Friday January 17 was the day appointed for the harvest, that is, the slaughter, of my favorite sheep of the flock.  Savannah, our wheelchair-bound student in Therapeutic Horticulture, gave her this name and I always preferred it, but she was officially known as Maple. I made no objection to the choice of sacrificial lamb, affirming the need to regard our animals as livestock rather than pets in order to maintain the semblance of an agricultural enterprise and to recoup a portion of the expense of breeding and feeding them. There was also the value of their hides for wool rugs and for me, otherwise a confirmed vegetarian, the opportunity to eat the most delicious meat I’d ever come across and share it with others on festive occasions.

Unlike the farm’s true pet sheep, Tucker, who was bottle fed from birth and raised as a 4H project by a young girl in Paso intending to sell her at the 2020 County Fair  but adopted out to us after the Fair was cancelled by COVID, Capri was never halter broken and like the others, only controllable when following Tucker, who would go wherever his shepherd or shepherdess led.

Whenever I approached Capri’s corral or pasture with a friendly greeting, she’d join the others in turning and walking away.  But if I came in, sat down on an upturned bucket and played my recorder for a few minutes, she’d shyly approach and then nose up to me for some closed-eye skritchy-scratchy followed by stroking on her cheeks and chin.

After a long morning chain-sawing for the trail at Prefumo Creek helped by four students at Pacific Beach High School getting Community Service Credit, I attended a workshop at the farm this afternoon.

https://www.universe.com/events/winter-crafting-skills-series-poetry-workshop-tickets-XZ0FNH

Caroline has been a part-time staff member for a couple of years—a reserved sylphlike presence who’s shown interest in dried flowers, sheep, tanning hides, and making teas.  I learned recently she was a birth doula, nanny for Shane’s baby, extensive traveller.

She wouldn’t take the offered payment from me.

The event resonated with my recent activity to prepare a script for a ten-minute performance of the start of Shakespeare’s Sheep Shearing Shindig in Act4 Scene 4 of The Winter’s Tale  that I’ll propose as part of the program for City Farm’s Sheep Shearing Shindig coming up in May.

Six others attended the two hour session, 5 women and a man, ages mid-twenties to mid-thirties. All gave evidence of commitment to introspection, journaling, reading and writing poetry, probably greater than mine.

Caroline let us know that she’d been to college and graduate school and wrote and published.

At the start, as we sat at tables under the Pergola, she served tea and fresh bread she’d baked and described the workshop’s format: she’d provide prompts, and time for us to write in response at different sites on the farm along with invitations to read poems we’d brought.

I’d printed out Wendell Berry’s, “The Man Born to Farming,” from his  Farming A Handbook  a collection which influenced our decision to move from New York City to an old homestead we bought at the end of the road in British Columbia in 1970, where Jan and I stayed for nine years.

The Man Born to Farming

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug.  He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing.  He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
Descending in the dark?

I was eager to read it to the group and to affirm the continuing truth of his prophetic  pastoral vision, manifested here at City Farm.

When Caroline asked each of us our connection to this place and what motivated our attendance at the workshop, I tried to keep it short, but my veteran involvement with the Farm and its link to my lifelong personal and professional literary engagements wouldn’t let me.

Caroline’s first prompt was to write without lifting your pen about last night’s sleep or a dream. It struck a note:

Sinking into the topper on my hard mattress, grateful for the fatigue and its support that floats me away, and when thoughts about the past day and the morrow crop up demanding attention, counting breaths passing in and out across the anapana spot—what’s left of my abandoned meditation practice—and knowing that by number eight I’ll be gone, and again after the midnight pee, greeting that trusty ritual, this time only up to four, grateful that this is all that’s left, no forcing or aspiration, but only an embrace of what’s not here and what is.

Next prompt involved walking to The Lookout—a location I’d selected and built up years ago, now rarely used except by shitting blackbirds– and to write inspired by its open view of land and sky.

