off grid building

On time.

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

This is not for those who want a quick one liner to rapidly read, cringe at or smile, and go on about your day. I ramble.

For those with the patience and interest to read, I hope you’ll relate and enjoy. And for those to whom I have yet to respond to your always appreciated comments to the last rambling I wrote… I am sorry. It matters, you matter, and it all comes in time.

Time. Slips. Away.

This morning, the regular light frosts of summer turned to a heavy freeze.

I woke to frosty breath, arms and legs wrapped tight around my man to keep warm. Now with the little heater turned on and the sun up over a full ridge south from where it was two months ago, our little camper drips with condensation, streaking the windows, making a little puddle on the wool rug and wet spot on the table cloth beside me as I write. The thermometer read a mere 25 degrees. What will it feel like at 25 below?

Sure, the roof is done, and in another week or so, Bob and I will have the walls and windows closed in. The shell will be complete.

But we won’t move into that shell just yet. Building is more than making a shell, and it takes more than a shell to live up here, out here. You gotta be prepared. You gotta know. You gotta have some things lined out. A shed full of firewood is of the essence. Likewise a pantry put up for when you’re snowed in. Closed in shelter for us, the horses, the chickens who still call the horse trailer home. Indoor plumbing would be sweet and an outdoor spigot for horse water when the creek freezes over, which this morning reminded me, will be a thing.

These things take time.

It’s not that easy here. The cold and harsh and isolation are real. Not forgiving. You gotta take care of what needs to be taken care of because there is not much margin for error.

And you gotta be tough.

Some days I tire of tough. I want to soften.

I can’t – at least not just yet.

Toughen up and finish up.

In the meanwhile… this morning, reality hits. I’m thinking about how close we are to finishing this part of the project. And thinking about how much more still needs to be done.

I’m whining. I’m sorry. I want to be stronger. Tougher. Harder.

But at the same time, I want to soften. I’m tired of being badass sometimes and want to settle in and be held and cared for and pampered, but that’s not how it is for me. Not the marriage I have. And though on days like this it sounds tempting, it’s really not what I want.

If you want me to soften, allow me a place in which I feel safe to be soft.

Building a balance between a rock and a soft place.

Where did summer go?

When the thermometer rises to fifty, we’ve been getting our yoga mats and spreading out for field yoga to begin our day. That won’t happen today. It won’t reach 50 until mid day, and this morning the ground is covered with a hard heavy frost. The coffee pot and cups were frozen down to the counter outside where we wash.

I know where summer went. I see it in the finished roof and nearly closed in walls and windows. I feel it in my tired arms from wrestling timbers into place, sore legs from up and down the ladder as we set the roof and laid the metal, and skin weathered and worn with the only reprieve a ball cap for shade and the occasional bath in that outdoor horse trough heated beneath by fire.

Now as I look out there from the window of the little camper windows veiled with condensation (the only running water to be had in this camper) I am proud of what we have done of course. And at the same time, see how much more we still have to do. Opening (and tightly closing) doors. Floors and ceilings. Window trim and interior walls. Exterior finish and backfilled soil. Cabinets, counters and shelves. Tables and chairs and a bed. An indoor bathroom. With running hot water. And all the pretty things that make a house a home for me: curtains and rugs and pictures on the wall; candles and crystals and racks for my cast iron pans.

The horse barn and greenhouse will come before that. I have my priorities straight. Like most of the horsewomen I know, I don’t sleep well unless I know my critters are sleeping well. So the next project will be the barn. Before such luxuries as that running hot water.

Next year.

But for now, be here and now.

What do we need to do today? Oh yes, poke a hole through the brand new roof to install the pipe for a woodstove.

And as the season passes far too quickly, or so it seems, so does time.

Where does it go?

At some point in the process of losing time, you wake one day and realize not only your youth, but the first half or more of your life is… gone.

It’s not that I’m afraid of aging and honestly, I don’t really feel old, whatever that is supposed to feel like. It’s just that there’s so much more to do and it feels as if time is running out. It’s like one friend told me, as is the case with the end of the roll of toilet paper. Things go faster the closer you get to the end.

My energy is not what it once was, and maybe that’s okay. I’ve spent plenty of years buzzing like a bee and running like a feral dog. Slowing down ain’t all bad. I am not who and what I was in my thirties when I would wake before five to have enough time to write, light the fires and feed my family, could single handedly saddle a string and guide horseback rides, come home to straddle a log and peel the bark the old fashioned way for the cabin we were building then. And then wash up mighty quickly in a cold concrete slab showerhouse, put on the apron and cook up a lovely feast for a crew.

