doing. The cost is low but the place will need a lot of work. But I’ll still be here and as long as I make my payments and get it paid off I will have a home for the rest of my days, regardless of what else happens.

Work is starting to pick up again and I am in negotiations with my boss for my future here. This is another issue entirely and for discretion’s sake I won’t go into it here.

I knew there would be challenges in moving up here. None of this comes as a surprise at all. When my father died, in addition to feeling the emptiness and sadness of losing him, I felt (and feel) a looming sense of my own mortality, the finite nature of my own days. That’s why I moved up here. This is where I’ve always wanted to be. This is the stage where I want the rest of my life to be played out. And behind all the anxiety, uncertainty and fear, among all the infrastructure issues and all the rest of it, beneath everything, believe it or not, I am truly happy. Crazy isn’t it? I am trying my best to live life one day at a time and not get too wrapped up in what will or will not be. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I always find the answer to any dilemma I face is gratitude. So many people on this planet have things so infinitely worse than me. I’m lucky. I’m blessed! So what if I don’t have running water or a working toilet right now? Fuck it dude. Fuck it right in its tight little puckered asshole, man.

Because there are moments in the sun, quiet, gentle, timeless moments of reverie on the forested mountainside with my dog and the breeze blowing. No sound except the wind through the trees, the Bluestone River rushing over ancient rocks. Cornbread ridge shining in the afterglow of another day passed. I focus on my breath. I focus on this second, this moment. I try my best to distance myself from my desires and dreams. I try to achieve a calm, emotionless detachment from the world, from myself, from the worries of the world.

That’s another thing that I haven’t gotten around to discussing: the state of the world right now. I don’t know if this is the end of the world. It may be the end of the old world and the beginning of a new one. There can be little doubt that the world is in flux and that these are historic times. What will the endgame be? Will Jesus return? I mean will he physically manifest himself again here in the mortal realm? All I know is that my soul is at peace even while I worry myself over my own petty human concerns. Modern humanity is (and has been) living a life out of balance. Perhaps nature is correcting things. My hearts weeps for all the people truly suffering on the planet right now. It breaks my heart. One feels helpless and immobile. How much longer can we continue our steady diet of distraction with pop culture and celebrities? Will politicians solve our problems? Ha! What is the answer? The answer for me is to stay right with God and to work on myself, my own consciousness, my own shit. Kindness. Gratitude. Detachment. I have to constantly remind myself that this world is a shadow, a reflection, a wisp of air, a puff of smoke. Poof! It’s gone. Just like that. So whether my dreams come true is really of no consequence in the scheme of things. That won’t stop me though. I told myself when I moved up here that I would be willing to go to any lengths to make this life on the farm in WV work. That’s even truer today than it was almost a year ago.

I hope this hasn’t sounded whiny or complaining. That isn’t my intent. Clearly I just needed to get some stuff off my chest. Peace and love to you and yours, MG

Photoblog: A hike around the Farm for Dad

I get it now.

Today was a day where I felt like I am exactly right where I am supposed to be and doing what I am supposed to be doing. I spent 8 hours of the day outside on the farm working and hanging out with my dog Rudy. This morning I sawed, split and stacked the locust Curt and I cut yesterday. Then I took a break, ate lunch and drove my truck up over the mountain with Rudy riding shotgun. I bought 3 gallons of gasoline, some tobacco, coca-cola and four 25cent slim jims for me and Rudy to split. Back on the farm I fueled up the 4wheeler and went down through the fields to the river. Rudy ran alongside the whole way with her tongue hanging out, ears flopping and I swear to God a smile on her face.

I’ve been visiting this place my entire life. Some of my fondest and earliest memories from childhood are of me and my family picnicking here during long blue summers in the 1970’s. My grandfather used to throw some amazing family reunion picnics back then. All of my extended family would come out, sit around in lawn chairs, talk and eat. The women would fuss over the food in the kitchen of the cabin. The men would play horseshoes and fish. My sisters and I were usually the only kids and we would run around outside, play in the woods, fish, throw horseshoes, go on long walks and take naps inside the cabin in the afternoon. One of the highlights of these long summer days with my family on the farm was when my grandfather would fire up his old John Deere farm tractor and ride us kids down to the river. He’d follow a road he cut himself and take us up the hillside along the riverbank to a high bluff looking down on the island in the middle of the river he owned. Except he never said “he” owned it. It was always “we.” At the end of the road high on the bluff my sisters and I would hop off and carefully climb down the hillside to the fabled and mysterious “big rock”, a slab of granite on the riverbank twice the size of an automobile. I remember feeling adventurous and daring climbing down the steep mountainside and crawling out into the enormous stone monolith. We’d swim in the river, skip rocks and lay in the sun. At night we’d roast weenies over a crackling fire and toast marshmallows. Often we’d play cards or a board game until we got sleepy. There was no tv, only a radio that was always set to the local NPR station out of Roanoke. We laid in bed before falling asleep listening to the crickets and bull frogs serenade the Appalachian night.

