For the first time since I started the blog, I have no idea what to write. So, I’m putting on some Van Morrison and pulling out Bill Bryson. Not knowing what to write never seems to stop Bill. He dared write A Walk in the Woods about hiking the entire length of the Appalachian Trail after admitting he drove part of it and hiked the rest with his incredibly out-of-shape hiking companion, Stephen Kratz. If Bryson can be a naturalist, then there’s no reason I can’t be a sustainable-living guru, gas-guzzling seven-passenger van and all.
No airs, nobody to knock you down. Just doing. Always putting one foot in front of the other. I flip through The Lost Continent, looking for something funny, but instead, a quotation I find triggers what I really want to say. The quotation goes like this:
On another continent, 4,000 miles away, I became quietly seized with a nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him (pg 12).
(Grandpa Joe on the ATV with Everest near the front gate to Dry Creek)
Foolish or not, that is why I’m returning home to our land at this time. I lost both my dad and step-dad in less than the space of a year. I’m not depressed, but I’m ultra aware something is gone that can never be replaced. And yet somehow I also know something good is ready to grow in that space. You shouldn't foolishly try to fill voids to dull the pain, but you shouldn't ignore strong impulses either. A void is a fertile space for universes to unfold, but timing is everything. With time the wound will close and there will be nothing to occupy that space. William Least Heat-Moon wrote Blue Highways in such an empty space. Had he waited, it simply would not be the same book.
I’ve learned that from poems. What is a life, but a poem in progress? If everything is planned, it grows stagnant. Sometimes impulse is the best of who we are.
Anyway, my dream hobby farm was my step-dad’s dream towards then end of his life. So, Grandpa Joe, this foolish act is for you. I can never thank you enough for the life, love and example you’ve given me.
(Grandpa Joe, Rio & Everest near the front gate to Dry Creek)
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