Good Mourning

A double rainbow over the chicken coop and garden at Darwin’s View. Photo by Carl Q.

This past July, I made an audiobook of my memoir At Crossroads with Chickens, A “What If It Works” Adventure in Off-Grid Living and Quest for Home. I enjoyed the process of reading it aloud, revisiting what brought Carl and me to this point. And, to my surprise, At Crossroads with Chickens is not as humorous a book as I remembered it. In fact, I found it rather sad. Maybe because I am on this side of that crossroads and know what has happened since.

Times have changed, have they not? Certainly, my New Yorker friends tell me New York City has changed. They struggle to explain it, pinpoint what’s gone. The taxis still honk. The trucks still downshift and belch. The subway still shakes the ground, and people, people, people still shout, argue, love, and laugh. And yet. New York City is not so alive, they say. They say, “It’s just different.”

Maybe New York City and its inhabitants are just being more introspective. Or is it the missing 42,961 (and counting) people who died there in these first years of COVID? Are those souls lingering, taking up space? Or is it their absence?

Here, at Darwin’s View, too, everything still swirls. It’s just different.

My 2013 declaration of war against climate change has flopped, most likely due to my lack of planning, and utter neglect. I dub what little time I spend outside as sh*t show gardening and herding feral chickens. But I have begun to live out the answers to the questions I was asking myself ten years ago.

Not new questions, of course. Millions are asking and have asked the same for millennia: Why am I here? What is my path, my purpose? Where is home? Is this home? Hay or straw? Deep litter method or poop boards? Sand or pine shavings? Would I adopt chickens again?

Maybe a lot of people haven’t asked themselves those last questions. And no, I wouldn’t adopt chickens again. They are too stressful, with their eye infections and worms, their heavy molts and pecking order. Their fluff and eye-batting flirtation.

On second thought, maybe I would adopt them again. Their eggs are fabulous. It was for their happy eggs I adopted in the first place. Eggs that are practically free if you don’t count the cost of the mealy worms, vet visits, and coop renovations.

Yes. Yes, of course, I would adopt them again. Every year, it seems, we take on more of them—nineteen to date, ages eight years (Apricot) to five months (Snowball and Fogbank; Bernadette, Duchess, and Lady Jane Grey; Black Beauty One and Two) and they have so very much still to teach me. Every day is a lesson. Lessons learned and forgotten, and the hardest of all: the world turns and change happens no matter what I do.

The other day, Carl and I were driving back from Keene and the topic of aging came up. And that we really do need to figure out what the long-term plan is for Darwin’s View, and for us. The reality is, this is a hard place to be old. It takes a lot of work and we intend to pass it on to the younger generations. In which case, where will we grow old?

We reviewed our homes of yore: Providence. Stonington. New York City. Jaffrey. Peterborough. That night, we went to realtor.com to see what’s out there and there was a house with solar panels. Spacious and light. A huge lawn that we could rip up and replace with a few fruit trees and raised garden beds. All in walking distance to downtown. And my heart jumped. Walking distance? No need to renovate?

We would, of course, bring the chickens.

I think about that reaction, how quickly I was willing to leave here. How easily I adapt.

Or is it how easily I run?

I sit still. Breathe in and out. When I do, I feel my mother with me. And bathe in the tears of missing, and the relief that her energy is free. I revel in the darkness of my mind that will. not. be. calm. Ever flowing with thoughts, new ideas, renovations, and hope, that healing power that slowly rises within me. It pours over the edges of my being to a place I might share it, connect.

Hope and connection. Is that not the only way we, as a species, will survive?

For now, I am going to try to remain here, my breath like the ocean, ebbing and flowing. And like the wind over Mount Monadnock, breezing through the fields and trees, caressing and buffeting the birds, porcupines, deer, and coyotes, all being, changing, every day. I am here. I. The ever-evolving Tory here at Darwin’s View.