TAKING A JOB // MAKING A HOME

TAKING A JOB // MAKING A HOME

originally published on May 5, 2019 on now-defunct tedpackard.com

I’ve been away, in a sense.  Across the Animas Valley, up the ridge and down again, towards the setting sun.  There is a secret valley, one that touring humans may never see, but one which holds the vibrant heart of some humans who hold this land in a deep integrity.  The valley was carved by glaciers, and is framed by the laid-down bodies of giants.  The rocks are so beautiful that I want to take a bite out of them.  

It is in this place, where magpies and ravens make sophist arguments atop compost piles, where people are drawn from around the country and world to learn what it means to tend and grow living soils, where in an afternoon the sun will shine, hail will cover the ground, and snow will blow sideways, and the sun will shine again; in this place, I helped to build a home.  

Two months and so much effort later, there is a story in the wood that is now up to the family to read and keep writing.  A father and a daughter, a bunk bed and secret compartments.  

The lesson here is, things work out.  I haven’t gotten to anything stressful or harrowing, but still, it bears repeating, it is worth remembering:  Things Work Out. 

That is the beginning of this story.  Laying on my back, rolling around at a potluck, inspired by the back-laying-rolling of a spritely matriarch, a dandelion queen who is on the path of social revolution and biological abundance.  

I was in the uncomfortable situation of having No Work.  As in, the jobs had dried up, the winter persisted, the snow still grew from three to four to five-and-more feet, and what came next, I didn’t know, couldn’t make, and had not found.  

And maybe I was beginning to forget again, the truth of things, that Things Work Out.  

So laying next to this community-incubating, righteousness-spreading woman, we are rocking back and forth and all around among a room of post-meal potluck goers, circles of friends sitting on the carpet, a guitar or two in the corner couch strumming softly, the open kitchen flowing joyfully between gleaning and cleaning.  

And she asks me, “Ted, I haven’t seen you in a while, what have you been up to since you came to Durango?”  

So, I trot out the tired response (to me), of doing some building, did a stint at UPS, been focusing on my music and art and storytelling and hosting this open mic, and oh yeah woodburning and writing and delivering these magazines every couple months and my eyes glazed over and my tongue glazed over and I’m so tired of saying all this and being drawn in ten directions and being challenged to quickly translate the hummingbird focus that I steer only slightly, moving quickly from place to place, but dipping deeply at each flower, tasting something that is vital and nourishing and worthy and I will be back when that flower has made more nectar, I promise, I believe, I hope.  

And my desperate path is either unseen or deeply understood.  From this wise woman, I would believe that she knows that path though it is not for her - having settled and dug into the earth and planted and tended and slow-warmed the soup of nurturing in people the seed of what was promised - that we belong here, that we belong to the earth and she belongs to us as a mother belongs to her loving children.

But all she says is, “Building?  I have a project that needs a builder!”

Things Work Out.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Two days later, I am sitting in a living room with a team of caring people, and we are planning a transformation:  Shed to Home.  

The dandelion, the lion, the mother, the green man, and his daughter, the singer.  The latter two will be living in this tiny home.  He and I will be working together, with help if we need it.  There is a budget, there is a will, and there is, strung between everyone present, enough knowledge and experience to pull it off.  Because this group knows that Things Work Out.  They believe it and they call it in and they trust, and sitting among them, I remember that it is true.

We looked at the greenman’s hand-drawn blueprints, made some maths, talked about materials, and planned to reconvene on site and plan again, to get to work. The feeling was of potential, of fresh starting, of a believed-in beginning.  

We arrived at the shed together, dandelion, lion, greenman, and myself.  Dandelion and lion are partners, and they live across the street, underneath impossible stone holding and hanging and ruling this hidden valley.  Walking from place to place is to pass the organic farm that is devoted lovingly to weeds.  Specifically.  Intentionally. 

Bees love weeds.  Your liver, your eyes, your connective tissues, the spring in your step, the easy calm of restful sleep - loves weeds.  And the earth loves weeds.  So they are grown, they are tended, they are harvested, and the good word about them is spread.  

Ironic beyond imagining, the next-door neighbor has been, for decades, a pesticide company, family-owned, and committed to the poison chemical that they built their lives around.  Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

The true and full story of that is beyond my telling, but in short, the dandelion spent decades in quiet and good-willed effort to win over these people, to change their minds, to encourage them away from the active poisoning of the valley, of the community, of the earth.  And after much and more than can be told, that family moved away, took their chemicals with them, and sold that land…to the weeds-farm.  The fence was opened up, permanently; the mushroom-mulch was put down; the students of tending the earth moved into the house, and a long-sought feeling of ease and connection settled onto an old border in a silent war zone, where diversity and healing sat opposed to homogeny and decline.  

The shed was on the other side of the fence.  We were embarking upon a rebirth here.

