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

Hi Alexander

I came across your film as accidentally as you came across my Shakespeare at Swanton website.

As part of general downsizing efforts, a couple of weeks ago my wife, Jan, sent a beautiful Afghan dress she acquired in 1972, when we homesteaded in the woods of British Columbia, to a friend born and still living there, who took a photo of it, worn by her daughter riding a ropeswing on the property their family leases from us.

Seeing it reminded me of another woodland use of the dress in 1999 at Swanton Ranch. So I googled the old website to download a picture of it worn by  a student playing Hermia in scenes from A Midsummernight’s Dream that the class filmed there.

I was amazed to find the link to your “Shakespeare at Swanton” video and astounded to watch it.

I’m still pulsing with the world wide web of connections it activated. Parallel surprises of happening upon a relic in the course of searching for lost treasure—lost through fire and aging and through the digital loss of “bitrot” and software updates.

And parallel grief for the losses of Time: 1960’s back-to-the-land hippies turning 80, ’90’s English majors now in their ’40’s, a 2021 forestry student graduated and out in the world.

And the transformation of it all, through memory and art, via the alchemy of Shakespeare.
___________________

March 2024 Postscript: A further variation on the theme of Alex’ video and this post.  Shortly after this entry was written, Cal Poly University erased the whole website which included “Shakespeare at Swanton” from its server. Almost two years later, the site was resurrected from its 404 grave on a different server with a new URL–smarxpoly.net–which allowed for the link here to be reactivated. Thank you, Ty Griffin, for all the work you did to make this happen.

The “Atmospheric river” is still flowing.  The drum solo of rain on the roof hasn’t stopped since arrival here yesterday morning.

Before departure from the South Terminal, the agent announced that unless the pilot found a hole in the clouds to allow visibility the flight would go back without landing.  But the young captain with delicate wrists and blond hair flowing over her epaulets brought us in smoothly to the cinder block shack of an airport that hasn’t been improved at least since our arrival here in 1970.

I haven’t yet stopped loving this weather.  The compensation for drought in SLO, the heightened coziness of the wood fire, friendly cats and house’s silence, the 14 hour night and half-light of day inviting intermittent sleep, the absence of stimulation and obligation permit words to flow from thoughts and thoughts to flow from words.

This trip has been intended as a retreat to allow processing of recent events that are taking on the appearance of a life transition. “Retreat” has several associations with this place: its mythic remoteness at the end of the road and the time and expense it takes to get here, the initial retreat from war and society that brought us here from New York in 1970, the  summers of 1996 and 1997 holed up to start and finish my book, “Shakespeare and the Bible,”and the writing and meditation retreat on Cortez Island I attended in 2010.

Meditating hasn’t yet happened here, but this journaling may better serve my purposes.

Life transitions are times when the future seems undetermined, subject to the vagaries of chance and choice, when the present holds promise and danger, when the past reopens.  This one was brought on my long-anticipated retirement from the position of Executive Director of City Farm SLO.  The result of the successful accomplishments of our two young staff members, Kayla and Shane, whose salaries were financed by generous new supporters, it became clear that finally the organization could survive and thrive without me.

At the advice of a canny professional fund-raiser, a campaign was planned to mark the changeover in leadership with a public celebration targeting people of means and influence.  The admission price was $50 along with discreet requests for additional donations. Using a well-tried method for non-profits to generate support and money, the theme was to be a tribute to my past dedication. Kayla focused publicity on her photo of me tending our sheep that recalled the literary archetype of the old shepherd I’d explored 40 years ago in my doctoral dissertation. I sent personalized invitations to all the friends and relatives for whom Jan and I had addresses. (more…)