Ben Hewitt's Blog, page 76

The Downside of Freedom

Our boys have enormous freedom to do as they please. This is by design; we have engineered it into our lives. Most mornings after chores and breakfast, they set out on some adventure or another, into the woods or down the field. Usually they do this together, although it is not infrequent that one returns before the other, complaining of a grave injustice: Fin didn’t want to pretend it was the “old days.” Rye didn’t want to pretend they were carrying a 30-30 and everyone knows you can’t hunt deer with a .22. Rye put wet wood on the fire and it went out. Fin made Rye carry the heavy backpack. Like I said, grave, grave injustices.

From a parenting perspective, there is a downside to the tremendous degree of freedom they have been afforded, and it is this: The boys seem to have developed a sense of entitlement regarding how they spend their time. In short, when the occasion calls for them to do something they’d rather not do, they are not terribly accommodating. Actually, that’s not true: What I meant to say is that in these circumstances they can be pissy little snot-nosed brats.

Penny and I talk about this a lot. Depending on our mood, and the degree to which the boys have managed to invoke our ire, our perspective on their entitlement spans a broad chasm of possible outcomes. The worst of these, we figure, is that we’ve failed them completely and they will never amount to much of anything. The best is that we are allowing them to be discerning regarding how they pass their time, and this discernment will serve them well as they go out into the world beyond a certain hillside in Cabot, VT.

I suspect the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, if only because experience has taught me that this is where truth most often lurks. They will, of course, need to learn how to accept that life is not all a bed of roses (or, to put in the context of their current passions, one extended hunting trip in the “old days,” replete with large caliber weaponry, a pack animal for the heavy lifting, and a crackling fire on which roast fresh meat). But I can’t help but think of how my own sense of entitlement over my time has shaped my life and generally (I’d like to think) for the better. I did not like school, so I walked away from it. I did not like working for others, so I chose not to. I do not like to spend a lot of time indoors, so I don’t. I want to live the way I want to live, conventions be damned.

Maybe it’s just narcissism, or it’s slightly lesser cousin, self-indulgence. Probably it’s a little of each. But damn it anyway, why is it so hard for us to remember that time is all we truly have? Why shouldn’t we choose how to pass it?

Because if we don’t, there are plenty of people who will be happy to choose for us.

The Work of the World

Late in the season, after the final crop of hay is in the barn, our neighbor grazes his cows in the hayfield abutting our southern property line. Over the past few weeks, the boys have taken to rounding up the 40 or so lumbering, cud-chewing beasts for evening milking and driving them the half mile or so across the ridgetop field and down the steep hill to the barn. They do this with no assistance from us. Our neighbor, who is 64 and recently broke ribs when he slipped and fell in the milking parlor, appreciates the help.

It is a task they approach with no small amount of enthusiasm, and I am grateful for this. Even more so, I am thankful that they have the opportunity to experience  first hand a small piece of the essential work of the world, the type of work that goes largely unacknowledged and unappreciated in contemporary America. I sometimes think there is nothing more honorable and heroic than to be engaged in this sort work.

Actually, I’m coming to always think that.

 

In The Money

It has been a productive summer and early fall, insomuch as productivity can be measured in outbuildings constructed, sawlogs sawn, firewood dropped, skidded, bucked, split, and stacked, kimchi made, beeves and pigs dispatched of, sausages mixed and stuffed, pasture cleared, soils amended, .22 rounds shot, blueberries harvested, mushrooms foraged, and so forth. As measured in paying work, well, not so much. I have spent less time at my desk this summer than I might have ever thought possible, and every time it seems as if I can no longer keep the ball in play, I am graced with some project or another, the paycheck for which is just enough to return to the world beyond my office windows.

Somehow, and certainly not inconsequentially, the writing of my most recent book about money and our cultural relationship to it has all but severed a long held spell I have been under for most of my adult life. Although have always been thrifty, perhaps even cheap, and although we have never gone without the basic essentials for even a day, I have nonetheless lived under a pall of worry regarding our finances. For too long I have chalked this up as an inevitable response to the uncertainty of self-employment, but now I understand that was merely a story I told myself and anyone who cared to listen. The truth is, I have often let my concerns over money lure me out of the flow of my life and keep me from becoming fully immersed in the portion of my world that is unrelated to my financial well being. I sense that I have not been alone in this regard.

