hillborn's Blog

May 4, 1970, forty years ago today.    Like many others of my age I remember the shootings at Kent State that day.    The pictures, the times, the feelings in those warm May days and weeks that followed were all unforgettable.    It all happened a very long way from the little college campus where I was in rural Pennsylvania.    But I can still see the blood red crosses that went up on the lawn and stayed there all that May.  

At the time we felt anger, defiance, and fear at something we all felt a part of.     We all knew that if we had been there that day, it could just as well have been us.    

Such a long time ago.    There was so much we didn't know.     Looking at the pictures of that day now I still grieve, but not with defiance, now, as a father, just with sadness at the loss of those dead children and what their parents must have felt.

Such a long time ago.   Different times now.   As a father, I am glad of that.   

For many years the sight of hawks at my farm has reassured me, a sight that no matter how common never ceases to be special, always seems a gift of luck, a gift of the sky on any day.    I love the power and beauty, grace and freedom and wildness of the hawks.... red tail hawks mostly, osprey, and now and then, an eagle.

Recently I have been reading J. A. Baker's The Peregrine, a book of such luminous intensity of presence that it can be hard to read, the awareness is nearly overwhelming.    As soon as I opened it I knew I had found a new addition to my personal list of "sacred" books.   So I have been immersed in peregrines.

I had been thinking also of the studies of peregrine flight in the Nature documentary Raptor Force, which I own, and at the farm, alone on the Saturday night before Easter, I watched it again to help me bring alive the falcons in Baker's book.

Easter Sunday.    A warm and sunny day, alone on my farm.   Pruning my young apple orchard, digging holes for my new trees.    Feeling slightly vexed as I tried to find my pruning snippers,  I left the barn and walked toward the toolshed to look for them there.    As I approached the shed, walking slowly, thinking about nothing but snippers, suddenly a big gray bird leaped from the projecting rail that the shed door slides on; it wheeled sharply in the light as I glimpsed its confederate=gray wings and lighter flank; and sped off rapidly, low across the field.....

I lost sight of it for a moment, and then I saw it circling, soaring higher and higher in the drafts above the eastern field, till it was so high it came in and out of my vision in the light....

It was a peregrine.   The first peregrine I have seen on this farm.    It must have been resting or dozing on the rail at the end of the shed, out of view, till I came near and suddenly it roused and saw me and leaped away...

I felt stunned, grateful and blessed, somewhere in my heart I fell to my knees on the gravel in front of the shed. 

While my soul reeled, the rest of me went on walking.    I found my snippers and went to my trees.    Hours later, thirsty from digging, I rounded the barn to get a slug of water and the peregrine came in sight again, whipping above me around the corner of the barn, again I saw the gray angled flash of its wings as it rose again this time into the west toward the sun.  

So this will be my peregine Easter.    Such beauty given to me seemed to hallow the day.    All will be well and all manner of thing will be well, I thought, remembering a poem in the lowering sun.    On this sunny April afternoon, I was given a rare gift, a wild peace.    

Rain and wind.

My old window rattles in its frame

Like a soul

Shaken in peace and purpose.   

The other day I came across a sobering find: a sheet of notebook paper dated 9/8/04 and titled "Whatever Happens," on which I had written my five-year life plan for the years 2004-2009.   It's a list, and I remember clearly writing it -- I was sitting jet-lagged in a meeting room on the opposite coast of the one I live on, and making this list as a kind of ladder out of weariness and despair.    I even noted the number of weeks I would have to get through between then, and now.  

So now it's 2010 and I'm looking back five years, down the ladder list.   Some things happened like I said they would.   Something happened that nearly shattered everything else, losing the job that in 2004 I had had for 25 years and couldn't really imagine ending.    But life went on anyway, and so did the list.    I did what I planned to do, and did a lot of other things I had to do and didn't expect.  

So now it's 2010 and the only item on that list still not reached is the last and the hardest:  "Find a quiet way."    I haven't.   I still think it exists, but maybe it's so remote with the way so harsh that only a few can reach it, like the South Pole.   Maybe it's just a dream of late middle age, as when I was 25 I used to imagine my perfect, symmetrical life.     If so, that's fine, I want the dream anyway.    Though I don't know how to live in contentment, I certainly don't want to live in resignation.    

So now it's 2010.   Time for another list?   No.    I'll just carry over the one item:  "Find a quiet way."    I don't know what lies between here and there, but no schedule needed,  its got to be the last station on the line.   

