life in the woods

We used to create pretend lives in the woods.

 

The first instances I remember are with my sister. Our first pretend home was the center of a circle of forsythia bushes. They were directly outside of our real home, but it was our own little hideaway. The round bushes seemed to create a wall with a tunnel to enter through. Once inside, it was like we were "big kids" in our own little home, closed in by powdery yellow with an open sky.

 

Our next was the giant pines a little farther up the yard. Pennsylvania really has some great pine trees. These were maybe forty or fifty feet tall with long, thick branches along the bottom, which were great for two purposes: 1) they created a skirt around the tree where we could hide (our new walls) 2) they were thick enough and low enough for us to begin the climb. We'd take turns, each climbing as high as we could (we were always climbing trees). Sometimes we'd lie down on the branches & pretend they were our beds, as if our bedrooms were just on different levels of our house.

 

(Now that I think about it, my sister always begged my dad for a treehouse. We sort of got it after years and years of piece by piece construction. We spent one night in it (still unfinished), and that was it. Never got done. But that's okay because I think we were better off for it because we had better times living in the trees because a treehouse isn't a wooden structure built among trees--it's just trees & an imagination.)

 

I have no idea what I thought as a four or five year old climbing those pine trees. The memories come in small snippets of questionable truth. Picturing me up in the pine feels like we were pirates, climbing the highest mast to lookout for intruders. I guess that's partially true--we never wanted to be found.

 

Yet a smidge farther up the yard, there was a small opening between clumps of trees that was its own cove, complete with…you guessed it--a brilliant old clawfoot tub. By brilliant, I may mean covered in dirt & algae and filled it the greenest water and the occasional turtle.

 

As I'm writing this, I’m realizing that is becoming more a list than a story of our many play-venture homes in the woods, barely touching the details of each. I'll settle for a few more before making my point.

 

There was this place we called the picnic area--a spacious opening between the trees where my family had set up picnic tables, a barbeque, & everything else necessary for a party. However, by the time we took to playing there, it had been long out of use and falling apart: a shadow of its former life.

 

At the far end of the clearing, a large beam sat propped on poles--a few railroad ties broken & balanced in their own little Stonehenge. We used to climb on the tie and use it as a balance beam, though I think its intended purpose was to be a serving table for food. Over a dip in the landscape, near the thickening woods, a small rotting hut sat full of pots & pans & random kitchen utensils. Sometimes we would go in there (usually on a dare) to sneak around for something for our pretend homes.

 

The picnic area was great for our play-pretend because everything we needed was already there. When the area was cleared away, we scraped our way deeper into the woods to build a new house. We’d graduated far from our old homes in the woods where we just played pretend that the trees were walls & rooms & living utensils--for this one, we took a level & made our best twelve-year-old attempts to create flat ground out of the hill. We then laid down plywood: floor complete.

 

Living up the road from a junk yard, we decided we should go rummage around for some other household items. We settled for one tire, which we rolled all the way up the hill around the bend, down & up another hill & back into the woods. We dug a hole and placed the tire over the hole: toilet.

 

Derek's parents had this little plastic garden wagon. We would fill it with utensils & snacks & attach it to Derek's wheelchair for him to tow it back into the woods for us--the beginnings of yet another woodland home.

 

So there we were: us & our play-pretend homes with our play-pretend lifestyles and our play-pretend futures.

 

I went camping last weekend. I snuck away a few times to just sit in the woods alone. There was a "primitive campsite" back into the woods--just a small open clearing, big enough for a tent. It wasn't occupied, so I'd go & sit on the small stone bench. Looking up: the break in the trees; looking around: the rustling, moving stillness of the forest; listening: silence, silence & birds in swooping whistles.

 

These are things I haven't experienced in a while. I've missed them. It all feels so familiar; I wished I could lie down in the grass & pretend that I was in one of our play homes in the woods. I actually did try, but it didn't take long to realize just how far removed my current life is from all of that--city, noise, pollution, solitude. I think that's a major downfall to being an adult: even when you try to imagine your life as different, it's all of the current intricacies that keep you bolted down in what is real.