That has not been the case this summer, or if it has, to a much lesser extent. Indeed, we are making and have less money than at any point in the past 15 or so years. And yet, we feel lighter and freer and nearer to our sense of what our lives should be than at any point in the past 15 or so years. Furthermore, we have noticed an interesting phenomenon: The less we think about money, the less we seem to need it. I am not yet sure of the pathways from the former to the latter, but I suspect they are pragmatic, rather than energetic or spiritual (although I can’t be sure). Because the less time I spend in pursuit of money, the more time I spend immersed in the skills and activities that cost not only cost nothing, but actually “pay” us in productive capacity. And the more I immerse myself in these skills and activities, the more I am drawn to others who share these interests, who both teach and learn from me.

All of this is not to say that we have somehow created some sort of moneyless utopian society in the rural hollows of northern Vermont. My life is still very much tied to the monetary realm, as I suspect it always will be. I guess what strikes me is that even within the context of this reality, I have a choice: I can allow money and the angst it generates to lead me by these reins. Or I can refuse to relinquish such control, and lead it.

 

 

Small Comfort

A few mornings back, after chores and breakfast and our ritual run to Jimmy and Sarah’s farm to pick up a couple buckets of milk for the pigs, the boys and I headed into the woods. Fin carried a fishing pole, a container of worms, and the fervent hope to ruin a couple of brook trouts’ day. Rye carried a basket, which he planned to fill with a smorgasbord of mushrooms: Boletes, chanterelles, hedgehogs. From these ingredients, they were scheming to fashion a stew of sorts, cooked over an open fire at “Camp Dubbins.”

We strolled through the woods for a half-mile or so. The boys pointed to the spot where they’ve twice flushed a handful of grouse on previous fishing trips. We stopped to snack on the few remaining wild blackberries; they were huge, almost outlandishly big, but frankly a bit past their prime. We didn’t eat many. We debated the relative merits of different caliber hunting rifles and decided (for approximately the eleventh time; this is a debate the boys are keen to repeat with some frequency) that we’d be best served by either a .223 or .243 as our first “real” gun. Soon enough we reached the stream, with the remains of its old hand-laid stone bridge abutments. The water was low and the fish flitted about. Fin cast his line, Rye headed back into the woods, and I just sat, soaking up the early sun.

Now, it just so happens that only the evening before I’d had the misfortune of catching a bit of the Republican Convention on the radio. I was on my way home from my friend Robbie’s, where I’d loaded a ton-and-a-half or so of gorgeously flat patio and wall stone onto our big Ford. I drove home lazily along back roads, a little tired, a little unsure if the load had been adequately secured. Our truck has a flatbed, which is great for hauling things that are easy to strap down, and not so great for hauling things that ain’t. Rocks ain’t, and  the last damn thing I wanted to do was reload all that stone along the side of some dark-ass gravel goat path in rural Northern Vermont. Indeed, I allowed myself to imagine that if I lost the load, I’d simply drop into a protected hollow and doze away my fatigue, before facing the hard truth of those dozens, if not hundreds of scattered rocks. (The load held)

I’m not sure why I allowed myself to be subjected to the convention tripe; it must have had something to do with my tiredness. Or maybe it was a bit of “car wreck” syndrome, which is to say, what I heard was so flat out disturbing, it was actually captivating in its gruesomeness. By-the-by and for what it’s worth, this is not a partisan observation; I have little doubt that I would have been equally horrified by the goings-on at the Democratic Convention, which I plan to ignore in its entirety.

In any event, I happened to tune in during the warm-up speeches for the main event, which on this evening would be none other than Mitt Romney his own bad self. And for whatever reason, the warm-up speeches on this fine late August night were geared toward education. This is what I heard:

Compete. Engineering. Economy. Global. Opportunity. Best. Entrepreneurialism. Excel. Growth. Test.

