The Blue Book

About a year ago, we started discussing, Carl and I, the long-term reality of Darwin’s View, ten, fifteen years from now. That time will be here before we know it, assuming we live so long. And the question is, will we continue to live at Darwin’s View? 

The answer had been — until now — “Of course!” We created Darwin’s View to “age in place,” after all. It was to be my last Forever Home. Why would we ever move away? We can’t. In the same way Big Red and his five hens committed us to moving here from Providence, so the Blue Book requires that we stay.

“What,” you might ask, “is the Blue Book?”

In his mind and iPhone apps, Carl has the map of how the organization and networks of Darwin’s View work, and he has written down how to read that map in what we call The Blue Book. He updates it — or intends to — whenever there has been another adaptation to the complexity of Darwin’s View because you, as do I, might ask, “How do they all work — the house, the coop, the watering lines attached to the catchment systems, the fresh water pond-pool, the house batteries and pellet boiler, the ERVs, the solar panels, the Electric F150 and Tesla?” 

Carl has a lot of oversight to juggle. And he is quite competent and confident around it all, even when, in the midst of a Zoom call, all the lights go out and he has to grab his iPhone and headlamp to spelunk in the darkness of the basement where the house battery system lives. I might follow to watch him work his magic. More likely, I sit and mull because it isn’t magic. It’s mechanics that are dependent on Carl because they are all connected to apps on his phone where all the passwords hide.

As Carl readily admits, anyone else would call a professional. I call Carl.

However, and I find it hard to write this next sentence, someday Carl won’t be here. (I might not be here, too, but I don’t have the organization and networks of Darwin’s View in my head.) What will be left? The Blue Book. It’s important and needs updating. Like electrical systems. And plumbing.

Apparently, it is no longer the Blue Book but the Black Book. Who knew!? I didn’t. But I do now because I asked Carl, “Where’s the Blue Book?” 

“The what?"

“The Blue Book with all the info on the systems and stuff.”

“Oh, that got changed.” And he handed me the Black Book.

It's as much him as it is me. I distance myself from this stuff. As I say in my book At Crossroads with Chickens, I concern myself with the whys of life while Carl focuses on the hows. And so the Blue Book becomes the Black Book and we continue to evolve up here at Darwin’s View. Adapting, adjusting, adopting chickens…

And so I beg the question, will we really age in place at Darwin’s View?

About a year ago, a dear, childhood friend of Carl’s mentioned that Carl’s family home in Peterborough, NH might be going on the market. Six months later, yup, it was going to be sold. Did we want to look at it? As I have been known to say, window shopping can’t hurt. Three months, two, one. We closed on August 16, 2024. One of those inflection points that doesn’t seem insane until looking back on it.

We plan to renovate it to be off-grid in the middle of town.

Carl has brushed off his wonder bar and is aiming for the kitchen, which is in even worse condition than we had thought it was when we bought the house. The whole house is in worse…But let’s not go negative. It’s exciting! In the spring, we get to demo more than half the house that we just bought!

We have thought this through. We always do. 

Life is an evolution, one I can see when I look back at all of our homes. All of our new old homes. Our old new homes. We create homes. That’s what we do. My only issue is letting go. Time and again, we create a home, and then, just as I begin to feel settled, (which takes me a good deal longer than it does Carl, or most anyone else on planet Earth) we begin again. 

One more renovation. That’s what I said to Carl twelve years ago when we had moved from Angell street — my first Forever Home — to Beachmont — my second Forever Home — and started to build up in New Hampshire. I have one more renovation and this is it. And so we built Darwin’s View in 2012 — my third and “final” Forever Home.

Little did I/we know that Carl’s childhood home might be our second “final” Forever Home. 

And, so, slowly, and again, I begin the process of letting go.

Thank goodness the chickens are adaptable and portable.

Carl’s childhood home. No, we have not adopted a horse. Just the house.