When I was a kid I spent hours in the woods. I would build forts everywhere. I had house forts and drinking cocoa forts and veterinarian forts. I came across spaces and instantly saw living rooms and bedrooms and examining rooms (for the many varieties of logs and rocks that I operated on in my veterinarian practice.) When Hallie and I were hiking the other day we came across a mossy space and she commented on it. I realized that as a kid I would have thrown myself upon it (a king-sized bed!) and upon my back I would have stared up at the sky and believed that my bed of moss was the best place in the world to be. Because it was.
My adult self saw things like wet and potential bugs (and heaven forbid a snake!) and sticks that would be uncomfortable. Everywhere I looked, I didn't see what was wonderful, I saw what was wrong.
Why?
Today I hiked with a friend in the woods and I was completely aware of the peacefulness of the surroundings. It felt like the only place in the world I wanted to be at that time. It felt like the best place in the world to be. Because it was.
We found a rock to sit upon and ate our peanutbutter sandwiches and it was better than a 4-course meal in a restaurant. Finished off with oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that Hallie had baked the other day. As I looked around while we walked, I kept thinking what my younger self would have thought. When we came across a cellar hole, I thought WOW! What a house that would make. There was a piece of scrap metal further up the trail, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I would have dragged that back to the cellar hole and it would have been transformed into a wonderful counter.
I can still see the find of the century, in one of my fort homes of my childhood, of the old mailbox I found. A perfect refrigerator!
Some of that ability to make the best of my surroundings certainly followed me into adulthood. My first house was absolutely horrible. I look back on it now and can't imagine I lived as I did. But to me, it was fine. We used to live just in the bedroom, really, because it was cold and unwelcoming downstairs. We both worked and we would go out to eat, then come home and run upstairs and jump into bed and watch TV. I think those times in an early marriage (or relationship) are always so amazing because in your heart you know that you will go from that place to more. And when you get to more, you look back on that as not so bad.
We're all wacked!!!
Every morning in the winter we had to unfreeze the pipes with a hair dryer in order to take a shower. Peter had a sweater he left hanging on a hook that he would put on to climb underneath the house (before there was a cellar) and he would go at the pipes with a blow torch and I was inside blowing on the pipes in the wall with the hair dryer. Whatever, it was just what we did. We couldn't keep the house any warmer because we did it by woodstove, and we weren't really there enough hours to ever get it warm enough. Eventually we put in a foundation and a full cellar. Then we put in a heating system! And so it went, one improvement after another until we had a decent (and truly liveable!) home.
When this house was being remodeled, there came a time deep into summer and several months with my in-laws in a small cottage that it became absolutely and without a doubt MANDATORY that I return to my own space. I loved that time; of living in one room (the kids lived in the mudroom in bunkbeds!) and our hot water came from a small propane tank and since I didn't have a kitchen, I cooked on a grill. It was like camping, more or less, and it was of course not ideal. But I can live in a house that isn't perfect without a second thought.
I look at pictures of Charlie's birthday party after we moved back, and it cracks me up. There I was, holding a full-blown party in a house under construction, with wires coming out of the walls and ... who cares, right? I remember the first Thanksgiving after we moved here; there really was no kitchen to speak of, just a small space. No oven. I had a large convection/microwave oven that had to live on top of the refrigerator because there was no counter space. That is what I cooked the turkey in. Why wouldn't I have my entire family over for Thanksgiving just because I didn't really have a kitchen? I can still see that old bird rubbing up against the window of the oven as it turned on the carousel. Hilarious.
I just rearranged the living room. That is my thing. I have two large couches, three chairs, two ottomans and a big area rug with a few end tables. I can't tell you how many times I have reconfigured those items in this room. I swear, I came up with a new one. Or maybe I am delusional and it just feels that it is arranged the best way it can be.
Because it is.
4 comments:
I think we may have been separated at birth. When I was growing up in Virginia (we lived there until I was 9), we lived on several hundred acres. On weekends, I'd pack up and be gone all day .... and I'd just go .... and go and go and go ... and climb trees and make forts and climb on rocks and crawl through old logs ... the smells, the sun on my face, the animals ... it was heaven. My mother would ring a huge dinner bell when I was to come home .. you could hear this thing for MILES and it told me what direction to go.
When I moved in with my grandparents in Sutton Mills in 1981, we lived across from the reservoir. I was out there all the time. After school, on weekends ... I'd, again, pack a lunch and be gone all day. In winter the reservoir would freeze and I'd walk across it, or shovel off the snow and strap on some ice skates..... and imagine. Always imagining.
I'm taking a walk in the woods behind my neighbor's house tomorrow and I cannot wait.
Thanks for this post.
Remember the one by the bottle dump? That was one of my most favorite forts. So many shelves nestled within the rocks...and then there was the one like this picture that I could only find sometimes. I think you built it with Robin and Jill.
I wonder...so little time our kids have spent in the woods...like that anyway.
Then there were the beaver dams. Loved those little "island" forts. That is where i used to go alone a lot. Funny that Mom never seemed to care where we were!!
ha ha ha
I woke up thinking of changing my furniture around...but this house, as much as I love it, has very few furniture changing options. Se la vi.
I want to come up and hike soon...what are you guys doing this weekend?
Oh yes, the imagining! There was a beaver dam in the woods and there was always that magical time when it was as smooth as glass and not snow-covered. As I flitted about the beaver dens I was a famous ice skater (Dorothy Hamil at the time!) and even though my body didn't do the jumps and turns, I still did them, over and over. I could fly.
Have a great walk in the woods! I am headed there myself once it warms up (35 this a.m.) a bit!
There were several bottle dumps on that property. Why don't we have bottle dumps on our own property? hmmmm. I loved scrounging through those. The one that Robin, Jill and I built was in Robin's woods. That was one hell of a fort. That was the sex fort! LOL We also had guy help on that one, so it was a little less rustic.
I agree, I think our kids are missing out on one of the things I enjoyed the most about my childhood. That, and riding my bike around EVERYWHERE. Zach does that, but my kids never have.
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