This is what I didn’t hear:

Nature. Compassion. Resourcefulness. Generosity. Spirit. Gratitude. Community. Alive.

It is no secret that I do not think much of our nation’s mainstream educational offerings. This is not an indictment of the many good people working within the boundaries of the box that contain these offerings. Rather, it is an indictment of the box itself and all the flawed assumptions, unacknowledged truths, and flat-out denials that have gone into its construction and continue to be devoted to its maintenance.

That evening after chores, the four of us gathered at Camp Dubbins to eat brook trout and wild mushroom stew, along with ears of fire-roasted sweet corn. The boys had built the fire and prepared the stew; they’d harvested the corn and soaked it in water to prepare it for the coals. I knew I’d be left with the bulk of the cleanup, and it’d been a long day of sawmilling and framing the new milk house. It was the sort of day I could feel in my bones and it felt good, but not necessarily the kind of good that makes one keen to mop up a bunch of fish guts and corn husks.

But you know what? I was happy to do it. Because when I considered the day and how my young sons had passed it, I didn’t see any walls. And you have no idea how I was comforted by that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unanticipated

 

A week ago, Fin and I took a walk. We were ostensibly on the hunt for mushrooms, but it’s been so dry that other than a fine patch of hedgehogs, we found none.

We stopped for a while to sit in the woods, lowering ourselves into a patch of moss-like plants. They looked sort of like little spruce trees, but were not.

“Papa,” said Fin, “did you know these plants are the same species as a tree that used to grow a half-dozen feet around and like a hundred feet tall?”

I had not known that.

For the next quarter-hour or so, we lay in a soft bed of plants descended from enormous prehistoric trees.

 

This morning, Rye and I went fishing. We loaded the kayak onto the truck and rumbled over to Nichol’s Pond. We were the only humans on the water. The sun was bright and warm and made me a little sleepy, and from across the pond we could hear a loon. Or maybe two. I caught a small bass and a sunfish; Rye caught two sunfish and a perch. We put them back in the water and they flickered out of sight.

One the way home, I reached across the truck’s bench seat and he held my hand and I did not take it for granted, because soon there will come a day when he will not do such a thing. So I squeezed a little. He looked over at me and grinned. And then he squeezed back.

 

Sometimes I am struck by the fact that the moments I most remember, the ones that feel as if they are embodied by everything that makes life something we are afraid to give up, are the moments I could never have anticipated.

 

 

 

Half Full

This morning after chores I set out for the most prolific of the half-dozen or so ridiculously prolific wild blackberry stashes that surround our home. Penny and I have a shared affliction which will not allow us to vacate a berry patch until all vessels are full, so I carried only a single one-gallon bucket: I couldn’t spend the whole freakin’ day harvesting fruit.  It was cloudy, and it’s been so damn dry that even the promise of rain felt refreshing. We’ve had maybe two inches of rain in the past five weeks, enough to keep things green, but only just.

The berries were absurdly abundant. Each cane was bent under the weight of ripe fruit, some the size of my thumb from the knuckle up. And I have pretty big thumbs. I picked the first two quarts in maybe 20 minutes, at which point rain began to fall, not hard, but steady. It ran down my face and soaked my shirt and stung the innumerable bramble scratches that criss-crossed  my bare arms. I was cold, but to be wetly cold in the rain has been such a novelty this summer that I kept pickin’. Besides, my container wasn’t full.

But soon it was, and I turned to leave. Before I did, though, I surveyed the patch and realized that, by rough estimation, I’d picked perhaps 1% of the available ripe berries, which totaled maybe a third of all the berries. There were so many still to ripen. So much fruit, so much food, so much abundance, and all for nothing more than the asking (well, that, and pair of sliced-up forearms).

I am just finishing my third book which, roughly speaking, is about money, a friend and his relationship to money, and my relationship to money. But even this is a fairly superficial description, because I found that when I started exploring this subject and these relationships, I uncovered underlying themes of abundance, scarcity, community, interdependence and, perhaps most profoundly, fear. I suppose I could explain what I mean by all of this, but then you wouldn’t have to read my book. And I really would like it if you’d read my book.

