My friend Alex came down from NYC and we downloaded instructions on “how to fell a tree”. The goal was to build a treehouse. We bought a chainsaw and went at it. There was no structure on the land, and no power at first. Alex used his strong arm powers to wrench the 1st logs to the pine trees, connecting 3 trees with three logs to be the base of the house. After that we built the frame together, then Alex went back home and I bought a generator and built the rest.
I later moved out there with an old Mercedes I’d converted to run on veggie grease. It was after touring with the Obama campaign and I was ready for some peace and quiet. I brought my hen and her newly hatched brood. The goal was to live as green as possible. Unfortunately all the clean grease in town was already collected on a contract by a Chinese company so the veggie car didn’t work out but I did base myself out there in the wild for 5 months. 4 of those months I was a real hermit, except when I went to the health food store. I pushed sweet potatoes into the coals of my nightly fires and they were perfectly baked overnight in time for my morning breakfast each morning. I showered with a forest for walls. I felt pride in doing my duty in my composting toilet. I started an overly ambitious (for my experience at the time) bio-intensive garden. I sat by a fire for hours every night, studying the stars. I memorized the night sky that summer. I walked barefoot without a flashlight accompanied by a strange black cat who circled my fire at a distance for the first week till he decided it was time to be friends. I named him Mars. He would run ahead to scout the scene when I walked at night and, I assumed, make sure the path was clear of snakes. I would climb the rope ladder to the treehouse to sleep and he would climb the tree. The treehouse creaked as it swayed with the wind while I slept. I would poke my butt over the side of the porch if I had to pee late at night, showering the forest floor with nitrogen. I created a cat door for Mars in the treehouse screen. I built myself a "wigwam" dome structure in a meditation from the treetops left from the treehouse logs. The whole summer was a meditation. Or a trance. I witnessed the blood of my moon drop into the deep pine between my feet each month as women had done for centuries before. The was something very "right" about all of it. I was very much "in tune".
I was out there on the wild peninsula by myself for awhile, with no one around,
till the neighbors started building a house.
Apparently on top of an undiscovered native village.
Then they dug a pond.
A big one, far from their house, assuredly for the purpose of a “view.” It bordered my narrow “property.”
Alligators, who don’t mind about property lines, came from somewhere. They made their way to that pond. I saw one cross my campsite.
The neighbors shot those alligators.
I saw one belly up, floating. It’s underside white, it looked like a dead alien floating there..
I haven’t lived out there since. The tree-house fell during a big storm in my absence. But I know there are still spirits out there, in the land and the live oaks. I will return some day but I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that magical connection I experienced that summer. Not with the Alligators being in proximity to my small child.