Nine essays are included here as samples from the book.
Quiet People in a Noisy World

Soaking Wet in the Sierras

      Laura and I lived in Toadtown then, in the foothills of the Sierras, west of the Sacramento Valley, before we had children, a car, or many material possessions. We did own an aluminum frame, nylon backpack that carried groceries and laundry well.

      Now, because of dangerous experiences, I won't hitchhike. Then, however, we did hitchhike, because it was the only way we had to travel distances beyond what we could walk. Early that day, we hitched a ride down the mountain, visited friends, bought essential groceries, and laundered at the laundromat. When we headed back up the road, dusk descended, hastened by heavy clouds gathered close against the mountain.

      With our thumbs in the air, we hiked about three miles of a necessary ten, and rain began to pour down. We didn't own rain clothes, but the rain was bearably warm, and we kept walking. Our clothes soon soaked through. Water ran off our hair, noses, and fingertips and into our shoes. Laura said, "Why won't anyone give us a ride?"

      "We're soaking wet. We would get their upholstery wet. Besides that, anyone who would walk in a downpour like this has to be crazy, and people shouldn't pick up crazy hitchhikers."

      The rain began to erode Laura's spirit. I realized I could easily become discouraged. Then we would be two wet, discouraged walkers with a long way to go in a rainstorm. I sang, songs I already knew, and songs I never heard before but pulled out of the dark rainstorm around us. I sang upbeat, even crazy songs. I danced. I blessed the rain and praised the clouds. I found reservoirs of energy that fired me with warm enthusiasm.

      Laura's beginning descent of spirit stopped, then reversed. She kept walking. She cheered up. She laughed and realized good still surrounded us. I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than walk with a heavy pack on my back, Laura by my side, singing in pouring rain as cars sped by, spraying water from their tires and soaking us more, if we could be more soaked.

      Laura said, "All those people are in their warm, dry cars, with the windows rolled up."

      "I know. Think of what they're missing. All the great outdoors. This wonderful rain. What do they have? A tiny, isolated little place, rolling along too fast, cut off from everything real. They're missing out on this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Think of how boring their lives must be."

      Years later, tonight in fact, Laura told me I rekindled her energy and helped her appreciate the rain, the clouds above us, the water running off us, and the earth running with water under our feet, but she wondered if I was crazier than she had ever realized and if the dark, wet night might never end.

      I thought her descent into discouragement might begin again, and I said, "We'll get home in good shape, in good time, and we'll look back on our rainstorm hike with appreciation." The time had come, in her book, for that promise to develop.

      A pickup passed us, and the brake lights came on, and it stopped on the shoulder of the road. A voice floated through the dark rain, "Jon, Laura. Is that you?" and since it was us, and the driver was Pike and his passenger was Shirley, our neighbors in Toadtown, we ran, put the pack in the back and crowded in front with them, because they said they didn't mind if we were wet. They delivered us right to our front door.

      We built a roaring fire in the stove. We discovered the backpack was, as advertised, waterproof, and while our clothes weren't, our skin was, and our hair soon dried. We had carried home freshly laundered clothing, and we put some of it on after we hung what we had been wearing to dry.

      I peeled and sliced apples while Laura made a pie crust, and the odor of baking apples and cinnamon soon filled the small cabin, already full of the sound of rain drumming hard on the tin roof and the sound of Laura singing of the joy of rainstorms and the joy of living.

A Unique, Light Grey Cowboy Hat

      Someone who studied that hat might have concluded it was a product of a hat factory and the Mad Hatter combining efforts. That was close enough to truth to qualify.

      I camped out on Coalpit Mountain the summer I bought the hat, almost 25 years ago. I learned to walk again after having been hit by a drunk driver. I needed a hat. Sunshine at 5,000 feet in the clean air of eastern Oregon is intense, and a wide-brimmed hat would shade my face and neck and provide some shelter from eastern Oregon's sudden cloudbursts.

      The next time I went to town, I went into a western wear store. A cowboy hat would be a good starting point, I had decided. It turned out as I had thought it might; there wasn't a hat in the store large enough for me. That was all right. The sweat band inside the hat took up some room, and it would come out, once I was on the privacy of my own mountain. I bought the largest, light grey, felt cowboy hat without mentioning my plans.

      With groceries and my new hat on the back seat of the car I had borrowed for the summer, I drove back up the dusty gravel road and packed my supplies the last hundred yards up Coalpit Mountain to my camp, with the still-too-small hat riding high on my head. I put everything away, ate lunch, and went to work on the hat. I removed the leather sweat band. Without it, the hat fit just right. The hat came with a double crease in the crown. I punched it out smooth. The double crease had been pressed in, so all the lines still showed in the felt.

      I soaked the hat overnight in a bucket of water, then smoothed it over the bottom of a gallon jar and let it dry in sunshine. I liked the result, a high, round crown. I put a large dimple in the front of the crown, and I started wearing the hat.

      Without a leather sweat band, the soft grey hat was very comfortable. Because there was less adherence between the inside of the hat and my head than there would have been with a leather band, it blew off easily in sudden wind.

