hurricane jacob...

it sort of seems fitting to post this now, despite being nearly a month in the making. why? columbus day weekend found temps in the 80's in new england. a few weeks later we got snow, before halloween. at least it won't be 80 tomorrow night, all those munchkins in their costumes and the like...

at any rate, the photos are fair at best, partly due to not having a great camera, partly due to not having a set of "before" shots, and mostly, who really looks at pictures of the woods?! my cabin is surrounded by woods, it's were i will live again soon. got some details to work out, but rest assured, i'll be resting assured up there eventually, if not soon...

the cabin sits catty-corner to the four directions, so most of the big thinning has happened on the south corner, and to the west. bring in more sun, thin out the conifers, and give the deciduous trees the room they need to create a good summer canopy.

this is the third and most substantial cut to date. the first was during the first year of me being there and just had to get a ring of pines down around the inside of the drive and yard. probably 5-8 trees in all, it seemed horrendous but brought in a bunch of light and air... the bark is well off those trees and they are just long sponges in the yard, holding the line of where the forest once came to. the second thin was about 5 or 6 years ago, essentially in the same area but deeper in, between the yard and the drive. a good 10 trees came down, again opening the southern sky for light and even more air. many of those trees are laying where they were felled, bark still on them, fanning out away from the house. I cleared the ones that were across the drive...

this round is going to take a bit more clean up. don't be fooled by how chill the guy below looks, we dropped a mess o wood!

you might get a little sense of the light behind him, more to the left of the picture. to the right and above him is the next round of cuts...

on the other hand, the below picture is the drive, house in on the left at about 10 o:clock. you can see a fair bit of light on the upper left, much the idea. nope, not driving into the cabin on the next trip up, maybe not the spring either! there were a couple of considerable white pines, totally worth milling, just a matter of making time and money to do so. jacob likes the idea of using the lumber right there on the property, board and baton siding for the house, lumber for a structure down at the chicken shack pad...

i couldn't agree more!

it was definitely strange dropping hard woods. i will be needing fire wood in the next couple of years so that is going to be nice, knowing i can harvest my own. most of the hardwoods are all straggly from tying to keep up with the softwoods. long and lanky, bendy and likely to not last long without the integrity of the stand.

it was a little unnerving, hearing jacob talk about what could stay and why. i knew he wasn't into just cutting anything down, and i also knew he had nothing to gain. had i hired a forester, the more he takes out, the more he makes, quality of trees as well. most lots don't cut down the crap, they glean as much of what they can, leaving a little crap behind so as to not look like a clear cut (but let's face it, doesn't that actually look a bit worse?!)...

it was cool learning that while a white birch has appeal (nice bark, lovely fall yellow, not a ton of foliage) the yellow last longer. cool, so that adds a new angle to what stays and goes. birch split easily and burn nicely, if but a little quickly...

we talked too about beech, and how many have a blight. we looked at what the stand had and thinned out the beat up ones, opting to see what the smooth barked, non blighted specimens might offer in the future. it'll make great firewood someday if they begin to fail. great fall copper colors too, and that lovely light green all summer. since i was learning about all this, i had to take jacob down into the thick of the property, on the way to the frog pond, to show him another beech. it obviously got topped in that big ass ice storm, what 15 years ago? it has a very rough bark on it, that's the blight says jacob. i learned how important the beech are in the forest for all the nuts they produce, and wondered if the one were standing under still did. i couldn't say for sure, it wasn't this year/currently, but they often alternate. i asked him, so then this is what, 30 or 50 year old tree? he shrugged, looking up, smile growing, "I dunno, probably more like 60 or 80..." and he chuckled when i practically started crying and told him i could practically smooch him for such wonderful news... stay tuned for a shot of the old buzzard!
cedar and 'cob (jacob's son) quickly popped out of the house once the saws stopped whirring and the trees stopped falling. they got busy right away with helping of clearing some debris and eager to hand saw and trim away in the rearranged environment.

do note the new roofing on the lower section of roof. i had a marathon weekend in august stripping and replacing the roofing on that section, back and front. got the flashing right around the chimney and FINALLY step flashing up against the portion of the cabin that rises another story. been too dang long that i've been flirting with that bit of poor construction i inherited! 30 year shingles, don't think i'll be dealing with that next time, or at least i'll have some significant help, (you listening cedar?!)

