Like it or Not

Hanging on the wall of our camp house is a stone polished smooth by years of flowing water, plucked from a now forgotten river bed during our travels. Under it, my husband has written one of his favorite quotes about nature.

“We do not go to the green

woods and crystal waters

to rough it.

We go to smooth it.

We get it rough enough at home;

in towns and in cities.”

Nessmuk

That quote rang especially true for me as I worked from home during the pandemic.  As I’ve written previously, spending time in the woods brings calm, balance, and perspective to my life. At no time was that truer than in the past 15 months when camping off the grid became a welcome escape from the real and perceived chaos surrounding me.

I’ll begin with the real chaos. Less than a month into the pandemic, we had our own scare with Covid when my husband tested positive. Mask wearing was a fledgling idea for the public, and scientists still had much to learn about the virus. Thankfully, though it was frightening for our family, Lynn had a mild case and fully recovered. As soon as he was well and we were out of quarantine, we headed to the camp. In the ensuing months, more than ever before, Longleaf became our place “to smooth it.” On weekends, we would escape to the woods but during the week, as day in and day out I worked from my home office, there was no escaping the “rough” happening in the country and our small town.

I noticed the literal noise first. Perhaps it was always there and I just wasn’t home to hear it but now the toxic noise of gas powered leaf blowers, weed eaters, and zero-turn lawn mowers interrupted my thoughts on an hourly basis. It’s as if the yardmen knew when I had scheduled my virtual meetings, and on cue cranked up their machines. I tried reasoning with myself, tempering my ugly thoughts with grateful ones – happiness for the landscapers who had safe jobs during the pandemic. 

As the months dragged on, a different kind of noise attacked my senses. News headlines screamed of the global pandemic itself, Black Lives Matter, the U.S. presidential election, the January 6, 2021 insurrection, and much more. As I cooked dinner, worked on home improvement projects, or took a quick trip to the store, I found myself constantly reading headlines or tuning into NPR. Reading, listening, discussing, and processing were necessary, difficult and often disturbing. A weekend in the woods, without access to internet, was the best reboot.

Closer to home, the yardman’s leaf blower was soon dwarfed by the sounds of the pandemic housing bubble. While we embarked on our own noisy kitchen renovation, planned months prior to the pandemic, our house was also suddenly surrounded on four sides by major construction projects. My work is not the kind that can be done from the local coffee shop. Some days I fled to my husband’s office but on others there was no escaping the unpleasant thrum of the air compressor, the whining of the electric saw, or the grinding sound of machine against brick.

From sun up to sun down, I was powerless to control the racket around us. One morning in a fit of exasperation brought on by the incessant warning beep of an off balance lift, I stormed out the back door, waggling my finger at the painter in the lift, and shouting for him to “please turn that damn thing off.”

Later that week, at a Saturday morning yoga class, my teacher used the phrase, “like it or not.” There was the aha moment. The noise, the chaos, the world events were all going to happen. Like it or not, I was going to be powerless to control it.  I could be the angry and resentful victim or I could question the story I was telling myself and adjust my attitude. This wasn’t a new concept, just one I had forgotten to embrace as the din grew louder both in my head and outside my window.

I expect the construction projects will extend into the fall of 2021 and like it or not, so will my hypersensitivity to the noise. Thankfully, I’m now working a hybrid schedule that gets me out of the house four days out of five. The woods will always remain the place we go to smooth it. In fact, as I write from my favorite Adirondack chair, I’m enjoying the melodies of  the natural world – the call of the Eastern King bird, the buzz of the cicadas, and the whoosh of the breeze through the trees. And one more unnatural but very familiar sound- the hum of a generator running at a nearby farm. Like it or not.

Aggravation can be inspiration for creativity. Here is a poem I wrote about the noise surrounding our home.

Pandemic Yoga
April 25, 2020

On my Yoga journey
Practicing on the front porch
The teacher in a tiny Zoom square
Then full screen.

I learn to lean into the byproduct 
of the Covid Spring.
Noise Pollution.

The gas leaf blowers
Their roaring motors creating
Tornados of dust and leaves
Across the street, two houses down,
Or at the end of the alley that takes a
Dogleg turn just beyond our home.

I turn up the volume but the teacher's voice
Is replaced by the pounding of
Aggravation in my ears.
Try to soften around it I tell myself.
We are in the same storm, but
The yardmen are in a different boat.

Softening takes patience and practice.
Early Saturday, while the birds
Call and the squirrels
Tut tut to one another,
A man rides his grandchildren
Up and down the street on a zero turn mower
Eight times.
Again drowning out my teacher's voice.

Lean in, lean in, lean in,
I tell myself in twisted triangle pose.
Sit with the noise
Though it's not my preference.

find quiet in my head
Love in my heart
Learn from this storm
and its fleet of boats.