 

I began to wonder if I would ever again have a home in the woods. I tried to imagine a career scenario that would allow it. I've often dreamt of living Annie Dillard's solitary writing life in a cabin in North Puget Sound. I don't know how to make that happen; now, after living so deep in the city, I’m not sure I could. Like how I wanted to live alone in the desert and am now beginning to realize how crazy of an idea that was for me in particular.

 

The idea of life in the woods again feels distant & impossible, like the prospect that one day I would have a husband & children. The truth is that I don't know what I want. I know what I've had and what I've loved, but I cannot say with certainty what I want. This is a strange place for me --yes, me, the girl with the evolving 5-year plans. Maybe it's just today.

 

I soaked in as much of the silent time with the trees as I could. Those moments are extremely rare these days, so I sopped it all up like our campsite did the rain, & I packed myself home to return to the present, the city.

hope eventually

Well, here we are: the fourth of July. A day of hotdogs, fireworks, & good old Americana. This year, I’m escaping to the woods with a group of friends for a few days of camping.

I’m beyond excited to get out of the city. As much as I love it here, I am always missing the woods. And I am ready for some quiet. Seems like things have been chaotic lately—if it’s not one thing it’s another, right? Busy, busy: gogogo. I’ve been counting down for this: quiet, rest.

Even though there is a whole group of us going, all I want is solitude. I want some space to be alone. To write. To read (I got a new book just for this weekend). To enjoy the trees and birds and lack of metal buildings & loud people. I’m not sure I’ll be able to accomplish this, but it’s certainly a hope. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do that I haven’t had either time or brain power for.

Maybe thinking isn’t it, but I certainly need something. I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I mean, here it is 1am, and I’m not even tired. Well, I’m tired, but not in the sleep way. I took a one-hour nap this afternoon since I only slept four hours last night too. Last night, I kept my mind occupied by cleaning the apartment. To actually think of things that would be productive to my goals or the present tense felt impossible. My mind felt blank and thus needed occupying since sleep wouldn’t come: hence cleaning.

After writing this, I suppose I should begin to pack for camping. I haven’t done a thing to prepare. I don’t even have food. I’ve already set my alarm to get up early enough to go shopping before our 8:30 departure. Hope the store is open.

Sometimes hope is all we have to hold onto. I think that is one of the best things in the world: hope. (And these three remain: faith, hope, & love.) You know how people will say not to “get your hopes up” for something you dreamt of happening? I’ve been thinking about that a lot & the ways that I have found myself losing hope in my own life or not letting myself have hope in certain scenarios.

I think it’s all bullshit. Why the hell shouldn’t we have hope? Without it, what do we have but a meaningless routine with no chance of improvement? Pessimism. People call me a pessimist sometimes, but I’ve always responded with saying I’m a realist (cliché, right?), but I mean it. I think faith and hope are closely tied—like in Ecclesiastes: a cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

That’s what faith, hope, & love are—three strands tightly knit together. So in this instance: faith and hope. I choose to believe that purpose exists for this earth. I choose to believe that we are not meant to lose hope in what could be.

Sure, we don’t always get what we want—we don’t always get what we hope for, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have hope at all.

Six years ago on this day, I had hope that Aunt Sharon would be okay. That she would pull through. I prayed for it. I hoped for it. It didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean the hope or prayer was wasted. It becomes a new hope: I hope we meet again someday. All of us. I pray for it.

I believe in hope.

So while on this particular day, my hopes are small—to be alone in the woods, to make it to the store on time—it’s still important to know that we are not stuck where we currently are. We are not stuck because we have hope in something greater or at least that something greater than the most mundane moment will happen eventually.

solitude

A few years ago, I thought I wanted to be with someone, but his answer was no. I know that’s common, but his reason stuck with me, one word: solitude. It took a few minutes to find that word, but when he did, he knew that was it. Solitude. As a generally extroverted person, I didn’t get it. Why would anyone want to be alone?

