Now co-driving to Elk Camp shouldn’t necessarily involve me staying in Elk Camp, but the fact that I always convince myself I can find some one-way ticket back once I get there, or I underestimate how long it will take me to get to the last flight out, I have managed to wrangle, mostly unintentionally, an invite to camp until I can find my way home.

For some reason, on these hot days of Houston summer, I am remembering those trips, those stays, with a special kind of longing.

I guess it’s in part because my soul feels something when I kneel at that makeshift memorial, beneath the dying tree there on that mountain, the place where I have talked out loud to God, when the guys were out scouting.

I guess it’s because last year, wearing Jake’s old boots, I tramped around camp, with the snow lightly falling, flakes covering everything with a soft blanket including the toes of his boots, and as if the moisture laden air itself cocooned our camp, my heart too, blanketed by memory and emotion, had time to rest in the mountain air as nature, herself prepared for her own cold repose.

I guess it’s because my Josh, my youngest soldier son, will be going back to Iraq soon, a trip that forces familiar patterns of worry and pride and mother-missing-child, and long distance birthdays of Christ’s and sons.

Strange, really, the thoughts of this odd old woman who, having breathed the clean crisp air of snowy, Colorado autumns, amongst the ribald laughter of hunters and husband, finds remembered solace there.

There are places in our experience where the feelings of sadness run so deep that they make a sanctuary, a place where upon revisiting them, the perfectly distilled moments that brought us to our knees are balanced by the recognition that one day, some day, we have the promise of everlasting reunions and all tears wiped away.

It’s Christmas in July, this July, a Colorado Fall in the summer heat, because I have spent borrowed time in the cold and snow up on Electric Mountain.

I just may find an excuse to go there again this year, presumptuous of welcome, an interloper, in a place where I feel comfortable and sheltered by God, by snowy mountain air, and a group of men who do their best to pretend I am not a burden and in doing so, shelter me with an odd affection.

Did I mention they always dry out my (well Jake’s) boots for me? They do.

The book is a collection of some of his most vivid memories. He writes about Gertrude Stein who held a salon in her apartment for young artists. Many familiar names take on life when you read about Hemingway’s acquaintance with James Joyce, his aversion to Ford Madox Ford, his great friendship with Ezra Pound, and his tender compassion for the tragic Scott Fitzgerald.

The writing is typical Hemingway, tight, concise, never an extraneous word. It is sometimes funny and lighthearted, sometimes grave and sad. Some of his most poignant writing describes his turbulent relationship with Fitzgerald: “If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find out soon enough.”

I first read A Moveable Feast in the late sixties. I was captivated by the picture that Hemingway created. There was Paris, home to painters and poets, musicians and writers of stories. There were the gardens and the cafes, the wine, and too much drinking of it. Recently I was prompted to pick this book up again and discovered the Restored Edition.  There are differences of opinion about the two editions, but in the newer one much of the heavy posthumous editing has been removed. Making use of the author’s original manuscripts, the editors have been able to give new life to Hemingway’s story.

Knowing what we know now about Ernest Hemingway’s life and death, it is sad to read his memories of his early years when he was often happy and his life held so much promise. But it is really a fascinating portrait of a lost time and place, and it is a pleasure to read. According to his son, Patrick Hemingway, the last words that the author ever wrote as a professional writer are “the true foreword to A Moveable Feast”:  “This book contains material from the remises of my memory and of my heart. Even if the one has been tampered with and the other does not exist.”

Let me explain.

When we first bought the farm, the pastures looked like this:

Not knowing much about anything we went to school. Cowboy school. At A&M. Anybody can go really, as long as you pay the money, and you can go to classes that talk a lot about hay and how to make sure it’s high quality, which turns out to be largely about fertilizer and soil tests and pH. And rain. Don’t forget the rain, which is of course, obviously going to be overwhelming problematic because you might be able to control the other variables I mentioned, but rain doesn’t fall into that category.

Sooo.. we had our soil tested and bought a tractor. I love this tractor. I am amazing in this tractor. I am strong in this tractor.

(Sorry, I get a little carried away about our John Deere.)

Turns out that not only did we have to apply 3 tons of fertilizer to our pastures (a special blend) but we also had to lime, another 3 tons. So our tractor pulled and spread all last fall and then again this spring. In the full knowledge that all last summer it failed to rain. And while we had hoped we have hay for our cows for the winter, we didn’t. Not only we didn’t, but very few others did and come last winter, we were buying the most expensive round bales of hay, every 4 days. I began to resent cow poop because it seemed to me like they could be more efficient in their digestive efforts.

