Honest Notes about What This is Like…
Maxwelton Journal|Today in the rain I raked gravel from deep gouges in the newly graded driveway, trying to fill in ruts already beginning to form from our car. The excavator said we should try to pack it down by driving on it. Bad idea. Water mixed with gravel dust and clay ran light brown in rivulets down the grade, puddles filling, and I couldn’t help but think about future potholes. A white substance rose in the area where the bulldozer broke down and spilled hydraulic fluid. I wanted to scoop the oil away with the new piles of sawdust, but no one else was supportive of this idea. Now I worry about it going into future plants, or worse, the water supply–what is the toxicity of hydraulic fluid? When I pointed it out, I was simply told, “well, that’s where it came from.” Did the excavator mean to say it came from the earth? My confusion silenced me.
Between the shallow canyons of earth we’ve carved are islands of moss and fern. Everywhere new spring nettles are already springing up, firm, green and robust. Trampled earth and alder dust surrounds the portable mill, and I wonder how the plants along the trail will make their way up again through this constant barrage. 
I want it to be over with. I want to start the work of growing and planting and building. We’ve cleared our swath, we’ve made our impact, now it’s time to get on with it.
Seeing a home being built from the ground up is something I want to experience. I want to know this impact we have on the earth. What does it take for me to be here and live here? What impact has every house I’ve ever lived in had on the earth? I remember in Kansas as a child my family moved into a new house and my father planted plugs of Bermuda grass. My brother ran his matchbox cars through pathways in between the green plugs, and soon, the plugs grew together to form a solid lawn that my father fussed over for years. It was a singular and substantive thing. I forgot all about the dirt underneath.
The hole where the house will be is muddy clay. Even along the edges, few roots poke through the sides. I’m surprised how thin the layer of green is. I thought the forest would be this thick, grasping skin, non-yielding, hardly willing to give in to our shovels and machines. But it’s not like grass roots I’ve had to dig out, or other invasive weeds I’ve worked to eradicate. This earth is fragile, tenuous, almost uncertain of itself. So lacking in aggression I wonder how it has survived at all.
The Bible says the meek shall inherit the earth. I wonder everyday about whether that’s really true…