And now, after all these years, after madness and uncertainty, after travelling the highways of America, after marriage and divorce, after decades of career work as a chef and cook, after the passing of my grandfather, my grandmother and my dear departed father, after a lifetime of GOING the road ends here and now I stay. When I am out in the fields and forests caretaking the land my soul is filled with joy and peace. My mind is calm. I take deep strong inhalations of pure mountain air as I work. The only sounds I hear are the rushing of the river and my own breath. Often during these tender moments of living I think of my father and my grandfather. Both men loved to work outdoors. It’s pretty funny that I now enjoy these same past times. When I was a teenager growing up in the suburbs I hated yard work, despised it in fact. But I did it and I did a lot of it. My dad always had me out there doing something in the yard: mowing, weed eating, pruning shrubs, raking leaves, picking up sticks and pinecones, hauling rock, splitting wood…the list goes on and on. I fucking hated every minute of it. And sometimes I hated him too. I wanted to be out with my friends or running around with girls. My dad and I would have passionate arguments on the necessity and utility of yard work. I don’t know who aggravated who more….most likely it was me.. And now all these years later I’m out on the land with my chainsaw, weed eater, branch lopper, etc. and tending to the land the same way my dad taught me to. I laugh out loud at myself when I think of all my idiotic adolescent protestations to “working in the yard”, saying aloud, “I get it now dad. I get it.”

A Winter's Wood

A Winter’s Wood

is next to the cabin,
piled high,
some neatly in stacks,
others happenstance and
laying where they fell.

Precious heat emanates from inside the
richly glowing cabin walls, wooden…
reddish-brown and comforting.
The charred stovepipe exhausts smoke,
white hot stove aflame.

Tin soldier trees are
in formation
in the wilderness night.
Winds are blowing, snow falling.

Super Bowl Chili

Super Bowl Chili

makes 2 quarts

2# ground beef
1 medium sweet yellow onion, diced
1 medium green pepper, diced
1 large tomato, diced
2 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
4 T chile powder
2 t ground cumin
1 quart fresh cold water
1 cup crushed tortilla chips
1 bunch scallions, white part only, diced
1 jalapeno, diced
2 T fresh cilantro, minced
juice of 1 lime
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

sour cream
shredded cheddar cheese
Fritos Scoops

Method: In a thick-bottomed soup pot brown ground beef over medium high heat. Drain grease. Add onion, green pepper, tomato, garlic and spices and cook for 5 minutes stirring regularly. Add cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 30 minutes. Add crushed tortilla chips, scallions, jalapeno, cilantro and lime juice and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring regularly. Season with salt and pepper and serve topped with sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese and fresh jalapeno slices. Eat with Fritos Scoops!

How time can just ruin a man

I’m sitting here in the cabin with NFL Primetime on the television, Rudy outside barking, the wood stove emanating warm dry heat and a bluish moon rising over Cornbread Ridge. I spent the entire day with my buddy Curt. We drove into Princeton and ran errands which included going to Lowes and buying new bars and chains for our chainsaws and then driving out True Road in Summers County, visiting with my friend Josh, his wife Ginny and their two adorable youngsters. We took in breath-taking southern West Virginia scenery all day, driving back roads up and down and over mountain after mountain until finally dropping down beside Bluestone Lake. It was frozen over from shore to shore. Barren mountains formed a ring around the body of water.

We crossed over into Hinton and went to see Curt’s brother, Kevin, who is just a few years older than me, who is at a nursing home after a tragic and horrible motorcycle accident several years ago. I hadn’t seen Kevin since I lived up here when I was 23, over 15 years ago. Back then I had spent a good deal of time with him. I used to go cutting firewood with him. He cut it and I hauled it into the truck. One day I remember we brought back 4 regular-size pickup truck loads to the cabin in just a few hours. He was full of life back then, wiry and muscled, tan and more than a little wild. We used to listen to Bocephus in his red Chevy z71 truck while barreling around sharp curves on dirt roads above the hollow.

