Many people write to me and say the same things.
“I want to live in the country.”
“I want to have chickens.”
“I want to keep bees.”
“I want to own land.”
"I want to go home."
They are the people who grew up in good green places who heard the golden roar of cities and moved there only to find the gold was but a thin veneer covering rot and pus. Despite this, they stayed. Sometimes the money was too good, sometimes they had already built a life that was good enough, sometimes they were just too tired.
I ask when they plan to do these things, to buy land, to build or to return home.
"Someday."
Let me remind you, them, and everyone of the good man from whom I bought the High Wood, the sprawling forest surrounding my childhood home. He too had a dream of living in the country, of returning to a place he never truly knew. He dreamt of living on what the old farmers here call The Overlook, a hillside retreat where hunters and farm hands would bring their girlfriends and wives to "take in the view" of the valley below. He cleared a road. He drilled a well. He dragged camper trailers onto the property to stay in during the summer. He would come up from the city a week or two out of the year, look at that view, and dream. He too, said "someday."
"Someday" never came.
Life kept happening and before he knew it, he was too old to realize his dream. His children who once enjoyed a week or two of their summers in the High Wood chasing fireflies and June bugs moved on. They too heard the siren song of the cities and suburbs, of an easy life. His wife became sick. She died. He became sick. He got better. He remarried. His new wife became sick. He looked up one day and realized he had spent the last thirty years in hospital waiting rooms and funeral parlors. There is joy of course. Grand children, retirement, church, time in the garden.
Yet, when we closed the deal, he looked off into a place I could not see. Someplace far, not entirely of this plane. Somewhere between reality and what could have been. There was a sense of loss, not of the land, but of something unrealized, of something desired that would never come to pass.
After what felt like a very long time, he nodded and solemnly said something that will stay with me for the rest of my days.
"That old wheel keeps turning."
He was right.
Time grinds on, a millwheel that never tires, softens, or fades. You think you have time. You think the long summers of your life will never end; an eternal solstice of opportunity and second chances, of fireflies, June bugs, and "somedays."
I would like to comfort you and tell you that you are right, that you can wait, that next year or the year after will be a better time, that you can return when the time is right.
The truth is simpler though.
That old wheel keeps turning.
I started keeping bees as soon as I could. We moved too late in the season last year to start them, but this year I was eager and had everything ready by May when they would arrive.
Well, nearly everything.
I wanted to keep bees because it is in my blood; my grandfather kept bees and my mother kept bees. I remember his hives at the top of his property in Cape Cod. It felt like hundreds of them, a labyrinth of tall wooden boxes full of goodness incarnate, of sheer benevolence. I am blessed by having many of my grandfather’s items related to the art: his smoker, his veil, his wax molds, most of his books. His old smoker works better than mine. It calms the bees quicker, the bellows in it feel more supple like it has more life. It feels organic, not mechanical. Such is the way of things that have meaning to us. We can feel the life in them.
Being the youngest of the grandchildren, I did not have an opportunity to cultivate a love for his art before he passed, but we rarely recognize the gifts we have laid before us before it is too late. One of the great faults of human nature, perhaps, or at least of adolescence.
After we moved home, I resolved to take up the family tradition of beekeeping. I started taking classes from a local beekeeper, ordered all the parts for two hives, and even bought extra elements of the hives to ensure they would have room to grow and not swarm away.
I received my first package of bees on the 4th of May: three pounds of an Italian breed grown in Georgia, USA. I had learned how to install a hive at least in theory; when we had done the workshop where the hands-on experience was offered, my teacher miscounted the students and I was the odd man out who had to stand by and watch during the workshop.
That was fine.
I did it myself in front of my family and neighbors anyway.
Here is a video of me installing my first hive:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Echoes from an Old Hollow Tree to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.