It’s taken me until recently to understand.

We were on a hike, some friends & me, and as usual, I lagged behind. About six miles in (the tail end of a loop trail), I realized that I didn’t mind hanging back. I soaked in the shade of the Redwoods and breathed in the green. I could see no one ahead of me on the trail, no one behind. With the quiet of the woods around me, I kept going at my pace. To me, hikes aren’t the time for timing to beat a personal best.

After being consumed by the regular chaos of city living, I realized that one moment was what I longed for: to be truly alone. (I admit, it was weird at first to hike without my dog, but honestly, do you know what it feels like to be truly alone?)

Sometimes it’s easy to feel alone when surrounded by people. In the city, you can walk up the street & not talk to anyone (rarely, albeit) and feel like you are the only person alive—the rest of the passersby are part of the surroundings. Have you felt that?

I just wasted about twenty minutes trying to find a single word, but it’s a word that means the realization that every person around you is simultaneously leading their own life with their own emotions, feelings, needs, beliefs. The notion crossed my mind occasionally over the years, but my first memory of it was at a gas station in Utah. It was my biggest solo trip. The man at the pump across from me had deep lines in his face, though he could not have been more than fifty. It suddenly occurred to me that this man had lived 40+ years before this one moment of our lives crossing. Have you ever thought this about your co-workers? Your boss? I think about it at work the most: all of these acquaintances, but we are all human, at our core.

It’s funny to think that we are different. We live off our experiences and become so indulged in our own lives that it’s easy to forget that everyone else’s lives are just as complex. They go to bed at night. They get hungry. They feel sad. Sometimes remembering this is the only way living on the other side of the country from my family makes sense. Life does not stop in Pennsylvania just because I am out here. That’s why it’s always different when I go back; that’s why people call with news: life is still moving, even when I am not there to witness it.

Sometimes the complexity feels like too much. Sometimes I wish it would slow down (how many times have I wished it would go faster?). Sometimes I wish I could go back. But the pace is constant, along with change and intricacy.

I think that’s why we all need moments to be alone. This is my season of understanding solitude.

Solitude can often be confused with prolonged singleness. I’ve mistaken it myself, wondered why I am single, why that person chose to be single. There is a difference. There is a tiny knowing somewhere that solitude is a choice, that even when the opportunity to not be single presents itself, the direction to take is apparent: solitude.

That is where I am. While there are moments of doubting that, there are more reassurances that this is where I am supposed to be. I am grateful to live alone (with the company of my pets).

As I flip through pages of Rilke on solitude in Letters to a Younger Poet, I realize this topic is just beginning. I’ll leave you with these excerpts from Rilke:

“There is only one solitude, and it is vast and not easy to bear and almost everyone has moments when they would happily exchange it for some form of company, be it ever so banal or trivial, for the illusion of some slight correspondence with whoever one happens to come across, however unworthy…But perhaps those are precisely the hours when solitude grows, for its growth is painful like the growth of boys and sad like the beginning of spring. But that must not put you off. What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours- that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth bound up in things which seemed grave and weighty because they looked so busy, and because one had no idea what they were up to.”

and

“And you must not let yourself be diverted out of your solitude by the fact that something in you wants to escape from it. Precisely this desire, if you use it calmly and judiciously, as a kind of tool, will help you to extend your solitude over a greater expanse of ground. People have tended (with the help of conventions) to resolve everything in the direction of easiness, of the light, and on the lightest side of the light; but it is clear that we must hold to the heavy, the difficult. All living things do this, everything in nature grows & defends itself according to its kind and is a distinct creature from out of its own resources, strives to be so at any cost and in the face of all resistance. We know little, but that we must hold fast to what is difficult is a certainty that will never forsake us. It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it. To love is also good, for love is hard. Love between one person and another: that is perhaps the hardest thing it is laid on us to do, the utmost, the ultimate trial and test, the work for which all other work is just preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, do not yet know how to love: they must learn. With their whole being, with all their strength, concerted on their solitary, fearful, upward beating hearts, they have to learn to love.”