The dandelion and lion were voices of the land, of the long view.  They aren’t going anywhere, and are deeply invested in the evolution of the land.  The greenman is moving in to the tiny house with the singer.  The mother is, in so many ways, the one in charge.  She is an elder, and has made a life of growing and tending that which serves life and love and the earth and the good people.  She saves and spends, and grows the loving potential of those around her with her book-keeping, scheming, and life of experience.  She is an elder and an activist, and does not want to be in front of the curtain.  We’ll leave her in the background, working her magic in privacy.  

And then there’s me.  I’m the hired gun.  I have no skin in the game, so to speak, and I’m supposed to know what the hell I’m doing.

That’s what I think, anyways.  In spite of my own words and the team’s eager acceptance of my help.  

I told them what I know.  I told them what I don’t.  I told them what I can do on my own.  I told them what I can do when I have more heads to put together.  I was honest and earnest and really, that should take care of that feeling that crops up where I feel like I should already know how to do it, where I should not make a mistake of inexperience.  

So the four of us stand in the shed and we talk things through.  What does the frame of the building need to strengthen it?  We want to poke big holes in it for windows, for a sliding glass door.  We want to secret away storage in the rafters, we want to insulate the hell out of it, we want to make the building square (enough) and plumb (enough) and level (yeah, right).  

And each of these things takes many steps, and what comes first?  And what way shall we do it?  And what materials shall we use?  And what tools are available?  And what about that first step again?  And what if we do it differently?  Again, again, again.  

Sometimes there is a wishful thought that is unrealistic.  Sometimes there is not enough knowledge supporting a dream.  We have to piece together a path from four different visions, four different protectors who aren’t always protecting the same thing.  

At length, we began.  2x4s were bought, the softest nails I’ve ever smacked sideways, and we went about reinforcing the frame.  

The next day, we had another meeting.  Minutes and more and ideas and consultation and collaboration and creation and an hour has passed and the dandelion and lion have other things to do today, and the greenman and I have more to do.  

We insulate with blue-jean material.  It is thick and blue and entirely not fiber glass, for which I am thankful.  We tried to cram way too much of it in the ceiling.  We installed it in places that we should have waited on.  We had to take pieces out, put them back in, and take them out again.  

The next morning, the four of us met again.  Will we cut out joists to make room for the bunk bed?  Will we need to reinforce where we’ve removed wood?  Will we add a beam?  Will we add metal brackets?  What windows can be scavenged used?  What windows will we need to buy new?  

Morning meetings and incremental progress.  

And somewhere along the way, I started to realize, I knew enough.  I knew enough to do the math, check my work, measure five times and cut once, and more or less, for better or for worse, I knew what to do.  

In the evening (or sometimes over coffee in the morning), I would read through the appropriate section of my giant McGraw/Hill “CONSTRUCTION” textbook that I found in the goodwill.  It wasn’t exactly Construction For Dummies, but more like Construction For Someone Who Has Done Most Things Having To Do With Building A House But Wasn’t Paying Much Attention And Maybe Didn’t Think It Would Matter Later And Was Definitely A Teenager.

The day that I cut the walls open for the first window, I felt like a god.  

Weather was coming in the next day, and I had a plan for weather-proofing it, and the sun was shining for a few moments, which was very important for the caulk to set up before the winter storm blew in.  I drew plans, I measured, and I got out the saws-all, and I cut a giant hole in the building.  

We set the window in the opening.  It fit.  It actually fit.  Joyful surprise.

The second window was over twice the size of the first.  An improbable hole, weather coming in overnight (again), time to move, time to do it right the first time.  And it worked.  Incredulous glory.  I can do anything.  I’m getting a head of steam, and I’m ready to make some decisions.

Less morning meetings.  More progress, setbacks, re-dos, and good looking results.  The greenman and I are working well together, and we are communicating.  He, through his deep brown skin, brief-but-braided beard, boonie hat, snowboard pants, and large corduroy jacket.  Lots of communicating.  And when I say working well together, I don’t mean working easily.  We are working hard, and we are fighting for every inch.  The issue is an honest one.  It’s one of language.  

He speaks english, but it is not his first language.  I do not speak spanish, and it is his first language.  The process of communicating practical, specific plans, directions, requests for help, and the million small things that must be done, I take for granted.    I’ve been working with amazing teams of nature-connection mentors for years, and we speak the same language, be it linguistic, philosophical, and industry-jargon.  This is different.  

The greenman is an artist, and this shed is not just something we are building, we are building his home, and his daughter’s.  I want things done well, safely, efficiently, and under budget.  I have a fierce devotion to the good will of the mother who is not only writing my paycheck, but is tending the longest view, the well-being of so many in this community.  

So we are sometimes protecting different things.  We are sometimes not easily understood by each other.  And we are not always at our best. 

We get tired.  The days get long.  We don’t take many breaks, because we are driven.  And so it goes, and so we take two steps forward, then one step back to plan the next step.  

