This week was an important week. I finally finished writing about my panic attacks; I launched the Dog Support program and feel very good about it. And this afternoon, I took a beautiful walk-a-round the farm with my Leica 2 and sweet dog Zinnia. Come and see what we saw.
(Above, Zinnia is saying good morning to our garden Head. Zinnia loves all of the things that exist on the farm and is sure to greet each and every one when she sees them.)
Tonight, Maria and I are going to the city of Glens Falls to take a friend to dinner on her birthday. Her favorite restaurant is Red Lobster, where Maria and I have never been. I’m a lobster snob, and I prefer to eat my lobsters in Maine or Cape Cod, but I’m willing to give Red Lobster a try; it’s where our friend wants to go.
(Dusk, right across the road from the farmhouse)
Perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
We are getting excited about the upcoming holiday week. We have no families to worry about offending by staying home, and no families to fight with or appease. Many families get along lovingly and with ease, but that’s not been our experience in our own lives.
My idea is to take two or three days off from blog writing, something I’ve never done while we are home. I’m thinking of posting one or two photos daily from Thursday to Saturday with no text. I want to do lots of meditation, talking with Maria, walking, reading, resting, and resting.
We are both very much looking forward to quieting down next week and appreciating what we have. We are our own family, us and the animals and friends we have.
I’ve been working hard every day for months, and I believe I need to settle and absorb life and continue with my spiritual work of reading, meditation, and contemplation. I am thinking of solitude.
Good things come of that. But I want to take some photos every day, but that does not work for me.
Lulu knows how to get me to give her an alfalfa block; it never fails, and I no longer pretend to resist it. She has my number and has had it for years. She had my number from the first day.
The animals on the farm know when it’s time to eat; they all gather by the fence and make some noise, which can be quite a chorus. They are sure to let us know when we need to feed them. And they won’t wait quietly for long.
The Tin Man is an important symbol on Bedlam Farm. Made by our late and very good friend Ed Gulley, we had to remove the Tin Man from his body this Spring, but we kept the head. In the summer, he lives on the porch. In the winter, he keeps watching over our vegetable garden. It’s a good spot for him; Ed would approve.
Zinnia is a big stocky dog, but she can be quite graceful and fast when chasing after a ball in the pasture or running through the woods.
This is one of her favorite things, apart from going to Bishop Gibbons and/or napping with her head on my shoe, which is what she is doing right now.
I’ve always said we get the dogs we need, and Zinnia is the dog I need right now.
I’m doing well with my diabetes; sometimes so well I forget about it.
I’m good at taking my insulin, which I never forget, but I sometimes forget that what I eat and when I eat can be complicated for a person with diabetes, even dangerous. A nurse told me once that diabetes will take care of you if you don’t take care of diabetes. How true.
(Above, the white hen and the blue chair. She wants to eat my camera. Good for picture taking.)
I got a lesson in that today. I was at the gym walking on my treadmill, listening to the Beatle’s Rubber Soul album, and trotting along when I felt nauseous, light-headed, and sweaty.
I also felt confused, trying to remember what time it was and what I had to do when I got home. I also realized I was about half an hour from home.
I thought I might be about to faint. This is the point where I’m supposed to ask for help, but this is also (apologies to Tucker Carlson) where I have too much testosterone in me; I always want to tough it out. And I didn’t want to end up in an ambulance.
The strange thing about low sugar attacks is that I never understand what’s happening until it’s nearly too late. I got out of the gym, called Maria, and said I was dizzy and confused. Perhaps I had Covid.
I could say something to Laura, who looked strangely at me but left quickly. I knew I needed to get home and lie down.
Take the glucose tablets said Maria; it sounds like a low sugar thing. Once she said it, I knew she was right. I have a bottle in the glove compartment. I took two.
(Sun on the mountain, just before noon)
I forget that I am eating less, exercising more, and I paid no attention today to the balance diabetics need to maintain to keep their blood under control – protein, and the right carbs. I had a cup of oats for breakfast and a thin tuna wrap for lunch.
I ran around all day, writing, doing farm chores, and taking pictures. I’ve cut way down on portions, and avoid white carbs.
I forgot my glucose snack bars. I ate very little and moved around constantly. This was only the second or third low sugar episode I’ve ever had, but my whole diet, schedule, and activity have changed radically. I need to factor that in. There’s a lot to keep track of in my life, and being all too human, I stumble.
I was out of whack, and my body was letting me know. It didn’t feel good. I kept wondering about the possibilities – heart attack, stroke, diabetes. Since I just had a heart check a couple of weeks ago, I went with option C.
