October 2002

Today I began clearing the lot for my cabin. I had the location picked when I was young, and small, a dream I had, though I never thought it would happen. It was an “if” then, but now it is. There was already an opening in the canopy due to recent logging and a lightning strike. The strike in question split a pine four ways, the shards still reach up into the sky nearly twenty feet. That splintered tree closely marks the back corner of the cabin. The electricity has petrified the wood and I am fairly certain it will survive long after I have gone. To the front side, and the name of the location, is the Lightning Rock. It is a Bull sized rock that was split in two by another bolt in an eon not now. Obviously since its a rock, it hasn’t a definite age. My C-12 dater isn’t calibrated. Why did I start? I want to make something. I want to feel and see results beyond just paper documents and launches. I want a sense of the tangible not just designer clothes and monthly credit card bills. I want a success. The first step is made.

  

I cut about fifty saplings, enough space for the footings and the footprint of a modest sized cabin. I left a few black oaks that I found, hoping that they too will enjoy this journey I now embark on. The process is slow. As I imagine each tree decades from now, I wonder what it will be like. Does the location fit? The weather was perfect for such a task: mid-fifties, and the foliage is peaked. The size is twelve by eighteen feet, large enough, I think, for two people. I am my own supervisor on this project so decisions are true to my heart. I thank each moment that passes, as they seem greater than the last. Ah, Maine ;It makes me wonder how anyone could live anywhere else. But then I quickly realize that if everyone lived in Maine I couldn’t build a cabin a half mile out into the woods. So I’m actually some place else. . . . and where that is I can’t say.

November 2002

The snow keeps up even today, the squalls hit answered by sunshine, and then the clouds roll in. The path out is rough and a full trip now takes about a half hour. I found some deer tracks along the course on my first run out this morning. A buck, two does, and a yearling, by the tracks. I’ve seen the buck, five points and about two bills. Hopefully he’ll make it these next few weeks as Hunters are about and I am in blaze.

The cold air settles down upon the crisped snow, I went out to the site and removed about a ton of it. This was between carrying trips that I dispersed throughout the day. I’m glad now that I cleared with an axe; it was slow going, but genuine to the stature of a tree. After hacking away at a stump for twenty minutes, the sound of it’s final “Timber” was cathartic. Zipping through it with the whine of gasoline and oil smoke doesn’t pay homage to thirty years of growth. I wouldn’t want to go that way, so I feel for the tree. I’d much rather be hacked to pieces than shredded to dust. But that’s me.

This may be a cabin far out, and I wonder it’s future. To that end I supply a forecast. I am building a cabin because I can, because I have the time to do so, and because if I build it now, when I have time, then I can always visit. No matter what happens. By no means did I ever even consider living in the cabin, cabins are what you visit, cabins are where you go, not where you stay. This cabin is a writing studio foremost to me; walled by windows and glass in a serene point of hardwood. I have no intention of power as my laptop is a clipboard. It is a cottage, but inside it is a cabin and I the captain.  And so it will be.

I should note that all of the windows are salvage. I can say with certainty that this trash is my treasure.

Someone asked me what it was like to build my own structure, and I can say definitively that there is nothing so rewarding. The Architect Lester Walker said; "It seems to me that one of the great thrills of life is to inhabit a building that one has built oneself" This building and I are long friends, and I would have it no other way. Even as a frame I feel connected and a part of it’s being, as though the very essence of it, I hold in my hand. And when I visit it is not a house, cabin or cottage it is an old friend that I haven’t seen in awhile, the warm hands of caring. My time is well spent. I can feel it grow as I grow and that I will cherish always.

December 2002
As Cold Waters to a thirsty soul, so is the good news from a far country.

Echo the triumphant of silence begat. At bat was the question, to the pitch, eyes follow. Playback the diction, and stride out defining. So close now, I reel with anticipation. The cottage is far more than I could ever have imagined, or expected. Humble in size, an echo of need. It is life and being, beyond even the finality of death. As if by God I have created a sanctuary of grace. But alas I forward the notion. It hasn’t even a roof! Waxing poetic on an unused candle, my bias alights.

I have held to my goals and ambition like an axe to a stone. Sparks fly, and the edge is hewn. In doing so; following my goals, I have created myself a Mecca of imaginative thought. This process, I feel, should be a requisite step for the development of true clarity. Nature has become my pious reflector. Soy Zen. The walls form by steps, and the roof soon to follow. I aim for my New Year like Columbus and into this new world I embark. It is the path less worn that proves to contain the greatest reward. Melville? My elusive White Whale, a thought that shadows me as the cold sets in..

