Dogwoods

Hello, Handsome-

This was the thirteenth letter that Anya had written in four months to Avery.  Some were longer and some were shorter, and this one was about an average length.  Avery read it on the porch of his Washington cabin as the morning sky turned from gold to blue. 

Spring has landed in Swannanoa, a wonderful town near my home.  I am here staying with college friends for a few days.  We socialize all night and, while they are at work during the day, I bounce between the music shops and the coffee shops and, when it isn't raining too hard, the woods.  I played dulcimers for hours yesterday in a store downtown.  Some cost more than my car.

I am writing you from the edge of Lake Eden.  We have had a break in the rain the past two days, and the sun is out.  I'm on a bench on a hill and the valley is silent.  There are ripples in the lake where insects skim across, but hardly any movement in the air.  The wind is taking a break after blustering all over the place last week.  There will be a festival here next month, full of music and art and musicians and artists.  I go every spring, but will be traveling this year.  Do you have any festivals you go to regularly?  You should hear the fiddles here!  I can almost here them now, echoing from past shows.  

I love valleys.  There must have been so much slow, geological violence that created these mountain ranges, but then the scars were all patched up with grass and trees and soil.  We settle valleys and then climb to peaks to look back on what we've created.  I'm sorry for folks in the flatlands who need airplanes to get an idea of where they live.  I know you have your big old mountains over on the west coast...but ours are older and easier to get to the top of!

So, I have some good news!  Back in December you said that we should "meet in the middle" sometime because we're so far away from each other.  Google tells me it's about 2,700 miles from your house to mine.  I looked at that conference that you're going to in Mississippi next month.  I will be on my way to Colorado and can't go to it, though it looks sweet.  I'll be driving through just a couple of days early.

BUT...since you're driving east...and I'm driving west...at the same time...

What do you think?  Can we meet in the middle?  Like, maybe in Kansas?  We can see what those flatlanders think about us mountain and forest folk!

  .   .   .

I also want to tell you that I've really enjoyed these letters, to and from.  Your love for the land and perspective on life has been a thrill to hear about.  There's a resonance in my own brain when I hear your ideas.  Like you, I want to work land, smell soil, feel fresh water on my face.  Money is the catch, like always, but there is so much inspiration around me for farming, and I want to join the force of people moving back to the land.

You are on my mind often.  I want to dance with you again have enjoyed wondering where our paths will take us.  You've got a way with words, and I appreciate your feelings towards life and society.  You're a dreamer, I can tell, and I like it.  Thank you for sharing your thoughts, not just on the world, but on emotion and relationships.  Keep 'em coming.

And, with that, my friend, I will leave you.  There is a mountain in front of me (or, as you'd call it from the shadow of Mt. Ranier, "a lump") that I must climb.  My friend is wondering how long I could possibly sit on this bench for while she draws pictures in the lakeshore with a stick.

Do write soon...and...see you in "The Middle?"

-Anya

P.S.  Enclosed is a dogwood blossom, our state flower.  The understory of dogwoods are exploding right now in reds and whites.  The deciduous trees will soon leaf out and cover them up, but for now the flowers are everywhere.  Sometime I'll tell you the story of how the dogwood came to be; it's the story of an alligator.  Yup. 

Above photo from Flickr, by mtsofan, and modified.

Crocuses

It was Sunday morning, and April Fool's day.  Avery was arriving home after two days out in the woods by himself.  He'd caught the bus back to town; it conveniently had a stop near the highway trailhead from which he had emerged.  He stepped from the bus with his muddy backpack and began walking the half-mile back to the farm.

City buses made him uncomfortable, especially after being out in the wilderness.  They smell worse than the springtime wetlands; somehow decomposition of winter detritus was more appealing to him than the combination of sterile cleaning products and the mildewed clothing of the passengers.  The bus was full of people thinking about their lives, hardships, money troubles, health problems, and relationships.  City buses are where men and women can stare out of windows and become mesmerized by thoughts of their own disillusions.  There is always somebody worse off than someone else on the bus.  Thought Avery, there's nothing like a city bus to make you realize that you don't have it so bad.

As the door of the public transit machine squeaked shut and its gears hissed, he began walking down the dirt road to Nightshadow Nursery.  He passed the Morrison house, with its beautiful garden; the daffodils and crocuses had emerged in the forty-eight hours since he left.  Around the mailbox of the house were two or three dozen little stems, each with a purple or yellow flare developing at the tip.

Springtime, to Avery, was defined by the crocus.  Crocus stems meant that the soil was loose enough and warm enough to work.  Crocus flowers meant that nature anticipated the return of bees and squirrels and sunlight.  And, sure enough, he watched a honey bee, the first out-and-about one that he'd noticed, buzz past his ankle and into the fresh till of Mrs. Morrison's garden.

After a few more thoughts on the poetry of springtime, Avery arrived at the farm, pushing the never-locked wooden gate open towards the house.  It creaked a bit, the wood probably beginning to swell in these first few days of warm weather.  Ahead of him were the greenhouses and, behind them, the cabin that he had called home for the past couple of years.  He looked toward the main house on the right, but did not see any human activity; he heard chickens making a fuss on the other side of the trees, so he figured the farmer was over there, collecting the eggs that they'd worked so hard to create.  He clomped up the three cedar steps to his porch, kicking the toes of his boots on the stair edges to knock off some of the caked mud.  Nobody else seemed to be home.

He opened the door and, before even setting down his pack, looked to the little table on the right for his mail.  The morning sun had not yet reached the skylight, so the room was mostly dark.  He was glad to live in such a beautiful little home, the all-cedar cabin that always smelled like a forest.  Envelopes in hand, he strode into the lighter kitchen and dropped his backpack by the counter.  Passing up the bill, the Land's End magazine (that he'd never ordered from in his life), the REI dividend check, and the much-larger bill, he went straight for the letter stamped "Swannanoa, NC", in the homemade envelope from Anya.

In the past few months, since finding this beautiful girl lost in the rainforest, they had become prolific letter-writers to each other.  They had known each other just four days in person, but had learned each other inside and out by script and email since Autumn.  Avery had read her letters while the leaves finished falling from the trees, while the last of the kale was harvested, while the first bits of snow fell, and while the melting snow filled the creek to near-cresting levels.  He almost always occupied the same spot on his porch while reading her stories, and this time was no different.

He put on water for coffee, but then realized that boiling water would take too long, so he kicked off his boots, traded them for slippers, filled a glass with water from the tap, and went straight back outside to the porch.  This time, the view accompanying her words was one of sparrows, growing grass, golden dew, and, of course, crocuses.

Hello, handsome, it began.

Photo by frederikvanroest, and modified.