Maria helped me when I got home. She fed me some dark chocolate, the diabetic’s reward, and some peanut butter and sugar-free jelly on a piece of pita bread. Then I lay down and conked out for 45 minutes. I was okay when I woke up, and Maria headed off to belly dancing class.
I took Zinnia out for some ball throwing and Fate out to find the sheep that I couldn’t see or hear in the back pasture. We found them, and they are fine. I took a few pictures, some in this journal. I made a good dinner for myself: fresh large shrimp, wheat couscous, and vegetables.
Maria won’t be home for a while.
I love the afternoon light when it shines on the hay. Barns are like cathedrals to me. We are blessed, and we know it)
The brown/red hen hasn’t moved all day out of the roost; we’ve decided to let her die in peace. She isn’t struggling or moving much at all. If she isn’t gone by the time we leave on vacation Sunday, I’ll step in and let her go peacefully and quickly. She’s not going to recover.
We are both eager for Sunday when vacation begins. I need one, and so does Maria. Doesn’t everyone? Back on Wednesday next.
In the warm weather, the back porch becomes the heart of the farm, its images and symbols forever changing. We have a new Bud-like planter and the three-year-old blue birdbath, which the birds avoid because of the cats. The dogs like it, though, and we love the color and look. Fate jumped up on the porch and posed agreeably for me; she was worn out from running circles around the sheep.
I loved the way the clouds nestled on the mountaintop when the storm passed. The town down in front is Salem, N.Y. The picture speaks for itself. The cloud is a stratocumulus lenticularis (I don’t care for whoever named these clouds, they are all impossible to say quickly. These particular clouds form in layers of clouds rising over hills.
After the rains come, the worms and the chickens patrol every inch of the grass, looking for them. They don’t need to be fed their meal anymore. They walk in perfect and efficient formation. The red/brown hen is no longer coming out of the roost.
Here is one sheep calling out for his mother; the image struck me. Off to bed. See you tomorrow.
Katherine and Jim had spent most of their 15 years together dreaming of owning a small farm in beautiful, vast and isolated Northern Idaho, where Jim was born. When Jim’s father died, he left the couple enough money to pursue their dream. They left their bio-tech jobs in Cambridge, Mass. – they met at MIT – and bought a small farm.
The day after they moved into their farmhouse, a starving, straggly puppy showed up at the back door and decided to rescue Jim. The two were inseparable. They spent every moment together, he called the dog Buck, he turned out be huge – part Lab, part Newfoundland, maybe part wolf, said the vet.
Buck was a very powerful dog and he had a wild streak, he would disappear for days at a time, roaming and hunting in the woods, sometimes coming home with blood on his coat, but he always returned to Jim. He was almost always at his side, working in the fields, walking in the woods, hunting on the hillside, or riding in his truck.
He will never be just a pet, Jim told Katherine, he is something more, something wild. He is where dogs came from.
Katherine and Jim loved their new lives, they had a child, a daughter.
Bea, on their farm, grew vegetables and planted corn and alfalfa in their large fields. They loved the mountains, the mist, the deer roaming in herds, they became close friends with several of their neighbors, and the memories of their former lives faded in the passion they felt for their new life. “We have everything we need,” Katherine often told Jim.
As great dogs will do, Buck became their partner in life, guarding Jim, Bea and Katherine, driving off stray dogs and animals, warning of intruders, curling up by the wood stove on winter nights. Sometimes, even in awful storms, he would just vanish, no one ever knew where he went or what he did. Katherine suggested building a kennel for him, the mountains were unsafe, she said there were bears and wolves out there, but Jim said no. He has to live his life, said Jim, leave him be. He will always come back if he can. I don’t want to destroy his nature.
Buck loved Bea almost as much as he loved Jim, he always watched over her, and sometimes let her sleep with her head on his back.
Buck was a huge dog, frightening to many people, a one-family dog. He had long, black hair, often matted and full of burrs and thorns. He had no interest in other people, did not play with dogs or toys or care to be cuddled. He did not do trucks or offer his paw for handshakes. His work was watching over his family.
Buck has my back, Jim said of him, and over time, he came to see and believe that Buck was, in part, part wolf. He heard the call of the wild, it was in his blood. He’s your shadow, said Katherine, a part of you now. The only thing tethering him to humans is you, you and Bea.
On day, Jim was chopping firewood far from the farmhouse and three city kids from downstate on a hike started taunting him, demanding some money. One pulled a knife on Jim. The three were later found hiding in a cave where Buck had chased them and penned them up. One – the one with the knife – needed 30 stitches to close up his leg wounds. He nearly bled to death, said the sheriff.
But mostly, their life was peaceful and meaningful. They were deeply in love with one another, and their new life did nothing but enrich that connection.