Still, I don’t think I’d be revealing too much to say that working on the book and spending time with my friend (who lives quite well on about $6000 annually, and is perhaps the most contented person I’ve ever known) has dramatically altered my perspective on abundance. I now view the world as being enormously, almost impossibly abundant; it is only our contrived fears and collective reaction to those fears that creates the perception of scarcity. The tragic irony, of course, is that our perception of scarcity is what drives the reality of scarcity for some, in a world where the essentials of day-in, day-out survival have been monetized and commoditized.

To view the world as abundant in an era of massive inequality and resource gluttony demands a shift of perception that is nothing short of life-altering. At least, it has been for me, and the fantastic truth is that the more I believe in it, the more I experience it. I doubt this is quantifiably true; I don’t think that simply by putting out some sort of “vibe,” I’m attracting more abundance to me, although what the hell… maybe it’s true. In any case, I’m not preaching the prosperity gospel, here. Or if I am, it’s a sort of prosperity that can only result from letting go of contemporary assumptions regarding the accumulation of so-called “wealth.” To live a life that is subservient to these expectations is to live a life that is largely rooted in fear. It is a fear that is entirely convenient to the corporatized hand that feeds, because the more scared we are, the more we feel compelled to abate our fear with the accumulation of money and stuff. And the more we view the world – and each other – as being ungenerous.

If this is your view, come on over: I’ve got a certain blackberry patch to show you.

 

 

 

By the Roots

We were up early this morning, with chores completed and breakfast finished by 7. As such, I offered the boys a round of target practice; we’d borrowed a .223 from a neighbor and they were eager to give it a shot. Heh. So to speak.

We spent half an hour in the woods with the guns, blasting at a paper target and a couple of unfortunate stumps. I was not raised with guns, which probably helps explain my initial aversion to them, but having shot a couple thousand rounds over the past year or two, I now find that a rifle feels quite natural in my hands. The boys hope to be deer hunting within the next year or so; we’ll take a hunter safety course this fall and see where things stand.

In any event, the three of us came out of the forest with rifles in hand and spent shells clattering in our pockets to find a young woman on our lawn, conversing with Penny. If she was alarmed or merely surprised at the sight of two gun-wielding children (to say nothing of their father), she hid it well. She explained that she had come to show us “learning materials” and hinted that we might wish to purchase some, to which I said “you’ve got a tough sell, here,” and disappeared into the house. I did not intend to be short, although it may have come off that way. I simply didn’t want to waste her time. Actually, to be entirely honest, I was more concerned with wasting my time. But since that doesn’t sound very nice, that’s not what I said.

I do not wish to educate my children according to a curriculum engineered by someone else. Because the truth is, no matter how well intended, no matter how well engineered, no matter how flat out smart the designer of said curriculum might be, he or she does not know my kids. He or she knows only some aggregate average of children, which is then wedded to a particular educational philosophy (which I may or may not agree with) to create “learning materials.” Needless to say, there is an inherent standardization that cannot fully respect and honor the individual. Of course, nowhere is this more true than in formal educational institutions (aka “schools”) which suffer the added burdens of maintaining some semblance of order amidst the teeming mass of youth, as they attempt to meet the imposed expectations of state, federal, and cultural entities.

The world is full of committed and well-meaning teachers and other actors in the educational arena. Of this, I have no doubt. But they suffer the same fate as the committed and well-meaning politicians who must do their bidding within the context of a diseased system (although I’m pretty sure there are far fewer well-meaning politicians, than teachers). Some children seem to thrive in this system, although of course it’s impossible to say how they might respond to an alternative, because for most, there are no other options; the financial realities of contemporary America do not encourage a different track, because most families simply can’t afford to consider other options. And to me it seems as if our culture’s messaging, as steered by the steady hand of corporate media, suggests that youth is something to be endured, rather than celebrated. In other words, to live separate from our children, to do our best to ensure that they disrupt our busy lives as little as possible.