an encouragement to writers (I think)

I get into these moods where I suddenly think that I don’t need sleep because my life should be spent reading and writing and learning instead of sitting idle in bed. I guess it’s more of a season than a mood because it lasts a bit longer and tends to happen after Daylight Savings, when the days get just little longer, and I start to think that I can be everything at once.

I’ll come home from work and explore the outside world: walking the dog, going to the park, watching the dusk, sitting on the rocks watching the shore. And when I come in, I suddenly find that I have a whole evening to spend as I please—read, write, & repeat.

Somehow, I constantly seem to be simultaneously reading 5-8 books at a time. I keep, well, multiple books of poetry on my nightstand as well as a solid novel to trudge through a little at a time. My purse has a Kindle plus a paperback, always. Literary journals are scattered over my apartment—on the windowsill, on the back of the toilet, on the tv stand. As are Bibles. And journals, notebooks, and Post-Its. This sounds very scattered, but I like to think it’s an organized chaos such that a visitor wouldn’t notice how frantic my attempts at intellectuality really are.

The most clutter at my apartment is on my bookshelves, and I like it that way. They are overflowing, yet I never seem to have enough. It’s like how they say when you pull out one hair, three more grow in its place—when I read one book, well, you can finish the rest. Sometimes I scan the shelves for the books I haven’t read and I wonder if I will get to read them all in my life. I think of my Grandpap, who has read all of his books, many multiple times through. I hope I can do the same, though I don’t think I’ll ever catch up. I’m still not through the Classics let alone reading books from present-day.

Then there’s writing. If I spend all of my time reading, when will I write? When will I do things to write about? It’s a very amusing circuit of constant discomfort: not reading enough, not writing enough, not living enough.

I do believe this to simply be the nature of the writer’s life: nothing satisfies. Even when we think it does, like having time to write, the words are all wrong, and we feel just as unsatisfied as if we hadn’t written at all.

I used to be single-minded: one book at a time, one poem at a time, one post at a time. Now I find that I am reading more than I can comprehend, writing such random things that I have half-poems and lost paragraphs in scattered documents on my computer’s desktop (just tonight I’ve started and not nearly made sense of three different pieces), random notes on my phone, computer, and Post-Its that haven’t made it to my notebook, and I am wondering why I ever thought I needed sleep to begin with.

There came a time last summer when I decided 5 hours of sleep was plenty for a young woman. I created a pattern of what I would read when and what I would write when. I actually woke up at 5am to read the Bible then force myself into poetry. I was coming out of a long season of not writing a single poem for months on end, and I was desperate to write something. Since winter, I’ve become a bit of a bear, soaking in all the sleep I can with the long dark nights; summer leaves no excuse for sleep.

I do this a lot—force myself into patterns that I pray will become daily rituals but usually whither after a few months. I suppose I’m doing so now with my new-found motivation, but I will always pray that the muses would keep me company even when I don’t feel like thinking let alone putting thought to paper.

Just now, I turned to stare at my bookshelf as I waited for the next sentence, actually more like wondering why I am even writing these (I guess I’m documenting these words as encouragement for when this season ends or returns; I’ll need reminded.)  My bookshelves say: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes…tallying which books I’ve read vs. haven’t. I do this frequently. When I finally decided to “invest” in a second bookshelf, I told my then-roommate that I thought I had finally reached a point where the number of books on my shelf I had read out numbered those I hadn’t. Time for more books, I thought. Got to keep the balance in-flux.

