Opinion : 10 years...

Venus was looking over my shoulder.

I wonder what Grandpa would have thought of that.

I am sitting, right now, on the concrete slab that when I was born was used to support the metal framework of a corn crib. All I can hear are the birds chirping and the wind rustling through the trees. Other than the laptop in front of me, the only other sign of modern civilization I can see is the power line near the road.

Last spring, I cleared a couple of pickup loads of scrap metal (parts from old cars, tractors and other farm machinery, much of which I could not specifically identify). I removed leaves, thorns, weeds, piles of brush and wood from an area about an acre in size.

Then I went to work with my severely limited construction skills. From the road, at least, my picnic area does not look so bad. It has screens all the way around it, and a sliding glass door facing north. It even has a skylight, but don’t look too closely. I have learned that skylights on a roof with a very low slope are prone to leak, no matter how much tar paper and flashing tape you place between the plywood and shingles.

Last night, I moved in a folding (and padded) lawn chair, and found an old table. I stood facing east two hours after sunset, looking at Venus as she peeked down at me from between the pine and oak trees.

She is why I am here.

I came here in the spring of 2003, a few months after my grandfather’s death, to do this, although most of my specific plans had not yet taken shape.

“What I want to do,” I said to my friends, “is create a place where people can write and think and walk and pray and play and gather rocks from the fields and creeks and pick wildflowers and bluebells.”

I spent the first few years thinking I wanted to build a cabin way back in the woods, away from everything, including the gravel road 100 feet from Grandpa’s old house. But eventually I realized that the house would indeed become the cabin. I can’t do anything about the road, but then again: I have found several things about which I can do nothing.

The project is no where near completion. The house, while usable, still needs some attention. The garage needs shingles, and paint. Even this shelter needs a little more TLC.

But thanks to countless days filled with several hours of hard work (and very warm winter that allowed me to work on the land nearly until Christmas), it’s done enough that I can give you this progress report.

I was at the FFA Labor Auction a couple weeks ago, when I heard the name of a student whose photo I had taken at an elementary school concert. At the time he was the sibling of an FFA member, a little kid. But that Thursday night, as he stood on that black box, taller than me (and with way more facial hair than I could grow at that age) I realized that this is my 10th year here in Vinton. Many of the annual events that you read about in the news, I have now been taking photos of for the past 10 years.

And yet, I still can’t tell you the names of the small gray and white birds pecking at the tree outside my screen, or the species of that tree growing wildly in my rock garden. I still have so much to learn.

It’s silly to predict the future, but it seems to me that you and I will continue on this journey for the next 10 years.

And I am very OK with that.