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Adventurer in life's bewilderness

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Loving Well is the Best Revenge

You Can’t Go Home Again loomed large in my psyche during my teen and young adult years. “Home? What’s that?” was my mantra. My life embodied the alienation and existential angst fed by a world in rapid transformation. Now I understand there is a difference between nurturing comforts and transforming love. They aren’t always packaged together, found under one roof, or in one place.

I did come home to the land of my father’s dreams, and my mother’s nightmares, wilderness at the end of a seven mile gravel road thousands of miles from her mother and sisters. Dad’s dream came to fruition with the homestead, the Juneau Symphony, and French horn and piano duets with Nancy Nash. Mom hid her dreams inside, and with Louise Homested joined the Haines social network and potluck society.

Walking Mom and Dad’s path for ten years allowed us to see each other in different contexts. I’d shed the drive to save the world. They softened. I gained strength. Working the soil with my hands and tending the vegetable garden, day after day preparing meals from the harvest and sharing the bounty at table engendered empathic listening. Innumerable care-giving gestures: bathing, grooming, taking mom and dad on separate outings to visit friends when they could no longer walk prepared me for the dying part of life. Dad’s top destination was Budge McCray. Mom visited friends and family in her sleeping dreams.

From the Alaskan life my parents shaped for themselves emerged an image of what they accomplished, and a realization that human frailties pale in the face of even modest accomplishments. By etching out the homestead they took the steps I can follow to realize my dreams.

Challenges lie ahead. Challenges I peel away layer by layer, like the pungent onion skin that in turn burns my eyes and brings promise of subtle delight to innumerable dishes.

My dreams begin with protecting the wildlife corridor and wetlands for resident and migratory birds, moose, bear and other ranging creatures. A conservation easement and bird observatory top the list for this dream.

 Expanding Dad’s organic garden and introducing sustainable agriculture in the upper field is a dream in progress.

Rather than build a castle, I dream of the homestead as an eco-learning center where sustainable lifestyle practices are modeled, tested and shared community-wide; where a K-12 arts-and sustainability-integrated curriculum for life-long learning is brainstormed.

A retreat for artists, writers, musicians and healers is a core dream. Perhaps Haines High School shop students can build one-room retreat cabins nestled in the woods.

The homestead eco-lodge for community meetings, concerts, conferences and a locavor eatery could also serve as a mini-culinary arts school linked to Haines schools.

As the year-round resident steward I will live in a small and sustainable green home that preserves viewscapes from the water and across Mud Bay.

Walks in undisturbed forest will inspire visitors to dream.


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