Our silver boxes slid across the landscape with little fanfare, chugging along through mountain passes and valleys from Oakland all the way to Denver. We followed the rivers inland from the sea, until we reached the mountains where the water switches sides and flows to the Atlantic Ocean instead. The train is very quiet inside, so the scenic views do resemble paintings on display in a museum with recycled air.
As we crossed Nevada, I enjoyed looking at the harsh landscape of high desert and mountains. The soil is often white with salt and cracked from the absence of moisture. The hills are covered with loose gravel, sand, and occasional boulders popping up out of the earth. There is almost no shade, as there are no trees either. Occasional remnants of towns lie close to the railroad, marked usually by abandoned piles of scrap metal, forgotten to everyone and viewed only by travelers who will never know their history.
I find Nevada beautiful because it resists us. With no water and no arable soil, we can take root there no better than the basin sage brush which barely holds to the sandy soil and eventually dries up and blows away. Perhaps every 50 miles or so there will be a creek or small river winding through the landscape, and along its banks there may stand a few alder or cottonwoods with pale green leaves looking tired in the sun. The greenery fades to some low grass as you move away from the banks, and within perhaps twenty yards there is only sand again. It gives a nice view to break the stark brown monotony, but there is no hope there under the Nevada sun.
During most of our time passing through Utah, I was pondering the inside of my eyelids. Not much to report there, for sure.
Now I’m in a high valley in Colorado, in a town called Jefferson. Jefferson is a small collection of buildings along a state highway, with thousands of acres of land spread around them. The land is divided into large parcels of 40 acres or more, divided by uninspiring barbed wire strung along small metal posts. Signs prohibit trespassing, but I’m surprised that anyone bothers to walk the fence to put them up. For those of you familiar with the high plains of the west, this is probably a sight you’ve seen before.
Jefferson is nestled right against the Continental Divide, so you can look up from the valley floor at 10,000 ft. and see the surrounding mountains with smears of remaining pure white snow at nearly 14,000 ft. The slopes are covered with aspen, various types of pine, or nothing at all. The sky is large and open (almost as big as Montana), and the clouds are in beautiful, intricate patterns as they blow over the Rockies from the west. The grass waves in the wind, and small creeks cut across the land with bright green reeds all around them. It seems to me a wild, hostile, and often beautiful place, high and dry and far away from the rest of the world.
I reflect on all this scenery as the wind makes another attempt to blow me off the wall I’m working on. I’m trying to attach big 10 inch rafters from the beam of the strawbale house I’m helping construct to the top of the outside wall. If you turn perpendicular to the wind holding one of these 14 foot boards, look out below ‘cause either you or the board is likely to go down. A small saving grace is that the wall is 18 inches wide, exactly the width of the strawbales which we will soon stuff into it. Walking along it is not so bad, and in fact when I’m not carrying something that functions as a sail to lift me off the house, I often pause and gaze out over the valley and mountains and smile out from under my hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses.
As I swing my hammer and help this house to materialize, I find some peace of mind and reflect on life. I’m really enjoying giving my life away in helping a friend to build a high-quality house. I’ve got a comfortable bed to sleep in at night, good food and conversation with some other friends who have come to build, and a dog named Gave that is the Platonic essence of warm canine companionship for all of us who are working. I’m glad that I am here, bundled up to fight the wind and the bright sun, chopping wood and occasionally carrying water. It’s honest work, and I feel honest at the end of the day.
How can we be more grateful more often? If you’re reading this, you’re probably a friend of mine or a friend of a friend (the same thing in my book). This probably means that you’ve gone to college, and perhaps are headed back for more. There’s a decent chance you eat organic food sometimes. You probably try with mixed success like me to get a good night’s sleep. You’ve probably got friends far and near who like to be with you. You live in places like Philadelphia, Berkeley, Austin, Portland, Washington DC, or other cities where the action is at. We all lead full lives, and certainly have plenty of opportunities to enrich them even more.
So what’s life all about? I don’t know at all, but I’m liking the idea of keeping it simple. I’m enjoying building things, helping people talk about difficult questions, volunteering, cooking for friends and new acquaintances, leaving places better than I found them, riding on trains, reading thoughtful books, and plenty of other stuff that I always seem to babble about in these writings (or worse yet when you let me ramble on in person :-). I’m grateful for you, my friends. I’m grateful that I’ve had a chance in life and that I’m trying to make the best of it. Money, security, career, marriage, what movie to rent on Friday night, these are all big questions that are coming, I know. But I’m always glad to be able to focus on the simple, the real, the tangible in front of me, and if it’s not going great today, then I want to make it better tomorrow.
Quote from R.E.M. – “We’re dug in deep, the price is steep, the auctioneer is such a creep…” You can feel that, can’t you? It’s in the world around us. But, we can be different and better. Let’s give our lives away and be loved for it.
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