Two mountain ranges surround us,
two watersheds converge in the creek
that fills and drains our life-rich home,
the brooks and springs marked indelible
by green explosions interlacing out and up.

The next prompt was to look at the sheep in the pen nearby and write of your connection.  I used up most of the brief time to get a sweatshirt from my car.  I observed only

Two flocks exchange stares.

Then we went to Plot 1, the immaculate regenerative vegetable garden, to look at a single plant  or creature

January peach blossom two months too early
to meet its welcoming Spring,
petals as pink, pistils and stamens
as swollen as if it had a fruitful life ahead
despite the canker that leaves last season’s
dessicated twigs and flowers on the branch.

Back at the Pergola, Caroline read a poem by her professor and mentor who died young. It started with “Write a question: Yes.”  Write a question was the prompt.

How Long Still?

Richard Stiehl in France I learned last night, died at 97.
Marilyn across the street last week at 93.
Rick in Lund at 75.
Beethoven 57, Shakespeare and Napoleon 52, Mozart 34.
Wendell Berry alive today at 90. I at 82.

Almost to the boardwalk this morning and rising
January’s high tide layers up rocks and wrack.
Each wave approaches
in flowing curves of foam
ablaze in the low sun
then withdraws
leaving a line of bubbles
to pop and sink in sand.
Back home I sink on the couch
awaiting my morning movement
another reanimation
after arising from bed,
from bathtub immersion,
from imbibing coffee.
Marilyn’s obituary in the news
Gone at 93.
Down South, the fires still spread.

September 19, 2024 4:00 p.m. South Terminal Vancouver Airport

The entry Lund Retreat/Transitions 2021 is pertinent reading here waiting for the flight to Powell River. I wrote it during my stay at Knoll House hiding from the exposure I felt after the tributes marking my retirement from leadership at City Farm.

The entry concluded with an expression of confidence that continuing ownership of Knoll House would fill the gap created by that second retirement and our upcoming move from 35-year residence on Albert Drive.

But since then, real-world changes reversed that 2021 prediction.

One was taking up two new projects in SLO which filled the gap—initiating the Prefumo Creek Restoration and Enhancement Project and serving as a Director of our new residence’s Homeowner’s Association.

Other changes bore directly on Knoll House. After 28 years, the responsibilities of absentee ownership were growing beyond what we could handle at our age. We’d hoped to pass those on to our son by gifting him the property at present rather than as inheritance, but he declined the offer. That meant a major reason to keep the place—our annual summer stay there with his family—was no longer guaranteed.

After Jan and I spent our 2023 summer vacation traveling in Europe rather than in Lund, we both felt ready to sell Knoll House.  The most difficult consequence of that decision was having to ask our ten-year tenants to move elsewhere. But fortunately they found a way to buy it through a tenants-in-common agreement with their next door neighbor.

So after our first summer absences from Lund since we moved away 44 years ago, I planned to make this the last trip, in order to establish closure and say goodbye.

September 20 8:00 p.m. Knoll House

Today this all changed again, due to new real world causes.  First was the effect of waking up here this morning.

Another is recorded in an email exchange that took place after my hitchhike up the highway from lunch at Nancy’s bakery:

On Sep 20, 2024, at 3:36 PM, Frank…wrote

Steve, something bigger than me intervened today.
What an amazing event!
I’m glad you were hitching a ride.
Amy, my wife and I would love to get together when you are in Lund next.
All my best, Frank

———

Hi Frank

I’m grateful for your lift and our conversation, but even more for your amplification of it here.  I thought this trip to Lund was going to be a good-bye to the place, but it turns out, unexpectedly, that it’s a return… to the place where the past is present.

Two hours later, Jan phoned and relayed Joe’s surprise invitation to his home in Ketchum for this Thanksgiving. I called to thank him and Amy, and then the conversation led to our continuing connection with Lund, even after the sale of the property. It ended with discussion of their idea for a multigenerational vacation next summer on Savary Island or at an airBnB on the mainland.

