The house is built into a hill. Climb the steep stone
stairs,...
The house is built into a hill. Climb the steep stone
stairs, walk the slate path, open the front door, and it’s a regular place,
kitchen, living room. But behind both is a room dug into the hill which has the
feel of a cellar or a cave. We’ve been working to make this room, its walls
surrounded by wet earth, a usable, livable space. We’ve put in a bathroom, new
walls framed, insulated, plastered, new lights put in. It is still dim, and it
is still hard not to feel the damp press of earth on three sides. Spring
unfolds outside – here it is June! – but it’s a different season under earth, a
Hades gloom, and heading outside to where the saws are set up, we squint in the
sun, and heading back in to the dim, we blink, blinded, eyes adjusting to the
dark. I was starting to feel like a mole or a troll.
Yesterday, though, we started work on a deck. Outside allday. Loads
felt lighter. The hours had a different weight as well. Fat white peonies by
the sawhorses drooped under their own weight. Roses climbed a trellis. Birds
dipped by, close enough for us to hear wings at beat against the air. The work
felt not at all like labor. There are so many different shapes of leaves! What
a good thing to look up from the saw and see them, trembling just a little bit
on the breeze, as though they were as excited to be here, outside, existing in
spring.