So it was this spring and summer that we looked on our pastures with hope that this year wouldn’t see a drought like last. And that not only would we have hay for summer with new little calves and pregnant mommas, but that also, there would be plenty for the winter.

I love these round bales that you see below. They are ready when the trees lose their leaves and our black hided mammas are nursing their babies. Who would have thought dried grass could look so…promising.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Okay, so I am a little bit rusty on time lapse video.. but give me time..)

(If you have forgotten some of your history as I had, Guernsey Island lies off the coasts of England and France and was brutally occupied by the Nazis from 1940 to 1945. With short notice, 17,000 of the 40,000 people who lived there evacuated to the United Kingdom. Of those, there were 4000 who were just children sent to live with strangers. Although The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is fiction, it is based on the factual German occupation of those islands and I was so fascinated by the subject that I Googled to learn more after I finished the book.)

After the war, there were no bookstores on the island and Mr. Dawsey Adams wrote to Juliet in London..…whose name and address he found written on the flyleaf of an old book he had..…to ask her if she could suggest the name of a bookstore in London where he might send for some particular books. His mention of an odd sounding book club made her so curious as to write back immediately. Thus began the correspondence which is the form this narrative takes. For the longest time I didn’t want to read this book because of that particular style …  simply a series of letters… but delightfully fascinating letters indeed and the perfect form for this tale. That book club referred to by Mr. Adams, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, was conceived because of a roast pig and a hastily invented alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans. Refreshments became part of the society meetings because ” Will Thisbee wasn’t going to go to any meetings unless there were eats! Since there was scant butter, less flour, and no sugar to spare on Guernsey then, Will concocted a potato peel pie: mashed potatoes for filling, strained beets for sweetness, and potato peelings for crust. Will’s recipes are usually dubious, but this one became a favorite”

You will be as fascinated as Juliet is by the tales told in the letters of these charming and eccentric Guernsey characters who successfully thwarted their German invaders.

I like them.

But in the way of nature, things live and things die and one of our big old pine trees succumbed this spring. I could swear it had been green this time last year, but about May massive amounts of bark and limbs began to fall earthward and it was clear that the least of the big old pine’s problems was a massive infestation of pine bark beetles.

Nestled as it was behind the barn, every weekend I have been terrified to come to the farm and see the thing laying across our barn, or across the chicken and turkey coop (I could imagine feathers still flying as the it hit), or worse yet, laying across something of one of our neighbors. (Yeah, when I say this thing is nestled I mean nestled.)

I called Hymie.

He showed up, two helpers in tow, with a pickup full of azure ropes and chainsaws, took one look at the pine and said, “This thing didn’t just die.”

“Will you be able to do it”, I said. “Of course,” he answered and he strapped on his climbers, got his safety harness in place, and in the heat of a Texas July sun, he started climbing.

We had talked about the electric wire and my fruit trees and the muscadine vines I have been nurturing since January. I told him it was more important to me to have the tree down. He smiled.

Half way up the tree, he got a cell phone call, and with chainsaw in idle behind his butt on a carbiner, I heard him answer his phone and then laugh.

“She is an ole pine, si, it is good. Adios”

Meanwhile, I was praying, something between let him be safe and thank you God that you didn’t give me this job.

Higher he went. When he got to the fork, with about 20 feet from the top, with one hand he unlatched his chainsaw and swung in rhythm to begin his cut. The strong blue rope tied to the top, his helpers tugged towards the row of my garden where the tomatoes had been. He moved them a bit with the wave his hand, just to the left of my still producing peppers and down came her crown of dried and brittle branches.

He waved from the flat topped pine, her cones all gone and spread around my garden soil.

The second section on the ground, he tied his blue rope around the top of pine pole, and walking gingerly down, his spikes with little purchase on the slick, barkless tree, he called to his men. He cut the wedge out of the side, and coming around began the cut that would meet and topple the last of her. With a thunderous shake, she fell, nestled right up to my row of okra.

“You want some water and ice?” I said.

We all sat around the little picnic table, shaded by the other pines as old as that one he had just cut, drinking fresh, cool water. The dangerous job successfully over and in the sharing, made us friends of a sort.

“I do human bones and muscles, too,” said Hymie.

Huh, I thought.

“Let me show you.”

Coming around with one brown hand, dusty from pine chips, he pushed hard at the base of my neck where it meets my shoulder.