“We are so lucky,” Jim told Katherine almost every morning, as he and Buck set off for the hard work of the farm..
One day, life intruded on their dreams, as it has a habit of doing. Jim went out cut some trees for firewood, they lined the stream that raged down the hill from their home. When Jim didn’t come back all day and into the night, Katherine called the sheriff. They found Jim’s body floating well down stream, pulled along by the current. It looked, said the sheriff, as if a tree fell on him, knocking him into the water, perhaps unconscious. He didn’t suffer, he said.
But where is the dog?, Katherine asked suddenly. “Where’s Buck?” The sheriff was puzzled. No sign of a dog, he said, no trace of one. Buck was never found or seen again. Sometimes Katherine assumed that he had drowned trying to save Jim, his body washed downriver or eaten by scavengers. Sometimes, she thought he had returned to the wild, unable to comprehend his own failure to protect Jim.
Katherine grieved for Jim, at times she thought she would not survive. But there was Bea, and Katherine did not wish to spend the rest of her life in grief, she wasn’t ready to date again but she wasn’t ready to stop living either. Life went on, slowly and painfully, she stayed on the farm with Bea, hired a helper, immersed herself in finding ways to help others, became a much loved and admire part of their world. She couldn’t bear to get another dog yet, in a way she expected Buck to turn up at the farm any minute.
One day, years after Jim’s death, she agreed to take Bea camping. Katherine was still a city girl in some ways, she didn’t love the rugged outdoor life, but she graciously went along. Bea had been pestering her all year to go.
They hauled a tent and pegs and a small stove and some food out several miles to the top of a wooded hillside. It was cold, and Katherine was upset to see the garbage and the remains of some sloppy campers who had come before them. It was too late to move, she tried to clean up and then she and Bea set up their tent, cooked some chicken. She read Bea some stories and then they both fell asleep under a breathtakingly beautiful sky full of shining stars and a backdrop of majestic mountains. In the middle of the night, Bea said she had to go to the bathroom and Katherine pulled the tent aside and waited for her to come back.
In a couple of minutes, Katherine heard Bea’s screams, she sounded terrified, it seemed as if she was running or being chased. Then Katherine heard the roaring. She scrambled out of the tent and ran outside, she was horrified to see Bea running up a hill, a enormous grizzly bear in pursuit. Lord, thought Katherine, he was drawn by the garbage, she never should have camped there. She shouted to Bea to stay still and stop but Bea, only nine years old, had understandably panicked. The bear was enormous, roaring and running and frothing at the mouth. It was a terrifying sight to her. She dialed 911, sent out a signal for help. Then she started running. No help could reach them in time.
Bea was too far away now, Katherine couldn’t get to her, she kept running and stumbling in the dark, but it was hopeless. Her screams seemed to fade, and Katherine thought she would go mad with fear. Bea was well up the hill. Katherine stumbled, hit her head against a rock and blacked out.
***
It took a few minutes for Katherine’s head to clear, she had a dream of something nuzzling her, licking at her face, and then a surge of terror coursed through her body, she sat up straight. “Bea!,” she shouted, “Bea!” It was so quiet. At first, that horrified her. Then she heard a voice.
“Mommy, mommy,” she heard a soft and frightened voice say, as Bea came running to her. She was close. She was alive, Katherine could see, before she fell back again, she was okay. The bear was gone.
The helicopter came over the mountain before dawn, the noise woke Katherine up. Bea was in her arms, asleep, the two tightly wrapped around one another. The search and rescue team rappelled down to them, the ranger came down to the hill puzzled. “Damnedest thing,” he said, “there was a big fight up there, looks like a fight between the bear and a wolf or something. We tracked the bear up the hill, he’s alive but bloody and beat up, something tore him up a bit, he’s heading for his den. We can’t figure out what might have done that, there are no other tracks up there.”
The ranger shook his head and called for Bea and Katherine to be lifted up in the chopper and taken to a hospital to be checked out. As the helicopter moved away from the mountain, Katherine turned to Bea. “What happened, honey? What happened up there?”
Buck, whispered Bea to her mother. Buck came and jumped on the bear’s back and fought with him until I could run away. They roared at each other, she whispered. “He followed me down to the camp and sniffed me and licked me. He came over to wake you up. He seemed so glad to see me. I think he saved me. It was Buck.”
Poor kid, thought Katherine, she was so traumatized she thought that Buck had come to save her. No harm, she thought, in her believing that. But maybe she shouldn’t tell anyone else that story, she thought.
