An existential crisis at 10K feet
In which a screen door almost makes me cry. Plus a question for you re: Belle Burden's 'Strangers'
“If you own the world, you’ve got to mow it.” The father of one of my best friends used to say this, and he would know, he was a real-estate developer. But it was funny, so we laughed instead of heeding it.
I do think of it every year, though, when we open the cabin for the summer. There’s so much to be done: unpacking the sheets and blankets, turning on the propane, sweeping the outhouses, clearing the mouse traps, hanging the wasp traps, and restocking the firewood. I don’t mind any of it. They’re chores with a view and a cozy fireplace at the end of the day. Hummingbirds buzz me while I work outside because they remember who fills the feeder.
It’s the long-term projects that get me down. Owning a home reveals what kind of person you are and, as it turns out, I am not a task-oriented individual. (I can hear my siblings howling: No shit.) Michael isn’t, either, outside of business hours. He’ll pick up the phone to call a contractor before he picks up a hammer, no matter how small the job.
He traces his aversion to home-improvement projects to unpleasant weekends spent doing these things with his father, but I don’t care if it’s nature or nurture. His work is stressful and consuming. Of course he wants to spend his weekends reading in the hammock, not installing new screen in the screen doors.
Our incremental progress over the years has been easily outrun by Mother Nature, that great undoer of all human effort. Yes, the patio is in, but the rock retaining wall above it is crumbling. We won’t turn on the water for a couple of weeks (it’s still freezing overnight), but I bet when we do, Michael will be picking up the phone to call the plumber. We need to order more gravel for the yard to maintain our fire perimeter. (Those plants bursting through the rocks in every shade of green? They’re the same varieties I can’t get to grow in my mulched and watered beds in town.)
Each spring, the eroding foundation skirt and the peeling paint remind me that we are only here for a short time: at the cabin, on this planet. It’s both comforting and disheartening to stumble across evidence of the previous owners’ ambitions. A large, rusted metal tank is half-buried just up the hill, remnant of a spring-water delivery system. Below the road, another beautiful rock wall is collapsing onto the floor of a former sawmill.
How long did each of those great works last? I could deep-clean and repaint the outhouses, fix the skylights and rehang the mirrors, and a packrat will move in the minute she thinks we are gone for the season. When we bought the place from Mark, it was almost beyond fixer-upper, and despite the beautiful setting, it carried an air of abandonment, almost sadness. Walter, the man who built the cabins, was a DIY genius. Mark was a duct-tape handyman.
Is it the place? I wonder this in low moments. No, it’s because Emily’s husband spent his weekend on a ladder at their old mining cabin, while we spent ours hiking to the Three Apostles.
The problem is that I freight the whole thing up with ideas like legacy and stewardship. What am I leaving for the next caretaker of this spot? I get misty-eyed whenever I hear Elton John sing, “He must have been a gardener who cared a lot.” I do care a lot, episodically, and when you’re up against mice, sub-zero winter temps, and wood-eating ants, that’s not enough.
Who am I measuring my (lack of) performance against? This Old House? Chip and Joanna Gaines (who went full Aspen aspirational in their cabin redo)? Online influencers? I know better than that last one, at least. Depending on the specific location and lighting, I can make my place look like it belongs in Architectural Digest, or an episode of American Pickers.
I said I was going to refinish the cast-iron kitchen stove this year, and actually bake something in it. Am I, though? Summer is so short at ten-thousand feet, and I think I’ve got a couple more years before the stool* holding the big casement windows in place fully disintegrates and they fall out the back of the cabin. I’m leaving a lot of meat on the bone for the next owner, that’s how I’ve decided to think of it. Now, where are my maps?
*Apparently that’s what that little ledge is called.
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The male Burden
I keep thinking that if the genders were swapped in Strangers, Belle Burden’s memoir about the end of her marriage and the financial stress that ensued, the people painting Burden’s ex-husband as a monster would be cheering him on. If a woman insisted on financial independence in the face of a prenup favoring her wealthy fiancé, then left the marriage when she felt unfulfilled, she would be a feminist heroine.
I’ve known a few women who had to fight to keep much of anything after decades of marriage because of prenup terms that split post-wedding earnings (largely spent on living) while the trust-fund husband left wealthier than before. What if these women had insisted on more favorable terms for themselves instead of signing whatever their future spouse’s family lawyers handed them?
There is also a whole field of literature, nonfiction and novels, that encourages women to walk out of just-okay marriages. Surely, when they do there are some shocked husbands left behind. Can women and men be equal if we insist on different rules for us?
I’m not discounting Burden’s pain. I think she has done a brave and worthy thing by talking about the betrayal of the affair, the signs she may have missed, and the financial shocks that followed. But the desire to make “James” nothing but a villain misses the opportunity to talk about modern relationships, parenting, money, and personal fulfillment in a way that benefits all readers, not just women. The book has been inspiring and comforting to friends of mine who’ve gone through difficult divorces and I think it’s relevant to an even broader audience when we don’t buy into to the idea that it’s a zero-sum story.
What do you think?
Next week: As promised, a guide to choosing your personal safety device, and a lament about “bagging fourteeners.”
My wife calls me Handy Henny in jest. I blame my dad for my utter and total lack of ability to fix or repair anything.