      The next time I left the mountain and visited my mother, I soaked the hat again and ironed it while it was still damp, to take the remnants of lines from previous designs out and to stiffen the soft felt somewhat. I bought a long leather thong, circled the outside of the hat with it, cut holes both sides of the crown and pushed the thong through, rigged a sliding bead, and I had an effective chin strap, to keep the hat from blowing off.

      Then a red-tailed hawk left a very nice wing feather near camp. As the hawk screamed its hunting scream in the high air above Coalpit Mountain, I said, "Thank you. That's exactly what I need. I treasure this feather." I cut two holes in the side of the hat's crown and passed the feather's quill in and back out, and I had a feather in my hat. I rolled the left brim up, the right down, and I adjusted the forward brim slightly up or slightly down, depending on where the sun stood or later, when I left the mountain and resumed social existence, depending on what I wanted to communicate about my willingness to communicate or my temporary taciturnity.

      Nobody messed with my hat. I didn't have to tell anyone not to mess with it. Apparently, nobody even considered the idea. Until Laura came along. Every time I put the hat down, she picked it up and put it on. I thought that was rather cheeky of her. But then I decided she looked good wearing the hat. Partly because she was cheeky enough to wear the hat and looked good wearing it, we eventually married, and the hat went with us as we progressed through the world. Both of us often wore the hat, though it was too big for Laura, through nine moves.

      We owned it still when we lived in Whitney Valley. When we weren't wearing it, we hung it on the wall, on a section of weathered barn wood that someone before us had nailed up as interior wood. The hat blended well with the aged, silver grey color of the wood and with the ancient, almost forever quality of the old, ramshackle house.

      The old, remodeled, unique, light grey, wide-brimmed, high-crowned cowboy hat took on a slightly numinous quality over the years. It shaded our eyes from intense sunlight and gave our faces and necks protection from driving rain. To some degree, it symbolized the striving toward creative individualism that led me to learn to walk again, that led me through difficult times of finding and adhering to my own direction, largely against the currents of the culture. To some degree, it came to represent the melding of my forces and directions with Laura's.

      It fits with the slightly numinous, symbolic quality the hat began to have that neither of us now has any idea what became of it. We owned it and wore it in Whitney. We no longer owned it when we left Whitney Valley. With all powerfully positive numinous symbols, the material manifestation loses importance as the symbolic meaning and the numinous weight are understood and absorbed. Though we still need shading from intense mountain sunlight and sudden rainstorms, the memory and the meanings of the hat, we carry within us.

      Sometimes I wonder what became of the hat. Perhaps it passed from material existence, in fire, in a dump, who knows how? Or perhaps even now someone wears it, shielding eyes from sun, sheltering from sudden rain, building meanings for the wearer beyond its mere hatness.

Zinnias for Laura and Juniper

      When we were two and one just beginning to expand Laura's waist, Laura stood by the front steps in sunshine. She said, "I'd like to have a flower garden right here. I want to grow zinnias for the birth. Will you get the ground ready for me and get me some seeds?"

      I said, "I don't think there's enough sun here. It needs to be farther from the house, so the house doesn't shade it."

      "It gets the sun all morning. It will work."

      I worked manure into the ground, and dolomite. I told Laura, "Water it heavily. I'll work it again in a few days, and you can plant it."

      I brought home a book, and we read and exercised together from the book. The fourth day, Laura said, "I don't want to do it this way. A lot of this book is written to overcome fear, because fear makes birth more difficult. But, Jon, I have no fear. It isn't necessary for me to overcome fear, because I know God takes care of me. This child is part of God's plan, so there doesn't need to be any fear, and there can't be pain or problems."

      "Oh. Okay. But what about the exercises? Shouldn't you get muscles built up for the hard work ahead?"

      "I should be strong and in good physical condition, but if I rehearse it too much and exercise specifically for the birth, I'm taking the plan into my own hands and not trusting God to take care of me and this baby and this birth. I trust God to provide me with the knowledge and the strength and the stamina He gives woman for birth. I can't do it part one way and part another."

      I read the book through that night. Laura was right; a lot of it had been written to overcome an expectant mother's fear. Some of it meant to get the husband involved, and I was already involved without reservation. Still, I studied the book and understood why shallow, fast breathing worked best at times, and deeper breathing worked best at other times. I understood how to avoid working too hard at the wrong time, and I remembered everything I thought might be useful information.

      I worked for a nearby farmer. I drove home late afternoons. Wednesday evening, late in September, when I came out of the bathroom after showering, Laura said, "This baby is getting ready. I've had three contractions."

      I threw the towel on the bed and started dressing. Laura laughed and said, "I think there's plenty of time. They're a long way apart and not very hard yet. But I'm going to call Chas and Loretta."

      I cleaned house and washed dishes. I picked large, beautiful zinnias of several colors from Laura's garden by the front step and I brought them in and put them in a vase. Chas and Loretta got there at nine that evening. I arranged pillows behind Laura to support her. She panted and strained and pushed, sweating, skin flushed red. She didn't make much noise. She said, "This is awkward. I can't push very well in this position." I crouched beside her and picked her up and held her.

      I said, "You're going to have to make some noise. Quit thinking about the neighbors. They'll live through this in good shape. Getting this baby born takes first priority." I led her, "Come on. Do it like this," and I panted and took long, deep breaths and hollered out loud, as if I worked the hardest work in existence, and Laura followed my lead. She grunted with the work and hollered with exertion.