The man I saw today was just a husk of the man I once knew. I followed behind Curt as we walked down the hallways of the nursing home, past other men and women in advanced stages of decline. We arrived at Kevin’s room and found him slumped in a wheelchair asleep. Curt began crying as soon as we entered the room. He went to his brother and lovingly cooed words to him while petting his head and kissing it. I stood to the side and just witnessed. Curt is one of the toughest men I’ve ever known…perhaps the toughest. His hands are thick and strong and rough as sand paper. He held his brother and wept. I was grateful to him for letting me in, for not being ashamed or embarrassed to share this moment with me. He tried to wake him but Kevin only opened his eyes and looked at us. He was confused and distant, mumbled a few words and drifted back to sleep. We only stayed for 20 minutes or so. As we left I put my arm around Curt and patted him on the back. Once outside the depressing building where people go to die Curt’s spirit lifted and we took off again on mountain roads towards home.

We drove to Nimitz and then got on Ellison Ridge and dug the countryside as the sun began sinking in the western sky. Enormous meadows stretched out in open spaces between steep mountainsides. We talked about old times, Curt spinning yarns about being a boy in this country wrecking cars, hunting deer, growing weed and chasing girls. Later we filled jugs with gasoline and headed back to Wolf Creek Hollow. Back at my cabin we tuned up our chainsaws and went out into the cold night and sawed firewood.

Mountain House of Rock and Wood

Lovely images come forth in my mind of the home I am in the process of building. A spacious, warm, loving environment for family and friends from near and far to come visit, spend time, relax, dig the West Virginia back country and share our lives and experiences. This thought excites me the most. I picture my big mountain house of wood and rock, built from the land around it, with a steady stream of loved ones flowing through throughout the year. That is what I want. That is what I desire more than anything else in my life I think. I truly feel like I am home and I want to take care of this place, treat it right and share it with my dear ones.

The summer cabin I am living in and working on right now should be completely finished in a couple of years. At least that is the time I’m thinking and hoping it will take. With the wages I earn working as a chef I am able to buy materials and it may take that long to be able to pay for everything. The work I am doing myself with my friend and neighbor Curt’s invaluable help. But when it’s done it will be paid for! Then I will begin the process again on a proper house and when that is finished the cabin will open up (as well as rooms and living space in the new house) for friends and family to visit on a more regular basis. I see meals shared on a big table in the late summer evening of vegetables, fruits, meats, cheeses…grown, raised and fixed right there on the farm. I smell campfires at night. I hear the telling stories. I see beautiful faces of friends illuminated by the fire. Huge Christmas feasts with a house overflowing with friends, family and love.

So tonight as I sit here at my desk with the lamps burning and the wood stove glowing red from the heat of roasting logs, Muddy Waters on the stereo, the hound dog stretched out on a fleece blanket next to the stove, tonight it may just be me and Rudy down here in the holler but I know others will be arriving shortly in the scheme of things. Won’t you pull up a chair, kick up your feet and have some laughs with me on the porch? Later I’ll take ya frog giggin’!

Things I must earn

And there are those nights when I am driving to the store with my hound dog sitting there in the cab of the truck with me, and the darkness all around, the road bumping and looping and whirling around mountain bends, snow beginning to fall. The blower is on blasting the dash and windshield with hot air, melting the ice crystals and burning the moisture off the glass. Again I am listening to the Big Dog radio station out of Beckley and that same high school sports announcer again, this time calling the Woodrow Wilson Flying Eagles Varsity Boy’s Basketball game. The announcer’s voice takes me once again. My childhood in Raleigh County blossoms forth in my mind’s eye again. I attended the games at the Raleigh County Armory with my parents and my sister Julie. My sister Beth was a cheerleader so she would be down next to the court jumping and cheering and smiling a lot. I’d get permission from my parents to run around the hallways with other boys my age sometimes. It was a real treat to go out to the games. Dad always bought us a coke and some popcorn. During halftime my sister and the other cheerleaders would throw out little small plastic basketballs with the Flying Eagle logo and a sponsorship from The Raleigh County Bank where my mother worked as a teller. Outside in the cold winter nights of my early youth frost was building up on the little league baseball fields just outside the armory. Beyond the baseball diamonds cow pastures stretched into the whispering darkness towards distant mountain ridges.

I recall hearing Queen’s We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions being played loud over the PA system and the smell of popcorn and soda pop. The cheer of the crowd and the loud boos when the home crowd didn’t agree with a call. Afterwards we would file out of the arena and into the cold lamp lit night. Tiny snowflakes would cascade down in columns of bright white lamp light. All of the cars in the lot would be covered in snow. Every single one of them! It was such a thing of beauty. Especially those first few moments…before anyone arrived at their cars, when the blanket of gathering snow was at its purest and most pristine, no footprints yet, maybe two lonely car tracks leaving out from someone who exited the game early. I can hear the sounds of windshields being scraped, motors starting and idling, a radio blasting rock into the silence. I can see puffs of smoke from the exhausts of the automobiles huddled in the cold. I’d huddle in the backseat with my sisters and we’d snuggle with each other to get warm. Dad would drive and mom sat in the passenger seat and they talked about the game and talked to Beth about it since she was down by the court most of the game. I never, not once in my life, ever felt scared for even a second in the car with my dad behind the wheel. It never even occurred to me that there might be some kind of danger with the condition of the roads and all. My dad was an excellent driver. Truly he was one of the greats. He knew his vehicle inside and out and was one with it on the road.