No, I’m not that person anymore. And I don’t wish to be. I don’t look back longingly. It was hard. I’m good leaving the past in the past. What I’ve got now is wonderful. And maybe even who I have matured into doesn’t feel too bad to be.

Matured. As in, grown up? Finally? I dunno. Maybe.

I don’t really know what that feels like. I just see what it’s starting to look like.

I want to let my hair go grey and my skin show the road map of my life in lines. I want to be at peace with what time and life and living does. Maybe even proud.

I don’t want to look shiny and new, young and untouched by years and experience nor as someone sheltered from the elements. I don’t want to be plastic and pulled tight and fight gravity and try to be something I am not and don’t care to be any more. I am deeper than that. Richer. Happier! Beauty is found in diversity, in black and white and all the shades of gray. I’m not interested in trying to be today what I was yesterday.

Honoring the changes of time. Accepting of how life happens.

At the same time, it’s strange to see myself not who and what I was even ten years ago. My image is not what I expect. I don’t want to be vain. But I think for most of us, it’s harder to find beauty in frosted wildflowers turning brown for the season, in withered leaves and shriveled fruit turned to seed.

There’s not much of a mirror here at camp, but I caught a good glimpse of my head in this little tin decoration hung on the outhouse door. The sun was shining and the light caught the juxtaposition of mirror and me just right. And guess what? I was shocked.

When did my hair get so gray?

When did I get so old?

This summer aged me.

It’s not an easy life here. It’s hard and harsh, though it is what I choose. But it takes its toll on me too. The image I saw shocked me. It looked as if I am withering and wrinkling, yet I still feel tough as nails and strong as I ever was. Strong as I need to be to live this life we’re living.

And yet…

Some days I want to be more. Or maybe it is less.

Pretty for my husband. Girly. Soft. Gentle.

I want him to look at me and still say, “Wow.” And yet I know it has never been those words I just used that he ever used on me… and yet he still said, “Wow.”

If you haven’t noticed, all the photos of construction are always of Bob, and the few that have come here to help. (Thank you, Chris and Lee and Forrest!) Never of me. Huh. Makes a person wonder, no doubt. I’m the one who takes the photos. Yet I’m also the one up there, out there, cutting, drilling, screwing, lifting, lowering, and staring in wonder and awe (often through the lens) at what we managed to build. Together. As Bob reminded yet another person giving him all the credit, as those of us women in so-called men’s worlds are used to hearing, we’re in this one together. I just don’t have the photos to prove my point.

Alas… I want a little leisure and comfort and ease. Just a little would be nice.

I want to wear nice clothes, at least clean ones. Without holes. We’re not talking dresses, dress boots, slick hair and make-up and that sort of thing. But more than what I see when I show up for work wearing the same work pants I have worn all summer long (testament to how impressive these Dovetail Workwear women’s work pants are, I dare say). Or I sit down for dinner and I’m still kinda feeling dirty and disheveled and wish I could look a little more like the lovely ladies I see on social media, primped and pimped and preened, with bright red botox lips and false furry lashes, hair dyed and quaffed just so, painted nails and skin pulled so tight it reminds of the old lady in the movie “Brazil.”

No, I really don’t wish to be her.

That woman is beautiful too. But she is not me.

I guess what you see is what you get.

Some of us are meant to be rough and rustic, rawhide and worn, warm leather, flannel shirts and dirt in our nails and our hair pushed back by the wind.

Am I right in feeling I’m not the only one?

I wish I believed that with age comes is wisdom.

We know that’s not always the case.

Without contemplation and reflection and the compassion of true understanding, age is but a number.

I want it to be more.

I want to have something to share, to give, to be a safe place where others can come to soften.

I want you to know what took me too long to learn.

And I am wise enough to know you will have to learn for yourself.

I want to share the lessons that took me way too long to figure out.

And I know you too will one day kick yourself for having had to wait so long.

I want to continue to learn. Something, every day. For as long as I am blessed to live, to age, to grow old.

For now, I sit back and stare out these wet windows onto the worksite that’s calling me loudly, “Get back to work, woman. There’s things to do.”

Time is a wasting.

Winter’s coming.