      A contraction of her uterus started again. She breathed long and deep. She raised her voice from deep grunting to a shout, exultation and the beginning of pain from extreme effort, bordering on tearing muscles and ligaments. "Ease up, relax, catch up on breathing. Rest for a minute." She panted. Loretta wiped away Laura's sweat with a damp towel. I said, "Don't push yet. Pant. Let your muscles get started. Wait. Now breath deep and push hard."

      Laura breathed, stretched back to loosen muscles and shifted position. I moved to accommodate her, holding her in the curve of my arms. Laura straightened and pushed with strength and determination, and her voice filled the small apartment.

      Loretta said, "The baby is stretched out straight now. The baby is doing some hard work, too. Come on everybody, some more hard work now."

      Chas supported the perineum. Laura hollered and pushed hard, and the baby emerged to the shoulders, face down, and then rotated so she faced up. She blinked her eyes open, found my face, and focused on my eyes. I thought my smile might crack my face.

      I said, "Let's do it again," and Laura pushed, and the baby reached for the world and emerged in one long, smooth motion. Chas caught her and lifted her up and laid her face down on Laura's abdomen. The baby raised her head and studied her mother's face.

      Laura talked quietly to her. She said, "You're beautiful. You're really beautiful. We've really looked forward to this moment." Then the baby looked at everyone there, one person at a time. Loretta and Chas patted her with towels to dry her, and we tied and cut the umbilical cord.

      Loretta said, "She's really a big baby. I haven't seen newly-born babies raise their heads and look around like that. Baby, you're strong and big. Laura, now we need to get the placenta out. There's still work to do."

      I held Juniper and talked to her. She studied me, and I studied her. It didn't matter much what I said. I told her everything that came into my mind. I said she would grow up, and maybe some day she would give birth to a child, and it would be very like this room the night of her birth, with people gathered, helping a child be born.

      Loretta laughed and said, "She's only about fifteen minutes old. She'll have a few years to think about that yet."

      Chas started cleaning up. Laura discharged the placenta. She said, "Give her to me," and I did. Laura held Juniper and talked to her.

      We drank orange juice and put everything in order and talked with each other and with the baby. Chas and Loretta left at four a.m. Chas said, "The only thing I don't like about these parties of yours is they last so late."

      Laura slept after they left. Juniper lay on Laura's abdomen and chest, also asleep. I put a blanket over them, and I sat for a while and looked at them. I took the placenta out behind the garage at dawn and buried it. The next spring, I would plant squash there, and the bushes would grow lush and deep green and bear many yellow crooknecks all summer.

      Some of the people who came to see Laura and Juniper said the zinnias by the front steps and in the vase on the dining room table were the largest and most perfectly formed zinnias they'd ever seen. The zinnias I had picked for the birth lasted in the vase for more than three weeks, and the flowers still growing by the steps put on blossoms for more than a month.

      Laura said the zinnias were a gift from God for the birth, for her and the baby. Laura was radiant, as if a light glowed from her for the next several weeks, that never did completely fade.

BOOK TWO

CENTRAL OREGON

A Waterfall in Our Backyard

      John Rouse died. The people who handled his estate laid off most of the crew. We found another caretaking position, near Bend, in Central Oregon. We sold or gave away or hauled to the dump everything we could get by without, and we left the ranch in Whitney Valley in October, four humans, one large, shaggy dog, one short-haired cat, and everything we owned in a pickup truck with sideboards, and a car.

      Whitney Valley had been Amanda's and Juniper's home most of their lives. They were ready for the next step in their adventure of living. They walked around our part of the valley and said good bye to the barn, to ever-happy land, where the grass stayed green and lush all summer, to the house, empty now of habitation but still full of memories, and to every other meaningful place. Laura and I also walked slowly and said good bye to Whitney Valley. We had time for thoughtful farewells. The place with no electricity and no running water, only a hand operated pitcher pump by the sink, with an abundance of wildlife on the meadows and in the forests around us, had been good for all of us. We weren't in a rush to leave.

      Eventually, we gravitated to the vehicles, climbed in, and drove from the Blue Mountains of Northeastern Oregon to Bend, and from there 13 miles to 5,000 feet elevation on Tumalo Mountain, where we would take care of the water inlets for the city of Bend. We arrived on the mountain mid afternoon and unloaded into a modern house, with electricity and running water. Because the house had a washer and drier, we had packed dirty laundry last.

      Though I hadn't missed any of the modern conveniences while we lived in Whitney, I appreciated them now that we had them. Laura, on whom the primary responsibility for laundry and household chores had fallen, had missed the modern conveniences. Though she appreciated everything Whitney gave us, she accepted the modern, equipped house with gratitude. We both worked at laundering nearly everything we owned as we moved into the house. With clean sheets and showers all around, we settled for the night.

      The 97 foot waterfall in the backyard impressed me even more than running water and electricity in the house. Bridge Creek tumbled and roared down the steep mountain and joined Tumalo Creek, which flowed rapidly down another canyon to its confluence with Bridge Creek. A few hundred yards above the place where the two streams blended their waters together, Tumalo Creek leaped off an edge of eroded-away stone and fell 97 feet straight down through open air before it again found solid stone to support it in its long journey oceanward. That waterfall, called Tumalo Falls, performed its dramatic plunge less than 200 yards from the back door of the house we were just settling into.