His eyes twinkled. “Feels good, huh? Doesn’t hurt anymore.” He said without question.

“Here’s my card. If you have any more trees. Or I can fix your bones or muscles. Yours too Bob”, said Hymie.

You never know what kind of multitalents are hidden in Hempstead but tonight, my shoulder, as I lay down, despite the work of carrying that gargantuan down to her resting and rotting place behinds the dam, my shoulder relaxes into my pillow, my sinews and muscles, soothed. And my brow a little less worried that when the wind blows at my old farm, the strong pines left, will bend and not bow nor break, at least for now.

No, lacuna. He said it means a different thing from lagoon. Not a cave exactly but an opening, like a mouth that swallows things. He opened his mouth to show. It goes into the belly of the world.”

Take this opportunity to be swallowed up by the world that Barbara Kingsolver has created in The Lacuna. It is a world peopled with colorful and fascinating, sometimes maddening characters.

Harrison Shepherd has always lived in two worlds, never quite belonging to either. He is the son of a gray American bureaucrat father and a fiery, beautiful Mexican mother. When the story opens, Harrison’s parents have gone their separate ways. He and his mother Salome are living in Isla Pixol, Mexico, a jungle island, with a man named Enrique. He is just one of many rich men on whom Salome pins her hopes for a life of luxury and excitement. They spend a year there and Harrison falls in love with the water, spending his days swimming, diving and exploring the mysteries of the sea. He is befriended by the gifted cook who teaches him the secrets of preparing Mexican delicacies, including his specialty, pan dulce. Thus begins the saga in which Harrison himself, by means of journals and letters opens up to us a fascinating segment of history. Through his eyes we meet the artist Diego Rivera and his exotic wife Frida Kahlo. We get a glimpse of Leon Trotsky in exile in Mexico. We view the ancient Aztecs and their contribution to Mexican art and culture. We are carried along just as Harrison is from Mexico into the United States at just the right time to glimpse the anti-Communist fervor of the late 40s and early 50s. There are lots of twists and turns as Harrison rides the wave of history and is inevitably drawn into its current.

Garrett is what he told me his name was, not a boistrous kid, and he sat with me in the dirt while we fixed the weedeater I was working on.

He’s smart, I thought to myself, as without much talking, he watched what I was doing. A fine bead of sweat glistened above his thin upper lip and I watched him as he tried coiling the new string into the weedeater.

“Garrett”, Grandaddy Gene called. “Come on back over here. Your momma is ready to go.”

“Can I come back?” he asked me.

“Year, Garret, you’re a good helper”.

“I like you,” he said.

“I like you too,” I said with a smile.

Gene later told me about his grandson. How they almost lost him. Deep inside every cell of that cowboy’s body are little factories that make energy, and his are messed up. “He’s got what they call a metabolic disease,” his Grandfather stated.

Garrett and I have spent a few afternoons together. He always politely asks if he can help me. He tells me about school and likes to help me get the chickens and turkeys in the pen. He watches and learns in everything he does and when we are done, we have a coke out of the little fridge in the tack room. He usually stands, shirt all tucked into his belted genes, pushes his hat back, booted feet crossed at the ankles, and swigs his drink happily.

“Can I come back next time I am here?” He always asks.

“Yep”, I say.

I watch as his little thin shoulders grab the fence and he hooks his boots into the hogwire and over he goes.

Garrett is the resiliency, innocence, and beauty that is a child. He takes each day the way it comes and hopes for the next.

He’s my handsome cowboy this month.

Take for instance bugs. Right now, out at the farm, there are a million insects. They are flying everywhere, moths and butterflies eating sap and whatever else they eat, June bugs pouncing on the screens at night dying, literally, to go into the light. I’m used to seeing giant cockroaches, so much so, that I think anytime I see a fairly large brown object move, inside or out, its one of them. But nooo.. not out at the farm. If they were roaches, we’d call it an infestation. There are that many crickets making their home in our organic refuse. Something about them flitting across, rather than roaches makes me feel very good.

Then this caught my eye while I was weeding the garden. I love the plant cock’s comb. For some reason they are hard to grow, and despite the jillions of seed we planted, only two plants survived. I looked this little bugger up on google. Isn’t she cute?

I thought it weird that she was on this flower. But given that her common name is Flower Crab Spider (which translates into Misumena vatia), she is just where she is supposed to be. Guess she thinks some other tinier tasty little insecct morsels are going to come her way, given the beeeuuttiful magenta flower she is sitting on.

Ahhh.. the cycle of life.