There will be time to write when we’re settled into the season. I’ll make damn sure of it.

In the meanwhile, no time to be soft. Time to build. To kick ass. To get it done.

I got it.

Oh, one more thing before I leave you today.

Remember Harry? The snowshoe hare the dog found on the drive to our camp? The little feller grew beautifully. He was ready to go. And so, we released him back to the wilds this week. You know there was a twinge of that bittersweet sadness as we set him free, even though we knew that is where he was meant to be.  

Until next time,

With love, always love,                                                                                                   

Gin

What the dirt stirred up.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Red flag warnings flare again today. Strong winds rattle the little camper. Dust devils twirl and dance along the dirt road where the horses run. Logging trucks stir lingering amber clouds in the far distance. Dry and dusty and this feels like the Wild West. And today, it feels like home.

The work site stays somewhat protected against the east facing hill, tucked between the little camper and the new bathhouse. The dirt work is done. Right on schedule for a cement pour happening later this week.

With light frost and ice kicked out of the dog water bowl outside, and inside the little camper the thermometer read 42, I’m excited for solid wood walls and a wood stove.

But we’re a long ways away from that.

In the meantime, plenty to do to keep me busy, and (in theory) out of trouble.

But then there was this.

Trouble.

It’s a thing for me.

Horses.

The livestock auction was this weekend with sixty horses being run through, mostly by horse trainers and traders, and not too many buyers. I could have bought a few.

I refrained.

And limited myself to just this one.

The new boy.

I don’t know what they called him at the race track, but the folks who sold  him to me called him Jessie. A good, historic Western name. We’ll see if it sticks. He kinda looks like Cinco to me. See, before him, there was Tres, and there was Quatro, and two other sorrels with stars before that.  This guy has a blaze, not a star, but sorrel he is, so we’ll see which name takes hold as he settles into life on this mountain with us.

So far, so good.

Getting a new horse (and this is something long overdue for us) is kinda like having a baby. You’re never really ready, and the timing is never right.

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to get through.

And I need horses to get through…

In an ideal world (if there is such a thing), we’d bring the new guy home and put him in a little pen and spend some quality time with him, bonding and getting used to one another for a week or a month or whatever it took before I was certain turning him out didn’t mean he’d run away. But it’s not slick and perfect here. It’s a little wild and western, rough and rustic (and did I mention, very dirty?).

So we bring the new guy home and put him in the corral where I keep my two old horses nearby at night. Leave him there a couple hours while he meets the old guys over the safe panels.

And then we turn him out.

Okay, so it’s 160 acres of fenced off open ground here, crossed fenced to maybe 80 acres. Turning a new horse out onto 80 acres seems a little nuts. And an ex race horse, at that. I expected all hell to break loose. It didn’t.

The old guys met the new guy, nose to nose, ran back and forth once in front of the camp for maybe 100 feet. Then put their heads down to eat. That’s kind of how it’s been ever since.

He’s a sweetie, a little unsure of wild open spaces, but bonding well with the old guys, and learning good lessons from them, from me, and from the mountain. How to cross washes and drink from creeks. How to lay down to rest in the morning sun and graze close to camp in the evenings where you’ll be treated and brushed and put in the safe pen for the night. And most important, of course: How to come to mama when called 😊

This guys is a keeper for sure.

Alright, enough about horses. I gotta get back to work…

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

~

First things first.

/ Gin Getz / 7 Comments

First things first.

Plant trees. Got a dozen in the ground on our fifth day here.  Native aspen and baby blue spruce planted on the hill behind the outhouse. Just feels good to give back to the land, whether we are here to enjoy them, or someone else is.

Second thing is this. Get the garden in. Well, it’s not much of a garden. Eight feet by thirty inches. “What are you gonna grow?” our neighbors back in CA ask. “Radishes?” Not much else would fit in that space.

But I’m hoping it’s just enough space to fit in the plants I started and brought.  A little kale (admittedly, the chickens “pruned” these plants rather severely). A few pepper plants, a zucchini, some herbs A  half dozen tomato plants already laden with green fruit because they were born in raised in California. Don’t know if they’ll ever turn red, but a gals gotta do what a gals gotta do. And this gal grows things. And yes, maybe I’ll get a few radishes going because seems like you always can grown them.

Admittedly I’m missing the abundance of fresh veggies I was able to provide for us year round, but Bob reminds me: There were no fresh veggies when we moved to California either. There was no garden! These things take time.