      I wasn't surprised that the sound of the electric refrigerator clicking on and running and the furnace clicking on and running woke me and kept me awake. Mechanical sounds always have bothered me. What did surprise me was that the sound of the waterfall bothered me. Even with windows shut for the cold autumn night, the steady roar of the falling water penetrated the well-insulated house. I lay awake hearing it and allowing it to occupy my mind until I couldn't sleep.

      I couldn't make the waterfall sound part of myself our first night there, even though the sound was natural and a good sound, the sound of water striving toward the sea. I spent some of the next day looking at and listening to the waterfall from different places. The next night, I slept, though I woke throughout our time there to electrical, mechanical sounds, because I couldn't incorporate those sounds into myself.

      The waterfall fascinated all of us. Winter brought cold weather and shaded the waterfall from most of the day's sunshine. Ice climbed in front of the falling water and stood white from wall to wall of the vertical channel in rock.

      Away from the falling water, where mist filled the air, frost rimed the ground. I found Juniper's tracks going farther under steep cliffs than we had said she could go, toward the waterfall about two thirds of the way up. I remembered when I was young and adults limited where I was allowed to go, and I went where I would go anyway. I reviewed my responsibility as a parent, and I knew part of my responsibility since our children were born was to gradually release them into God's hands, to trust them and all the universe with their safety.

      I spoke to Juniper, "Be really careful if you approach the fall over icy ground. I'm concerned that you could slip or that rocks above you in the cliff could loosen from ice freezing and thawing."

      She said, "I am really careful. I won't get hurt."

      A man who said he had climbed the ice in front of the waterfall several years before gave me his phone number and asked me to call him if the waterfall froze all the way up. He wanted to come out and climb it again. I sometimes hoped it wouldn't freeze all the way up. I thought it might be too early for Juniper to see someone climb the waterfall. She would want to climb it. Despite knowing I needed to continue releasing her to her own sense of direction, I thought that adventure could wait quite a while.

      Tumalo Falls gradually froze until a solid wall of ice stood in front of the falling water two thirds of the way up the waterfall, connecting the two sides of the channel down which water fell. Then the days and nights warmed in preparation for spring, and the ice, closing off more than sixty feet of the waterfall, began to melt and eventually fell away into the pool beneath the waterfall and left the falling water clear.

      By then, I left the window of the upstairs loft, where Laura and I slept, open a little even on the coldest nights. We heard the waterfall. With the sound of falling water foremost around us, all the mundane electrical sounds of the house didn't bother me as much, and I slept.

Book Three

Colorado

Tomahawk Ranch

A Man Called Grandma

      John started it. I took him in as a partner in my wood-cutting business. I said, "You don't cut wood with me without wearing a hardhat." He didn't argue with that. He knew it made sense. Even if you're such a good faller that trees always fall exactly where you want them to, a top or a branch can break out of a tree and hit you, or a tree can fall into a green tree that throws it back to hit the faller. He didn't like it as well when I watched him work and said he was going to have to revise some of his techniques. He'd been falling trees longer than I had. I said, "It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it. Some of your work isn't as safe as it could be. I'm not sure I'm strong enough to carry you out of here if you get hurt or killed, so you go by my safety rules if you want to keep cutting on my contract."

      Sometimes, after we sold a load of wood, we picked up my wife and daughters and drove to Sumpter and ate dinner in a restaurant. John usually drank a beer, or several. When he ordered the first beer, I held out my hand, and he deposited the keys to his rig in it. I wasn't, and my family wasn't riding with anyone who'd been drinking. John took all of it well, and it was all by agreement, but sometime along the way, he started calling me Grandma. "Okay, Grandma, we do it your way."

      I took a job as site manager of a Girl Scout camp in the Rocky Mountains. The camp director, counselors, everyone who works at the camp goes by a camp name. The site manager can or can't. I couldn't think of anything and didn't care much about it, so as we started gearing up for resident camp, I was just Jon.

      Then I had security problems. Too many people knew the combination of the gate lock, and some of them abused their privileges by coming in late. Somebody who came in late didn't lock the gate. I photocopied rules from the manual and distributed copies. I changed the combination and gave it only to authorized personnel. I lectured everybody about security. I lectured again about visitors. "Read the rules. I have to know who's in camp. If somebody comes to visit without letting me know, they're unauthorized visitors, and they go out, and the counselor being visited gets called on the carpet. Clear it with me first, and they're authorized."

      I upbraided the animal care specialist for tying the llamas wrong. "They have to be tethered on a swivel, so their ropes can't wrap around anything, or they have to be watched. They could wind their ropes around those trees and choke to death.”

      We had a staff meeting, and the camp director asked me, "What's your camp name?"

      I thought of John, and I said, "Grandma." That caused surprise, so I explained about John; then I said, "I'm responsible for the safety of twenty-five counselors and up to two hundred and fifty Girl Scouts, and I'm never going to give anyone any peace until I know they're observing every rule about personal safety and camp security. John thought that concern for safety and the willingness to keep after it was a grandmotherly quality, and he was probably right, so call me Grandma."

