Imagining Being in the Woods while Sitting in a Hotel

Before launching into this first blog, I shall set the stage for you:

It is just after 8AM on the Wednesday after Labor Day.  I am sitting with my English Springer Spaniels on the carpeted floor of my living room in the coal region of Pennsylvania with ABC news playing.  My sixteen year old daughter is at the dining room table experiencing the miracles of modern schooling in her virtual algebra class with the PA Cyber Charter School.  The windows are open, admitting a fine breeze whose coolness belies the 90 and 100 degree weather we endured last week out at Four Quarters Farm.  I just got home yesterday:  I am thinking about the daunting task of unloading my van and cleaning out my storage shed so that there is room for my vending equipment; I feel fit; I look tanned; I have a broken toe and a spectacular case of poison ivy.

Thus endeth my working vacation.

  I was raised loving the outdoors.   I am convinced that my late father was an incarnation of the Green Man:  through him I overcame my childish squeamishness about dirt, worms, stinging caterpillars, swamps, mud, bugs and snakes.  Seeing Saturn or Jupiter and its Galilean moons became much more important than being eaten alive by mosquitos or coming inside half-frozen because the universe was huge and endlessly fascinating, and my little problems could be solved with Bactine or Mom's hot chocolate.  I learned that tramping through the dirt was a much more desirable activity than tramping through the malls that were becoming so popular during my youth, and that there was more value in finding interesting rocks than in finding a great sale at the department store.  Dad was a birder:  he was always looking up.  Having been collecting rocks and minerals since I was 4, I was always looking down, and in areas where there were no rocks there were always other treasures like wildflowers and fungi.  I just had to keep my eyes open.

Most people dread thinking about their teenage years:  I think of mine as idyllic.  I was outside much of the time, reading, drawing, writing, dreaming.  I read Tolkien and imagined that the nearby woods were occupied by Elves and Hobbits and wizards.

After high school I moved to Philadelphia so that I could attend the University of Pennsylvania.  I loved the city, but was always glad to go home to what at the time were the far western Philly suburbs and sit on the porch at night and see the stars.  But over time I became disillusioned with my old haunts as new people moved in and the woods where we found the Pink Lady's Slipper orchids and stinging Saddleback Slug succumbed to the unfortunate tide of McMansions that swept over the landscape beginning in the mid-1980s.  Woodland Dad and I had explored became PRIVATE PROPERTY with manicured lawns and driveways.  I was no longer home.

I figured it was time to "grow up".

I spent the following years in places that were, at least in terms of development--if not population-- entirely too civilized.  I became cosmopolitan:  my burgeoning art business took me to science fiction conventions in hotels in various cities, and there I drew portraits of people as Klingons gazing out at the stars, and wizards in magical woodlands.  In my Fantasy Portraits I drew people and their visions of nebulas or galaxies or mountains or trees or sweeping plains, but we sat in hotel air, getting hotel cough, eating hotel food and sleeping in hotel beds.

In late 2005 my sister Hollie finally succeeded in getting me to accompany her to Four Quarters Farm www.4qf.org ostensibly to help her close out her campsite.  I had, I felt, endured at least a year of her tales of the wonders of this place (ordinarily if someone says I "have" to see or do or try something I do exactly the opposite--must be that Badger thing) so I agreed to go out with her.

The day dawned cool and crystal clear as we drove south on I-81.  I love traveling early in the day, and we listened to our favorite music and sang along as the miles rolled by.  By the time we reached Hagerstown, Maryland, the day had become warm:  we had to shed several of our carefully-planned layers of clothing.

View From the Labyrinth

Four Quarters lies off of I-68 (conveniently, it happens, at exit 68).  To reach the farm, we traversed a number of country roads over hill and dale, and by the time we reached the dirt and gravel driveway I was absolutely certain that I would never--even with GPS-- find the place again (I later learned that GPS in fact does NOT get you all the way there).  As we drove up to the farmhouse, I began to understand Hollie's attraction to the place:  I experienced that overwhelming feeling that I had finally arrived home, which only increased as we passed the labyrinth, stone circle, vendors' meadow, kitchen and picnic tables, and entered the campground proper.  By the time we reached Hollie's campsite, I was hooked.

The Mother Stone

Perhaps in a future blog I will discuss the happenings of that weekend, the people I met and the things we did, but that's not really the thrust of this story.  Suddenly I was Outside again, in the deep woods, in a place that was decidedly wild, where the stars were not dimmed by street lights and members lived in tents rather than McMansions--although some of the campsite setups were decidedly palatial!

I became a promoting member of Four Quarters; I got myself an EZ Up; I became an Outdoor Vendor.  In the intervening years my business has undergone a remarkable transformation:  instead of being mostly done in hotels it is now mostly conducted outdoors.  The number of portraits I have done has dwindled and I often call them Spiritual Path Portraits now.  I have instead a series of paintings that cover many spiritual subjects http://badgersoph.deviantart.com.  I have been rained on, subjected to wild wind, and been sent diving for cover in thunderstorms.   I have had relationships come and go.  I have camped in brutal heat and teeth-chattering cold.  I have walked the creek bed and seen the Great Blue Heron; I have paddled around in the swimming hole and done battle with the Nibbly Fish and yellow jackets; I have picked out the songs of the owls late at night and loved every moment of it.

I have put down roots in this place.

Panoramic view of the Stone Circle at Four Quarters Farm

The Author
Photo by Pete Muench

Labor Day weekend is reserved for Stones Rising, a festival in which the community (i.e., those who show up; you don't have to be a member to participate) gathers to pull and raise megaliths in a tradition that will eventually produce a circle of standing stones.  My visceral description of this activity goes  something like this:  "It is the coolest damned thing you will ever do!  Even when you don't like working in groups you will find yourself working in one way or another!  I would rather cut off a limb than miss this event!"  More specifically, people at Four Quarters have, over the years, succeeded in pulling and erecting over 40 stones, some tilting the scale at over 14,000 pounds.  The entire event is centered on community, but before you balk at attending the definition of "community" here is fluid, and includes all who show up.  Newcomers are treated as much like family as five-year members like myself or those who have been there since the beginning.  And there you are, pulling or drumming or cooking or bringing water to the workers or witnessing or (like me) directing traffic--you find your focus shift from the noisy outside world to the core of who you are.   This is, as the cliche goes, "what it's all about."

On my way home from Four Quarters yesterday, I talked to my very good friend Beth, who with my other very good friend Beth had gone to Dragon Con in Atlanta.   She described to me the guest panels, the autographs, the photo ops with guests, the myriad people and activities, the shopping, the food, the fun...and I was really happy that she had had such a good time.  I don't look down on the convention scene, but I also realized that I was grateful to have spent the same time period in the woods helping to pull and raise two megaliths, taking part in ceremony, swimming in the swimming hole, socializing at the Coffee Dragon's, or just sitting out in front of my booth at night listening to the drum circle, looking up at the stars and talking with anyone who happened by over a bottle of mead.

Last weekend, a friend remarked to me that she knew people who tried to attune their spirituality while sitting in hotel rooms imagining being in the woods.  As I wrote this blog I realized that, for a long time, I too--along with many of my customers--had been doing the same thing.  I sat in hotels drawing the woods and mountains and starfields of which my customers dreamed.  I sat in my studio, drawing the forest.

Now things are different:  I walk the woods, and when I am not there, I carry them in my heart.