Flying the Coop

We'll be gone on a trip from the 19th until Feb 2 or so. Can't say exactly where but one thing's for sure: it won't be cold.

The Fire Demon

My heart is still pounding. The awesome power of the fire beast, the heat and the helplessness I felt was something truly frightening.

Some months ago, my friend and contractor Grant came over with his helper Ralph to do some work in the barn. The product of their labor was a pair of dead flat, laser-leveled new floors capable of supporting a Sherman tank or a 12 inch table saw, which ever came first. When they were done we had a pile of old timber that once comprised the tack room, or “granary” as Grant termed it.

The woody remains of the granary were put in the field, south of the born. Out here, you call it the born, not barn. And out here, your don’t call the trash company to take away stuff like a 25 foot long pile of old wood. If it’s big, you deal with it yourself. Like burn it.

This pile of dirty nail-filled old lumber had been awaiting a cold wet day for burning. I was content to wait until the grass was soaked, or covered in snow, or until a downpour.

That is, until friend and master farmer Dave noted that he had to plow the grass under soon if we’re going to put in oats come spring. “It has to rot, before we can we can plant oats.” said he. “Otherwise we’ll get too many weeds.”

One thing is connected to another thing it seems, in farming as in much of life. I’d asked Dave to plant wheat in our fallow fields. When I asked him if he’d like to have the wheat from our fields, in exchange for straw bales, he treated me to one of his sweet, patient smiles. “Hey buddy,” he grinned. “We can’t plant wheat here, not now. You’re way too late!”

Turns out that you have to plant wheat in the last days of autumn, well before winter comes. Who knew? By the time the hay farmer who’d been cutting the field, decided he didn’t want our second-class grass, it was too late.

I must have looked pretty depressed, because then Dave said, “But we could plant oats in the Spring!”

Oats are good. They’ll grow quickly, in Spring. And best of all it gets harvested in the form of grain and straw bales. Dave will get the fine oat grain for his animals, and I’ll get the straw bales.

I felt a twinge. Not a burst of delight at the prospect of getting a nearly unlimited supply of free straw bales, but of fear. Because of Randall.

Randall, my indomitable and highly knowledgeable next door neighbor, had once told me in great and deeply disparaging detail, about the former owners of our place, who had burned some wood in the very same field, in the same place as my pile, and nearly caused a forest fire.

“They lit a fire when they shouldn’t have. And that fire spread out into the field and ran like murder towards our fields. I wasn’t home so my wife Gladys got out the tractor and ran it around the field, turning over the earth to stop the fire. And she stopped it!”

Knowing how particular Randall is about his land, having his land cut up like that must have been similar to having one’s skin flayed.

I am afraid of Randall. The idea of burning up my own field, much less letting the fire get to his, just was too horrible to contemplate. I had decided that the only way to prevent this was to wait until a fire-proof (i.e. totally cold and wet) day came along.

Yet I had to fire that wood, since it was sitting in the middle of our (future) oat field.

Dave offered to cut a firebreak with his tractor and tiller, in a large circle surrounding the wood .

Out there, in the field, was a bonfire in the making, firebreak all around. I hemmed and hawed all morning, as the morning dew slowly dried off.

I decided to burn it. Checked to be sure there was no strong wind. Poured kerosene all over.

Applied match.

Within ten minutes, that old wood was burning like hell’s own fires transplanted onto the surface of the world.

Fire when released, is a terrifying, unstoppable monster. If you’ve never seen a big fire out of control, you haven’t seen the fire fear demon that lives deep in our psyches.

The heat was unbearable. It was so hot that wet grass five feet away ignited. The fire demon grew larger and hotter.

Licking, crawling, unstoppable flames burned the grass and moved quickly to the edge of Dave’s firebreak. I had no way to slow the unapproachable, frighteningly voracious fire. My heart was slamming like two sledgehammers. I was, to be honest. terrified...


... to be continued

Contrails

Going out to feed the chickens yesterday, I glanced up to see that the sky had become a gigantic blackboard with long lines crisscrossing from one side of the horizon to the other.

