The Constant
The view of the Freewill Baptist Church’s steeple some sixty acres away was swallowed up long ago by the random and burgeoning stands of a arborist’s dream collection: sycamores, black walnuts, blue beech, box elders, shagbark hickories, cherry, silver maples and myriad varieties of oak that we’re still identifying. In the early days of our tenure here, from the top of the Hill on the western edge of the walking path, I could stop and cast an unobstructed gaze across our own seventeen acres of once-employed cornfield, catching my breath after a steep ascent and exhaling into the glorious open space of the greatest responsibility Patrick and I would ever embrace. The cross-topped triangular spire rested comfortably against whatever backdrop the sky offered up that day, creating a postcard scene that we transplanted city dwellers found charming one sunrise after another.
Standing there this morning, my boots planted firmly yet gently on the leaf-covered soil, I peered through the bare branches of a young forest well on its way to mature and have to take that steeple on faith, much like its praying congregants do as they round the curve on the road leading them to their weekly inspiration. I can barely see the far eastern edge of the field line where our responsibility ends and our agronomist neighbor’s begins (not sure how he prays or what path he walks but it’s reassuring to see his white pick-up parked in the gravel driveway leading up to his home). If one is looking for a retreat from the world, hidden from view and not a billboard for miles, this is the place.
Did I ever tell you about the time one of those young and faithful Baptist congregants decided right there in a Sunday service that he wanted to be baptized? The pastor and all the faithful drove down to the narrow bridge at the end of our driveway, plunged his eleven-year-old body dressed in all his Sunday best into the frigid waters of the creek that cuts through our little agrihood (it was February, snow on the ground, thin shelves of ice along the banks), and brought him all clean and renewed and wrapped in dry towels back to the church to finish their collective prayer. I came upon the joyous scene after an early morning run to the grocery store and our neighbor, Jean, invited me to watch it all unfold. It pays to get up at dawn. Just sayin’.
That memory and so many others live alongside regular musings about how this place has changed since we took up residence nearly twenty-four years ago, how we’ve changed because of our touch with and connection to a place whose generosity has no expiration date. We made promises at a land blessing that first summer, most of which we’ve kept, a few of which we’ve had to revise with heads bowed in regret. From any position on the land, be it Hill or field or next to the compost bins, we look out across the paradox of reliable married to continual change. The Old Man tree with its tractor tire swing still dangling, the thick rope now a part of the branch around which it was looped some eighteen feet above the bustling creek waters below…how a heavy rain fills the low spots in the grass along the driveway on both sides where once I saw a little beaver swimming with two branches clenched fast between its teeth…two chicken coops still sturdy and capable of keeping out foxes and raccoons while the girls slumber and dream about whatever chickens dream about…the gentle soothing slope of a secondary walking path through the meadow framed by well-established mulberry trees that toss their fruit to the ground in alternate seasons, turning the bottoms of our feet purple when we impulsively take off our shoes to feel the soft feathery grass between our toes.
Where did my 30’s go, and my 40’s, followed quickly by every last minute of my 50’s? By some deep and mystical agreement, I handed them over willingly to the rhythm of a life lived by and with so many relatives, human and not, two-legged and winged and some with no legs at all, until our respective boundaries ceased to matter. Lines of existence blurred beyond care and recognition, we are forever intertwined, fused and growing older together. The steady hum that vibrates just beneath our shared skin is what wakes us up in the morning, pushes out buds that unfurl into the most gorgeous of leaves in every shade of green Crayola has yet to copy. I know exactly where the tiny snowdrop bulbs live just at the feet of the majestic silver maple out back through the mud room door and isn’t it sweet that there are twice as many blooms this year? I can rearrange the bird feeders hanging from shepherd’s hooks on the ridge all I want but the raccoons living in mysterious places down in the meadow will still pull them down every spring when the night’s temperatures soar past 55 degrees. Branches fall, we pick them up for sweat fires or the burn pile, then toss the ashes onto the composting shreds of spent coffee grounds and salad greens gone all slimy until it’s time to shovel that into the soil of this year’s raised beds where we’ll grow salads for this summer’s dinners. It. Never. Stops.
There’s a bend in the creek where one year’s heavy autumn rains carved an island surrounded by rocks that carry the laughing waters down a jumbled staircase on the way to a distant river beyond our sight. The music is exquisite and almost too much to bear. On my morning walk, I stand on the banks just below a towering black walnut tree, pull off my head wrap and whisper “Hello, constant”, listening as she adds a new verse to her never-ending song. Whatever was weighing heavy on my mind crashes and tumbles and dissolves on those rocks and I step forward into my day, all clean and renewed and wrapped in the reassurance that the heartbeat of this place is shared between us. No matter what happens or how we change in the days to come, we will always know each other.
That’s something I can count on.