Now, it could be said that I do not know what my children need most. At times, I am sure this is true, and like most parents, we suffer from bouts of self-doubt and general uncertainty. But having committed ourselves to this path long ago, and having seen how many of our specific anxieties have been banished by the maturation of the boys in their own time, at their own pace, as the natural outgrowth of their true interests and passions, these bouts come less often and are less acute, and I can see how they are the result of fears that have been seeded into me.

And that the best thing I can do is pull the damn things up by the roots and let my boys learn.

 

 

Me Don’t Need No Education

For various reasons, I have been thinking about what constitutes an education and the ways in which our twenty-first century American expectations surrounding the learning process are failing us. (Big disclaimer: As posted here, my personal educational path has been decidedly atypical). I think I will have more to say about this soon, but for the meantime, I thought I would post an excerpt from an essay I wrote for the current issue of Taproot. 

What is an education? Should it be one thing, and not another? It’s a silly question, really, a bit like asking what is a person? Should she be one thing and not another? I recall the time my father told his mother – my Grandmother – that I was working toward becoming a full time writer. She looked incredulous: “But he’s not qualified!”

Our boys’ names are Finlay and Rye, and they are ten and seven, respectively. It will probably not surprise you to hear that they do not practice formal schooling. “Unschooling” seems to be the contemporary term of choice for education based on life experience, although I’m not sure how I feel about it. I mean, is not doing something the same as undoing it? Or maybe we are schooling them; what is schooling, anyway?

Not so long ago, a few months at the most, I mentioned to someone that Rye does not yet read. She was shocked. “Really?” she kept asking. “Really?” As if this were some unconquerable failing that would haunt him all his life. I was not offended, for I know what the expectations are, what they have become. I know that by age seven, my children are expected to be reading, to be multiplying endless rows of numbers across a page, to be sitting for hours on end, bent over pencil and paper, or, more likely, a laptop or iPad. I know what they’re expected to know.

But in full truth, it’s what they’re not expected to know that interests me: To identify every tree in our woodlot from 30 paces. To butcher the hindquarter of a hog. To wield a splitting maul and use a chop saw. To make a fire. To know when a windrow of hay is dry enough for baling. To disappear into the woods below our home and return an hour later with a bag full of chanterelle and hedgehog mushrooms. Of course, this knowledge is not mutually exclusive to a conventional schooling experience. But a child cannot know everything; there are only so many waking hours in a day, and if those hours are passed inside the four walls of a classroom, or gazing into a pixilated screen, they are by default not spent otherwise.

Every so often, I fall victim to the manufactured educational expectations of our culture, and I worry that my boys will remain forever out-of-step with twenty-first century America. I fret over the many things they don’t know, and think, my god, I am failing them. Or I consider my own unlikely education, and my still-bloated ignorance, all the times it feels as if I know nothing or, if not nothing, then not enough.

Yet, this I do know: Whether by serendipity, stubbornness, or blind luck, I have pieced together a good and satisfying life far off the well-trod corridor of the assumed educational path, and it is the aggregate of everything I have learned and experienced that has led me here, to this exact place. In my wildest dreams, I would wish for nothing else.

When I remember this, I am reminded that perhaps the most crucial knowledge I can impart upon my boys is that an education, like a life, can be whatever one chooses. And what I want to say to them is, Go. Do. Be. I will teach you what I can. The rest is up to you.

So it Was

Every week or so, Penny and I take the boys on separate adventures. Given the amount of time they spend together, and given that both of them are just as rowdy and rambunctious as young boys should be, and perhaps even more so (never mind strong-willed, hot-tempered, and generally feral), it feels imperative that we occasionally pull them apart for a few hours, lest they thrash each other right into the emergency room. I exaggerate, of course, but not by terribly much.

We alloted this past Saturday morning for just such adventures.  The rules of engagement are simple: the boys alternate between us from week-to-week, and can choose what they each want to do, so long as it doesn’t cost anything, and doesn’t require much vehicle travel. Generally, we stick around the homeplace; fishing is a popular option, as are mushrooming and the construction of catapults from scrap materials on hand.

This week, Fin wanted to go squirrel hunting, as he’d recently made what he deemed a decent squirrel potpie (actually, it was chipmunk, but truth is, there’s precious little difference between squirrel and chipmunk. They’re both disgusting) and was keen to replicate his success. So he loaded the .22, and he and Penny set off for the woods to stalk wild game.