The sound of a hammer in the silent wood, entrances. Today I skin the walls that surround me, a hug and a smile from a tree I have known always. A large pine, Pinus strobes, at the end of the field, back at the farm, that looms thirty feet higher than all the rest. It is called a pasture pine and they stand tall over the pond and much else beside. The watchtower. In the winter of last year a triumvirate of it’s structure fell, via an assumed large gust. The tractor pulled it out of the pond, and the logs were sawn by a neighbor with a sawmill. The width and grain of a near century now face this cottage of mine like an old world tribute to a forgotten age. It is a sight to see. Native as well, my tangible connection to this place, this country, this Earth.

It was near fifty today and I was thrilled to shed my layers. Clouds rolled and surrounded, but the sun shown triumphant resilience, sly as a fox between windows of moisture and gray. I have a love this day like no other. Temperate. The process of this venture has lured me in and taken hold. It is my structure and place that compels me forward.

There is a stonewall that borders my path the distance. The stones green with lichens speak of a day when forests were stripped for fields. Along the wall stones have fallen, now righted in my passing. A story of Frost it is. I uncovered a few others, foraged, a Flynn stone in. A footing, my step in fact, natural granite slab. It is far heavier than I should lift, so it waits until I have help.

In the thaw of December, streams have made their way clear. There are three, in fact, along the path. Two are ledge run-off, the third is a constant run, the essence, an aquifer below. The motto here is “The Way Life Should Be”, and each day that passes, I hear that. The siren scream of a promise; that truth and the justified are just, like the wind and dawn. Of course it goes that it is: Anyplace is what you make of it, but I am continually astounded by the aesthetic tranquility I find here. Dirigo.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.


   January  2003

As the flurries began in the morning I made my first trip to the site. The roof was fastened Christmas Day, a wish come true in light of the snow, which seems continual. Today, New Year’s Eve, I review my dissertation. Tomorrow, I expect, I alight for the final countdown. I have been asked if I regret this, if I departed too quickly, abandoned too much. Sure; I miss boutique coffee and city life. In reflection, I wasn’t so alive, perhaps only bones living. I stand here and deplore you this is my finest hour. I am immersed in a world I created. It is in fact the ultimate freedom. For those who have yet to feel that, I recommend you do so. Would it be the first quack prescription filled? Regardless of realities now moot, I am free, and in this moment I am alive as though I never lived, a first breath. Epiphytic grace.

February 2003

It was T-shirt weather today at twenty. Two weeks of zero warp what cold really is, says the voice crack from the freezer. It has been the coldest winter in awhile they say. I say it’s getting better all the time. The woods are now a-run with fresh tracks. In the book of Gnomes by Poortvliet and Huygen, there is a forest scene that shows these tracks. After two months of near barren frozen landscape I am amazed. Life in the pass through, like magic the woods are alive: Deer, Coyotes, Rabbits and the occasional Lynx. The Wild Turkey’s don’t count because I see them every day. There is about thirty of them storking about with a ruckus. As I pass I hear their squawk high up in the branches. Although the winter Gnome tracks are rare, I can feel their assurance and approval.

Most of the windows went in without difficulty this weekend. Some minor, but not worth expounding. The space is shaping up nicely, in fact it borders on ideal, though that lies in perspective. A view, in which, I am swayed. It snowed another ten inches today, which slowed progress. I was given rest by the elements though as too much, too soon, is often too.

This art is becoming, and I am alive with it. The quiet assurance of knowing that I am near done is what I needed. The musical lament of reflection rings of the past and of the future yet come. There is a light that shines on the darkened days and it is adventure. And this is mine.

I read of an installation at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery by Thomas Hirschorn. The piece, titled Cavemanman is focused upon the inequalities of mankind and the central insubordinate nature of Enlightenment. We go back to the cave.

With package tape, cardboard ,and inspiration; Hirschorn renovated the space. It is the reclusive hermit haven, a cave, even down to the rocks. On the walls are the paintings of ideology. Text and muse from our past intuitives. It is a dialog of space as liberation. I have many parallels to this work in my own. The notion of sanctuary encompasses the visitor. This is what the cottage has become, and portrays. As the final steps pass, I dismiss the trials of its development and revel in its completion.

To again further this philosophy see the play by Bertolt Brecht titled Mann ist Mann, again the grace of mankind is reflected by space. Like a closed hand I am lifted. We rise above raw naturalism because we respect most the tune of it’s aesthetic.

It is a wicked world in all meridians.

April 2003

The snow has passed six inches, and continues to fall. The woods mute beneath a thick blanket. The sound is a crystalline sprinkle through muffled silence, as though the world were left on a sample of blank vinyl, and the volume was quiet, and the only sounds are the dust pops of time.

