Enclosed by Friday, The Contractor Promises

 

The cabin should be enclosed completely by Friday, Contractor Zane Czyck told me by phone today (April 15, 2020). The rounded logs, more than the construction of other homes, remind me that this cabin was once trees. And, as I near the end of the fifth week of Covid-19-induced hibernation, I can't help but sympathize with the trees whose limbs once blew freely in the breeze, reached for a sun lit sky, held tightly bird nests built on forked limbs, and provided shade for critters at home on the humus littered floor of a woods.

Inspired by the book Braided Sweetgrass, I think of the changes that will occur in the forest where the trees once lived.  Were they culled wisely? Will the cuttings provide opportunity for new species of trees, grasses, herbs, shrubs, flowers? As the sun heats the soil where the roots once grew, what will change? What happens to the critters that lived within the cold, dark earth? Have the birds and critters found a chance to re-home? I pray so. And I am grateful for their sacrifice, a gift I want to receive with reciprocity.


This land on which the cabin sits is designated agricultural. But it's been fallow long enough for the junipers to arrive and thrive. They are the first in the succession back to a forested state. In the name of reciprocity, as a way of giving back, I hope I can work with the land toward its healing even as this cabin, and the land and the air around it, bring healing to me.

Give as has been given to you, the Bible says....
May it be so.
T



 Sources:
Braided Sweetgrass is written by Robin Walls Kimmerer
Photos by Photographer Steven David Johnson
Log home: Appalachian Log Homes; Dogwood Mountain Log Homes of Harrisonburg VA is the seller
Contractor: Zane Czycick Construction

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