When on the road, I can sing this.    When alone on the road.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm2_7o8DGtI

For Bill:

I miss the wildness in his eyes.    I saw it every day and I loved it and I miss it terribly.   I miss his scarred face.   I miss him like I would miss a lover who is gone.     I feel so deeply the gap and loss of something I loved.    And the sight of his empty mat, still waiting just where he left it; the wood chips where he used to sleep; the box of his food, not eaten; my plan to heat the greenhouse for him this winter now not needing to be done; the knowledge and alertness and alive-ness of him now all out of sight and gone.    So much in that little life, that little creature of my yard.   Something that knew so much about me; something that watched me so closely, it is hard to believe that could be extinguished.    It is such a sorrow yet I am lucky to have known him.   I know that.    He was a stray when he came here, thin and frightened, and while he always remained wild, we gave him food and a home and all our love.    And this was his home and I know he knew it.    And I think he is resting now somewhere out there, very close by, still part of here, still home.

Bill was last seen 8/7/09, 5:30 pm, as I departed for my evening walk and he watched me go as he often did, just his little face visible above the back step.   Shortly after, my son fed him his dinner, and then he was gone.   

This was written 8/28/09 but I didn't feel I wanted to post it then.   

On summer nights, I have the best sleeping place in the city.   My deck is roofed and screened, and stands on posts several feet from the ground.    I sleep out there on a mat and it’s like sleeping in a treehouse.    On a moonlit night I watch the pale white light cross the floor, cross the table, cross my body as I lie there, cross the flower bench and the lettuce pots and on until it’s gone.   Sometimes a plane drifts loudly across the sky and I can watch its course; from my sleepy place in the darkness, I think I must see it like the yard cat sees it, a noisy, inexplicable phenomenon, but it passes, and nothing to do with me.    Sometimes there is a cat fight or a squabble among the raccoons somewhere in the darkness below.     I lie there waiting for the daylight to pass out of me and the night to take me in.    These nights the crickets are loud in the brush just outside and there are katydids arriving too.   Sometimes when I wake up, I’ll see the shape of one of the cats, sitting on the sill above me, keeping watch.   No matter how warm the night, always there is a little breeze and always, lying there on my mat, I am happy.     I need no alarm, the first light will wake me quietly.  I know I have the best sleeping place in the city.   

One of the fine things about having an office at home, is that you can step outside at lunchtime and pick some beans.     This year, my beans struggled early on in the cool and stormy spring, then straightened out to fly right, you might say.    They have been a good crop for a couple of weeks now.     They are pole beans, as they always are here, mainly because I love to watch the progress of the vines as they  climb the poles.    Bare bean poles awaiting the vines in good moist ground, that is a beauty of spring.  

Today's beans:   a few I'll cut later and steam for supper tonight.    But there are a lot of them now, and some will go into the freezer to be come out some dark winter evening six months from now, when they'll bring me the memory of this muggy summer's day, the feel of the beans as they are grasped in my fingers, the prickle of leaves of the vines on my arms, the rain of the thunderstorm that is coming here soon.   

Other than creaking knees, my father was strong and capable until he was nearly 80, still loading his truck himself, still working on the farm.    After many years of steady decline, now he is 91, wheelchair bound, ill and frail and nearly helpless though his mind is alive.    Without the latest advances in cardiovascular medicine, he would likely have died of a heart attack or stroke a decade ago.    In earlier generations the oldest man in my family lived to 83.   

I am 58 now.

Today I enjoyed a long walk on a hilly trail and the feel or strength in my legs and a good sweat.    I thought about my father sitting by his window.    I thought of myself and how I'll be able to walk again tomorrow.     What is time?   Time is a blessing, I thought.     I want every day I can have.     

Today, my mood has ranged from dull to sullen to surly to short-tempered, and not beyond.    I have not been a nice person.    Yet as I came back from lunch (only slightly refreshed), I found a forwarded email from a customer in Norway telling us how pleased he was with a product I had been instrumental in making:  how attractive it was, how valuable he was finding it.    Well.... it was as if the clouds had lifted just in the moment it took to read the message.     And I could not have done this for myself.     Yet a few unexpected, unsought words from a complete stranger in Norway could clear in a moment the foul clouds that had blinded me all day.  

So locked in my centre of aloneness, I am always surpised when I'm reminded that even I am a social creature.   

