06/2013, Farming and Writing, Writing and Farming

Nine months since my last entry. I just did the math and smiled when I realized the significance. This period of my life has felt uncannily gestational, a re-birth in the making.


Nine months ago, I was leaving Alaska, a tiny cargo trailer full of my grandparents' heirloom furniture hitched to the back of my Jeep Liberty, my cat in the front seat, the two of us bound for a modest, green parcel of farmland in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

The long ride, first on the Matanuska ferry, then across the Prince Rupert Highway, through Canada at the height of the fall, past miles of brightly painted hillsides and through tapering amber sunsets, gave me the time and space I needed to steep in all the bittersweet feelings I had about moving away.


Here are a few photos I snapped on the journey...

Arriving at my family's farmhouse in Oregon, I unpacked my few bags and set a mattress out on the floor. I felt like a wayward divorcee, nervous, emotionally spent, fragile as a weathered bone. 

But as fall turned to winter, and winter to spring, as I bucked hay to feed the sheep, nurtured seedlings in the greenhouse, and carried yet another damp, wriggling, newborn lamb into a stall to bond with its mother, I felt myself beginning to thaw, the hard spots in me giving way like calving glaciers. 

Fast forward nine months, and I have just past the hundred-page milestone of a book I never thought I'd write, I'm up to my eyeballs in juicy red strawberries, and I finally realized that I like it here enough to hang some curtains in my bedroom and raise my mattress off the floor.

Though still very much a work in progress, I also feel ready to share this process of living on the farm and writing a book, originally inspired by the experiences that launched 1000 Cranes, a social movement of suicide prevention, and my two year journey from a remote native village on the Bering Strait of Alaska to a 40 acre farmstead in rural Oregon. With editing feedback from my mentor, novelist Jo-Ann Mapson, I have begun to re-trace my life's touchstones, collecting them, like paper cranes, into a developing memoir, excerpts of which I plan to share with you here, along with updates from my new life out on the farm.

While the things you read on this blog may eventually find their way to the editing room floor, especially as this book continues to undergo the surprisingly organic process of growing and sloughing, I hope you find something of value in the parade of words, however ephemeral.

Please feel free to join me by adding your comments, suggestions, and perhaps even some of your own memories to the conversation. A walk down memory lane is wonderful, but never quite as nice as sharing a walk with a friend.