Chop Wood, Carry Water

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

– Zen Proverb

 

My husband, Chris, and I came late-ish to the home ownership game. It wasn’t that we didn’t want a house and land of our own, we’re just really particular and we live in a really expensive part of the US. So it took awhile for the stars to align. And did I mention we’re really particular? That’s important to the story.

 

For a lot of years, our lack of land didn’t stop me from honing my gardening skills. I became a proficient container gardener: peas, eggplants, carrots, cukes, tomatoes (and I’m talking “real” tomatoes, not the little cherry jobbies) – all grew happily in various-sized pots carefully jigsaw-puzzled into place on the patio of our small condominium. I could water everything on my way out the door to work in the morning; I could watch over everything while eating my dinner at the kitchen table in the evening.

 

It was good, for what it was, but we so wanted our own piece of real ground… and eventually we got it. But all those years provided ample time for daydreaming, and for envisioning how we would conduct ourselves on our “homestead.” (I should mention now that our property is small, under a quarter acre, lest you be picturing rolling New England farmland stretching down to the sea. Nice picture, though.)

 

So Chris and I had determined to live as lightly on our land as possible, to let our actions follow from our strong environmental ethic. We were very particular. We would chop wood – by hand – to heat our home. And we would carry water – by hand – to grow the plants that would feed us. The land was considerably overgrown and neglected, with non-native locust trees and invasive maples towering above tangles of equally non-native and invasive multiflora rose and other assorted nasties. (And the house itself – well that’s a story for another magazine.)

 

These are the tools we started with: an axe, a spade, loppers, a reel mower, a wheel barrow, and a gas-powered chainsaw (well, come on, I didn’t say we were Luddites). We also started with two 30-something bodies and a decade of pent-up wannabe home-owner energy. And as such, we made progress. Trees came down, raised garden beds went up, ridiculous swaths of ivy were cleared on a south-facing hillside that is now home to our herb garden. Native viburnum replaced privet; native summersweet took the place of multiflora rose. Gorgeous New England fieldstone steps were laid in, replacing rotting creosote railroad ties. And it was all done, by and large, by our four hands with our basic tools. We were mighty proud, crushed fingers and sore backs notwithstanding.

 

Our land continues to evolve, continues to be “improved,” but now we’re two 40-something bodies – and a curious shift is taking place. We’ve noticed that our most important tools – our bodies – aren’t bouncing back as quickly as they used to. The crushed fingers are now on hands that stay cramped for several days after wrestling with the shovel. The sore backs now belong to bodies that need to lie supine on the floor to soothe spasms.

 

A couple years ago, Chris ran an underground pipe out to the veggie beds and installed a spigot so that I wouldn’t have to lug the hoses across the yard. Now I’m looking into a self-watering system. Our neighbor has a log-splitter, and we have used it more than once in the last couple years. Yesterday we started talking about getting a “real” mower to replace the “reel” mower (but it would have to be powered by a rechargeable battery!)

We frequently pose the question to each other, “Are we getting lazy? Are we compromising our particular ways in favor of the easy route?” But when we step back and look at the whole, we’re still the same people, carrying on with the same thoughtful approach to how we manage our land. While I’d hardly say that we’re anywhere near enlightenment (ha!), there is an astuteness that does seem to be coming with age. The wood is still getting chopped, and the water is still getting carried – we’re just wiser about how we do it now.

Shoot… I even bought a non-native tree recently and, after battling a patch of my old nemesis multiflora rose, proudly sunk it into the ground. It’s a star magnolia, and I like the flowers. Reason enough.

END

Jenna B Sammartino