      And members of the staff did. And they told the counselors, and the counselors called me Grandma. Most of them. A few of them just couldn't do it, and that was fine. They called me Jon, and nobody objected. The counselors told many of the scouts, and some of the scouts called me Grandma and seemed delighted that this grizzling, bearded man answered quite naturally to that name.

      And something happened that I couldn't have predicted. That name helped the rest of the camp personnel and I be at ease with each other in a way that otherwise might have taken us weeks to work our way to. I did my best to manifest the positive attributes of a grandmother. It's all part of my job, but somehow, being known as Grandma made it easier to reassure counselors and help work out ways to keep Scouts and adults warm, fed, and at ease when a summer snowstorm weighted down our power lines, created bright blue flashes across our small valley, then strange behavior in lights and electrical appliances, then most of the night and half a day without electricity, and consequently, without propane for heat. It seemed to make it easier to work our way through all the emergencies that came up through the summer. I think there's something reassuring in calling Grandma for help.

      Some of the counselors delighted in drawing me over in front of parents who hadn't met us before and calling me Grandma. It took practice to keep a straight face, to act totally natural about it, and we all took pride in achieving it.

      That summer and that group of counselors are gone from the mountain, and most of this winter has passed. I'm starting to look forward to the time, early next summer, when all the counselors who have been hired meet and I stand up in front of them to explain rules, how to take care of kerosene lanterns, how to use fire extinguishers, and say, quite seriously, "My name's Grandma."

Book Four

Colorado

Magic Sky Ranch

Family Cohesion on the Ranch

       When Juniper reached the age when she would have started school, we took care of a remote ranch in northeastern Oregon. Getting to school on the rambling rural bus, being in school all day, and then getting home would have taken twelve hours. We weren't willing to commit her to that long a day.

      We had already started her education ourselves. When she was six, Laura helped her learn to read, and she launched into an avid reading career that has rarely slowed down since. Amanda, four then, listened in on the reading lessons and learned enough to read simple books. She expressed an intense desire to gain access to more difficult books. I worked with her, in between and during ranch work and garden work. Within a year, she could read almost anything she was interested in reading, and she had made a good start at writing.

      Juniper and Amanda are 16 and 14 now. Tests required of home schoolers by the state show our approach to education has been academically successful. It has also helped build a firm foundation for a cohesive family. Our interests center around the home, the family, and the creative interests each of us pursues. We have no television. We pursue enough interests, writing (all of us), drawing and painting (some of us), music (all of us), reading (all of us), a deep and active interest in the outdoors and wildlife (all of us), that we never have time for television.

      My jobs have not been full time, partly because I was severely injured in a highway accident, and it was many years before I recovered enough to work anywhere near full time.

      When the owner of the ranch we took care of in northeastern Oregon died, the crew was laid off. We found a part time job caretaking the inlets of a water system for a central Oregon city. It was ideal. We were able to continue our home schooling and to have time together. I was able to complete a book about our ranch experience. After a year and a half at that job, we were offered a job as site managers of a Girl Scout ranch in Colorado. During our long time of working at jobs with low wages, more and more needs had come up that we had not been able to meet. We were ready for a full time job. I was ready physically, and we moved into the job with enthusiasm.

      Our only transportation, a pickup, no longer comfortably contained the four of us, and it was more and more expensive to maintain. We sold the pickup and bought two older cars. We arranged for Juniper to continue with violin lessons in our new area. We helped Amanda buy a piano and get started on lessons. We caught up on buying clothing and other essentials.

      We worked that job for twenty-one months. My working hours often far exceeded the scheduled forty per week winter and forty-eight summer. Laura worked twenty hours per week in the winter and ten in the summer. The higher wage was convenient and enjoyable, but we saw that the job cost us irretrievable time together and experiences that couldn't be replaced, once missed.

      Our supervisor, aware of our interests and priorities, offered us a position taking care of another ranch. We took the job and made the move, even though it cut our cash income to a third of what it had been, because it cut our hours to less than half of what they had been. We have been living and working here for seven months now. None of us regrets the change. Amanda said, "I feel like I have my parents back." Juniper agreed.

      Our home education is going very well. I've gone fishing with Juniper. We have all worked together in the garden. Some afternoons, Amanda and Juniper and I get into the car, and Juniper drives, practicing for her driver's test. Amanda and I hiked up the ranch and found a dense area of wild columbines. Soon after, we took Laura up to show her the flowers.

      We have time for leisurely mornings, when all of us work together to prepare breakfast, clean up afterward, and linger to talk about what we've dreamed or what we're thinking about. We sit around the table after dinner and talk. Juniper or Amanda reads to Laura as she works in the kitchen or Laura reads to them as they work.

      Juniper, Amanda, and I take a volleyball out in the driveway and hit it back and forth, learning. Next time they go to a gathering of teens at the local church, when all play volleyball, they won't feel odd person out from no experience with the sport. Amanda and I work together with guitars. She's learning to play the instrument, and we sing together. We talk about going, taking Juniper with her violin, and Laura with her voice and singing in the old part of town in Fort Collins, with cases open on the sidewalk, for coins. We are saying it lightly, and yet it is an experience we would like to try, and not just for the possible coins.