our little lumber jacks getting busytown, sharing a ginger ale. me, i could hardly wait to rinse that chainsaw smoke off with a cold beer! it was gorgeous weather, a bit warm for sawing, but hard to complain! the next morning it was more than obvious inside how different the light already was. it'll help keep snow off the house as there is more room for air to move, and it'll bake off nicely now too.

the next trip north will find me bucking up the hardwood and getting it around the corner to the woodpile, for splitting later. i will attempt to get the white pine off the ground, in useable lengths should i get around to milling it. i could easily do some crude milling myself for a few posts and beams, but it would be inefficient and both time and resource heavy. that's for another post, i haven't even cleaned up from hurricane jacob properly yet anyways.

i do know i cleared the yard for a final weed whack and some racking, making spring clean up that much easier

it is hard to admit i wont be up there soon for some months, that just sucks. but it feels like the more i am away, the more i deserve to be there in the future. it makes sense to not buzz all the way up there just to burn wood, coal and propane pretty much constantly only to turn around and reluctantly drive "home"... so for now that is the routine, to spend the winter preparing for the next round of projects, knowing that i am no longer feeling behind, like the cabin is mine and i am in charge, not just scraping along, putting fires out as they rear their heads larger than another...

but aren't just so many fires, and hurricanes, and early snows. it's all just part of the mix

flirting

with nature and avoiding dino-diesel!

i have the great fortune of being able to burn a locally made and reclaimed fuel in my car.

it has been such a great feeling to both support a local business while NOT supporting the vast fossil fuel industry.

yes, biofuels still pump carbon into the atmosphere, no I am not innocent or on a pedestal

i am super psyched though, to be able to lower my impact by getting 50mpg

it's probably the only gamble i take, because around freezing, B100 (one hundred percent biodiesel) will gel, like olive oil in your fridge.

this morning's temperature is very close to that point! I believe the golden piglet will fire up when i hit the mainland in about a half an hour. if not, i'll be late...

a fair gamble consider i don't loose much, maybe a little time at work...

it's that time to hedge the bet and start cutting the biofuel with dino-diesel, it has been well over six months since i have had to, and the summer is when i do the bulk of my driving.

if you live in portland, consider using these guys! home heating fuel deliveries are even available, and this winter for the first time also on peaks island. no, can't use it the house here, but would love to...

gotta scoot, i'll be a little sad as i add a sip of fossil fuel to my tank... and let's see if i get to work on time...

ins and outs and all around

the gray broke yesterday afternoon and while it was nice to see the sun, i sure do love the balance of rain and fog. lush times like this make me both remember and yearn for northern coastal california. i find it so nurturing, feel such a presence and inspiration from green and turgid plant life. you won't find me in the dessert!this week has been a haul, shopping for groceries last night seemed like fun. just out, taking care of things, stocking the larder, preparing for a weekend with cedar and another week of school. (which reminds me, many of you know very little about what i do five days a week, stay tuned for that, it deems its own post!) i am constantly and in new ways amazed at humanity, both for good and ill. while i have been struggling to communicate with some, the ease at which i communicate with others totally baffles me. i don't feel like i have different voices, and love feeling heard, hearing others. i work mostly with children that aren't verbal (for any number of reasons i will explain later) so when i get the chance to at school (in other rooms as we do a fair bit of subbing and helping each other out) i find so much out about myself and the people i am communicating with. communication can be so arduous, even fruitless, and on the other hand/ear, can be so effortless and meaningful!

maybe i should tell you about my greatest wish, strongest fantasy. i don't stay up at night waiting for it to happen, but i do wrack my brain and heart occasionally working to break through those less than effective relationships. i would, perhaps more than anything, love to posses the ability to say the right thing in any given moment, or do the right thing in any given moment since so much of communication isn't even verbal. i have gotten better about shifting my language and message to other's awareness and understanding, language, but that doesn't mean i am effective all the time (lest i calculate the percentage...).

it amazes me that i can miss the mark as often as i do. i try humor, hyperbole, gentle tones, stronger ones, listening, but sometimes just fail to get through and understand. that is perhaps our greatest challenge as adults, as humans, to express ourselves honestly and truthfully and be heard without rocking any boats. given of course the diversity of human experiences, it is nearly impossible to hit every pitch over the fence, to have a meaningful, collaborative and mutually beneficial exchange every time.

it brings to mind a saying/practice, muslim i believe, or at least from that part of the world over there that our government has such a hard time having a peaceful relationship with. during conversation, there are said to be the three gate keepers, three solid pillars of compassionate, careful and effective conversation. when it comes to words, sharing of one's self, is it 1) honest 2) kind 3) necessary?

that of course becomes subjective, to the speaker, to the one spoken to, to both, and to what end? would anything get said if we employed the gate keepers? my gate is pretty wide and pretty fast, so it is easy to loose one, two or even all three of them in the flow. i am also a rather passionate being, so deeply rooted in my own practice that keeping perspective is challenging. these things i know, and it makes connecting with others on a deep level that i am compelled to, challenging to say the least. less can be more, and i have found that when i am trying to make a point, reiterating something, it usually just digs the hole deeper...(care to follow the rabbit? read on!)

so it leads me to wonder about introversion, which i feel is something i struggle with regularly. i used think that it was not a good thing to run to the woods, to live in them, to stay in them. even to be single in a world of people is a form of introversion. as my sister laura said to me a good decade ago (or was it two?) "it is hard for you to be single, alone and communicate with us. you don't have that perspective of someone to bounce things off first, to explore, to create a balance with your thoughts and ideas." she's right, and it is something that plagues me regularly, perhaps even more so now.

it leads me to question how much to interact with people and on what level(s). i don't like to filter despite getting a little better at it. it feels like i am not sharing my true self, that i am not representing myself honestly, and ultimately i don't feel like myself doing it. obviously, the vast majority of people out there really only want to know a fraction of what is happening between my ears, if any of it all. i respect that and work with the balance. fortunately i have gotten better at matching what i say with the contexts i find myself in... surely the room for improvement is the biggest one in the house

what blows my mind though, and is so completely freeing, are those (sadly too) few contexts where i am pretty much me, with very little filtering, if any at all. i feel so light, so alive, so heard, so connected, feel so much exchange, feel so open and able to share that which is coming back at me in real time.

rachel, when we were struggling with our relationship and communication, would regularly point out that i was "big" in my energy, my personality. in most situations that would be a compliment, but when that barrage falls on lives that can't, aren't able to or want to process it, then there is a gulf, a disparity that is hard to span, an abyss essentially. such it is with her and myself, and i have learned to basically share a minute fraction of myself with her. she is greatly relieved of course, as are some of you that only want to know various parts of me. I get that on some levels, but lean towards prefering to be taken as a whole, or not at all...

which is what fascinates me about introversion. when i am with and around people, i feel compelled to interact, to be an interlocutor (to be a participant in discourse), to share the mutual experience/context at hand. of course humans experience these moments differently, i am wordy, prolix even, certainly rather verbal. others are not, and it is hard to balance that, relate to.

when in social situations and others are observing me and hear of or know about my tendencies toward introversion, they are nonplussed, baffled, think i must be pulling their legs. i explain it as such > when around people, i share my experience with others verbally, want to know about theirs, enjoy hearing about and exploring their experience(s). i had to learn how to do so... when alone, i am completely at peace with not communicating, in fact find it rather comforting to not be plugging into others.

humans need interaction, but it is the quality of that interaction that defines the experience. i am edging towards quality, not quantity. i remember very clearly an experience in my undergrad experience up in orono in my mid twenties. i had wiggled my way into a wonderful group of people, many of them from away and largely in the forestry studies. i always felt like an outsider as many of them had bonds that predated our shared days in college, but one night around a fire we were chatting and partying and the like. (thank heavens for those foresters and their fires!) i lived alone and was studying with a very different group of people, largely female and "traditional students" in their early twenties. most of them coming straight from high schools in maine and their families. i wasn't worldly by any means, but had spent a few years poking around out west on my own and interacting with a variety of different contexts, expanding me greatly from my high school and family life in maine. studying humanity and teaching was stretching my mind even more, and while living alone, didn't share much of what was going on with others. we were shooting the shit around the fire and it was a wonderful balance of conversation, about forestry, past experiences of all sorts, music the like. i was having such fun interjecting, starting up new threads at lulls, and didn't realize i had said it a few times when someone around the fire said, "Prescott, you think a lot, don't you?" it was a lovely moment, partly self conscious and partly self confident. what would my answer be but "yes, and check this out" hoping to find more mutual conversational ground that we could all explore and grow from?! yep, i think a lot and forget that not everyone does...

