How We’ll Get There

Bilbo, an hour old

Last night I dreamed I was driving, and it was strangely thrilling in that way dreams can heighten the senses, transform the mundane into something novel. A little-traveled gravel road, an unfamiliar car, the sense of speed amplified by my sub-conscious, the metronomic ping of small stones against the rocker panels, dervish of dust in my wake. Destination undetermined, but anticipated.

I drove until I awoke (perhaps that was my destination: Wakefulness), and when I did it was not fully light and below freezing, so I started a fire in the cook stove and made coffee, before walking down the field to retrieve Pip’s day old bull calf, Bilbo. I’d spotted him, barely, from the kitchen window. The little beggar had squeezed through a gap in the barn gate. He’s a beauty, a Shorthorn/Jersey/British White cross, a little half moon of snow white under each eye.

I’ve been thinking lately about contentment and what, exactly, is compelling us to move. Because we love this place and our work here. We have no particular expectations for how our lives will change; this is not about the realization of a long-held ambition, or a belief (which would probably be naïve, anyhow) that this transition will shift something, fulfill a resolution or fill a void. The funny thing is – and I’ve mentioned this before – the moment we realized we’d be perfectly content staying put was the moment we felt liberated to pull this off. I realize that might not make any sense, but that’s ok. The older I get, the less logic seems to matter.

Stay tuned for Bacon Camp: A full weekend of farmstead pork butchery!

Speaking strictly for myself, I am at the moment held in thrall of the challenge, which is not to say there are not other moments I don’t question the wisdom of it. Don’t get me wrong – there are pragmatic reasons for the move, but in truth, there are also pragmatic reasons to not move, to stay right here, in this place, never more enticing than now, the grass at its annual peak of lushness, the pond still clinging to its winter cold. You jump and when you land, your breath catches hard. A beeline to the shore, clamber out, shake it off, dress. Renewal.

So, no, I don’t expect to be any more (and hopefully not less!) content in our new, yet-to-be-built home. I do not expect to be fundamentally changed by the transition, and after all, it’s not like we’re moving to New York City. Or even New Hampshire, for that matter. Eleven miles due north, that’s all. It’s not much. I could leave now, on foot, and be there by dinner, and that’s with stopping for a nap along the way, which of course I would do. I know exactly where, too. I’ve got it all suss’d out.

In some ways, I suppose it’s a bit of an experiment: Can we do this? But then, I already know the answer: Of course we can. It’s not like we’re reinventing the wheel, here. Plenty of people have done what we’re doing, and under far more challenging circumstances. We’re not unique; this is not some great hardship, particularly with all the good people we have helping us. We’re incredibly fortunate that way. Otherwise, I’m not sure we pull this off. Wouldn’t be half as much fun, anyway.

Maybe it’s enough that we’re enjoying ourselves, and in the process, stretching a bit. Strategizing how to pare down our belongings and then actually paring them. Figuring out how to fit our lives into half the space – certainly not a tiny house (and when’s that bubble gonna pop, anyway? I’m predicting a whiplash reversal in 2017, the market suddenly flooded with 200-square-foot shacks at pennies on the dollar, their former owners, suffering acute claustrophobia, fleeing to the suburban McMansions they once scorned. Hell, you can buy 5 of them, stick them together, knock out a few Lilliputian walls, and you’ll have yourself a livable space) – but still: Half the size of our current home. Determining which comforts we’ll retain and which will go. Penny wants just a hand pump in the house, no pressure tank, no faucet, no hot water but what can be heated in pots atop the wood stove. Why, I asked her the other day. I don’t want all that stuff, she said. It just breaks eventually. It just needs to be replaced. I thought about it for a moment. Fine, I said. If you do all the dishes. She didn’t reply, but I’m predicting running water. Generally speaking, I don’t believe in radical, transformative change absent crisis or catastrophe (and in many cases, not even then). I think that for all the New Year’s resolutions, all the grand promises people make to themselves to do this or quit that or start something new, the majority of change in our lives happens slowly, incrementally. Imperceptibly, even.

Maybe, then, that’s ultimately what this move is about: It’s a piece of our slow march toward an even quieter life. Despite the near term bustle of the physical transition and all it entails, it feels as if we’re winding our lives down a notch or two. One could view this as a sign of decline, I suppose, an unambitious glide path into the second half. When I was a boy, my father used to make what he called “coaster cakes,” the pancakes he half-cooked on the cooling pan after he’d prematurely extinguished the burner to save money. They weren’t bad. A little slimy in the middle is all.

So maybe that’s what we’re doing: Coasting until we’re done. Or (and admittedly, this is my preferred view) one could see it as incremental evolution, as our awareness of how little we really need sharpens, shaping our lives in ways we have yet to imagine. I’d like to say it’s like that dream I had: Destination undetermined and yet anticipated, but that’s not true. We already know how this ends. It’s not if we’ll get there, it’s how we’ll get there.

Which I suppose is exactly why it’s so damn much fun to be alive in the first place.