Monday morning, I sat quietly at the kitchen window of my farmhouse and watched three wild turkeys make their way across my lawn.    With their long necks and long legs in the clear early light, I could easily see their ancestry-- it truly seemed I could have been observing three tiny dinosaurs strutting and pecking their way across the grass, in the same spot 100 million years ago.

Yesterday morning, I was a mote in the noise and crowds of vast Manhattan.

Today, I am at my desk, ready for the business ahead and waiting to see the expected rain.   But just now it is quiet.    I think I look forward to the time when there are no divisions and all my days are quiet and calm, each day an island, and no divisions any more but sunrise and sunset, and season after season.     I wonder if I will ever find such a perfect time.    I wonder too if I will ever allow such peace to happen.   

I stood outside last evening in the humid twilight, watching coral clouds fade to dimness as the last light died and the yard cat flitted away into the shadows.    There are poems, I thought, that are lifeline poems, poems that bring you their strength and beauty and comfort again and again, coming back to you many times in moments in your life when they are most needed.   These lines came back to me again as they have before through nights long passed… 

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee…

What thou lovest well is thy true heritage

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee  

And for hillborn, Love is like the firefly in the darkened garden…. how it blinks on, blinks out, and then is gone….though it will always be there in the dark somewhere.

Blurred by clouds, the moon rose and then I went in.

Wishing I had done instead of not done…where error and regret are all in the not done, in the diffidence that faltered…

Good night I said, good night.    It’s dark now, that’s all.       

I don't remember where I first found these lines, but I came across them the other day among some old notes:

"There is one story

That Virtue has her dwelling place above rock walls hard to climb

With a grave chorus of light-footed nymphs attendant about her,

And she is not to be looked upon by the eyes of every mortal,

Only by one who with sweat, with clenched concentration

And courage, climbs to the peak."

Simonides, 556-468 BC

Not fame, not glory, not heroism, not wealth.    Only virtue.    Reading this, I come to see virtue as the simplest and most humble of qualities, yet perhaps also the most difficult.  

In the old house, the old bedroom of my father still carries the smell of him to me, as though he had just been sleeping in there, perhaps only a couple of nights ago, and like an old big cat is now departed.     Of course, as the big cat of today, I cannot sleep in there, and indeed I don't like having to enter.     I can feel it is not my place, I feel small, I feel almost an intruder, but I don't want to feel that now.   Don't like to feel that now.    So I prefer my own den, where everything is me and mine, and which may perhaps someday give a smell of me to the young'un now outside.     We each have our own place and time.    This is mine.    

How much of us an old house contains.   

The day goes by, winter day, with its winter hours, sky gray, cold rain, rain water sheen glistening on last night's ice still on the roof.    The monitor glows, the only sound is the tapping keys.   And my breathing.    In these silent morning hours the rain streams down and I feel so alone.    At moments I want to drop down and lay my face to the cold wood of the floor and pray.     I wish I could touch someone and I wish someone could touch me.    

A raw chill in the air, a touch of cold drizzle, clouds thick and lowering, the gray sky is coming down to cover the earth.    Sodden fields with rain-flattened grass.    In the black bare limbs jutting out against the gray, there is the thin remnant of a bird's nest, never seen till now.   On the water ducks quack, sounding irritated.    Somewhere not far off a hawk screams but stays unseen.    I feel like a winter bird, my summer a remnant, but I am still here, beating higher in the December rain.   

Tomorrow is the holiday, but for me, today, with long hours of solitude and silence, is the day for giving quiet thanks.    My son will be home from school in an hour or so, and today, I am giving thanks for him.   He will not know what he has given me, I don’t think children ever can know what they have given to their parents.    Memories?   Of course.    So many.    But one is of a Thanksgiving project he did in school in kindergarten or first grade, cut out a paper turkey and wrote in a child’s big simple letters: I Am Thankful for My Life.     He was 6!    What he was thinking of when he wrote that, I don’t know, but to me, awash in the complexities of my middle aged troubles and complaints, these simple words were like the pure, clear voice of childhood itself.       I treasure them still.   And at each Thanksgiving holiday I remember that little paper turkey and those words.     And I want to feel that way too.    I want to feel thankful that I can pause for a day, being warm and well fed, with a head full of memories and eyes full of visions, and stretch out with a kind of joyful determination and think, life is good, and I don’t want to miss any of it.