Madwoman at Hogan's Creek

In my late twenties, while at graduate school in Fort Collins, CO I read a lot of books like Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974). Anne writes prose on her experiences living near Tinker Creek to speak about the human condition, and our relationship with the Divine. The book is brilliant in that through writing about what on the surface seem to be observations of the mundane she transports the reader to a mystical dimension. It won a Pulitzer Prize. I had forgotten about the book until this past weekend as I wielded a brand new Stihl chainsaw all about our place here. I cracked myself up thinking about Annie’s gentile observations gathered from blithe hours spent gazing at the meandering creek or spying on busy blue birds contrasted to my own observations made while inhaling gas fumes, deafened by the roar of a chainsaw, and fighting off warrior wild rose bushes. Laughing, I thought “Madwoman at Hogan’s Creek” is my title. There is a creek, called Hogan’s Creek, but instead of pilgrim at that moment it felt more like madwoman.

I hadn’t set out to spend the day “logging,” but I found myself running an errand to our authentic, local hardware store for my brother’s construction project of the day. As I waited to pay for the drill bit, an affable black man was being served in his search for a bag of lump coal. Mr. Southern, the store owner, took him in the back to see what they had in stock. I was left to browse. My attention was immediately caught by a wall of shiny new chainsaws. I had been thinking about all the trees and bushes that needed to be cut up or back around our farm. Being the impulsive buyer that I am, by the time the man was on his way out the door with a 50 pound bag of flake coal to as he said over his shoulder “slow cook me some fat back and pinto beans tonight,” I was intent on a chainsaw.

So there I was a mere two hours later literally at battle. I could see the barn that I wanted to save and the old garage that still holds my Papa’s old cook stove but I couldn’t just walk up and begin to enjoy these old structures or even work on them. They are barricaded by black berry, honeysuckle, and wild rose vines and hundreds of hard wood saplings mingled with decadent grasses and pine needles. They have been left to their own devices for many years. I can’t save what is inside until I kill this wild, out of control life around it, encasing it. I didn’t see it that way at first. I began with a little cut here and there, but quickly found that these sentinels fight back. Saplings slapped my face, briars hung in the flesh of my ankle, coat, hair, nose – any place they could get a hold. I had to get aggressive, nearly mad in order to go after it with the ferocity needed to win, to not shrink back when slapped in the face or pierced in the leg, to blink through the sweat running in my eyes.

I finally stopped, winded and wounded and thought “it really is a battle on many fronts whether for this old barn or for the kind of life I want to live.” I know many hate the battle metaphor, yet I can’t deny that there is an inertia inherent in life that constantly pulls all living things toward decay, disrepair, disorder even sloth. In forestry it is called succession – “a directional non-seasonal cumulative change in the types of plant species that occupy a given area through time. It involves the processes of colonization, establishment, and extinction which act on the participating plant species.”

It takes discipline, sacrifice, hard work, initiative, resourcefulness, will, vision, intention, hope and yes often power tools to keep things on course. If I want that barn back, I have to be more tenacious than those damn black berry bushes. It is hard though and why we are told the gate is narrow and lonely or that private victories always precede public victories. I guess it comes down to how badly I want it. We’ll see. I ended the day with dulled blades and an empty gas tank.