Snow comes in an echo shortly after Fools Day. This blanket weighs heavy the bough. The constant singsong of spring birds arises where there are green melted swaths of stream.Throughout the day, and into the night the snow continues. The Killdeer screech startles the near white landscape. The grace and power of this Mother Earth is apparent. I have arrived at a precipice overwhelming in view. What overwhelms is the opening, the outstretched arms of the unexpected. It is through this surprise that I am found. Here I am, am I?

With a spring tease I return indoors, the fire in the woodshop brings it to sixty. I finished off a slab of old-growth Redwood. I brought the nine-foot by thirty-inch slab from rough to wax and installed it. Location? I put it over the long window on the eastern side. It is a beautiful piece of wood. The old growth rings are close, one hundred and forty in the reach of my hand. Big Time. This piece of wood I drove back atop my car in the fall of ’98. Two hundred pounds of Western Sequoia, driven two thousand miles the week classes started my final semester in college. I picked it out from scraps at the sole legal Mill in Crescent City, CA. I heard the planer as I drove by after my visit to the Redwood National Forest. Hand finished.

Not that it is exceptionally grand or even really much like the standard Redwood display. I felt, and I feel, that it is symbolic of, and a window into, the soul of the tree. This notion has grown more and more impressed on me as construction continues. Every piece of wood has the fluid growth and essence of life. The phloem and xylem of the tree dried into wood. It is both a map and a view. The Hemlock I used for the framing shows this dramatically as the course fibers splinter as they dry. In finishing one side the grace of the grain is on display. It is with honor that I mounted the piece with remaining bark and whole.
The evolution of a name is a profound adventure. This place unlike a person, or a company, has a history established before it really had an identity. As though it is a new life to an old soul. It is just that soul for which I have spent the past six months searching. Through books and passage I searched for clues. Under rocks and within branches I made my survey. I listened as though the wind would whisper softly a hint. For some time I felt sure that I were blind. As the building grew by my hand it seemed guided. As though the nail had long nested in the fibers of wood and the hammer fall was an echo. But as with all, in due time answers arrive.

With the arrival of spring this search became a quest, probably more so because a new life had begun. From the stoic cold of winter freeze, the earth slowly thawed. A hibernating dawn awoke, and the name was given to me. The name of this place, as ever it was, and will be, is “gia”. I will venture that this title befits the greatness and triumph of a truly singular place. I even extend that it is my own, though more so through reason. I have long referred to this place as mi casa. So logically it would be fitting to have the title be Spanish. In reviewing my Spanish vocabulary, I looked up the one word that personified best this place I have built out in the woods. The one word that came to me without a question was Magic. As in; on, and through, all levels of creating this work the experience has been magical. In Spanish; Magic is Magia . . . . .and this is what the echo said. If I were to refer to this place, it would be referred to as "my gia" or less stringently spelled " Ma gia" which brings magic to “gia” and the title was born.

The snow departed as quickly as it arrived. Like the bounce of a ball, the green grass returns. The trees resume their fountain burst and the grass grows deeper. The lichens spring forth their pale green with exclamation. The sheep have been moved out to pasture, the flock, and the Llama head, can be seen scattered in one of the fields beneath the spring fog of early morning. Even the dandelions roar, their growth too quick from munching rumenants. It is a slow burst compared to the tropics I have known, but the subtle steps seem far more precise. The nights still drop to near freezing. The days however twirl with sunshine in the sixties.
And still there is a third angle to this prism. There is a unique colloquial expression found only in those close to old Maine, and Down East. The statement is most often used in conversation. In place of such phrases as “right-on” or the popular “ You know that’s right”. This sounds a bit like “yep” except it is sounded on the intake. In many ways like a gasp, but more like the indication of unending endurance. So if you were to ask me; What’s it called? This would be the answer. The spelling of a noise is obviously circumspect, but this noise is magic, my magic, magia, gia.  And here we’re back where we started, the circle complete, I the guide to the center, Radii in affect.

This magic I have mentioned extends far, I mentioned long ago a guided hand. It has extended so that “As if by God”, is a report, I can explain it just as ecstatic wonderment. Just today in the building of the front step I found not in my search, just rocks, but it seems, and will be, the exact rocks, perfect in my search and fulfilling in my ideal. And these miracles, as they seem, occur in such abundance that my awe and regard turn infinite.  

The experience of such grace is breathtaking. Perhaps I have grown to simplicity, my desire amply filled and exceeded by even the slight stir of oak leaves on the forest floor, or the shrill chirp of a chipmunk announcing my disturbance in his day. It is light and nature fantastic this spring and in the breeze I am exalted.  

There at the foot of the rainbow I found a promise and it is Spring, with each fleeting moment more wonderous than the last. The blast of green, telling. Never have I more so been in awe of Nature’s bloom. This long cold winter has watched me count bones where leaves now bloom. My path is a gauntlet of safe passage. gia like an old friend, settles into her home. I think back to the time before and I recall that never had I lost the dream of it’s becoming what it is. Magic.

June 2003

With the setting sun so passes the time. These days of welcoming sun usher in splendor, and in the wake, an age. I can’t tell you how long it has been since my every waking hour, has felt so alive. Even the labors of Farm work, long tedious and a plight to contend, seem now faded in a confused past. It was an age, I know now. As it slowly fades I let the current lift and carry. These are the days. Exhaustion so complete every muscle screams, as lactic shards tear into fibers. My structure is strong.

My ambition was to create a cabin, and this I have done. Along with that goal, I wanted more than anything to discover. To discover the solitude of Nature, or if it were possible the Nature of Solitude. I have listened to the trees, and watched the birds and the silence they shared, it is something I was not expecting. I had never had planned beyond completion. My one goal was finish and in it’s climb, or stride, I discovered. It was a task I cherished, and do, though the winter made for reluctant receivership. It, to me now, is not just a place, but a planet, and I am beginning to feel, that it, like any home, is an extension of myself, heart and soul. The project will never be done. Each new day has a million possibilities. I am alive and this space, this Planet is with me.

July 2003

The long days extend, yet I can not yet see Fall, but the shift is near. The grass has grown more than six feet in those places yet attended by a dutiful Farmer, or hungry livestock. Two weeks without rain, however, makes idle small talk. My Mother, ever the aforementioned Farmer, makes Hay every day. Fair weather certainly has it’s merits, though I question the grind, which now is near excessive. Luckily the Barn is near full, the once vast skeleton of centurion beams, are now lost in a filling of clover to the eves.
Ferns have reached up through the damp soil four feet in places. 


August 2003
With another month’s change I mourn the loss of Heat. From the woolen trunks emerge the next season into Fall. Thirty days of blur feels like a robbery. The forecast is evident, and a front confirms. How very quickly the time has passed. Light begins to shorten it’s reach, as though the stretch returns, sixteen hours, yet not still enough. Evermore gia waits quietly. The haunting of a wood thrush ripples the air.

The first few weeks of August were gray, completely, like winter, though the temperature never dropped below freezing. It was cold and damp, albeit miserable for vacationers. It meant for me a few weeks of easy work as the August sun and heat were shielded by moisture. A blanket of Sea foam actually. What I missed most were the stars. When finally it was clearing I looked to the sky for that which was forthcoming. There it was off to the east above the horizon, the first light in the sky. It was Mars.

When I grew out of knowing everything. Accepting first that I have grown, and second that I knew nothing in the first place. That is when I became aware; it was a fundamental shift in reason. “ The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” – Thoreau. Perhaps that is the plight, the meaning is found in reason. I make no means to preclude this adventure. It is just that the song has changed. Time is a fool with a Banjo.

El hoy asombraba. Una tempestad perfecta vino pesado arriba fuera del norte al este. Todo el día nosotros fuimos amenazados. Después que trabaja yo se acabó al gia para ver que el mágico de ello es la llegada. El relámpago estaba adyacente. Y entonces el sol salió y tuvimos un chaparrón de la lluvia para sobre una hora. Usted perdió un bien uno.

September 2003

And now into Fall the season steps. Already leaves change about the Forest. What a summer it’s been, indeed. Of course I should mention that the word “summer” here is defined as; sometime after June and before October when it is sunny, and not cold for more than two weeks. Though that might be a lie. Today is possibly the last day of not cold. I awoke this morning to mid-thirties and by lunch it was close to eighty, significant certainly.

The cottage waits patiently for me to sew these oats of summer, a rush to thrush at the mill. I look forward to these next steps forthcoming, namely because they have been next since April. Work and play pulled me away. What is most amazing however is that really nothing has changed. What is hardest to grasp is that it has been nearly a year since I started. A year more valuable than all the rest combined. Even if I haven’t been there in months, in my absence it seems as though time has awaited my return.

This night already the cold has settled. A perfect crescent balances atop the cupola. The cold air opens the eyes to the universe of stars shimmering echoes of light fantastic. My breath lingers opaque for the first time in months. It is fall and the reds are coming. Already the there is one, visible from the field, a red brighter than fresh blood, how about Ferrari red, this the one spot in a landscape of conifers. The tinting to yellow spreads like a fog far slower than thought possible. Change occurs like a sunset that lasts all day. 

I am alive and the Magic is with me. Now the story can begin.