we talked deep into the night, the fire dwindled with the crew and the degrees outside, and i made a copy of probably my favorite 90 minutes of grateful dead that morning, thanks Phred, you were such the man to hang with! (he noted one day driving in his monstrous GMC up the coast to Far Fields as we listened to music, "That's something I love about you Prescott, you really listen to the music, you are right there with them, appreciating so much of what is happening in the music [that context]." we were listening to a jimi hendrix tape, a collection of BBC tracks and outtakes. after blasting out a unique rendition of a song, the tape kept rolling in the studio and jimi rips this little blues riff, just a handful of notes, but totally blissfully and extemporaneously. I was like "Oh Phred man, i love that lick, it's so awesome!" and did a really quick little rewind a couple of times to savor the richness of the sound, the feeling it elicited in me. he loved the lick too, and then shared his appreciation of my appreciation. {and sadly, when that collection of music was remastered and put onto cd, that lick was lost in a quick fade as the song ends and that dangling participle wasn't deemed worthy. oh lordy...})

needless to say, for i digress and diverge, we shared all sorts of conversations and as i left the area for the west coast, lost touch with Phred and the gang (though he did just request a friendship on FB this month!) i didn't connect with someone like that musically until grad school, again, back in orono nearly a decade later. perhaps I will tell you about my experience with sister sarah someday, for it is in keeping with this conversation. we connected deeply on most levels and it was one of those refreshing relationships, a welcome balance to once again, being back in school, this time, completely surrounded by female cohorts!

at any rate, connecting with people has been a challenge for me, in many ways. and being unique, while so many strive to be different, aren't always truly desirous of being different, just not being like everyone else. perhaps those that are truly unique are plagued with the desire to connect with others like them, but find it hard to do so genuinely, as the saying goes, some folk are "one in a million" and when you are looking for some camaraderie and hang time, finding those folk amidst the now seven billion people on Earth is tough...
so anyways, as lavaman (the identity the above ponkin goes by, and has gone by already too soon) spews his fire, so I spew mine. sadly burning some folk along the way, and yet glad to know that there are those that resonate with that which belches forth from my core the same way lava belches forth from Earth's core. it is an adventure to say the least, and my fantasy evades me. i don't have the ability, for all the words and passion that i experience, to connect with so many, and even more tragically, some of those closest to me.

loosing sleep over it won't make it any better, but there are ways in which to cultivate that dream along the way. it isn't as much a dream as it is a hope, for i wouldn't wish for it, thinking that somehow it would magically reveal itself. the irony of the buddhist mentality and practice, for this is what it is, and that isn't the bad news, it simply is what it is. that isn't an excuse, or a cop out, it is an on going attempt to accept what is happening in the moment, from moment to moment, context to context. letting go of understanding that through words evades me, but is part of the exploration.

and so to the woods i'll return but a couple more times if that, at least my favorite place to do so downeast before winter makes it a little ridiculous. in the meantime i look to create such places and practices in the urban structure of modern maine. sometimes alone, and sometimes with others.

if you'll do me the favor, and we cross paths, won't you keep me posted about how much you want to know, about how much you want to hear? perhaps, at your behest, we'll share silence, or at least some quiet? it's nearly impossible for me, but likely part of the missing link...

I was going to tell you ALL ABOUT hurricane Jacob and all that, inspired by tonight's lovely rainy night and everything, but something earlier got my goat. Gotta get that goat on a shorter lead...

So instead I am going to keep it light. Seriously, nothing a little anime and a cyser won't rearrange. Oh, and the gentle warm rain outside. (warm's relative right, you had a hard frost yet?! I've been to those places, but the dragonflies still did business, saw a bat in broad daylight [no, i can't kick them out of the doorshed given the state of the bat population in Maine and elsewhere...] and those crazy "snowflake bugs")

But anyways, many of our Thanksgiving plans are taking shape. Gratitude is a state, you can focus on family, or you can savor each breath. It's a balance just like the seasons, just like our lives. I was thinking about it on the ferry this morning, up in the rain and fog on the top deck, if Universe is perfect, what do all those assholes in the top 1% have to teach us? Did we, the other 99%, just hand them our trust, blindly? The same way we have handed it to western medicine (and @ no surprise, a costly price tag)? It everything is perfect, and there are no mistakes, then the lessons that the crooks teach us might be something like this...

all that evil needs to triumph is for the good to do nothing. where is your good? will it do something to stem the tide?

OCCUPY YOUR OWN BODY

BE AT PEACE IN THE MOMENTS YOU ARE GRACED WITH

OCCUPY ANY STREET THAT DEPRIVES YOU OF YOUR GRANTED RESOURCES AND RIGHTS

BE AT PEACE WITH CIVIL UNREST, IF THAT IS WHAT THEY CALL STANDING UP FOR WHAT YOU KNOW IN YOUR CORE IS SUSTAINABLE

because in your core, just like Earth, a fire burns

she will certainly outlast us, but for now we have a unique opportunity to create a shared experience

or maybe we'll just play along, buy what we think makes us feel good, make excuses that are socially acceptable, and see if there is some sort of reward later

maybe... me, i'm going to occupy my bed and try to keep it light. compared to what was on my mind earlier, i did, so don't sass me!

~p

hands down

The most beautiful autumn weekend by memory. Well, not so much the weekend, a little warm, even swampy to qualify as "BEST EVER" but the drive from Wesley to Unity was, hands down, super ultra amazing!I chose not to take photos while driving so this is the beginning of the adventure...
Stay tuned for Hurricane Jacob evidence. I had some help thinning the woods, this time with another saw, and the chips were flying! 'Cob and Cedar watched from inside, and Cedar admitted that he is a bit like Dogmatix, he doesn't like it when trees come down. He doesn't have a problem when he is the one doing it, but chainsaws (thankfully) put the fear of god in him!

It didn't feel like October, and we barely needed fires, but had a couple outside to herald in the seasonal shift, and that Cedar would likely not be up until his next birthday in a handful of months. It's a bittersweet transition, leaving the p~pad from a stay, buttoning up for the winter.

Alas, such as it is for now. Cedar has some plans though, in fact, he has admitted to having many plans...

Man, tough crowd!

so I have already been spanked for not having updated photos of Cedar and lacking current news. Wow, tough crowd indeed. I didn't realize that shots of summer would be considered such old news. Or a picture from two weeks ago bicycling to the grocery store on the mainland was such old news. Yah, you might have to dig around a little, or take note of the photos posted above the blog...

lest i get spanked again, here is a shot from sunday night, crap it's already monday morning, i hope it's not too old... Cedar came home from Marblehead with a pumpkin, some nice painting and stuff on it, he wanted to get that thing carved up right quick. I made him wait through dinner and then we got busytown. Going to try and upload more photos and the finale, the video. sometimes I think our bandwidth just goes somewhere else late at night, things can just crawl...

denied once, another go...

regardless of the ability to post photos/videos, it was interesting to carve with Cedar. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted. I added a little style, forgoing just the big cutouts and going for some glow as well. He wanted the face to have a beard, and then it even had a special little spout within it. Before we got carving we talked about all the seeds and stuff inside. We had to free them from the flesh, the body of the pumpkin and got some tools. I told him we ought to just get our hands in there and he seemed taken aback by that, like maybe it would be gross or something. I made small mention of my disbelief, a "What?!" and just left it at that. The closer we got to the bottom, the harder is was to pluck the remaining dregs. Next thing you know, Deedles is fully in there, working it with the hand. It is fun to encourage and support all those little steps along the way. I think whether or not he is aware of my awareness and support of those little things, he is encouraged himself, maybe I am making stuff up as a parent, but it seems like he is aware of that process. First he's a little turned off by an idea, then works along side it, not a whole lot of pressure either way, and when he is ready, dives in. Whatever it is, it's fun to be a part of.

(whew, video up, now for one more photo, flirting with bandwidth disaster here... but since I have been talking about the progression!)

dag nab it, one more try the it's just what it is

that's it for now, lava man revealed. i'll try the hand in pumpkin another day, spank me for failing

nothing in particular

so I'm picking up somewhere abouts where I left off this past spring. I don't have much of a sense of time anymore, for plenty of reasons, but technology will guide the filling in of the gaps. Cameras remember when photos are taken and keep them in order accordingly. (and i just discovered I am able to move the photos around in the post once uploaded, it's a simple situation here in google land compared to using the mac software that is now shifting with the onset of iCloud...) At any rate, Cedar and I sometimes have a beverage at Grittys in Portland, waiting for a boat or grabbing a snack. The reason I am mentioning it, and seeing the photo from last spring, he is no longer allowed to sit at the bar. As our bartender said, "When he was little it was like 'Oh, isn't that cute' but now he's more of a child, and we can't have them at the bar." We talked about that with Cedar, that it wasn't personal, it's a rule. Before we picked a different spot to sit, I checked in with the bartender and asked "And the next time he'll be allowed to sit there will be...." and she said "21" and it just was one of those moments. Like that would be a longtime, even though this part has flown already... So we won't be seeing any pictures like the above for a couple decades.

We spend all sorts of time outside, for lots of reasons. The elements don't really stop us, we just adapt and take what there is. At first Cedar was reluctant to where things on his head and hands, but quickly caught on. Now he dons them more as accessories than as functioning clothing, but it simplifies things when he has choices to deal with the weather.

We have created a new area up at the p~pad, I guess I'll see what I can do for visuals with that. This summer we pecked away the edge of the meadow in front of the structure. The forest had been creeping in since I had lived there. I hadn't really noticed and only trimmed a couple things back but began to see the shape of the area changing, and realized I would soon loose the clearing if not acting. Cedar is a good little helper and we would tackle little projects here and there, and we found that as we pushed the forest back some, the little cement pad that was being swallowed suddenly had potential. Cedar wasn't into the chainsaw one day, surprising me, I honored that but mentioned to get to work, really get that area opened up, we would need the real thing. We had been pecking away with pruners, loppers, hand saws and the like. I pressed gently and he relented, I think intimidated by the sound. Down at "the end of the road" this summer he and Cob watched from the safety of the trampoline Jacob and I take down a massive spruce. We had to run a line up into it, we didn't want to drop it in the field or take out a fence line. That is where it wanted to go so they watched us work the tree. I started rocking once the front cut was done and the back started, with wedges. Attached with a long line, I could both see and feel the tree, and just gave it a little more each cycle of me pulling and it rebounding. It was like bodywork, like so many of the things that I play with that balance of thought and feeling. The tree fell right where we wanted it and the boys were delighted. At any rate, Cedar had trepidation about being around the saw, or something, but then once we were equipped with appropriate gear, he watched from safety while I cleaned up the edge of the meadow. Then he got all wound up about taking out one more tree, though we should clear one out between the pad and the meadow. I told him I though we should wait and watch, we could always take it out, but not put it back. He got a little stuck but I think now sees why we left it. We love the "chicken shack pad" and have built a fire ring, had a couple fires there together, even some meals. There's a little table there now, and next year I'll figure out how to tarp the area or build a roof of some sort. Spring isn't a great time to be outside up there so not sure about a screened in area, I looked widely for a screen structure but was not finding something medium sized... July did a number on the insects this year, dried things right out and August and September were easy going outside. We're not talking about blackflies until they come around again in May...

so we are heading up next weekend for a last retreat, a fall session in the woods. Cedar sees what it all means to me up there, it's partly the cabin but really it's the woods and our little spot outside now reenforces that, allows us a way, creates a space to be outside and really feel how enveloped we are by the forest. It is interesting, how it affects people, there were times when Cedar would be quite quiet up there, and I encouraged him to howl at the moon. He wasn't into it, and that was fine. He then heard some other noises, my voice echoed off the house or the edge of the forest on the other side of the meadow. He then started exploring his own voice, up in the wild. He has a very soft side to him, but can do some yelling and screaming. It's not directed at me but I know he does it, and the kid has pipes. Well he found them up in the woods, to feel comfortable with the peace around us, but also how a saw or an animal can be part of it. He found a balance there, with the peace that we experience, that seeps in around the edges and slowly fills us, pushing out so much of what society and technology has filled our heads with.

Yep, we'll be there again, creating balance to the crowded world of Portland and Peaks. He sees how hard it is to leave, and we take a moment in the car to say thank you, to brace for the coming transition, to essentially don the armor that melted off, to prepare to deal with society all that. For me it sucks, and I work at not letting on about that, instead I explain how important the woods are to me, how it feeds me, now I need it/them, and that I will be heading back there soon for keeps. I plant seeds like "I have to figure out how to make this work in my life. I want to live here." and he thinks he would like to live there too. I fill him in on some of the complications, he's not seeing the whole picture, doesn't conceive of how radical a shift that would be. He might like it, hard telling. But he can't have Peaks and the woods simultaneously, and his Mom isn't leaving the island, or if she does, it won't be for the woods...

as for me, it's pretty much the only goal I have, or at least the biggest and most important. Yep, grin and bear it for a spell