The funny thing is, there are some books I have that I can’t imagine ever reading, but they have sentimental value, and who knows? Maybe someday I will. Like No Latitude for Error by Sir Edmond Hilary. As a sprouting teen, I thought I would, but now I realize that I simply hold onto it because it is the only book I have autographed (I despise autographed things), but this one is different because: 1) of Hilary’s accomplishments 2) because the book was my dad’s dad’s and then my dad’s and now mine. It has its own lineage and lives on the same shelves it has for many years now, shelves my dad built when he was in high school.

I guess it’s all a bit of idolatry. Sometimes I ponder the point of learning if we all end up in the ground anyways. A bit morbid, I know, but with how easy it has become to publish your own books and send them off for no one to read makes me uneasy. Like anyone is a writer now just because they can get published. Not that I don’t think anyone could be a writer. I just think there is a distinction between a writer and an author, and people desperate to get published get those confused and rush into becoming a title on a shelf instead of an impact in the hearts and minds of readers. (At Barnes & Noble, the cashier asked me to sign the receipt; I told him I’d rather be signing a book; he asked if I was an author. No, I said, I’m a writer.) And the people who confuse the two and skip straight to author try to escape what I’m going through right now—the ebbing seasons of the writer’s life: the hypnotic chaos of feeling inadequate, then motivated; accomplished, then purposeless.

An artist does not choose this—it is simply in his blood, his being, his life and work. There is no joy without it and limited joy with it. But there is hope.

beer boy

I can’t hold it any longer. I’ve never been good at secrets—but it’s certainly not a secret—yet I think the whole story is here, so I’m ready to tell.

It all started at a Super Bowl party.

"Oh, speaking of the Canadian flag; tell Natalie, Martin.”

“We have an errand for you."

“Okay…”

My dear friends then made a wonderfully joint effort to tell me about this catch of a twenty-one-year-old available boy they met at the brewery a few blocks down.

“You have to go see him during half-time. We told him to look for the girl with ear plugs,” (she was referencing my gauges, in case you were wondering).

Half-time came, and Martin accompanied me to the brewery. On the walk down, we both felt quite silly about the whole thing. What was I even supposed to say? “Hey, my friends said you’re great; let’s go on a date?” Minus the rhymes. Totally clueless, we passed the small crowd of tables and up to the bar, only to find that the boy had gone.

“To missed connections,” Martin raised his glass of Amber Ale that had some clever name that I entirely forget. I kept thinking what a bummer this was—it seems impossible to find a nice, Christian man outside of my church (not that there aren’t nice ones at my church; there just haven’t been any advances), and now this one chance was gone!

So I left him a note. I have no idea what I was thinking; do people even call people anymore? The last boy I connected with, we exchanged email addresses. So I left a note with both my phone number and email address and waited.

“How long is the appropriate waiting period before a random stranger responds to a note left by another random stranger? Do they respond? I would. I'm curious,” I asked Martin two days later over Facebook. His response? “5 days from the time the random stranger views said note, give or take 39 hours.” This provided a very accurate yet inaccurate calculation, as the next day, he called. CALLED.

I was in the hardware store when an unknown number called. “Hi, it’s ____ from the brewery. I think you left me a note on Super Bowl Sunday?” It took a minute to register that it was actually him on the other line. His voice sounded either extremely sweet and gentle or gay, which was slightly confusing. He asked a few questions about myself over the course of several dropped calls as I had to leave the store for service and said to text him about making plans.

I immediately called the list of people I had told about him, which was basically Martin and my mom. My mom’s advice? “Just take it slow.” My response? “Mom, we haven’t even met”.

Later that night, we were arranging to meet when my lack of transportation + the chaos of that day’s parade downtown prevented me from leaving the apartment. We became “friends” on Facebook—something I was extremely hesitant of before meeting because it allows him a warped insight into my life. You really cannot get to know someone on Facebook, but for whatever reason, many millenials think you can. Further, any correspondence from then out would be biased against what he saw on Facebook. What if he saw my picture and thought I was ugly or fat or not “whatever” enough for him? That’s a shit way to “meet” someone. Regardless, he had already given me his contact info, so of course I had browsed his profile; it would have been creepy for me not to add him.