You gotta start somewhere, so this is how we’re starting.

A chilly 33 degrees this morning, but chillier when I walk the dog at dawn down by the creek and spook off a couple of cow elk bedded in the frosty bunch grass.

Now the sun is up and our world is already warming. In this elevation, that sun is intense!

So is the elevation.

My nose bled last night (again) and this morning I have (another) headache. I’m surprised and disappointed to be having trouble adjusting to the elevation, after living at 1,500 feet in Northern California for the past six years. I think we’re at 10,200 feet here. I spent 17 years living year round at 9,800 feet and didn’t have trouble then. Does this additional 400 feet really make such a difference, or am I getting too soft and old to handle this?

~

Now that more is going on here –with both building and writing – I will try to post twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. It’s good discipline for me to finish my thoughts, as well as a challenge to honor and hone my craft. Plus it might keep my ramblings a little shorter each time. As always, my hope is that you will enjoy reading and seeing as much as I enjoy sharing with you. I’d really appreciate your feedback – please let me know.

Until the next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Here or there?

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

And wouldn’t you know. The biggest tree that fell in the latest storm crushed a shed we built two years back.

A friend once told me I had the best luck of anyone she knew.

And the worst.

So Bob’s on the road and I’m trying to get stuff done while not tied to the mill (and kitchen) which feels like how my days have been spent the past few weeks.

Good news is he’s hauling this beautiful big load of lumber, a pretty impressive nine thousand plus pounds of beams and boards we milled, to our high-mountain-Colorado-one-day-will-be-home.

Me, I have big plans of my own. Tilling the garden and getting the last of the cover crop seeded before the next rains. Putting in a couple more rows of spring crops. And mowing the waaaaaaaay overgrown grass. With a simple push mower and somewhat steep hill, this kicks butt even when the grass is manageable. The lawn seeks revenge for neglect.

Of course it doesn’t turn out as planned. What does?

See, I was planning on cheating from my “no till” stance by getting the old Troy Build rototiller fired up. It’s about as old and a helluva lot heavier than me, but man is this a beast of burden and it gets the job done. Guess I’m gonna have to get that spading fork out after all (or wait for Bob to return if my ego allows) because after pulling, pulling, pulling only to realize it’s out of fuel, I pour in gas only to watch it pour out some tiny little hole I’d never seen before. After putting a coffee can underneath to catch that spill, I call Bob on the road.

“Turn the tank off,” he wisely advises. Duh. Mechanics are not my thing.

So I do. But then I can’t turn the rusty dial back on when I’m done doing some other procedures Bob talks me through to try an fix the beast. And then that shut off, well, it’s gonna be shut off for a while because the damn thing breaks.

Well, I did manage to get the spring crops in and mow before the rain, but the cover crop will have to wait.

In the meanwhile, I invite you to take a tour of the garden, humbly as it was yesterday without a fresh tilling, is today in the rains, and then bragging on how it was in the bounty of last summer if you care to see one of the reasons why it’s so hard for me to leave this place.

So that thing about place.

I finally figured this out. You probably did long ago. I’m slow. Slow living. Slow learning. Whatever.

Our place is where we belong.

It may be a physical place, person, community, a state to live in, a state of mind.

But here’s the thing:

It all comes down to connection.

Connection, as in joining, being a part, somehow linked, united or bound together.

Connection determines our place.

Connection defines where we belong.

Whatever we feel connected to – close friends, your place in community, the old family farm, a mountain, the sea, the school where you have been teaching for thirty years – these things give us a sense of belonging. Different for us all, and always changing at least a little bit because that’s how life goes, that sense of belonging that connection creates helps us feel stable, secure, grounded. And we all need that.

There’s also that thing about connection being intertwined with commitment, contribution and care. but let’s talk about that another time, because this already threatens to be way too long. That happens. Especially when Bob’s not around, the rains force me indoors, and I find myself talking to the dogs and my self way too much.

Okay, so here’s the interesting twist I’m finally figuring out. Connection with others (the “where ” and “with whom” we belong) begins by connecting with self.

You know. It’s that “home is inside” wisdom my old friend used to say.

