The Road We took.

This is my 600th post. That's hard to believe. When I started this blog back in 2014, I gave no thought to its future, and yet here I am, pounding out yet another 'installment.'

I've reminisced about my life in many of the posts I've written over the years. I've told those of you who read this blog regularly, by way of explanation, that I write it as much for myself as for anyone else, and that's true. This blog has filled uncounted hours for me with comfort and satisfaction. It has given me the opportunity not only to share our experiences here in Aotearoa, but to think about my own life as well. That's especially important to me now. 

So, this special post is going to be mostly reminiscing. I'm looking at life with hindsight. It feels good to be where I am, for the most part anyway, and I thought I'd put a few thoughts down.  

I'm almost 72. That's also hard to believe since I don't feel a day over 55 or so, except when I get up in the morning, bend over to pick up something up from the floor, try to run, and well, the list continues. It's better that I end the tally now I think, before it gets embarrassing.  Oddly, judging from my dreams, I sometimes think that my mental age is quite a bit younger than even that middle years figure I gave you. I find that perplexing. 

Mine is a strange time of life. Well, not strange really, although I would certainly describe it as 'not previously encountered', and 'unfamiliar' at times.  Maybe I should have called it unique. I do think it's an interesting time.  I'm looking backwards, remembering all the years, and work and people. And especially family.  But I'm looking forward too. Into eternity. I think that the time I'm living in my retirement would be wasted if I didn't contemplate my future. I love Robert Louis Stevenson's poem Requiem.  The last line of his first stanza is, And I laid me down with a will.  I agree with that. I want to be ready when it becomes my time to exit this life.  I don't want to cling to my old life, I want to embrace my future.    

You know, something occurred to me just after we had moved into Waitakere Gardens. Since our apartment here is of a modest size compared to our home in Michigan, I reasoned that my life in the village shares some of the aspects of my life when I lived in the Hunt Hall dormitory at Northern Michigan University, which I attended over 50 years ago. 

I had new freedoms then that I hadn't known previously. I have freedom here too.  Freedom from the pressures of earning a living.  

In both places, and in both times, I was/am able to follow my interests. I'm certainly doing that now. I'm marveling at the workings of our natural world. (And blogging about many of them.) 

I took a walk over to Tui Glen not long ago and found myself admiring the tree you see below. That is a living tree in the depths of winter. Mid-August here in Aotearoa.  I was reminiscing as I gazed at it, and imagined how I would have felt had I been confronted with a dead tree of that size in the woods around my home 45 years ago. We had had Dutch Elm Disease go through our area years before and the woods were dotted with trees that had succumbed. None however, that I saw were as massive as this one. This would have been a great prize.  

I stood and thought about how I would fell that tree.  I took down hundreds of them over the years when we lived in our first home and had only a wood-fired furnace in the basement. How I went about it was critical for my safety, especially when it was packed together with other trees in the forest.  Until you've had tons of tree come crashing to earth near you, you might not appreciate how puny we are in comparison.   

Then, I thought of cutting into manageable logs and hauling it back to our yard with my father-in-law's tractor and dray. Of cutting it to stove length with my chain saw, splitting a large portion of it, and throwing it down into the basement.

I talked once before in a post about working with a guy named David years ago, and how he scoffed at my description of hunting mushrooms in our woods.  I'm sure he would have been similarly disdainful if he had known that I lived in an old farmhouse and cut my own wood for winter heating. He proudly told me he spent all his free time in making money. (He was in sales)  

I've said it before, David knew only one kind of wealth. I know many.  

Just look.  

A bonanza of shaggy manes.  Jeanne and I harvested hundreds one day. We were on a day-trip to see some of the water falls in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  As we wandered near one, Jeanne came upon this sunny glade that was positively filled.  At home again, we fried them in butter, put them in jars and froze them.   

Morchella deliciosa. In my opinion, the gold standard of mushrooms. We collected many thousands of these over the years.  Thousands.  Fred and McKenzie told me that they once found a package of morels in a fancy up-scale market in St. Paul, MN., that contained four morels of this size. The price tag was $20.00.  (David, what do you think now?)  

A plus-sized, perfect shaggy mane

Felled and limbed cedars in process (late December) 

Eight-foot cedar posts, all cut by hand with my Finn saw. (a type of bow saw)   

The real value of these posts to me was not the value of the peeled posts. It was the time I spent in the winter cedar swamp harvesting them. (I had set up a trail-cam in this clearing to record the deer that would come in to feast on the cedar tops I left behind. I decided to test it before leaving.)   

This is one of the deer that did come in.  Notice that the deer is standing directly behind where I was standing when the camera recorded me. You can see how much of the cedar brush has been eaten.  

I loved it out in the woods. Winter is, by far, the finest time in a cedar swamp. 

That's my 'limbing' Finn saw in the picture. The 'felling' saw is larger.  

Straining maple sap into the boiling caldron.  I made gallons of this. 

The finished product 

Over my lifetime, I have often thought of Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken. It seems to me that it sums up the decisions Jeanne and I made.  

Just after Jeanne graduated from Northern Michigan University, (I had graduated the year before) I was hired by the United States Customs Service. During the period before I left for training, we thought long and hard about that decision.  I had serious misgivings about what sort of life my young wife would have. My first assignment was going to be in Detroit, of all places and I'd be working all three shifts. I couldn't imagine us living there.   

Ultimately, we turned the job down.  After bouncing around Marquette for a time while holding a couple of temporary jobs, we decided to buy a home and 20 acres from Jeanne's Uncle Albert. I went to work at a furniture factory.  We lived 8 miles out into the farmland from a town of 200 and 12 miles in the other direction from a town of 400.  

I worried a bit during those days about our lifestyle choice. Rural living was in our blood but I was not earning anywhere near what I could have been.  Had we made the right choice? 

Well, I can see clearly now from my vantage point of years that we had. While we didn't have all the money we wanted in those days, we somehow managed to have enough, and we learned about and accumulated many other sorts of riches.  And a wealth of memories that we still possess and can never be spent. I wrote a piece way back when that I entitled, Them Thar Hills, that detailed lots more treasures that were part of our world. And another one called, At the Chopping Block, which was a sort of simplified chronicle of our lives.   

Today, I can still appreciate the value of a firewood tree, remember the wonder of gathering wild mushrooms, recall the satisfaction of harvesting cedar posts from my own land, and the delight of producing maple syrup from the trees around my yard. 

In John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday, Doc met a big, bearded stranger on a beach one day who later became a seer.  At one point, while sharing his dinner with Doc, he said, "Appetites are good things. The more appetites a man has, the richer he is."  

I still have many appetites. 

Here in New Zealand, I have collected pieces of Kauri Tree gum, gathered chestnuts along the sidewalks, harvested olives in public parks and processed them into oil and delighted in producing acorn flour from the fruit of giant English Oaks.  Jeanne and I have continued to grow richer.

I wonder if David reminisces in his old age about his years of sales figures? I think it's kind of sad if he does. He probably does have a ton of money.  

Jeanne and I began our life's journey together years ago, and did think at length (long I stood, And looked)* about which road to follow. Both opportunities offered certain advantages for us (And both that morning equally lay)*.  We chose and now, ages and ages hence*, know that the road we took has made all the difference.*   -djf

* Bold italics indicate passages from the 2nd linked poem. 

--  In case you're interested...

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/requiem/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken