We need to return.
It is a feeling expressed so often — the need for us to return to some time, some place, to something that we have lost. It could be as simple and misguided as nostalgia for a simpler time that did not truly exist (life has always been complicated, messy). It could be a specific place or a broader environment from which we have distanced ourselves. It could be a reclamation of a small, precious thing that slipped from our grasp too soon. More often than not though, we yearn to return home.
We can.
Like all good things though, we have to choose it.
My wife and I did.
It has been exactly one year since we returned to my hometown to the forest surrounding my childhood home, the High Wood. What can one really accomplish in a year? A great deal, it turns out.
In April we packed everything we could not sell or bare to part with into a U-Pack moving truck. We chose this because you only pay for the space utilized but we still ended up using all but two feet. Still, it was affordable and easy save for our own labor. This 30’ container would be dropped off where we chose anywhere in the United States and we would have three days to unpack it. We instructed the company to drop it off at a storage unit near my parents’ house, my childhood home. We shipped our vehicle as well through a different carrier. With our house sold, possessions packed, and vehicle on the way, we bought one-way tickets home. The remainder of April was spent catching our breath and musing about where my wife, daughter, and I would live long term. In the meantime, we were able to all stay in my childhood room by the good grace of my parents.
The question was not easy. We had acquired the land surrounding my parents’ home and the forest was secure from clearcutting or development. There is a well drilled deep in the forest at the Overlook so that presented an option for our own house. We decided against that, however, as it would mean we had two houses very close to each other that would be very similar: at the end of a dirt road in a dense forest looking west over a valley. We certainly could build at the Overlook, but it would essentially be redundant; my childhood home already ticks all those boxes. This raised the question: could the family home be renovated into a multigenerational family estate? It would likely be less expensive than buying a new home, certainly. I began sketching up some designs to present to my parents but the dream quickly fell apart when my father and I found we could not agree on something as simple as where the snow would be plowed to. Construction would also have been disruptive to my parents and to us, and really that is just not fair to anybody. Purchasing a separate house became the best option. We began our hunt.
When we weren’t house hunting in my hometown and adjacent towns, we began clearing the road to the Overlook. We knew we wanted to remove the abandoned, decrepit trailers and our kind neighbor offered to drag them out with his tractor. We would need to clear the way though; the logging roads leading to the trailers had become blocked by years of deadfall. After work and on weekends, my wife, daughter, and I would head into the woods with saw and mattock to clear the way and harvest firewood for my parents in the process.
May brought the incredible blessing of a small house in the middle of a five acre meadow about four miles from my parents’ home. The wide open space of the field appealed to my Coloradan wife and her love for vast horizons and clear light. The proximity to my childhood home appeased my woodland heart. Our daughter liked that the house was little and blue. We were all happy. It would be two months until we could close on the house — all things happen slowly in Vermont. This was fine. We still had work to do in the High Wood.
Languid June was spent dreaming about our new house, chasing fireflies, and finishing the road clearing to The Overlook. My wife also encouraged me to begin writing, and I published my first essay here on SubStack on the summer solstice. If you have been following me for long enough, you know that the solstices, equinoxes, and the four days in between are important to us. They are times for reflection and celebration. The summer solstice brings the daylight’s zenith and with it the zenith of our energy. Afterwards, the year is on the march to winter and we begin ever so slightly to slow. Perhaps sensing this, my little girl wanted nothing more than to loaf in the piles of freshly mowed hay in the July fields around our home and my parents’. July should be for a little bit of loafing, for swimming in the lake and lying in hay.
It should be, at least. This past July rained and rained and did not stop. The revelry of the 4th gave way to the floods of the 9th, the same day we closed on our little blue house. We were lucky, or had good foresight, as the house is high on a hill. The road to my parents’ did wash out into a canyon however, and we aptly renamed it.
The July rains did have a benefit, however; the kind logger working the forest adjacent to the High Wood needed work and, when asked to take a few large pines out of the Overlook that were dominating the space, he offered to take the trailers as well. We just needed to wait until the ground was dry. The rest of the month was spent moving into our new little home, reclaiming the aging carriage house from its many-legged inhabitants, foraging chanterelles in the High Wood, and cutting firewood for winter. It was a good month.
August was much like July, but two important events occurred: our logger friend was able to pull the trailers out by the end of the month and the sugar maker who was leasing trees from our neighbor’s sugarbush approached us and asked to lease ours as well. Part of purchasing the forest meant conserving it, not preserving it. A forest is like a garden and must be tended. After spending months cutting deadfall out of logging roads, we decided it would be beneficial to have someone else as invested in the High Wood’s health as we were. We also wanted to see the forest become part of Vermont’s working rural landscape — the last thing I would want is for it to become an untouched Posted property. Forests should be utilized responsibly, so we modified our forest management plan we had drawn up back in January when we purchased the land and agreed to lease nearly two-thousand taps to a local sugar maker.
September was spent enjoying all the good events harvests bring. We lacto-fermented most of the green beans we grew and preserved the spring fiddleheads in apple cider vinegar, our little girl enjoyed the agricultural fair, I spent a good amount of time honing my skill with a bow in preparation for October deer season, and we smoked a feast of brisket to celebrate our logger, our neighbor, our sugar maker, and everyone else who helped us reclaim the Overlook and activate the High Wood. We gave them all knives to commemorate their achievement.
October was more important to me than I would realize as the cold weather and the fires in and out catalyzed my regular writing. The SubStack in its current form essentially owes its existence to October, to reflecting on lighting fires, to standing by the hearth and thinking about what it means to be a father. It’s ironic; the end of October causes us to think so much about death and the winter ahead but for us, it meant the genesis of this project that has become so close to my heart, so dear.
November brought thick snows and the beginning of the indoor time, the hearth time, of the year.
There is little to say about the winter. It should be a time when we slow to a comfortable hiatus, when we gather around the table, when we bring the green in, and light a merry fire on the winter solstice to celebrate the lengthening days. We were gentle with ourselves in winter, allowing the sleepy snows to engulf the home while we kept the fire burning and enjoy time with our family and all the friends we made over the year. Little was accomplished and that is how it should be. I did pick up half a cow, however, and that was an adventure in itself.
Now the winter has passed, just barely, and we are just over a week to Beltane or May Day, the traditional start of summer to our distant ancestors. Another fire will be lit here on the hill to celebrate the beginning of the outside season, the busy season of more projects than we can likely handle — a blessed problem to have — and meandering walks through the forest and down to the lake. We have chickens now, I am building their coop, and bees are on their way as well.
We beat on, growing boldly here in the fields and forests of Vermont, constantly returning to something good, green, and right.
As eventful as this recounting is, it is just the broad strokes, to those who read about your victories and setbacks in real time. Which has been a pleasure.
A lot can indeed be accomplished in a year. You should all be properly proud of yourselves