Maybe this isn’t needless to say, but I haven’t heard from him since. A week later, I sent him a text asking if he still wanted to meet sometime. No response. Seriously? At least be polite enough to say no, damnit.

On Valentine’s Day, he made a Facebook post along the lines of, “Its better to be single with high standards, then in a relationship settling for less!” followed by hashtags about his dream woman. After a brief texting exchange with both Kim & Martin from their separate phones (they are definitely the cutest couple I know), we all agreed that my standards start with someone who can at least write an accurate sentence, concluding that, IT’S better to be single THAN to settle for someone with shitty grammar. #Ihavestandardstoo (Thanks for the encouragement, friends).

Here I am on this lamest of lovey-dovey holidays, date-less and cuddling with my dog. I called my mom to thank her for the valentine & cookies (yes, I got a valentine from my parents! No shame! There are lemon cookies involved!) and told her that I was out for a walk with my valentine. While she assumed without saying that I was referring to my dog, I had to awkwardly avoid referring to my valentine as “she”.

All that to say, we are no longer Facebook friends, this “beer boy” (as Martin so cleverly referred to him) and me, though the slightly hopeful part of me can’t bring myself to delete his number even though he’s clearly never calling back. It’s because I don’t ski. Seriously.

Anyways, after more encouragement, I wrote a song about beer boy. I figured it was only appropriate that it take place as a pseudo-voicemail. You can listen to it here. 

1corinthian8.2-3

I love people. I’m a people-person, you could say. But I am also an introvert. Is that possible? I say yes because I don’t really believe in introverts or extroverts as personality types but more of leanings. I guess I would be an introverted extrovert, as I am, well, a people person, but I also love and long for time alone.

After the busy rush of summer, I find myself a tad burnt out. I can’t even recall in my mind where it all went. It’s hard to believe that we still went to work during the summer. Fall feels like the buckling down to get shit done. Play time’s over. Work-wise, that is. In the rest of my life, I am just longing for time alone and time in books and yarn and the bathtub.

Partly, I just want solitude—to be able to live without a stressful schedule, to not have to worry about plans with people. I want to seclude myself. I want to just spend some time with God, the way I used to, before God meant Jesus too. I used to go into the woods and read poetry and climb trees and write poems and smell the air and feel God, talk to him. I imagine being secluded like Annie Dillard in her little cabin along the Sound in The Writing Life. Just chopping wood. I love hauling firewood, not that I can chop it.

I like to think that this solitude would fix me. Like praying or talking to God would solve all of my problems, so I wouldn’t have to worry or wouldn’t have a bad temper or say so many awful things. But when we are alone for a while and go back into the world, do we remain “changed”? No. We go right back to they way we were, maybe even more irritated at how people can be, forgetting that we are just the same.

Like each morning, I get up and read and pray and usually feel quite content going into a new day. Then I get out of bed. I go to work, and my mouth betrays me. I ride the bus, and my head thinks poorly.

It’s like when I am around my family after a long absence. I think I have changed, but I will always be who they think I am, so they treat me so, and I act accordingly. They treat me like who I used to be, and I revert back to that because that is how I know to respond.

It’s so wrong and ugly, and it all just makes me more aware that I cannot change myself. We weren’t created to live alone and try to become perfect stones on an empty beach. We were created to live in community and be messy and be real.

Today I tried to cheat that. I got off the bus downtown and just walked amongst the crowd, pretending to be one of them, making pretend that I fit in, like I was known. When I got home, I dreaded the fun music shindig that we were hosting; I didn’t want to go; I wanted to be alone. But of course I went anyways and really did have fun and really did feel like I fit in, like I was known because I was around people whom I love. Life is not solitude, not even solitude with God because how can we love God if we do not love his people? Don’t you get to know an artist through her creations? A writer by her words?