We returned from our year in the woods on Aug. 1 and are still in the thick of unpacking, resettling, registering the kids for public school, and catching up on doctor appointments. The big surprise was having to fix the myriad house problems that manifested in our absence, such as broken shower nozzles, a broken refrigerator shelf, a year?s worth of untrimmed hedges and mismatched touch-up paint unwittingly applied by our well-meaning tenants throughout the house. My shell of calm began to erode as I drove across the Piscataqua River Bridge ? Maine?s southern border.
Summer rush hour isn?t bad, but on our way to one appointment, we drove past down-at-the-heels urban neighborhoods the whole way.? But upon our return, in a dense residential neighborhood along a busy access road, I glanced left while stopped at a signal. There, running purposefully across a lawn, was a coyote ? big, skinny, grey, with a bushy tail. All we caught of coyotes in Maine was their scat.
The morning after we returned to New Jersey, my husband Craig called us all urgently but quietly to the front yard. We live on a dead-end street, across from a large park-like area overgrown with weeds and trees run amok. There stood a young buck, his antlers no more than a foot long. He paused for a moment and then stepped delicately into the thicket.
Later that day, returning home from running errands at Target and Home Depot, a groundhog waddled rapidly across our road toward the drainage pipe where he has lived since we moved here six years ago. He turned and squatted at his doorstep looking back at me with interest. His black eyes won the staring contest; I parked the car.
Birds thrill to be in our stone birdbath, littering feathers with abandon. The night air quivers with crickets. We have seen more wildlife in New Jersey in a week than we saw in Maine in a month. How do they cope with living amongst us? And at the risk of sounding like a misanthrope: How can I?
What I miss the very most about our year in the woods is privacy. Stepping out our front door in New Jersey, gentle suburbia notwithstanding, feels like jumping off a bridge into the societal maelstrom. People everywhere. Each interaction demanding a socially appropriate response. No downtime.
My antennae are weary.
I miss the time and space we had in the woods. As we gradually unpack the basement room jammed with all the belongings we did not bring to Maine, I find the volume of what we own to be staggering?yet we live in a modest-sized home. Since we?ve returned, I?ve spent at least half my time just looking after our belongings.
Finding space for things. Cleaning objects, washing clothes, doing dishes. Dishes! The kids have observed that it was less work to wash the few dishes we had in Maine by hand than it is to load the dishwasher here in New Jersey because we use so many more dishes each day?and we use them simply because we have them.
Since we have returned, I have not meditated. I have written in my journal four times. I have read one chapter of my current book. I have taken one walk. I think it is simply that it takes much more discipline here in populated places to just be, where so much else clamors for my attention. Perhaps seeking serenity in the woods is the easy way out.
I write this, my final Year in the Woods post, at my desk in a room at the back of our house. The window is open to the cool summer breezes. I hear the leaves whispering and the cicadas chattering, and feel the wind?s caress. Yes, I also hear the low rumble of a jet every few minutes (inescapable in a metropolitan area) and the ever-present drone of traffic from the nearby highways that close us in, and no, I cannot see the horizon. But?
I?m happy to reconnect with friends again, pleased to see the boys dive back into social lives, and feel like writing a fan letter to our washer, dryer and dishwasher. No more homeschooling, yippee! And curbside trash pickup, mail delivery, our great public library, and the ease of getting groceries and gas. What luxury.
But, I do not know what phase the moon is in today, nor where and when it will rise and set. The streetlights and the pale-red ambient light from the city flood the clouds from below in the dead of night. Whether the moon is full or not, its light will not keep me awake in New Jersey.
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