No, it’s not selfish. It’s still means giving more than you take, because end of the day, what we do for others is still what matters most and gives us in return some sense of meaning (and yes, belonging). But it’s about making sure you have something to give to begin with. Starting with the basics. The foundation. Figuring where (and with whom) we feel safe, and can be ourselves. Where our soul feels nourished and nurtured. For me, that means my husband, our son, and a strong sense of solitude, spirit, simplicity, and the natural and animal world. It’s time writing, growing food, working with horses, and luckily, yes, even building! Because these things make my inside shine. They may not define me, but they do define that sense of place I’m trying to find.

You know the feeling. It’s that place, space or state where you lose sense of time and feel safe and have trouble leaving. The place you long for, where you long to be. It’s more of a feeling than a physical person or place. It’s that knowing we are where we are meant to be, doing what we’re meant to be doing. That is belonging. We all long to belong. All of us. We are hardwired to want to belong. And when we lack that belonging or feel we don’t, connection is broken, and we somehow feel broken too.

It’s that happy place.

For me, the physical place has changed and may continue to change, as long as it contains an element of rugged and wild. But the essence remains the same. Like my core nature. It’s what feeds me, and in kind, allows me to feed others even more.

With that, I am starting to see it need not be so much “where” we are, but “who” we are that allows us to figure out where we belong. And somewhere in the equation, to notice the difference between “belonging” and “clinging”. Clinging holds us down. Belonging allows us to soar in place. Not to hold on because of fear. But because of freedom.

Maya Angelou famously stated, “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great”. 

It sounds paradoxical, but I believe it’s all true.

Sometimes I wish I had a crystal ball or could read tea leaves or somehow figure out answers to those big pressing questions, the easy way. But life isn’t easy. And easy isn’t always good.

When people ask me, “Where are you from?” it feels like a trick question. I hesitate, look up and off to the left, and try to come up with a clever response. It’s complicated. Might be easier if someone asked, “What do you do?” (That sounds so 80s and 90s. Do people even say that anymore?). Can’t say I know how to answer that one too.

You know that expression about the apple not falling far from the tree, right? But that’s assuming the tree has solid roots. And what if it does not? If I stayed to close to my rootless tree, I’d still be in Jersey. Nothing wrong with that, just not where I was meant to be.

Surely I’m not the only one out there trying to figure this out.

The answers will be different for us all, but maybe the process is the same.

We gotta listen to our heart and soul.

We gotta listen with our heart and soul.

My research is based on life, living and learning to listen to the wisdom of that quiet heart and soul.

I don’t have the privilege of a college degree. I left high school at 16 and learned to make do, make up and do without.

I learned what’s real based on what I saw, heard and felt, NOT what I read or was told.

I am still learning.

As for place, this much I know. Finding my place has been the trip of my life.

I’m still not there.

On one hand, I long to belong to one place, to remain long enough to watch trees I plant grow big and fat and fruitful, to have it all built and done and be able to kick back and watch, tend, and care for lovingly, to sit on the front porch with a cup of coffee and my honey and look around with contentment and know we are finally done building and need to build no more.

On the other hand, I’m not ready to settle down and do the same thing year after year just yet. I’m curious. Adventurous, in a quiet, simple way. I want to experience and try and do more. Not big fancy elaborate things like trips around the world and luxuries that aren’t my thing. I want to know what it feels like to break ground and get to work and feel the pride of creating a family ranch that holds us – my self, my husband, our son, our pets and livestock, with gardens and trees (yes, I’m going to grow at 10,000 feet!). I want to be bundled up and see the expansive sunrise on Winter Solstice from the front deck we will build, or the summer sun rise as the full moon sets from the top of an unnamed mountain behind our ranch.

I know. I want a lot. Simple stuff, but a lot of it.

But most important, I want to be at that place of belonging that is not a place out there, but a space in here. Within me.

It doesn’t matter where I am. It matters who I am.

I am not the land.

There’s more to me than the mud on my boots and under my nails.

Though that is how I chose to live.

Here or there?

California? Colorado?

I won’t be losing either way.

Why can’t I have both?

Maybe I can. For now, that’s what I intend to do.

Here and there.

But of course, there is this. The cold hard reality of affording your dreams. Money. Geez, I hate talking about that. I have always believed I had enough (though my son can tell you stories of the poverty we lived with) and things just work out. Kinda. Sorta. More or less.

It always seems to work out. Not always as we plan. Sometimes even better.

In the meanwhile, as I try to figure out how to make this all work, I’ll work on finding that place inside. The place where I belong.

Sometimes that is hardest place to be.

At home in my own skin, being okay being me.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin