Catching up to being Here

I have attempted to start this post a few times, both in my head and on the page, but come up short each time. I have been in my new element—digs, family/co-workers, job, landscape—for 9 days now. With so much being new, with necessary adjustment on each of those fronts, there has been a sort of rubbernecking of processing happening—and I had, perhaps still have, little clue how to distill that time into a page of writing—so many details seem worth sharing, so many feel important, and yet the details make the water very muddy. And I don’t want to serve you muddy water.

So let me lay out some basics for a picture. I’m living in a house, built for housing for New Deal projects*, with 16 other roommates—8 men and 8 women. My roommate and I are the only women in our thirties here (the rest are younger). Men have a similar age breakdown. I’ve got the top bunk in our preciously small room. We seem to be a good crew. Who could curate 17 people living in a house together well besides the universe? I laugh a lot. I feel like my brain is part of a brain network of 17 brains that work to supplement and reinforce each other. Sometimes that is overstimulating, so this first week is also an adventure in problem solving for quiet or alone time, without alienating a new tribe who I depend on for survival. Sometimes it looks like nesting in the top bunk, sometimes trekking up an unknown hill, or experimenting with being alone amongst people in a way that isn’t loneliness, but simple trust in how to enter one’s own realm. Where Andy and I live in Tennessee yields great opportunity for introverted reflection. Here I get to practice being part of a belonging to a group, and making sacred time for being quiet. Oh, and I’m being called by the end of my middle name here: Inder.

The house sits in Moab Valley, so from our yard full of bicycles, old lumber for firewood, cement mixers, laundry lines, and permaculture garden, you can look up and see the Rim, the snow-capped La Sal mountains, and up in the direction of the Sand Flats.

We have completed one full week of work thus far. Our tasks primarily have centered around learning to use a building transit and batter boards to set the level and placement of the house(s) (2 of the 3 we’re building), we have built a lot of “boxes” which are the sides of the mold for when we will pour the foundation on Monday for the first house. These boxes will be reused as posts in the actual building structure—a permaculture principle. We have dug for the foundation, set the boxes and the squared the corners. The first few days were pretty intense with all of us primarily working on 1 house site, later in the week some of us got squirreled over to another site, where we settled into a new rhythm for a moment.

Thursday night I was feeling pretty overwrought and took a solo walk up from the end of our road. My intention was to retrace at least part of a group hike we had done the previous weekend, but I found myself struggling to match it. (Later I realized I was on the wrong road to begin with) Twice I realized I was on private land, but the second time, I did not scurry quickly back down to the main road, I was already committed to my journey and the sun was going down. With the realization that I would probably never dare to venture to this spot again, I settled into a rock formation and called a friend—a little familiarity in an ancient and ineffable spot, with that feeling that I am amongst immense beauty and can’t quite feel part of it at the moment. As I sat, birds returned to their brushy bushes and the light intensified and deepened the color of the land. When I turned to leave I found myself face-to-face with 5 furry deer who seemed rather surprised to see me, but not particularly put off by the encounter. One seemed quite young and furry, as if he had just had noogies with ears that were adorably large for his head. They let me take a picture of them in this epic landscape, which is one I share with you here.

*some of the houses built in Moab as part of the New Deal were used during WWII as Japanese Internment Camps

**If you have a soft spot for animals, check out Mt Peale Animal Sanctuary where I stayed the night before our program started. They are in need of some help for feed for the winter.