All of this flashes by in my 38 year old noggin’ as I navigate the four wheel drive down increasingly snow-covered roads with one arm around my dog Rudy and the other wrapped on top of the steering wheel. Insouciantly I pilot the truck down the same roads my father used to drive me down and I feel connection in the night, connection to the Holy Spirit of eternal mystery. And my mind rests for a moment of reverie on the true nature of T I M E : Things I must earn.

Things I must earn.

The Pilgrim's Path

I have a pot of green tea steeping in the kitchen. I’ll only be a minute. Things echo off the darkness. The cabin is still and quiet in the night. I can hear and feel both the fire in the fireplace and the fire in the wood stove across the big room. They’ve both been going for days now, constantly burning, embers flaming and then waning with every descendant load of wood that gets added. Did I mention how quiet it is? It is mind-shatteringly quiet here. The hillsides are barren of leaves and undergrowth, bluish white snow carpets the midnight Appalachian Mountains. There is a red hound dog asleep on the bed. Her legs and arms are outstretched as if in mid run. Occasionally she will have a fit in her sleep, dreaming of chasing deer I imagine, and her legs and arms will twitch and jerk and she will begin to talk and howl in her dream.

Well I made it here. Moved up here in late May of last year and writing this as of January of 2011. It was a bit of stunt to pull for sure. Even for me. I’d lain really low for six years and licked my wounds after having to come to terms with my alcoholism and drug addiction. I’d just buried my dear father and off I go and decide to move once again to the farm in West Virginia. There was definitely more than a bit of grandiosity to it. But there always was in the past too. My mind has a real love of grandiosity. Anyway, the difference this time has been being a man instead of a boy. I really can’t put it any better or simpler than that. My heart has shifted significantly over the past several years. I’ve grown and there’s no sense denying it…I’ve aged.

I haven’t been listening to music much here at the cabin. I prefer the silence. I listen to the fire burning, the crackle of wood in the flames, the creaking of the old cabin, the wind howling on the window panes and through the fluted trees. I can literally hear

the snow melt, the drip drip drip off the roof top, the sound of slushy week-old snow under boot. I’ve long admired the pace of nature, the rhythms of the natural world. I’ve always sought to get connected. All my life I’ve wanted to live here on this farm so I could be close to nature, so I could learn from it. I’ve learned the ways of the cities of the world. It’s not for me. It never was for me. But I played along. I chased it. I thought I’d find happiness behind the wheel of the latest new thing all the while knowing what my heart truly desired was ancient wilderness.

Is it in fact feasible and possible to live a different kind of life? The kind of life I’ve always dreamed of living. Well, I’m finding out right now. Once the grandiosity of the Big Move wore off it was down to brass tacks and daily living in a 40+ year old summer cabin with often dodgy utilities. And it’s been a crash course in country living for this suburban boy ever since. This place is already marking me up, claiming me as one of its own once again. In all honesty, I fit right in here. I’ve been reconnected to my tribe, the hard-working blue collar people of southern West Virginia. From them I arose into life and to them I now return. I left when I was twelve years old, a neat bookend to my childhood, a closing of the door on that wondrous time of life and the opening of another door into the whacked out mania of puberty and adolescence. Then of course young adulthood with its own dramas and comedies…and now…middle age.

My past has been full of more twists and turns than these mountain roads I now drive daily. And everything, all the minutiae of my personal path and journey has led to this dead end road down in the holler. This is truly the end of one long and winding road for me. I’ve not made it through the winter yet but I know I will. I won’t be run off like I was those other times. This time will stick. I’m making a home here, a base, a pastoral life. Everything I’ve learned up to this point is golden, every experience, every failure, every struggle, and every disappointment. They are all like money in the bank. Things I thought I’d never be able to understand are now just common knowledge to me, no big deal in the Grand Scheme of things. The seasons shift, the heavy snows and icy throes of winter will blend into the muddy rains and pale green longings of Spring which will ease almost imperceptibly into the bright neon green leafy glory of a warm summer, that then slowly fades as the light recedes, leaves fall, temperatures drop…and the snow comes again.

And I’ll be here, living, watching, learning, growing…listening. Just a pilgrim on his path.