      Juniper's and Amanda's creative efforts receive audience in the family, when they want them to, and they didn't, much, when we worked full time. Laura has begun to work on a long held ambition, writing, and has sold two essays since we moved. I've been able to continue writing essays and to sell some of them. I've organized and sent out a book of my short fiction. I've revised the book about our Northeastern Oregon experience, and I've begun two other books. In shorter words, we are usually able to give the family and the individuals in the family priority over the need to make money.

      Is our existence ideal? No. Sometimes financial pressure can be intense. When we decided to make the move, I had been selling enough writing regularly that we thought we could count on at least two hundred and fifty dollars a month additional income from writing. My average went up for a while after we moved. Then the car we use (the other is inactive, without insurance) suffered a series of mechanical problems that cost us a thousand dollars in less than two months. The washing machine quit. A newspaper that had been a dependable source of income had staff changes, and my publications there dwindled, which meant our income dwindled.

      But we have what we really need. A house, with utilities paid, is furnished with the job. Our income takes care of food needs, music lessons, and other essentials.

      We haven't given our daughters a rich environment in material terms. Most of our clothing is from second hand stores, and we are pleased with that. None of us is caught up in style. Amanda likes pretty dresses, but she would rather have them cost four dollars from a second hand store than sixty dollars new, because she knows the difference in price can serve other needs better, including a small contribution to an effective environmental organization or a donation for people who need food.

      When I think of enriching children's environment, I don't think of material enrichment. I think of enriching their environment with love, with the parents' support, teaching, revering the children and being there to help with their needs.

      We haven't been able to give our children this and a wealth of material goods, so we chose this. Do we ever regret our choice? Was it too much of a sacrifice?

      No. Far from it. We love our children, and love becomes the environment. We, children and adults, love and grow in love. We teach our children, and we learn so much ourselves, from what we must learn to teach, from what our children learn on their own and then teach us. When we help our children get out into the mountains to experience the wildlife, the flowers, the forests, the freedom of movement, we also have the experiences, and we experience the joy of having them together. Our experience together increases the depth of our experience and the openness with which we receive. There is no guide as effective as a child for bringing one into experience with openness.

      Sacrifice? Far from it. It is not always the easiest way to live, but it is the most richly rewarding.

All the Winter's Interruptions

      Snow falls from a grey, twenty degree sky onto our house in northern Colorado's Rocky Mountains and onto the forest, meadows, and granite ridges around us. I work on two essays and a short story, moving from one to another as sentences and paragraphs coalesce in my mind.

      Juniper, our oldest daughter, attended public school last year, her junior year of high school, to see what it was like. She did well, but she returned to home schooling this year. She enjoyed and appreciated some of the students and some of the teachers and particularly classes she couldn't have at home, such as orchestra and team sports, but she decided she could achieve more directing her own education.

      Now she applies for admission to college. Besides the forms all parents fill out for college, we put together transcripts, counselor's reports, and other forms school employees supply for public school students.

      In the fiction under my pencil, Anton shoulders his pack and walks in pouring rain north into the mountains. Then Juniper brings me a partially completed transcript. It, along with other forms, needs my attention. Juniper has done her part. She provided most of her own motivation for her home schooling and some of the decisions about what to study, especially as the years went by and her picture of the world filled in more and more. She researched colleges and filled out most of the application forms.

      Anton has a good poncho, and he has experience in the wilderness. I leave him in the rain, with Rocky Mountain lightning and thunder moving down the mountain, and I help Juniper revise her home-built transcript and counselor's report and a record of extracurricular activities. Then I read her essay, required for an admissions application, and I make a few general recommendations. It is an excellent essay, but too long. I can't help much with solving how to meet the requirement for no more than three pages. I have a long-standing agreement with the three other writers in this family that I don't intrude much into their writing with specific suggestions. Years ago, we realized it would be easy to end up with four writers from one mold, which none of us wanted.

      I return to writing, not to the story about Anton, but to an essay about sprouting seeds. I can work with it a few minutes at a time, whereas Anton seems to require more concentrated, uninterrupted time. Conversations go on as I write, about the college applications and about anything a family can discuss. I hear some of the conversations, but I make no contribution. Some, I join in.

      Snow keeps falling. I am gainfully employed half time as caretaker of this ranch we live on. My schedule is flexible, but I will have to plow our roads tonight or early in the morning. If I start to become nervous about being too scattered out, with too many projects going on at the same time, an effective response is to refuse to accept the idea that I am limited in scope and start another project, which I have done, with this essay.

      The phone rings. Tami invites Amanda, our younger daughter, to her madrigal dinner in Fort Collins this evening. Amanda looks with some trepidation at the manuscripts spread in front of me on the table, and she asks,"Can I go?" She knows someone must drive her forty-seven miles if she goes, and I am probably the designated driver, because Laura so far lacks confidence about driving in snow.

      Up here on the mountain, our children pursue their education at home. We live far from friends and activities, so we stay alert for cultural and social opportunities for them.

