Dear Folks, What I should be doing is reading the great pile of student papers on my desk, but it’s more fun to write to you.
My annual teaching term at Dartmouth has begun, which always drops a full-time job right into the center of my already over
(Simon the cat walked across the keyboard here. I don’t usually let him leave his personal statements in my typing, but I thought maybe you’d enjoy seeing one.)
-committed life. I hate that. But I love the students.
You should see them this year, 27 eager environmental studies majors, full of energy and confusion, idealism and fear, intelligence and humor. One of them is a Native American raised on a reservation in Montana, one is a fundamentalist Christian who comes to class in a suit and bow tie. (This makes him an immediate standout, given the normal unisex student outfit of baggy sweater, torn jeans, and enormous snow boots.) It’s particularly useful to have those two in the group, because I’m teaching environmental ethics again, a course I started at Dartmouth years ago, then passed on to another professor, then took it back when he left three years ago. So I have one student who has a firm ethical compass in the Great Spirit and another who has complete faith in guidance from the Bible, and 25 who have little ethical grounding from any source. It’s not that they’re unethical. It’s just that they couldn’t tell you why.
We’ve just finished a case on what to do (ethically) about world population. Their answers make up that pile over there on my desk. Next week we decide what to do ethically about the great Northern Forest. (Joke from the Internet: UrGEnT MEssaGe FrOm tHE TrEEs! WE wILL Kill OnE CEleBriTY a WEEk uNTiL thE CuTTIng SToPs! ThERe is No sUCh tHinG as A sKI AcCiDenT!) Then we go on to Kyoto and what to do about greenhouse gases. For the fourth case they pick one of their own. We have speakers and games and videos and role-playing, all devices I use to try to make the issues real to the students, not just academic exercises. It’s a lot to orchestrate, and a lot of papers to read. I would love it, if I weren’t so involved in other things.
The main other thing at the moment is the new community, which is taking up this whole weekend, except for the present little break on Sunday morning. We’re interviewing our final two candidates for architect — which actually means design team, because each of them brings with him a constellation of energy consultants, landscape experts, construction managers, etc., who will guide us through the next two years of decision-making and building. Each of these candidates is superb, and both are friends of mine (and one is a reader of this newsletter), and furthermore they live in the same town and are friends of each other. I’d be overjoyed to work with either of them. But it will be hard to choose just one. They, of course, are completely grown up and fine with this dilemma — it’s the community that’s agonizing over it.
The interviews are powerful stimulants to our process. Seeing the architects’ slides of other buildings and hearing their experiences, talking about “the leading edge” of green design, having them draw us out about our dreams — all this is making our community seem Very Real, as is the knowledge that soon we will putting a great deal of money at risk. (The money so far has been for buying the farms, so there’s real value behind it. The next round of expenditure is for plans and permits, which are of no value to anyone but us, and if for any reason the project collapses, they will be a total loss.) But this is an amazing group. As we get more real and risky, we seem to gather in and bear down harder, and more people join. It is SUCH a pleasure to work with them. It’s been two months since I’ve been together with everyone, because I missed the December meeting, because I was in Zurich. So I’m enjoying this weekend immensely, though it is not helping me get the papers graded.
Ideally we will choose our design team by tonight. Within the next two weeks we’ll incorporate a limited liability development company, with all of us as directors, which will take the project through the planning and construction stages. Then we’ll pony up the first of the major cash inputs from each of us and start the design process. We’re hoping to be permitted and ready to build in about a year — and to start building in the spring of 1999. When the buildings are done, the development company will sell the common house and land to a community association (which we also have to incorporate) and the living units to households, and then it will go out of existence.
That sounds so neat and clean in theory. I wonder what pitfalls and lessons and hangups and adventures and joys and heartaches it will really entail!
The sun is shining brightly at the moment on a perfect white winter landscape. Mary has just headed out with Chrissie to ski. Stephen’s going out on snowshoes to pack down a trail in the back woods. The dogs like to help in these activities, though the trails they break go looping around crazily and can’t be followed by anyone except other dogs.