Bea and Katherine fell asleep in the arms of one another. When Katherine woke up, the helicopter had landed and nurses were preparing to move the two of them onto cots so they could be brought into the hospital. “Let’s clean you up,” one nurse said to Katherine, picking something off of her jacket. “What’s that?,” asked Katherine. “Dog hair,” said the nurse “big long black hair. Was there a dog down there with you on the mountain? What happened to him?”
Katherine didn’t know how to answer. The nurse seemed to sense it wasn’t something to be pursued, she went on cleaning Katherine and Bea up. “It’s okay,” said Bea, smiling, “I have some on my jacket too.”
It is an especially humbling experience for me, tilted upside down in a dentist’s chair, my mouth forced open with clamps and filling with saliva – hoping the dental technician will notice and put in the sucking tube – waiting for my root canal to begin. I don’t recall often feeling much more helpless, exposed or useless than at such a time. The root canal wasn’t so bad, it was a lot easier than dealing with Verizon and less painful, but in the long interval between the needle and the numbing, I thought about a beautiful e-mail I received from Clay in Georgia. He is pondering a move from Atlanta to a small town in North Carolina and has been following my own run to the mountain for years. He wrote that my blog is like a wise old friend whose observations are both comforting and unsettling but which ultimately made the thought of changing his life a little less intimidating.
That was a lovely message to get, it means I am doing my job. A lot of people fantasize about living on a farm, there is something about a farm that touches a deep yearning in many of us, although not usually in real farmers who tend to live without fantasies and can’t afford yearnings. It is a great irony of our times that so many people want to be on farms, so many farms are collapsing. I wondered, sitting in my dentist’s chair, hoping for the best, why I set out on my own hero journey, whether I was running away from life or towards it. As it turns out, I think, it was something of both.
I was fleeing an unhappy and cowardly life rather than facing up to it, and as Joseph Campbell warns, on the hero journey you leave the familiar and set out into the realm of adventure. You cannot hide from yourself. There, you fall into a dark place, and you either come out unscathed or you never come out. Along the way, you confront yourself, find out who you are really are, and if you are lucky, you encounter mystics, prophets, guides and magical helpers, often in the form of animals. All of this, all that Campbell prophesied, came true for me, it was a profoundly spiritual and life-altering decision beyond my imagination. Once you set out on the journey, you can never go back, you will never be the same, and that is the beauty and the terror of it. You will always be a refugee, in the old world and the new, stamped for life with the mark of the wanderer.
Yet ultimately, my running to the mountain brought me to my true life. To knowledge, strength, spiritual reward and love, all the things I had always been seeking but could never seem to find. Clay has been reading my blog since the beginning, I can tell, messages from those people always come through like old and dear friends, we have a connection that is strong and clear, even through the digital divide. I fell into a dark space and almost did not come out. And I saw so many magical helpers along the way – Carol, Orson, Izzy, Rose, Frieda, Simon, Rocky and now, Red. And so many people to guide me, my departed friends in hospice, many of you, most of all Maria.
I feel sometimes as if the animals handed me off, one by one to one another, each one taking me to another place along the path, bringing me to Maria, where I was destined to be. Beyond that, the journey into my life challenged me to be honest, to be strong, to take the leap of faith out of one life and into another. To life life, rather than exist in it or survive it. That means leaving the familiar behind, leaving people behind, most people don’t want to come and fear people who do. Along the way, I have met so many other travelers on the hero journey. I have never met one who ever went back or who ever wanted to.
Sitting in the dentist chair, I settled in, was calm. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. The wonderful thing about taking a leap of faith is that it always leads to another. And another. Run to your mountain, Clay, take a breath and take the leap.
When I left my family and familiar life behind 20 years ago and moved to a cabin in the hills with two dogs for a year (Running To The Mountain), I knew I was searching to fill the empty holes in my heart.
I knew I had come searching for something, but I needed to find out what it was.
It should have awakened me to see that my year of reading Thomas Merton’s writings suggested why I was there.
But it wasn’t until later, when I began working with my friend Sue Silverstein and the traumatized refugee children she taught and loved, that I began to understand the reality of it.
I was looking for spiritual direction. It used to be that the search for spirituality began in organized religion and was shaped by monks, priests, and rabbis—wise men like Merton.
It was Merton who taught me spirituality didn’t have to come from a church or temple; we all carried it inside of our hearts; in a sense, I came to learn that spirituality is a discipline of the heart.
It comes from the heart and lives in the heart.
My early life was marked by trauma, and trauma blocked and distracted me year after year from getting to the heart and knowing what I wanted.
Moving up to the mountains was a terrifying gamble, leaving chaos around me and leading to my falling apart.
I got help, asked more and more questions, and began to learn who I was and who I wished to be. That, wrote Merton, is how a spiritual direction begins.