      Tami's parents will happily keep Amanda and feed her if this storm makes the roads unsafe for us to drive down the mountain tomorrow to retrieve her, so I say, "Yes. You can go. I'll take you, but see if it's okay to get there early. I'd like to get back before the snow gets too deep." I have almost finished the essay about sprouts, and it will benefit from simmering in the back of my mind without direct attention for a while. Anton will mature if I cultivate patience.

      Dusk settles on the whitened mountain as we drive onto the highway, not entirely because a teenage girl takes a while to get ready to go. As usual, I take warm clothing, boots, sleeping bags, and paper and wood for a fire, in case the car breaks or the storm strands us. Down the mountain a few miles, the snow lies deeper on the road, and the snow falls faster. We are in no hurry, and I am grateful for studded snow tires and for other drivers who are cautious on snowy roads.

      Earl, Tami's dad, says, "You sure would be welcome to wait out this storm here. We have a bed for you and food. This snow is coming down pretty hard."

      I say, "Thank you Earl. I'm going to see if I can get back up the mountain. I want to keep writing if I can get there."

      I don't exceed twenty-five miles an hour up the mountain, because falling snow limits my vision. Halfway up the mountain, six deer walk across the road, with snow built up on their backs. I slow down to let them cross without vehicular harassment. I climb the long, steep mountain. In the edge of the light from my headlights, a large owl rises from the ground and flies away, into deeper darkness.

      The slow drive up the mountain becomes a time for contemplation, much of it without words. As frequently happens, I'm not doing what I had planned to do, but I enjoy what I'm doing. Large snowflakes float down densely, illuminated in their softness by my headlights pointing up the mountain toward home. I have no deadlines to meet, no schedule I'm locked into.   Enough of my work centers in or close to our home that, as our daughters' horizons expand, I'm there to participate. Their education continues to be my education.

      One view of the world claims work toward material gain is all important. According to that view, this day has been full of interruptions, and I am far behind what I aimed for. Another view, that fits my family better, says the interruptions of my writing and of my caretaking work make up the actual substance of the day. Without the interruptions, without my daughters' needs for assistance in living and the drive in a snowstorm, the deer crossing the highway, the great horned owl flying into deeper darkness, with small prey held in powerful talons, I would have no need to earn a living, and I would have nothing to write about.

      The night, darkness mingled with clean, white falling snow, is advanced when I return to writing. I pile my partial manuscripts together and start on a clean pad of paper. Seeing the owl stimulated many memories of experiences with owls, and I want to write about the mysterious birds while the memories move vividly through my mind. Wind rises and blows snow against the house. Except for the sound of the storm and the sound of my pencil leaving words on the page, the night is quiet around me.

Poems for Your Suppers

      Some were vegetarians, while some preferred mostly meat, and some ate between. We supplied all with good food that met their standards and needs, but none of them escaped the requirement that each of us, guests, cooks, heads of the household, and afternoon visitors would read a poem, of that day's creation, to earn dinner.

      Laura, mother, wife, one of the nominal heads, primary cook of the household, established the rule. Our daughters, Juniper and Amanda, brought guests home with them during their break from college.

      Juniper and Amanda both took a class from a sparklingly creative teacher and poet, lover of original similes and metaphors, who recommended everyone write a poem every day and who required of his students, as willing as native trout leaping from the pool at the foot of the waterfall toward multiple rainbows hung like mobiles from the black basalt cliffs, a poem every week. And Laura, hearing of his requirement, said, "We will require a poem from everyone every day before dinner." Understanding that procrastination fells more students than double-bitted axes stout pines, she added, "Everyone who wants to eat dinner. No poem, no dinner. But the poem can be anything, funny, serious, short, long, very bad, good."

      Liz, primary guest at that time, looked like someone who suddenly saw dinners might become as scarce as sharks in our nearby small stream. Juniper reassured her, "They don't have to be good. Any kind of poem will do."

      Liz further relaxed when I started the readings that evening before dinner with a very bad poem, worthy only to start the organic activity within a slow-to-work compost pile. I didn't do it to encourage Liz, nor to show her every aspiring poet would be treated gently by family and guests. I just started late, wrote fast, and was abandoned by every muse. It didn't bother me. I have never been afraid of failure, or I never would have attempted to write in the beginning nor would I have stuck with it this long.

      We wrote, early in the day, some time during the day, or at the last minute, as dinner began to arrive on our table. Laura turned out to be a wonderful writer of limericks, interspersed with more serious, highly metaphorical efforts.

      I think Liz became pleased with what she could write under the pressure of must. I know she was pleased with the dinners that followed, and we were all pleased with what she wrote and read aloud and with what every one of us wrote and read.

      When Brett came up the mountain for the afternoon, we required a newly created poem from him. He and Juniper helped Amanda make the salad (Humankind cannot live by poetry alone), and when everyone read before dinner, Brett's and Juniper's poems, while very different from each other, shared the subject of radishes. We all clapped just before we bit into slices of radishes in the salad.

      Now we are back down to three of us, and Amanda will fly east, toward college, Saturday. Laura and I will probably not adhere to the rule of a poem from every diner for dinner. But be forewarned, all future guests. The rule will apply.

