#6 – Finale: Catharsis
It’s been a wonderful, relaxing trip. I’ve been thinking in the last couple of days about phase transitions. Wood is mostly cellulose, a complex carbohydrate. When CO2 is captured by a plant or a tree, it is converted into other chemical compounds that make up the plant and are stored in its parts, or sequestered in the soil through roots. So there's not actually a lot of straight CO2 to release when a tree dies, because it has been bound in another form. Leaving dead trees to rot releases all of these compounds slowly, over a long period of time. Burning releases them quickly; for this reason, we use it quite sparingly. But it is a tool to use in balancing the environment; too much rotting brush stacked around everywhere has its own challenges. On the farm, we stack branches, limbs, leaves, and weeds in ditches and piles in a number of places across the property. These decay slowly, and provide habitat for birds, animals, fungi, and insects. A small percentage we stack into a burning pile, usually on the bank below the house, just above the lake (though I’ve done a few others over the years in the fields above the house).
After the high winds on Tuesday afternoon and brief rain on Wednesday morning, I’d almost given up on burning the brush pile this trip. But on Thursday morning the weather was dry and calm, and I used the Tennessee Forestry website to get a burning permit for Jefferson County. The water hose from the house reaches down to the area around the pile, so as usual, I soaked the ground outside the perimeter of the pile before applying kerosene and igniting it, keeping the water hose at the ready. The pile had a lot of the dense ash wood from the trees killed by the emerald ash borer, so I suspected that this would be a long process. There is still a primeval, visceral satisfaction to commanding fire.
I did some other small jobs in the area near the fire so I could keep an eye on it, but I had lots of time to reflect on the week, the crackling of the fire punctuating the silence of the morning. There have been no grand revelations, a few profound insights, minimal transforming enlightenment. Moments of deep appreciation, deep knowing, certainly. But overall, refreshingly ordinary.
And quiet. In recent years I’ve learned to listen for the Silence, to invite it, welcome it. Now it seems to stalk me and can sneak its way into fermatas, into the spaces between words and musical notes, into the gaps between tasks, into waiting in line. Silence can happily take my stored compounds, transform and release them.
From my trip journal:
“Postscript> It’s simple. So simple. And absolutely ordinary. Breathe it in. The waves come in, the sky changes, the clouds move. The light leaves the sky, the sound rises and falls, without my involvement. Accept. Allow.”
– Tom Morgan (March, 2022)
___________________
NOTE: The LLC that presently maintains the Old Brick and the farm (including my siblings and my aunt and her family) is getting closer to being able to rent out the property to family and friends as a vacation/retreat rental. It won’t be available to the general public (in our current plans). If you might be interested in spending a week here, please let me know, and we’ll keep you on the list to receive information as it becomes available.
