Free as a Bird

Early this morning I poured my first cup of coffee and stepped outside to greet the day. As I sat on my stoop and sipped my coffee, I started watching the Spring birds. It's the end of April in Virginia and the song birds are busy this time of year. The morning air is full of song, and the sky and trees are full of birds.

Birds live a simple life, as do most creatures of our planet. They eat what the circle of life provides. They drink what falls from the sky. When it's warm, they sit in the sunshine. When it's cold or rainy they seek shelter wherever they can find it. Their social order is as simple as a song. They declare their territory and connect with mates and please nearby humans all with a warble and a caw. And they are free to fly as high as they like, but inexplicably to me, they rarely do.

I used to think about birds a lot, envying their simple ways, and thinking about how they and the other life forms of our planet are so tightly knit into a web of life, while us human remain so removed. Of course we humans still have plenty of advantages like clean and safe housing with automatic temperature control and Internet connections. Plenty of safe food and clean water. And health care and airline transportation and televisions. Things like that. So maybe birds secretly admire our way of life. But I would still trade several of my days in a corporate cubicle for just one day of living as a bird does. And indeed, in some small ways, I've made some of those trades.

Early this morning, I watched the birds and pondered, and having finished my coffee, I went back into my canvas nest and got ready for my corporate job.

One Year at a Time

When I was younger I was a pretty good planner. I had goals and dreams and plenty of ambition. And I worked in the technology field so I knew all about planning. How to define tasks and milestones and identify dependencies and evaluate risks and determine resource needs and manage the critical path and so on. I could spend a few hours filling in project management worksheets and print out the rest of my life as a nice, tidy Gantt chart. Of course, it wasn't always easy predicting how my life would unfold, but that's why mankind invented contingency plans, right?

But what I didn't do very well back then was to track my actual progress against the plans that I made. Yes, I could dream about my future and come up with a brilliant plan that covered all the angles. But then I'd just set the plan aside and go about my life, convinced that I was now prepared for whatever came my way. I never looked back at my old plans to see how well I'd predicted the future. I only came up with new plans, and then convinced myself that my future was under control.

It took me several years, and lots of failed plans, to finally realize that trying to plan out my life was a fool's errand. They say that "life turns on a dime". Well, dimes are pretty small, and I think they're right. Looking back over my life and all the things I tried to plan, all those big things like marriage and children and jobs and homes and retirement and so on, it's now clear to me that life simply happens, regardless of how much we try to execute our plans.

One day not so long ago, I tried to figure out just how far ahead I could plan my life. I listed some of the major events in my life, like getting married, having children, changing jobs, moving to different states, buy and selling houses, ending my marriage, and so on, and I thought about whether I could have planned any of them. In every case, I couldn't see the event coming more than a year ahead. One year I was single, and the next I was married. One year no children, and the next a son. A few years more, and a daughter, then another daughter. I moved from Michigan to Texas, then to Virginia, and never saw those moves coming, either. I woke up one day and my marriage of 33 years was over, and a few months ago I was informed that my job of 25 years was at risk. All big events, and all unplanned. And I'm now convinced, all unplannable.

So I just stopped making plans. Well, not exactly. I still try to plan a year ahead. It took me awhile to stop looking so far into the future and to just live one year at a time, but now that I do I really enjoy it. Friends sometimes ask me things like, "Are you going to retire soon? What if you lose your job? What would you do?" I tell them that I have no plans, and that I just deal with things as they come.

Before I became comfortable living a year at a time, I first had to learn to let go. I had to acknowledge that my prior attempts at long-term planning didn't really work for me anyway, and that it was okay to just let go and trust. To have faith that the world would always have a place for me. And now that I view the world this way, my faith has strengthened accordingly.

I only plan a year at a time now, which means I don't really do much planning at all, but hey, I still do some! And every April, I plan my next year of tent living. That's because I pay my rent a year in advance, and April is "rent month". So later this week, I'll be paying another year's rent.

So if things work out according to plan, I'll be living in my tent in Brandy Station for another year. After that...?

Early Spring

Each season has it's charm. The dark greens and long, hot days of Summer. Autumn's cool nights dressed in reds and yellows. Winter's short, white, windy days spent near a warm fire. And Spring, with its light greens and soft pastels. Open the windows, listen to the birds, and feel the sunshine warm your skin!

The coming of Spring brings immediate changes to tent living. With daytime temperatures in the 70s, I leave my door open now. The stall scent of wood stove smoke that permeated my canvas walls all Winter is slowly disappearing. And small friends that I haven't seen since Autumn are popping up for a visit already. So far it's spiders and stink bugs, but more to come later. It's seems it only took one warm day to wake up the spiders. And now that they're awake, they're busy casting their webs across my path again, just as they had last year, leaving me little reminders that warm weather is here again, and that I'd better get used to clearing the webs from my face as I pass through them.

The larger animals are back, too. More birds. And the deer are settled back in. I'll probably see turkey soon, as I did last year. I don't want to think about the ticks yet. Or the mice. But they're all coming, now that Spring is here.

The coming of warm weather brings lifestyle changes, too. Soon I'll be carrying in more water, trying to stay cool. But there's an upside, too. The nights are longer and warmer, so it's time to open up the outside living space and have some friends over! And it's time to pull the wood stove out and set up my indoor living room!

When I installed my wood stove last December, I had to clear out my living area to make room. I was able to keep a small rocking chair off to the side but that was about it. I also pulled up the rug to keep it away from sparks.

Living room with wood stove installed

Now that Spring is here, the wood stove is out and the rug and furniture are back in!

Living room without wood stove

Spring is my favorite season. The short, cold days of Winter are behind, and the hot Summer days and nights are still ahead. Spring brings me back to life, just like the creatures that I live with.

But I gotta say, I'm starting to miss my cold Winter beers already :)