Drink the air
Clear spring water

Float on silence
Forest bathing

I checked in with Peter after our return from Germany and his from Montreal with his granddaughter.  He reported that his several undiagnosed health conditions have him walking with a cane. He mentioned that he’s been thinking about King Lear these days. I was prompted to send him this poem by Johann von Goethe and my effort at translation

An old man is always a King Lear

Whoever embraced or grappled with you

Has long since taken off.

Whoever loved or suffered with you

Is busy elsewhere.

The young are here for themselves.

It would be stupid to protest.

Come on with me old fella.

After a hearty breakfast and checking out of the hotel, we received this email:

Somewhat disoriented, but aware of the widespread disorder in this summer’s flight scheduling and especially wary of British Airways’ unreliability, we scrambled to adapt. We were able to secure another night’s stay where we were.  Then we tried to secure seats on the next day’s United flight, having  had the past experience of being bumped from a confirmed reservation without them. By middle afternoon, Jan managed to speak to a United agent who would provide the seat numbers only after payment of a late fee of $450.

Now left with time on our hands but not much enterprise, we walked down the block in the opposite direction from the elegant French bistro toward the tuba sounds coming from  Munich’s largest beer hall and cliche tourist attraction, the Hofbrauhaus. The cavernous dining room was too loud, but we found a table at the small patio in front. There the day’s frustration was dissolved in traditional food and drink and amiable conversation with a young South Korean couple centered on the TV series “The Extraordinary Attorney Wu” and with our waiter, centered on his happy experience in migrating from Albania, settling here and making a family in Munich.

This was to be our last day in Europe before returning to San Luis Obispo.  Jan suggested we spend it at the Bavarian National Museum.  She was motivated by its large collection of  Tilman Riemenschneider woodcarvings, some of which, like the Franz Marc Blaue Reiter, she’d been taken with during her 1965 stay at Stanford in Germany.

We caught the Tram at Mariannenplatz, at first confused by its name’s similarity with Marienplatz, the city’s central square.  Across the street rose St. Lukas, a Lutheran rather than Catholic church, whose combination of Baroque and Art Nouveau styles reminded me of the Prinzregentstheater we were in the previous night.

Getting off at Maximillianstrasse, we waited to cross the street next to a young family in Bavarian garb on a Sunday Spatziergang who allowed me to take their picture.

Before entering the museum we stopped for lunch at its garden cafe.

It was still a long walk to the front entrance of the complex dedicated to the decorative arts and culture of the medieval and early modern periods.

Once inside, we got sidetracked by a labyrinth of exhibits of ivory carving, painted porcelain, filigreed silver and other gewgaws of the super-rich during the 18th and 19th centuries  before we got back on course to the 15th. (more…)

I rented a bike from the shop down the block to explore Munich’s extensive park, the English Garden, located  nearby.  Designed to resemble a natural landscape, its mature forests, wide meadows and rich water features were nevertheless meticulously maintained.

I hadnt ridden a non-electric bike in a couple of years, but the exertion felt good as did traveling the wide paths meant for both walkers and riders.

I came upon the artificial surf break I’d read about, lined on both sides with people and their boards waiting for a shot. None lasted more than a few seconds:

Signs in German and English proclaimed the Germans’ love of nature and their commitment to environmental action, though the translation of Habitat as “Lebensraum” had sinister echoes of the Nazi rationale for invading their neighboring states.

The meadow adorned with wildflowers reinforced the point that lawns are useful for sports but should share space with less artificial landscapes.

I sat on a bench for a while to watch locals enjoying the lake.

Looking for a cup of coffee I exited the park across from a building whose design lured me into its courtyard. It was was the home of “Munich Re,” the worldwide Reinsurance Company that insures other insurance companies for their losses. (more…)