Around 7:30 AM, numerous jets fly over the farm at high altitudes, flying mostly west. At 7:40AM I counted more than 10 at once. At no other time does this seem to happen.

Their icy contrails are like massive sculptures in the sky. Yet these huge forms decay and disappear within half an hour, leaving the eternal sky. The way these lines trace and form beautiful, or disturbing backgrounds to the prosaic scenery fascinates me. I feel awed by the immense power of the contrails, which are extremely large but very far away (30,000 feet up in the air or about five miles).

These absolutely straight lines seem at once foreign to a medium which is anything but linear or geometric, and made of it since being water vapor, contrails are literally clouds. They look pencil-drawn. One line made a scissors cross behind an electrical wire, forming double arrowheads that face each other. Surprising to see such geometry in the normally soft sky.

In one image, the sky is converted into a minimalist canvas, divided by a single severe stroke. I think about the speed of the jet, about 570 mph. That line races across the sky. Despite the formality of the composition, the line seems comical, like a series of cartoon exhaust puffs.

In a way these contrails are technological graffiti on a massive scale - aside from the unusual geometries involved, the sky also seemed marked and scarred by them. At a lower angle, the angle and size of the trails made it almost seem like the sky was falling into the edge of the horizon.

Over the barn, an explosion of lines placed alarming exclamation points, or perhaps an aerial Statue of Liberty crown, over the sturdy dowager building. I shot one frame without a contrail, as contrast to all this drama. And another, with a faint contrail faintly behind a tiny morning moon lurking behind the branches of a walnut tree.

More images at Contrails.

Fog

The fog just arrived, descending rapidly over an otherwise sunny day. In the late afternoon the air was overcast, an hour later it was distinctly foggy. Before long, a deep and mysterious fog had surrounded every object within perception. I stepped outside to blanket myself in the silence.

The mercury vapor lamp that illuminates the farmyard after sundown had switched on, and had become a moon, casting a frosty, crystalline light into the dense air, and limning the inky dark branches of a nearby walnut tree with surfaces of bluish glow. Stepping slightly to one side, so the light was behind the tree trunk, increased the spectral effect. Inside the bowl created by the branches was a luminous spherical glow of steely cold, yet oddly comforting light. My own private moon dog, I thought.


Behind me, the spring house lay crouched into it’s bank, like an ancient building slowly sinking into a Irish bog. On either side, two huge walnut trees reached upward, their branches like a thousand arms eerily reaching toward a dark sky, like hundreds of devils at worship, but frozen in time. The fog carries sound extremely well but no sounds came, making the silence a deep cavern of acoustic space. The bluish glow in the background replaced the familiar detail of trees and bushes sitting on the rising hill behind, which had the slightly unsettling effect of pushing the powerful trunks and grasping branches forward yet keeping them flat, in silhouette.

The fog became still denser and it seemed, more quiet. Behind me was the pond and I turned, and walked toward it. By this time the fog had painted out the entire background including Shade Mountain, the nearby hills, the fields in front, even our own fields. The treeline just beyond the pond just barely be seen, against a hazy deep blue urple backdrop. It was as if everything further than 100 feet was replaced with an out of focus curtain.

The trees became mysterious and important. The water was still and glasslike. My imagination conjured beauties behind the curtain, and imagined that ghosts and flying wraiths could come flying up towards me, like a scene from Harry Potter. I felt odd emotions.

I love the fog here. Day or night, it always profoundly alters perception. It seem that subtracting the background or obscuring it, changes one’s perception of things nearby. It creates a new context for the familiar, one possessing both more depth and less information.

To balance and fill this void of visual information the mind seems to activate, and within foggy scenes, people seem to sense beauty, or threat, or insecurity, apparently dependent , Rohrshach-like, upon their psyches.

It is tempting to think of fog as a metaphor for ignorance, and a clearly lit day as a correlative metaphor for clarity of perception and vision. Yet this leaves out an important function of the mist, for fog, like mystery, engages our imagination. The crisp clarity of sunny daylight turns the world into a knowable, measurable, apprehensible mass of detail. We lose all the magic.

