Bucket List

Our first born came to the table early Wednesday morning for his brother’s birthday breakfast. He hung around after, to tell me of pedals and high hats and crashes he’s known and loved, miming taps and blows as he spoke. His dream drum set up, vivid in his mind, already surrounded him with sounds as with friends.

Now he’s working on the nitty gritties. Getting another job. Saving.

I have dreams too.
* Travel cross country. To seek out those crazy concrete buildings shaped like tea cups and donuts, shoes and ice cream cones. Take touristy pictures. Stay at the Treesort in Washington for two nights and get the T shirt.
* Grow a perfect tomato. Warm from the sun, thin skinned, wet and sweet.
* Build a small house with a stained glass window out of salvaged bits, on a piece of land near trees and a stream. Perhaps on wheels for travel. Perhaps without for summers spent with family.
* Return to Italy with my sweetie. Master the language well enough to manage without a dictionary.
* Visit the world’s longest yard sale.
* Identify birds by their songs.
* Forage entire meals a la Euell Gibbons.
* Finish writing a book about my father, a sculptor, for his grandkids. Stuff it full of stories, and photos of his work. Weave a bit of biography throughout.

Each dream has a starting place, the string end to follow through tangled real life. I’m taking a few strands at a time. One actively, while the others lay fallow. Doorknobs, architectural salvage and building print outs for the house. Language tapes and a coin jar. A friend’s promise to teach what she knows about native plants in the spring. Boxes and boxes of clippings and letters.

So dream your dreams. Build on your dreams with the bits and pieces you’ll need to reach them. Don’t give up. Even the process is worth it. It’s all worth it.

Sort of a Book Review Possum Living

You have to admit the name is intriguing. I first heard the title mentioned in a Philip Brewer article for Wisebread over a year ago. Philip looks at his dog-eared copy when he wants perspective. After a bit of searching I found the book in it’s entirety on line. Read only. Then our intrepid library ladies tracked down a copy through inter-library loan. It’s easier to peruse in hand but had to be returned. I wanted my own and checked our favorite used book sites, only to find it was outrageously expensive to purchase. Happily, it was reprinted just this year and is available for $12.95. My sister Lisa gave it to me as a Christmas gift. (Thanks Lisa!)

PL addresses basic questions, “What is enough?”, and “Is there a way to live outside the money economy?” I’ve puzzled over ways to integrate Dolly Freed’s experiences into our current situation, eliminating any ethically shady bits. (There are plenty.) Several major strategies remain. Maintain a large garden, cook from scratch, preserve, learn how to fix things by reading library books, forage, and be content. I suppose in a pinch I could learn to kill rabbits for meat. That certainly would be a learning curve for the kid who freaked when her fish swallowed a hook. But our cellar isn’t good for rabbit breeding or chicken nesting either, as it tends to flood in heavy rains. So gratefully, that’s not an option. And there are always beans.

Dolly and her dad were content to live in a fixed up house, basically off the land, and never go anywhere. If it were a treehouse in the woods as home base, maybe I’d agree. Washington state, or Britain or France even. But a treehouse, or a small bungalow among trees. Not suburbia. Not all the time.

Would I recommend it? Try interlibrary loan first. It may not be your cup of tea. For me it adds ideas to the stockpile. I have big dreams and limited means. The romance of cross country travel, silent stepping in pine forests, musty marsh smells, hawk calls, salty sea breezes, churning brooks, cool water rocks. All these sing their siren songs. How to get from here to there though, that is the question. And Possum Living may just offer some answers.

Dreams of Treehouse Living

Early morning eggs sizzle white with happy yellow middles in an iron skillet. Birds outside the window circle a makeshift feeder before lighting. Falling acorns gently drum on the tin roof. Outside, wind blown leaves dance under a porch swing. Under the porch trap door, a circular staircase touches the loamy forest floor. I'm living in the trees, and loving it.

It’s an image that keeps coming back, though it smacks of unreality. My dear sweetie, Art, (always a pragmatist), reminds me he’d be hard pressed to keep all his books in such a home. Like the ill-conceived Medici family’s marble-encrusted-arboreal-folly, it would come crashing down. So we’re left with an alternate dream. This one is totally doable. A cross country trip in a converted van, darting here and there to smaller and larger sites, until we arrive at Michael Garnier’s Out ‘n’ About Treesort, in Takilma, Oregon. Ah....His tree-house dream came true, and we can enter into it.

Check it out at- http://www.treehouses.com