      After the first, momentary trepidation at writing under pressure and at performing, all of us will be enriched by sharing the warmth of everyone's appreciation for the performer's effort, by increasing the size of each poet's portfolio, by hearing and appreciating each other's efforts, and last but by no means least, by being given leave to dig in, to the vegetarian's dinner, to the dinner of mostly meat or to the dinner somewhere in between, with elements of both.

Book Five

Before and After

Raindancer

      I rented a dilapidated house on a farm in the Treasure Valley in eastern Oregon, with the agreement that I would work for the rent and for cash when I was able and when there was work to do.

      I planted a garden across the swale from the house. A barn owl roosted in the long-unused milkbarn north of the garden. I tried not to infringe on its privacy. It became accustomed to my nearby activities and continued to use the barn.

      I found a killdeer nest at the bottom of the garden, just a scraped out spot in the grass, with four small, spotted eggs. I avoided that area until the killdeers hatched and, able to meet their own needs much earlier than most birds, ran away into the grass.

      Seeds sprouted and grew. Insects ate two cabbages, two spinach plants, and a few lettuce plants. They left plenty for me and for the friends I began to share my garden with. Quail ran through the garden, called softly, and hid from me behind cabbages, corn, and kohlrabi.

      I drove tractor to pay the rent. I put a metal holder around my neck, fastened a harmonica into the holder, and blew wild music of my own design as I scored the field with ditches that wobbled from straight in time with my music.

      I siphoned water from the ditch at the head of the field into the small ditches I'd formed behind the tractor. The curved aluminum siphon tubes of different sizes became effective wind instruments when I pursed my lips and blew resonant music through them down the field and into the sky

      I played my guitar and sang under a big cottonwood tree by the house. A weasel pranced down the dirt driveway, long, low, reddish brown, with a white underside and a black tip on its tail waving jauntily at the sky.

      The weasel looked me over as it passed. It ran up the back steps and into the house. I followed. The tiny animal circled each of the four rooms, looked at my sparse furnishings, then passed me in the hall, trotted out the door and down the road. I resumed guitar and song, played a weasel trot, happy and confident about existence.

      Reverence for life was part of my healing process. Reverence didn't come to me only by conscious cultivation. Gratitude for my life, for all life, for the Life Force itself and the joy created by that gratitude were gifts given to me as I regained consciousness after I had been injured. That joy ebbed in the hardest times, of pain, of economic difficulty, but it never left me entirely. It knit together my life as rhythm knits together a complex piece of music, and it became part of the cause of my raindance in the cornfield.

      Summer scorched the land. I irrigated corn, but there wasn't enough water to reach the ends of the longest rows. Gary, the owner of the farm came out, and I explained why the ends of the rows stood dry. He said, "We sure do need rain."

      I said, "Want me to do a rain dance?" He laughed and said, "Sure. Do a rain dance."

      I thought about it after he left. Hopi danced for rain. They believed the universe is a complex, spiritually-driven system, of which man is an integral part. If any part doesn't function correctly, then the entire universe will be out of balance. Man's responsibility is to maintain the complex structures of belief and ritual that recognize, reinforce and revere the creator, all of life, and all the forces that knit together the universe in harmony.

      Their dance was not for rain. The dance was to fulfill man's function, reverent performer of rituals in a harmonious universe. In a harmonious universe, rain comes as it is needed.

      I thought of the weasel, the owl, quail, great blue heron, deer, the bear, all forms of life that needed rain to ease their survival, and I danced between the corn rows in the dust-dry soil, soft under my bare feet, corn stalks taller than I was.

      I walked up and down the corn rows in the stately crane walk. I danced as I had seen sandhill cranes dance. I became a bear, down in the dust in a wallow, a bison in a dust wallow, a ground squirrel inventorying corn, a grouse, a blue dragonfly, a crow, dancing, running, flying, resting, all of them knowing the creator drives the universe in perfect harmony.

      I was not Hopi, and I knew none of the rituals. I was not Native American, just awkward, self-conscious modern man, but as I danced, I thought of life and the earth dry beneath my feet, and the creator of everything, and all limiting consciousness fell away from me. I became simply a man alone before God, trying to fulfill man's potential and man's responsibility.

      I danced deep into reverence and gratitude for life, for all of life, for the Life Force.

      Clouds gathered dark above the valley, and rain poured down. I knelt in dust turning to mud, and I sang and laughed in gratitude for the pouring rain. I walked back to the house, scraped mud from my feet, and went inside.

      All night long, I listened to heavy rain drumming on the roof, and I smiled and laughed out loud.

      Several days later, when Gary came out and said, "That rain sure put things in shape," I said, "I danced for rain."

      He looked at me and laughed.

      Then I laughed.

      I didn't laugh away anything that had happened. I laughed at the absurdity of modern man's scientific concept of the universe, a mechanistic universe of chance and chaos, where love, reverence, and responsibility for all of life, where worship and rituals for holiness are no longer understood. Modern man has discarded as superstition prayer, ritual, and belief in the holiness of all life and of every force in the universe. We have discarded the largest part of our spiritual power.

      I laughed at my own naivete. Alone in the days after the storm, I had forgotten that, if I had changed the way I saw the universe and acted in the universe, that did not mean anyone else had changed.

      The modern world still existed, just as it had before my dance in the cornfield, ready with the challenge, "Wouldn't it have rained even if you hadn't danced?"

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