Conversely, when we’re presented with a mystery (or a partial truth surrounded with confusion) with a tantalizing promise of answers just around the corner, we are drawn into conversation with it. We yearn to solve the mystery. We supplant the missing information, meaning or understanding with myths and symbols of our own invention. And if we cannot solve the mystery we worship it.

In November 2006, Wired magazine devoted an issue to a subject they termed “The New Athiests.” In the lead article, “Church of the Non-believers,” author Gary Wolf presents the argument that logically, religion makes no sense. There is a simple clarity to this argument that appeals to me. Yet like the flattening snapshot quality of a bright day, something deeper is missing.

It might be possible to be satisfied intellectually with an argument that dispenses with the idiocies of religious dogma, ritual that mainly serves to elevate and distance the priest from parishioner, and blinding obsession that has led to more human death and misery than any other source. Even so, the argument doesn’t explain the process of imagination and the function of creativity. I feel the need for a more deeply satisfying engagement with life, and a way to admit the mysteries of origin, perception and awareness.

Imagine a Mass, being said in a large, ancient cathedral. Censers swinging slowly, dispensing incense, the priestly group advances to the altar. Mysterious words and concepts beyond understanding float into the space, which is adorned with impossible images of perfect creatures and angels, with reflective gold glints, and scintillating bits of colored light streaming in through a rose window. The contemplation of such rich pageantry is somehow satisfying on a non-verbal level, perhaps because the twinkle and pomp engages both the sub-conscious and the imagination.

When the mind is deprived of a complete and full answer, the imagination goes into gear. When the fog shrouds familiar objects, or when snow obscures the once familiar road, our subconscious supplies answers.

Similarly, when out of place information is added to a scene, especially light, it triggers emotional and sometimes spiritual responses. Light rays (formed by openings in the clouds) become known as “God’s rays” and confer a kind of majestic blessing over an otherwise ordinary scene.



“Imagination and “subconscious” are similar but not interchangeable subjects —I think the imagination is a conscious view screen of the subconscious process. It is the method of the sub-conscious to float visions and symbols, word fragments, emotional sensations and bits of taped experience to stimulate response, stimulate instinct and suggest solutions. We see this cornucopia through the imagination, and sense it through emotion.

When presented by a view of the pond that differed from the “norm,” and my imagination began throwing up ideas about flying ghosts, it would have been tempting and “normal” to put such thoughts out of mind, to suppress them. This time however, I did nothing and instead of pushing them away I tried to open and embrace them. I allowed images, emotions and ideas to flow through me as water passes under a bridge. Looking at the blue-violet mist, I simply enjoyed the show and laughed inwardly at myself for the crazy things the mind sometimes does.

After a bit, the purplish haze behind the treeline simply became a purplish haze. It wasn’t possible to clearly focus on the trees, so I simply enjoyed their arborescent mass as a bristly brushstrokes against the background. The pond was glass smooth and only reflected more of this out-of-focus impressionism. The gentian landscape fused into a unity, and seemed peaceful.

That’s when I think I saw it most clearly.

My Cabin in the Woods

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to build a cabin. A nice, old-fashioned cabin, tucked into some picturesque site. My cabin would have a large hearth, Hudson’s Bay blankets on the rope-strung beds, maybe some kind of rustic rug on the floor, and would be cozily primitive. I picture getting up on a cold morning and making ranch-style coffee in an old chipped enamel coffee pot, heated on some left-over coals in the hearth.

I’m not sure where this comes from but I suspect it has to do with my parents. Their generation, at least in the Colorado Rockies where they went to college, met and fell in love, was into cabins. Somehow the quiet dreams of one generation pass down to the next in an invisible cascade, filling our ways and attitudes almost without our knowing it.

One of the ways my child brain was filled was through art and drawing. I have memories as a six-year old watching my Dad draw his cartoons and drawing fancy letters with his Speedball pens, going to watercolor classes later, and learning from my mother to draw and observe. We also had a cabin, and spent a lot of time there.

