The Birchbark Letters

I clearly remember the day I became a man.  Well, at least in my own mind.  The wind whipped in from the north on that January day.  The sky was raw, clouded, and very, very cold.  The grass was brown and the apple trees in our backyard were barren, hunkered against the wind.  I was 10, wearing a tri-cornered cap my grandparents had given me.  A Patriot I was, born of the American Revolution, fighting the Redcoats beside the dog-lot.

A fort of some kind was needed.  Not only to suppress enemy musket balls but to protect my hide from the thunderous wind pouring down from Virginia.  Washington and his men braced themselves against the cold at Valley Forge and I was no different.  I glanced around the backyard wandering about the materials needed for my bulwark.  This was for keeps.

Logs and iron-work were hard to come by at my current state.  I had no equipment with which to sharpen the ridgepoles or fasten the flying buttresses.  Of course these things weighed heavy on my mind seeing as how the hour was growing short and rather frigid.  It was almost time for supper.  The warm light of our house looked rather inviting and I think I had some homework.

Mustering some strength from my frozen limbs I gathered the only fortifications available to me…4 innertubes.  Innertubes-the kind that go inside truck tires.  I think I found them in the basement, left over from sliding down the snow-covered hills around our home.  Thankfully they were inflated.

As the night drew near I clunked the innertubes to a strategic piece of ground in the back yard.  I set about constructing my Alamo.  Standing in the hole of the first one I reached for the second, lifting it over my head and settling it down around my knees, it resting firmly on the first.  I repeated this process until I was ensconced inside a stack of all 4 of the giant black donuts.  There was just enough room inside for me and my long rifle.

Inside my fort all was quiet.  I had conquered the wind and the enemy.  Inside me there grew a sense of pride due, in part, to the fact that I had devised a plan and carried it out with the end being the preservation and insulation of my person.  I had provided shelter.

Shelter is an interesting concept.  Of course as humans, we need it.  And if one watches much television, one will quickly realize how important it is for everything to have curb appeal, have a low fixed rate mortgage, pop with color, and impart a sense of calm quiet.  Oh, and it also needs to smell like milk and honey, or lavender, or some such.

But what is shelter?  What is real shelter?

At our home, we are trying to build a shelter from the world.  Much like I was protected in my boyhood fort from the bitter wind, we are trying to foster an atmosphere in which our children, and us for that matter, are protected.  My wife and I are striving to create and maintain a shelter in which our family is safe to explore good things.  Where we are free to learn and share and participate in the process of growing.

What is the best thing we have done so far in our sheltering?  Why remove the television of course.  Well, not really.  We of course have a television set to watch DVDs, but the programming like CBS, and Fox News, and Food Network, and ESPN, and all that stuff…gone.  And I really like it.  Didn’t think I would at first but it has really grown on me.  The peace is tangible.  The increased productivity is noticeable and I hang out with my wife and children more which is a good thing.  Honestly, I do not miss it.

More than the absence of television, we live out.  Out of the city.  Not too far out…but out.  Wee see deer from our windows.  I’ve been known to hunt deer from our windows.  We watch nature.  We watch the clouds, the pine trees up on the hill, the birds that come to our feeder, the blackberries we pick from the bank beside our driveway, the stars from our front porch.  We hear owls, barred and screech varieties, whipoorwills, bats, tree-frogs, crickets.  We smell snow, rain, falling leaves, frost.  We touch shovel handles, tomato plants, pine needles, cicadas, salamanders.  We taste well water, wild blueberries, and fresh zucchini bread.

It seems our culture has grown increasingly insulated from our environment.  Oddly, an environment we are bent at saving.  Of course, I understand that not all can live out.  Pity.  What I’m driving at here is perhaps to stress the importance, in my mind, of being connected to creation.  God’s creation.  We’ve come so far from there.  A couple of generations ago, it was not uncommon at all for most everyone to grow at least a small garden.  Now, well, bluntly put, that’s not the case.  Perhaps, when it’s all boiled down, what’s missing is a virtue that was one of this great country’s founding principles.  A virtue that any boy scout knows.  A virtue that is in short supply these days.  Self reliance.  Preparedness.  Wherewithal, gumption, whatever.  Not being a victim.  Responsibility.  You get the idea.  Shelter.  Men, can you build it?  Can you find it?  Can you provide it?

I eventually wriggled out of my innertube citadel.  The wind, by now, was blowing a few snowflakes.  They drifted noiselessly against my face, stinging.  It was full on dark, the moon tiptoeing in and out of the apple tree branches.  The lights shown through the windows of our home.  Truth be told, I think I could have stayed the night out there.  Honest.