Rye was having trouble deciding what to do. I offered fishing, romping through the woods, tractor driving instruction, and helping Melvin, our 65-year old dairy farming neighbor, load square bales into his barn. I’d seen Melvin baling at nearly 9 the evening before, and knew the hay would still be sitting in his wagon, which was fine so long as the weather held. But showers were forecast for the afternoon, and if that hay didn’t get under cover, it’d be ruined. It’s not that Melvin couldn’t've put the hay in the barn by himself, but if ever there is a task where the phrase “many hands make light work” rings true, it’s loading square bales.

I was a bit surprised when Rye chose the lattermost of these options. First of all, at 7:30 a.m., it was already wicked hot and humid, and would be more so in the loft of Melvin’s old barn. Second, he freakin’ loves driving the tractor – what boy doesn’t? Third, the bales weighed somewhere in the range of 50 to 60-pounds; Rye weighs somewhere in the range of 50 to 60-pounds. You do the math.

In any event, we puttered down the hill to find Melvin, which wasn’t that hard, considering he was where he is every single morning of every single day of every single year at 7:30 a.m. Which is to say, he was milking. “Melvin, we came to unload the wagon,” I said. He looked at me, then at Rye, and almost – but not quite – missed a beat. Within a half-dozen minutes, we had the wagon positioned at the bottom of the hay elevator, and Rye had climbed the sketchy wooden ladder with the missing rung into the loft. It was determined that I would load the elevator from the wagon, and Rye would pile bales in the barn. To be honest, I wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it, and I don’t think Melvin was either. But there was nothing to be gained by not trying, and so Melvin returned to his cows, and I started sending bales up to Rye along the clattering elevator.

Within an hour, we had most of the bales unloaded, and Melvin had finished milking, and he came out and we all stacked them neatly along the back gable wall of his hay loft. In the vast, open space of the barn they looked almost inconsequential, and I knew it was maybe three days worth of feed for his small herd. Three days out of the 200 or so days they’d need to be fed hay over the year, and for a moment I thought about all of the essential work that happens that most of us never see, that goes unheralded and unnoticed. Unappreciated.

That night, Rye showed me his hands, and the blisters that had already formed and burst. Little flaps of skin hung ragged from his small palms.

“That was fun,” he said.

And so it was.

Matter over Mind

Frankly, I am struggling a bit with updating this spot. Part of it is the madcap rush of mid-summer and my increasing aversion to the desk/computer/interior of our home. It seems the more time I spend outside, engaged with the particulars of innumerable projects that are either partially completed or not even begun in earnest, the more time I want to spend outside. Our phone and internet were out for nearly 3 days, victims of the July 4 thunderstorm, and it was like a gift. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate these conveniences, only that, like most in contemporary America, I too easily allow them to exceed their proper boundaries, to the point where it sometimes seems as if they are using me, rather than the other way ’round.

The other part, however, is that I do not feel compelled to share the quotidian particulars of our life, no matter how un-quotidian (non-quotidian? De-quotidian?) they may seem to others. Truth is, there are plenty of folks doing that much better than I ever will, and my intent with this space is to say something only when I have something that I truly want to say, that feels important to me or, at least, that feels as if it demands some clarity which might be gained by sharing. The fact that I haven’t had much of this lately is perhaps a reflection of long hours of physical work at hand: Splitting wood until the day has been quite nearly overtaken by night is a fine way to scrub cobwebs from the mind. Despite my last post, and the very real need to figure out how to maintain some meager cash flow beyond the even more-meager proceeds our little farm brings in, not much in my life seems as if it needs clarity right now; the demands of what needs to be done on a day-in, day-out basis provide all the clarity I need. This is what matters. This is what I must do.

All of this is a sort of long-winded apology to those who visit regularly. I am all too aware of the expectations that blogs will be updated regularly, and that to not do so is to risk alienating readers. But I am in a place where the physical is taking precedence over the intellectual, and it’s hard to say when that might shift.