A Little Taste of Heaven

My two young granddaughters and I travelled to Pennsylvania this summer with my daughter who was doing research at Bucknell University. We stayed at a wonderful farm B&B in Lancaster County. Tucked away among vast acres of corn, the farm was a haven from the bustle of Lewisburg. We were free to roam the barns and yard, to peek at the newborn kittens and, when the chore bell rang after breakfast, to help feed the animals before taking a wagon ride tour of the neighboring farms. When we were introduced to her dad, Jim, and later to her mom, Mim, our host Jodi asked if any of us had ever stayed on a farm before. I confessed that I’d grown up doing chores at a dairy farm, had once milked cows, helped put the hay in and had even driven a tractor. My dad raised chickens when I was a child, and when I was in my forties, my own family homesteaded in Vermont, raising pigs and chickens, and growing a huge vegetable garden for home consumption. For the rest of our stay, I was known as “the farm lady.”

If you appreciate hospitality without undue hovering; if you love the sound of locusts buzzing, of murmuring chickens, and the bleat of goats and baas of sheep; if you’re delighted with barn cats who butt your outstretched hand with their warm heads, begging for a pat; if you can hear the whispered secrets of a million corn leaves in the breeze or lose yourself in the silence of a sunset; if swooping barn swallows and cleanly swept barnyards delight you, if rockers on the porch whisper your name; if baked oatmeal with blueberries, chocolate chip pancakes, melt-in-your-mouth egg dishes with ham or spinach, and crispy breakfast potatoes sound delicious; if an immaculate room, a comfortable bed, and air filled with the scent of roses appeals to you, you might want to book a spot at The Country Log House Farm B&B (https://www.countryloghouse.com/). Tell them the farm lady sent you.

A Life of Walking

--> I read that the Tarahumara Indians of the southwest Sierra Madres must, when they die, make a journey to every place they ever lived and collect their footprints. These, along with their hair, they must present to their god. What an interesting concept. I wouldn’t have much hair to present (mine has always been rather fine and thin) but collecting my footprints would be great fun.

I’d start at the place where I was raised in Massachusetts. My footprints are in every room of my beloved homestead. They race up and down the stairs and out the doors, cover every inch of yard, front and back, then venture off into field and forest. They climb the old apple tree that grew beside the berry patch, find narrow, prickly paths between the blackberry canes, stop at the edge of the brook that bordered the property, leap from an old stump at the side of the road. And the road! I’d need another lifetime to collect all the footprints I’ve left on my old home street.

After leaving home as a young adult, I lived in New Mexico. My footprints must still be in Albuquerque and in Old Town, in the arroyos and the desert sands along the Rio Grande River. They must still wander through dormitories, resound in the dimly lit, spidery tunnel that connected the classrooms, trace their way along the sidewalks of Santa Fe, climb the mystical, winding stairs of Loretto Academy.

Having collected those, I would search next in Media, Pennsylvania where I moved as a bride, and in King of Prussia, Philadelphia, and the Amish towns of New Hope and Lancaster. Next, I’d search them out in Kansas City, Missouri, where I spent a few months with my newborn son while his father served in the military, and then in several Connecticut towns - Glastonbury, Bristol, and Tariffville - where we first settled as a young family. My footsteps must still ramble down the winding country roads,through the cemetery where I often sat and dreamed at the foot of a life-sized statue of the Good Shepard, and along the sidewalks of Simsbury and Avon.
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I’d have to drive far north to find the next set, up through the green hills of Northern Vermont. How long would it take to gather twelve years of footprints from Noyesville where we spent our first shivery winter, to Danville where we homesteaded in a hand-hewn log cabin for the next eleven years? How many times did I go up and down the back hill to the outhouse, up and down the front hill that served as a driveway, hauling loads of laundry and groceries during mud season when the car couldn’t make it up? How many times did I climb the drive, hauling countless gallons of water from All Right Springs ten miles away when our well went dry? 

My feet also walked ground in St. Johnsbury, in Greensboro, in Barton and Glover, in Morrisville, Newport, and Montpelier. I’ve left traveler’s prints in fifteen other states, in Canada, and in parts of beautiful, green England, northern France, Holland, and Germany.

Now my footsteps lay themselves down on a new road just three miles from where they first began. They’ve crisscrossed Main Street a million times, left themselves along Giberson in search of daisies, at the Mill Pond dam where I lean over the bridge to watch the chaos theory in action, along Miller to town, and over the bridge up Cook Road on my way to work. They’ve traversed Bear’s Den Road and Berkshire School Road, pattered along Salisbury Road and down Root Lane. Collecting them all will be life-affirming, for in every footprint I know I will also find a piece of my self.

Wait for Me

Eldest son and me three years ago along the Pacific Coast.

It hung in the air, its jeweled throat sparkling, and watched me. It's wings hummed as it helicoptered not two feet form my face. Then with a high chirp and a burst of energy it flew up and away. There have been hummingbirds at the feeder and sipping from the bee balm growing beneath it for the past few weeks. Usually I watch them from the window but this one seemed determined to greet me as I stood in the open doorway. Perhaps he was saying goodbye and thanks, for I will be leaving soon and when I get back the hummers will be gone.

Not two minutes later a slender goldfinch landed atop the shepherd's crook that holds the hummingbird feeder. It's not the first bigger bird that's perched there. Yesterday a grackle made a bumpy, awkward landing, looked about as though lost, and flew off again in a welter of sun-flicked feathers. The goldfinch surveyed the rudbeckia in the patio garden and then dropped down among the tall green stems to pick at the tufted flower heads. Some of the little yellow finches winter over here but they stay well hidden. I won't see them en masse again until next summer.

Two nights ago, as I sat in the gazebo at my brother's house reading, a movement caught my eye. I looked up to see scores of little birds bobbing their way across the sky. Great sweeps of them came, 20 or 30 to a bunch, and the flocks went by for some minutes. I estimated about 500 birds passed me before the shimmery dusk melted into darkness. Flocking birds are among the first signs of the changing season.

I am leaving next week for Oregon and a reunion with my two sisters and my eldest son who live out there. When I return to the cottage, autumn will have come. The gardens will be well into retirement, the flowers will have shed their petals and faded to buff colored stalks. The vegetable garden, already bereft of harvestable vegetables, will need cleaning up. Mornings will be chilly, and evenings - sweater weather. No singing birds will wake me. It will be the masses of geese and ducks returning to the pond that will call at dusk, and the jays and crows that serenade my afternoons.

But I will have new stories to tell, of the great forests, the high desert of eastern Oregon, of steep cliffs and glacial lakes and the wild, windy beaches of the coast. Wait for me.