Acclimating To The Simulation
There are no stop lights on Orcas Island. I didn’t notice at first, because there is hardly anything resembling traffic here. The first time I realized it, I was in Portland, right off the I-5 from a trip up to Orcas, stuck in traffic on NE Weidler, which has about 8 traffic lights within a 1-mile stretch. As my blood pressure was rising and all of the serenity collected on the trip escaped through a draft in the window, I realized I had not sat at a single traffic light while on Orcas. Now, I am back on the island of no stoplights, and I worry a little about what happens when I get back a city. Will I remain on "island time", or will I be broken immediately?
The speed limit here is 35 and I have never felt compelled to go more than 10 miles over it. I’m more fixated on getting the optimum gas mileage out of my car than getting anywhere quickly, because gas is >$1.50/gal more expensive than the mainland. Right now I’m at about 32 mpg, compared to my Portland average of 24 mpg. I worry about the dangers of getting used to stressless driving and the absence of noise pollution. I worry about the fact that nothing I read about in the news right now correlates to my current reality of worrying about weed control, or unwelcome visits from my neighbor’s cows, and that this actually isn’t reality.
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I also don’t know if any one single human has ever been as dedicated to eradicating tansy ragwort, from the roots, before summer’s first bloom, but I nominate myself. And despite my strongest efforts, it’s getting away from me still.
But last week, I shifted my raison d’être to Himalayan blackberries, also known as motherfucking Himalayan blackberries. If you own a home with a yard in the Pacific Northwest, chances are you have dealt with them in some capacity. They have extra large thorns, prolific growth, and only so-so fruit. I decided to focus on one area, close to the house, in what I call the "formal garden." Even with sleeves, my arms and legs took on the quality of raw hamburger. More than a week later, they look like a 3 year old was given a felt-tip pen and me as her canvas.
Unlike the tansy, there is no satisfying “AHHH” feeling of pulling up a nice, juicy root; Himalayan root systems are strong, and deep, and vast. Instead, I get my dopamine hit from snapping off the biggest canes at the base, then pulling them out of the snarl, liberating either the skeletons of former plants or the neglected forms of still-living-but-barely-there plants. Like when the victim of a shipwreck hangs on until rescue but dies on the stretcher, after the danger has passed, I don’t know if the red flowering currant went through too much to ever be whole again. Among the other survivors in the garden are lilac, peony, azalea, shrubby cinequfoil, rose, and columbine, along with some resilient rhododendron, a plum tree and an apple tree. There's also tatarian honesuckle, which I just learned is invasive, so maybe that needs to go.
Clayton, who had been living on the property since January, went to Europe at the beginning of June and flew back on the 5th. This marked four entire weeks alone on the property, the longest stretch of time I’ve spent here. I hope my month On Walden Pond wasn’t damaging. For me, a certain amount of solitude is as vital as oxygen, but you can get to a point where you don’t know if you’ve eclipsed your max. Much of the time, I love knowing that I am the only human within at least a quarter mile radius. I watch the birds, or the movement of water, and think, or not think, or not-think.
But other times, I turn to my phone when the feeling that I am living in a simulation is too much. My phone is there to remind me that the news is terrible and getting worse by the hour, that I am very, very lucky to, at least for a moment, feel very far away. But worry plagues me soon enough, because as serene and bucolic as this moment is, I have yet to solve the water issue, or get the house’s foundation inspected, or create a comprehensive plan for repair and rebuilding and financing while I’ve still got 2 years of grad school left, and the tansy ragwort is blooming in this moment. But suddenly the water has taken on a completely different hue, and I imagine how I would paint it.
So far, the biggest change I've made to the house is replacing the (at least) 40 year old refrigerator with a new one. It's not the fridge of my dreams (which would be a standard depth french-door with bottom freezer), but it's the fridge I need in this moment: clean, energy efficient, and not haunted.
Sometimes getting what you want includes doing things you don’t want, like pulling out a 40+ year old refrigerator and dealing with what is behind and beneath it. When I moved into my house in Portland 22 years ago, I found a lot of mouse shit and a large piece of drawing paper decorated in colored pencil. On the top of the paper it said in large letters, “THINGS TO DO” and below it was a list that the author, the former homeowner, identified as self care activities. 'Take a bath,’ ‘Listen To Joni Mitchell.’ ‘Sing' among other things, was written in curlicue script. “How embarrassing” I thought at the time, “Shoot me if I ever do anything like this.” I was thirty and had a zero-tolerance rule when it came to self-soothing suggestions written in color pencil with curlicues. Now, taking a bath while listening to Joni Mitchell sounds like peak living, and nothing I will be lucky enough to do anytime soon.
What I found behind the fridge, in addition to greasy lint, mouse and rat shit, and unspecified sediment from years of spills was a recipe for what I believe to be banana pancakes, a phone number, information about Social Security benefits in 1996, and a piece of paper that tells a complicated story in even fewer words than Hemingway.
This week, I am hoping to pick up a new-to-me riding lawnmower. One of the blades needs to be replaced, the brakes need work, the deck is loose and the front wheels are frozen or rusted in place...but it's free. I learned how to drive on a riding lawnmower, so I see no reason why I should not learn how to fix cars on one too. Can I be someone who fixes a free riding lawnmower herself? Likely not, but isn't it worth a try?