We escaped the terrible ice storm, barely. Fifty miles further north or 500 feet higher and we would have been in it. For us it just rained for what seemed like forever. Blow-Me-Down Brook rose to its brim and threatened to leap over into Stephen and Kerry’s garden, but we barely escaped that too. The folks who got hit by thickening ice for five days are still suffering — and the forests will bear the scars for a century.
On the Friday of that storm I had to fly to Washington for a meeting, and I had to drive down to the Manchester airport, which took me across the state of NH over the mountains. The ice-line was clearly visible; I climbed into it and dipped below it all the way. At its worst, around New London, traffic was creeping on the interstate, cars were flipped off the road on all sides, and the exits were blocked, because there were so many live wires down on the side roads. The town of New London was completely cut off. The ice was an inch thick on everything, dripping in foot-long icicles off the road signs, bending down wires and pulling down utility poles, and weighting great trees over in huge loops right down to the ground.
I could see the trees snapping, leaving jagged upright sticks surrounded by messes of downed branches. It was so sad. When I drove back the same way the following Monday, the sun was shining brightly, but there was still ice on everything. It might have been beautiful, all that sparkling crystal, but the sight of the forested hillsides was sickening. They were just raw stubble, especially the sugar maples. The pines didn’t do so badly. They’re used to heavy snow loads that prune off their weaker branches. They just bent their branches almost straight down and the ice slid off.
But the sugarbushes were devastated. It’s going to cut syrup production for decades. We may have just made a great investment over in Hartland, 1000 good tappable maples that happened to be below the ice line.
We almost lost all our snow cover during that rain, but since then we’ve had two good storms and the snow is deep and fluffy, which is all this valley needs in January to get into a good mood. Snow we love. Ice is another matter.
Let’s see, other Foundation Farm news. Kerry’s legs are becoming increasing functional. She still limps slightly and turns and twists with care, but I haven’t seen her use her cane for a long time now. She drives, she works a full schedule at the Coop, she mucks out the horse barn — and it was exactly one year ago that she woke up in the hospital with casts from hip to toe on both legs. She has been unbelievably patient and courageous through this awful year. I hope it’ over.
Stephen has overcome technophobia and is diligently typing the second draft of his novel into the computer. He wrote the first draft longhand, with copious illustrations, some photographs, some drawings by him. This may come as a surprise to you, because I’ve told you much more about Stephen farming than about Stephen writing and drawing — which he does essentially in every moment he’s not farming (or doing yoga or running). All I know about the story of his book is that it starts with a calving. I would bet you it has draft horses in it somewhere. I’ll let you know when you can get a published version.
Scot has finally come home from his long field season on Vancouver Island. He’s measured zillions of trees and now he’s ready now to process the gazillions of numbers he’s brought back and to turn them into a thesis. He and I and sometimes Chrissie too have resumed our carpool into Dartmouth, which is a nice time to compare notes and catch up with news
Mary spends increasing amounts of time over at Donny Faulkner’s in Hartland. They, along with the two families now living on the land, are the advance guard of our new community (though Mary and Donny aren’t sure yet about their commitment), getting to know the neighbors and the land and the town. Mary and Donny are working with their neighbors, who are big-time maple syrup makers, getting the lines strung throughout the forest and the equipment ready.
My gosh! Sugaring will be upon us in another month! The seed orders are coming in and Kerry and I are lovingly arranging the packets so we can find them in a hurry at planting time. Soon I’ll put up the stands in the south window of my bedroom and start the pansies and onions. I can’t really tell that the days are getting longer — I still can’t do the chores much before 7 in the morning or much after 5 at night — but they ARE getting longer, and it’s nice to know that. It’s a warm winter, not much below zero yet.
Better sign off. All those papers are still over there waiting for me. And the community meeting begins in an hour.
Love, Dana