Sometimes it takes many plannings to make the next step.  

 

We have to shovel the snow to get in the door some days.  

We have to shovel the path to get to the door some days.

We have to cut wood inside because the snow is blowing sideways some days.  

The snow is melting and the water is everywhere.

We have to dig an electrical ditch in the melting snow.  It is full of mud.  I am full of mud.  I am bringing mud up from three feet down and putting it on snow four feet high.  I am digging a seven foot ditch.  

The snow melts and the hail comes.

We start installing the wooden walls.  

I am the cut man.  And the install man.  I ask for help from the greenman, but this is the part that I know, and I muddle through but with a certainty for what I need to do this right.  

I make a thousand measurements, hundreds of cuts.

I draw angles and make hidden cuts that let pieces fit together invisibly.  

I am proud of these joints. 

I imagine his daughter dreaming up at the wood grain of her bedroom loft, tracing lines and wondering at the way the world fits together in the way that only the young can.

I am a child of a wooden house, and I remember those dreaming moments with fierce love.  

The world works.  I read it in the wood grain.

And Things Work Out.  

-.-.-.-.-.-.-

There is a porthole window in the bunk bed loft.  The window came when a friend rolled into town wanting to gift that window to the community.  It had been on his boat, a seafaring direct-action machine, one of the vessels responding to the Exxon Valdez spill.  The day that we needed a window to install, he gifted us the window.  Things Work Out.

When the second-hand sliding glass door was set in place, it slid evenly through its track, in spite of the floor slanting.  Things Work Out.

When the casing was put on the windows, they were glorious.  When the trim went onto the door, it looked positively snazzy.  

And when the floor was fitted together, it was done.

Done enough for now.  Done enough to move in. 

There are images that come when I think of those winter-into-spring months working in that secret, improbable valley.  Of the friendly, slow meetings of the students living in the house nearby.  Some days their class was on the land, tending, learning, moving their bodies barefoot.  One of them is flying back to Wales this very day.  Their course is run, same as mine.  
The sun on the bulbous cliffs, the slow thawing of the lake we call after the turtles.  I saw an eagle eating fish frozen in that ice.
The wind in the morning, every morning, from ten to twelve.  Then a lull.  Every day.
The lake of thawed snow.  I worried that it would overtake the shed.  It never did.
The deep trenches of tire ruts in the snowpacked driveway.  The potholes left after.
The first aspen buds.  The catkins.  The pollen.  The bloom and smell of spring.
The big, black dog, the greenman’s familiar, like a wolf and a demon in his face.  He guards and he grows to trust you.  He sits in the way of the saw and he is not allowed inside once the floor starts to go it.  I learn how to call him back when he goes off barking at a neighbor.  I can make the sounds of his master, which are spanish words I do not know and sounds that are not words at all and he looks at me with a small betrayal every time I do, as if I should not be able to control him so well.  
The greenman’s daughter, the singer.  She is a slight, almost-teen, perhaps a just-teen, and she is full of the loving wonder at the world, the skeptical glance from under an even brow, and a child still bursts through her legs as they run with the big black dog through the field.  

And greeting the greenman every morning.  Learning to share and to be clear and to build a home together.  

-.-.-.-.-.-

I am coming out of those months like an animal emerging from a burrow of hibernation.  I am surprised to see the world around me, and to find that it contains things that I want to do and that I love.  

Which is to say, while I was building this tiny home, I was exhausted.  I would come home and sleep on my face.  By the end, I had learned to wash my face after work, because the sawdust in my eyes added ten years of tired.  

I didn’t wake up and play music.  I woke up, made lunch, and went to work.  

I didn’t burn wood when I got home.  I obsessed about the next detail of the building and passed out.  

It was during this job that the open mic died.  That was sad for me, tragic and unlooked for, and isn’t to be told of here, except to say that I honestly hardly noticed.  I missed it, but only in the way that someone can miss something that they don’t have time for anyways.  

This job taught me about balance in a new way.  My hummingbird dives into my passions are sustainable because they are brief.  To take on something like this was to be consumed.  I am working out how to be involved and not submerged.  

Perhaps it is with habits, with daily practices.  Perhaps it is with boundaries.  Perhaps these are the same things.  

So, I am back.  I am here, and the snow has finally melted from the north slope of that secret valley.  And I have music coming out of my fingers, I have words that spin in my head until they jumble out in some order or another.  I hope that fire comes next.  And a thousand other plans and schemes that are narrowing themselves and funneling towards something that I pray is all-encompassing in its balance, in its ease, in its worthy striving, and in its transmission from me to you to the good of all.  

There is always more to say, but this is where I leave.  There is a potluck to go to. There is a carpet to roll on, in a room of friends, and maybe, another job to be had.  One with balance.  

It’ll work out.  

Animas River Valley,
February - April, 2019