A Month on the Farm

Ground squirrels and bluebirds and trout, oh my!

Veneta, OR: nearest Fitzlabs City: Eugene, OR: Eugene's climate in 2080 will feel most like today's climate near Granite Bay, California. The typical summer in Granite Bay, California is 13.8°F (7.6°C) warmer and 86.2% drier than summer in Eugene.

In a weird coincidence, my brother’s family started moving into their new place near Eugene, OR, just as I was hitting the coast. So I’ve been staying here while they make weekend trips back and forth to the Bay Area to move themselves up. 

Being alone for a time, in one place, clarified many things in my mind. At first, it got a little bleak. I have had to face myself in some ways that were unpleasant and probably best kept to myself. But there was also a sense of focus about where to go from here.

Being in one place and in routine showed me that it takes two or three weeks for me to start waking up with “ground hog day dread”—an oppressive sense that today is going to be the same as yesterday. Something I’ve felt before (and terribly in the months leading up to the trip), but only after having it lift during travel am I now able to recognize it as significant and part of my character. 

There is a yurt here on the farm. I have loved being in that space (I took it over for all of my gear and for repairing Agnes, and I stay in it when all of the family is here.) Funny, I saw my brother working in his new greenhouse and he was whistling along, clearly in his happy place, and this is how I feel in a yurt. I lived in one for a couple of years and loved it, but hadn’t realized how much that space affects me. The delight of the lightness of it, how it feels manageable in a way that houses don’t to me. That’s significant, too. Maybe backing out of a house and mortgage a couple of years ago had more to do with an underlying unease than all the rational reasons I seemed to have at the time.

I do love walking out on the land here, Liesl roaming along being able to be full-dog and running free as fast and as far as she wants. She’ll never catch a ground squirrel, but she keeps trying. I enjoy the pleasant little chores or meandering going out to tend the chickens a couple times a day, investigating the bordering river, contemplating the yarrow, picking some blackberries, watching Cedar Waxwings. Being able to wander, with Liesl running just as free, also puts me in a happy mindset. It also worries me, though…my stamina is kaput, my weight is up, my body aches, I’m out of breath at ridiculously easy tasks. Being able to be outside do these things is the best reason for me to try to effect some kind of change there. (Do I do it? No. I seem to be in revolt against self-improvement. I’m letting that inner child pout in the corner for the time being, and I expect she’ll eventually go along with doing something different because pouting in the corner is no fun.)

Eugene has been a friendly place. The logging industry has a big presence, and I find that I know nothing about it, having stayed in that state of “contempt prior to investigation”. I’ve explored some of the surrounding towns where I’ve browsed real estate listings over the past year, especially some of the coast north of Coos Bay that I’d never visited. I learned what I needed to know, satisfying the curiosity that can’t be satisfied on a computer screen. 

Things fell into place for me to dip my toes in fly fishing, and I spent a morning with Carolyne at True North Fly Fishing learning some basics and making the usual mistakes. I caught two tiny cutthroat trout and one whitefish while osprey carried on overhead about how theirs were bigger. There is a fascinating universe here in rivers and streams that I want to explore. Also I have loved hanging out at Home Waters and being on the edges of interesting conversations between fishing geeks. Like birding, the activity itself is only the surface of an underlying connection.

What’s hard to relate is the sort of gentle opening I am feeling into (back toward?) a life that makes sense to no one but me.

There is a pattern for me to fall into step with the status quo, become unhappy, and then need to extricate myself from the repetitive desolation of it all. What I appreciate about the experience of this summer is that I have been able to observe it and consider it in a gentler way—one that doesn’t require me to blow up my entire life.

Several years ago, I was chatted up by an astrologer on a dating site. He did my natal chart (I highly recommend the hilarity of getting an astrological chart done by an astrologer on the make) and despite my skepticism, one thing he wrote that always stuck with me was this: “…you can very easily change directions at times leaving friends and loved ones wondering where you've gone. After all, you were here just less than a minute ago.” 

I expect that after I get home, I’ll have the usual conversations that go something like, “Now I thought you were going to do this other thing…” My response in the past would be to explain all my thinking behind it, to rationally justify the change in direction, in some long-winded explanation that leaves everyone’s eyes glazed over. Maybe I’ll get more graceful about it. Maybe I’ll just shrug.

So tomorrow, Liesl will resume her supervisory duties from her passenger-side seat in Thirsty, and with Agnes riding on top we’ll head for Loveland, CO for Overland Expo. I want to step inside some truck campers and other rigs, see what they feel like, and educate myself more about backcountry vehicle travel.

On my first night out on this trip so many months ago, I saw a fellow with a nimble pop-up truck camper arrive, and within a couple of minutes he was sitting in his folding chair, enjoying conversation with friends with his campsite fully prepared. From the outside of his rig, it seemed there to be space inside to stand upright and sit to work at a laptop, make some coffee, be reasonably comfortable as an aging awkward person. I was immediately envious. That’s the life! So I want to learn more about those kinds of setups, and it’s worth the drive to see lots of them in one setting.

If I can get my new wading boots in a stream or two along the way, so much the better.

From the expo, we’ll head for home, back on Karas Lane, where my landlord has spent her summer enlarging my studio apartment—it’s as if I’m moving into a new place, without moving all the stuff. I’ll probably close down the bubbling business, though I won’t put the wands down completely. I just need more freedom on my weekends.

Back on the road tomorrow, then, for a couple of weeks.

Everything I’ve written here before seems like a lifetime ago.