I don't draw much any more, and shoot a lot of photographs instead. Building skill as a photographer is a complex, demanding process, and once in awhile I'm pleased with the results. This is rewarding. But something's been missing.

In his wonderfully competent book, “The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa,” Michael Kimmelman talks about the emergence of amateur photography when George Eastman came out with his Brownie camera, and how it replaced the fine art of sketching.

“Before cameras, educated, well-to-do travelers learned to sketch so that they could draw what they saw on their trips, in the same way that, before phonograph recordings, bourgeois families listened to music by making it themselves at home, playing the piano and singing in the parlor. Cameras make the task of keeping a record of people and things simpler and more widely available, and in the process reduced the care and intensity with which people needed to look at the things they wanted to remember well.”

Echoing this way of seeing and of recording sight by drawing, my mother wrote to her mother often and later, to us children, and frequently included her own drawings of things she had seen. Perhaps her desire to draw rather than photograph stemmed from an earlier cultural prototype that came from pre-brownie times.

In Kimmelman's view, to draw is to see more acutely, and thus experience our surroundings with greater intensity and authenticity. My sister gave me his book for Christmas this year, which increasingly seems prophetic. My mother gave me her treasured copy of Sara Midda’s book, “South of France – A Sketchbook,” full of hundreds of little sketches and observations, and a blank sketchbook. Quite independently, my brother also gave me a beautiful leather-bound journal, ready to be filled with drawings, thoughts and collages.

Perhaps these vectors of thought and intention reflect a greater process of handing down ideas and attitudes about life, art and observation, from ancestors who drew and wrote to record their thoughts and experiences. Perhaps it's also a message, alerting me to the possibilities and imperatives of opening my own eyes to see, observe and experience in an more authentic way.

It is both frightening and exhilarating to contemplate making little sketches of my surroundings, instead of using the camera. Today’s brownie camera is an incredibly competent machine of optics, digital processing, software and image processing all contained in a small portable package about the same size as the old box camera — but with skilled industrial design in the form of hand grips and display graphics. It is so easy to use, and I find my thought process being that of instant comprehension and almost instant manifestation of the image I see in my head. Instant concept, instant results.

I wonder if all this speed and processing is but a complex smokescreen, that comes between me and the world. Perhaps that’s why sketching seems so frightening – I must come out of headspace and really look at things the way they are.

I’ve long thought that anyone can learn to draw competently, since drawing is about 95% observation and 5% manual skill. If you can write your own signature, you have enough manual skill to draw, I’ve often said. But that belies the hard work of observation.

That hard work lies behind the fear of drawing that I feel. Yet I’m drawn to it, and want to draw now. It seems simpler, more authentic, more difficult and probably in the end, more sustaining. I justify these thoughts by saying to myself that if I draw, I will learn to see better and that will inform my photography. But I know that there’s something more going on, something mysterious, ineffable and primal.

Similarly, this deep desire to build and spend time in a small, hand-built cabin somehow connects to a basic vein of desire to connect to texture, to be engaged in authentic process. I feel a deep need to shuck the plastic of civilization in order to get back to a kind of world-contact that is only dimly remembered, in large part through the passed-along memories of my ancestors.

Not surprisingly, one of my most treasured books is “Your Cabin in the Woods,” by Conrad Meinecke. First published in 1945 (the era of my parent’s youth), this book is a handbook of methods and plans for cabins from the extremely basic to the large lodge, but all made by hand, of native materials. It’s extensively illustrated in one of my favorite styles, the romantic pen and ink style of travel posters and stories of the West. Crooked pine trees in dark black provide background for quaint drawings of secure-looking cabins, each with a curl of lazy carefree smoke rising from the chimney. Just looking at these drawings gives me a feeling of safety and contentment.



The book was also given to me by my sister, in a Christmas past. It’s been on my bookshelf, close to hand, ever since. Now that I have some land and maybe enough trees to build a cabin, it may be possible to manifest the dream of building my cabin in the wooods. It will take much work. I wonder if I’ll have the fortitude to build it. Cutting trees and fitting logs, even with chainsaws is hard, slow work. So is building a fireplace and chimney of rock.

