Maiden Voyage, or Made In Voyeur

The westerly view from our house-becoming.

Hello--whoever you are.  Is anybody actually reading this?  Maybe you're only me, proofreading my own post?  That's a weird thing about sending thoughts onto the internet.  Here I am, practicing a life with each action intended to create physical results, ones that I can pick up and hold, or lean against, or ingest, or burn, and this evening I am instead trying to alter my typical journal entry, which I usually write to myself, to help myself understand and develop myself's philosophical underpinnings, and this altered entry style is intended to do....what exactly?  I'm not quite sure, but if you actually are someone other than me, then bear with me, and see if it does anything for you.
          Today we spent most of the day doing joinery work on our sill beams.  This entailed much sawing, measuring, chiseling, mortising, etc.  These beams will hold the timber girders and joists, which will in turn hold the flooring on which we will walk.  I really enjoy this part of the house work.  It is not as physically taxing as rolling logs with peaveys (long poles with hooks), it is not as loud or exhaust-producing as milling the logs to beams, it is not as weighty as ending the life of a defenseless tree (whatever beam I'm working on has already had that decision made by us in the past), and satisfying results are within a single-day's reach.  I like to envision where exactly this post or beam will rest in our house, what part of the structure it will support, what activities I will do for years to come on top of or next to it.  All of these thoughts motivate me in my work.  And all of these thoughts also serve as long-term understanding for my mixed feelings about taking these trees' lives.  I'm sure much of the confusion in me is simply the result of having had a typical contemporary American existence until my early to mid-twenties.  That is to say, I had no real, personal idea of what the ramifications were of any of my actions. Though, even if this was an earlier century when most people had direct knowledge of their impacts by necessity, I still think it is always a valid exercise to question any action--routine or otherwise.
          As we start to establish routine in our work here at the homestead, we often contextualize our choices based on our hiking and other long-term travel experiences from years past.  I have spent so much of my life as passive traveler in all types of woods, from marginal to majestic.  They have been the backdrop to the play that is my life.  The clearing of forest is no small decision in my eyes.  Like John Muir said, "Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed - chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides....God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools..."  So it is with strong intent at wise action that we see a tree in this forest, and make that critical decision, to end it's life in the service of ours.  I cannot compare this experience of familiarity and intimacy with the wood from an individual tree to any prior.  Unlike the purchase of forest-derived products from the national chain-store, this experience is in no way an economic one.  It is far too enriching to be that.  And, if I buy boards from the lumberyard, I may intellectually understand what it took for those items to become what they are, but I can never know them in the sense that I know these beams we cut and chisel today.  I saw the hemlock standing in it's rightful place, I counted all one hundred and thirty growth rings, and I feel much responsibility for honoring that fact of life.

---