Working with Sue then and now brought me to the light. I first felt my future in the hospice work I volunteered for. I felt that was where I belonged.
I had this same feeling this morning when Maria and I saw Sarah Harrington, the pantry director. I am just beginning to get to know her, but she has quickly become a friend.
She reminds me of Sue Silverstein, the teacher, and my closest friend. Sarah is pure of the heart, humble, and all about finding ways to help underdogs and people whose lives have been pushed against the wall.
We work together and understand each other. We both get and do the same things as they apply to our work together. She’s my first real texting friend.
Like Sue, Sarah fell in love with Zinnia, and her passion was instantly returned. Like Zinnia, she is all about quiet and gentle love. Like Sue, she and Maria – both artists – are connected like two college classmates.
Like some dogs, they understand without language. They know one another.
Like Sue, Sarah does good and lives good every hour of the day. No wonder she has trouble sleeping. No wonder I do. No wonder Sue does. No wonder Maria does. Like Maria, Sarah is embarrassed by praise but deserves an awful lot.
Sarah is different from me. She is quieter and more soft-spoken, like Maria in some ways and Zinnia in every way. Those two have bonded, no surprise.
Today, our hearts yearn for the same thing – finding ways to do good in a complex and sometimes cruel world. I struggle with the anger and hatred outside that are part of living out in the open. Like Maria, Sarah has no desire to live an open life and be known everywhere.
It is hard work struggling to care for people who are suffering and in need. None of them sleep. It often feels hopeless and overwhelming. It can also be the most satisfying work there is. It is spirituality revealed.
I’ve lived in the open for decades, for better or worse. I hardly notice it anymore. When I think of meeting Sarah today, I think of Tide Detergent, something I’ve never considered or thought about.
In one sense, I felt like I was in a chapel, as I felt like doing the refugee work or running my meditation class at the Manion. Helping needy people is where the spiritual direction leads. It is what it is about. There is something sacred about it.
Religion may be declining in many ways, but spirituality is growing everywhere. It is increasingly necessary, and more and more people are searching for it. Our institutions of government and religion have failed us; we will have to do it ourselves.
And we are—the food pantry reeks of compassion.
Sarah and I have talked several times about Tide. It comes to the pantry rarely; the grocery stores don’t give it out, and neither does the Pantry Collective.
Sarah told me about a woman who had seen the Tide and had nearly cried. She loved how Tide cleaned her clothes and always bought it before the family ran into trouble and could no longer afford it. For detergent, Tide was and is the top of the line.
Sarah had gotten her hands on 20 jugs of Tide, and within a day or so, they were all gone. The pantry hasn’t had one since, and Sarah asked me if I could help her get some tide for the pantry users, she loves to surprise and please her “guests,” as she calls them.
Tide detergent is a sometimes painful symbol for people struggling with food deprivation. It represents a life lost but not forgotten.
(If anyone reading this wants to buy some Tide and send it to the food pantry, you can do it by going here. Sarah put it on the Wish List today. She’d love to surprise the guests again.)
Up on the mountain, I was and felt all alone in my search for spiritual direction. There is an Army of Good alongside me, and Maria, I am no longer alone.
My spiritual places are not in religious buildings; they are in the magical helpers I met along the way – Maria, Sue, Joanie In Memory Care, and a bunch of loyal and loving animals.
At the beginning of my search, I read that the search for a spiritual life begins by asking myself some agonizing questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Who do I wish to be? What is the meaning of my life?
I wouldn’t say I liked the answers; they were agonizing. That’s where the search begins.
I hardly had any answers. I had a lot of work to do, and I am still doing it.
The questions and answers all took me to the same place – my heart. I couldn’t plan my life or even heal it. But I did manage to find my heart, and I realized that the direction I wanted to take was doing things that came from the heart and lifted my heart.
I am no saint but a flawed and traumatized human being looking for a purpose in life and a safe landing as I get older. I found that with the refugee children, I found it at the Mansion, and I feel it at the very spiritual pantry.
Today, with Sarah and Maria at the pantry, I felt that this was why I had come to that mountain: and turned my life and my family upside down.
Henri Nouwen wrote that the discipline of the Heart makes us aware that spirituality is not only about listening to but “listening to the heart.”
I heard and felt it today at the pantry: Maria talking to Sarah like old friends, Zinnia waiting in the car for us, and me rushing around the room looking for pictures that would capture the moment.
I have learned a lot in this spiritual search, but the most important lesson was that it doesn’t matter what I am like to people or what people think of me. Spirituality comes from inside of me, flaws and all.
My trip is far from over, but I am visiting some beautiful places.