I’ve selected a little spot where the woods give out onto a meadow overlooking Shade Mountain. Perhaps by going very slowly, one bit at a time, I can confront the work and skills needed to build it. It would be wonderful to complete the cabin in 2009, which would be 30 years since my vision was given form through the book my sister gave me, back in 1979.

If a dream or vision lasts for 30 years, it must be real, and is thus worth respecting. In the process of trying to build it, maybe I’ll learn something about facing hard work and challenge, and why I love this land so much.

Another Window

Looking out another window, this time the computer, I revisit a favorite silly site, jacksonpollack.org, that allows anyone to make colorful "painting" in moments. It's great as a distraction when things get too serious, or just to stimulate the mind. Or do like I do and goof around just for the fun of it. It's a little addicting and sometimes the results are fantastic!

Soft Light Through the Window

This winter has been like Narnia, where weather comes in cold or warm at the whim of a magician. In Denver and points West people huddle under major storms, while we enjoy 50 and 60 degree weather. Freshly washed sheets are drying on the line, undulating like horizontal flags in a mild breeze.

Peering through the old glass of the kitchen window, I can see the old walnut tree next to the smokehouse. A squirrel flits across the grass, scampers up the side of the smokehouse and disappears under the eave.

The Tree in the Basement

If you were to place a marble on the floor of the hallway outside the door of any bedroom on the third floor, it would roll towards the center of the hallway and almost all the way up to the other side, then back. It would roll back and forth, assuming it did not fall down into the stairwell, until reaching a resting point in the middle of the hallway.

The floor is not flat. Without having to do the marble test you can see evidence of this looking at the door of the bedroom. The old-timey box lock on the door does not match up to the latch on the wall by a good inch. How it closes smoothly is beyond me but it does. Another way to tell is to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Like in a slightly zany funhouse the floor isn't quite where you expect it to be, and while half-asleep, one tends to weave and reach out for wall or banister on the way. More than one person has laughingly said they felt a bit like a drunk walking down and back.

The floor below is just the same. And if you go all the way to the basement, aka living room, you will see in the middle of the room, what appears to be a large tree trunk, stripped of bark. This sturdy trunk holds up the center of the floor for the entire house. It does its job well, but whoever put it into place, left the floor low by about 2 inches.

The tree is not at all in the same style as the other woodwork in the house which is generally of high quality and detail. It’s simply an old tree, stuck in the middle of the floor, holding up a massive beam.

Actually, I should say a pair of beams. The entire house-wide cross beam is comprised of two huge oak beams, joined by a craftsmanlike scarf joint, pinned with a very large hardwood dowel. The dowel is actually what woodworkers refer to as a draw-pin. It’s pointed on one end, an essential aspect of how a draw-pin works.

To draw two pieces of wood together and hold them there, the old carpenters first chiseled a square hole into the end of one beam, and a matching square tenon on the other. Then they drilled a hole in the first beam, through the side of the hole and another hole on the side of the matching tenon. The tenon fits into the square hole (the mortise). The hole in the tenon piece was offset from the other by a small amount. When the pin is driven in, the pointed tip finds it’s way into the center of the offset hole and draws the pieces together as it is pounded in.

It takes a year per inch of thickness for wood to naturally dry. As wood dries, it shrinks. The original carpenters didn’t have five years to wait for a five-inch thick beam to dry before using it, so they took advantage of the shrinking effect. They knew that the draw pin would pull the ends of the two beams together, and that over time as the wood dried, the pieces would shrink, making the joint ever tighter and stronger. Today it might be impossible to drive the pin out.

But this leaves a question. If the beam sagged, and had to be supported, what went on before the tree trunk was placed in support? Was there a time when the house threatened to fall into itself? Or was there just a gradually bending and bowing of the floors until one day one of my predecessor owners deemed it time to put a stop to the movement?

We may never know, but one thing’s for sure — that tree in the basement is a very important piece of wood.