A home not yet a house

We pulled up to what looked like an abandoned house in a quaint neighborhood of an old copper mining town, Ahmeek. The Ojibwa word for beaver. Faded white paint chipped off of the sun bleached and snow soaked siding. Unbloomed lilac bushes as tall as the single paned windows guarded the front door. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into. Neither did you.

It was the end of October, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My ex partner and I were on our first road trip cross country as a new couple, willingly embarking into the unknown. He had purchased his first fixer upper on a foreclosure and we were fixed on building a life together. This was the final destination of our trip... ready to open the doors to meet his new home and get a taste of what building a life together actually took.

You turned the key, pressed your shoulder firmly on the door, gave a little oomph and we were in. The first step into our new home. Although, we could hardly walk inside.

It was a hoarders home; every square inch from floor to ceiling stuffed with rare treasures, knick knacks and forgotten junk. The place reeked of someone's heartache and the stuff they enclosed around their pain. A barachade of decomposing stuffed animals, blankets, fur coats and vintage dresses, aqua mason jars, an array of glass bottles, thick telephone insulators, rotten wallpaper, wooden chests and a pair of snowshoes, milk crates and boxes filled with books, old porter cups from the once local neighborhood pub, outdated china, random toys including a creepy life size doll with red mangy hair, a variety of rusty tools, salvaged windows and doors, kerosene lanterns, kitchen hutches painted with cute little flowers, a piano that still sang, a clawfoot bathtub, a cast iron cook stove; A pickers paradise. It was our paradise.

Peeking through the piles of misfit things, we could make out two front rooms downstairs of the original house, one room with a pitched roof upstairs and a small bathroom. Attached to the back of the house was a collapsing addition that was practically going back to the earth. The neighbors said a fire had burned a gaping hole into the roof and surrounding walls. Nature had taken over. The weight of water and persistent snow, season after season had bowed the wooden floors into a deep surrender and soaked the charred rafters. The staircase in the corner also rotted leaving an opening for critters to be welcomed. Beyond that, the entire foundation was leaning and saturated, buckling under the weight and pressure of stuff it had been carrying. We weren't entirely sure how structurally sound or safe it was to be standing inside.

It was hardly a house, yet we had a home of our own.

As we peered into the work ahead of us, I felt as if we had just walked into the soggy, broken, and somehow still standing, beautiful mess of us. While we were still in the early stages of coupleship, this was about the time our shadows started to emerge.

The neglected house a mirror of two people held together with rusty nails... all of their baggage, wounds, hopes and potential stuffed into one crumbling home. If we wanted to get to the raw truth, the bare bones and solid foundation we would have to empty, organize and repair. We would have to face the stuff weighing us down and in the way, rotting our stability and holding us back from growing deeper and choosing each other. Needless to say, the house became an undertaking of clearing out old patterns and old energy, revealing pieces of ourselves buried in the crevices of our unconscious and preserving the foundation of what brought us together.

So we did. A force beyond ourselves took course. We held close the long term vision and potential of home, and commitment, as if all of the "stuff" was no big deal. We were in this together, invincible. Nothing was going to hold us back.

Love does that.

While the neighborhood wanted to demolish the house... seeing it as worthless, a lost cause, taking up prime real-estate, a sight for sore eyes, diminishing the cost of their own homes, easier to get rid of it, tear it down... we saw something special. Worth saving. Worth trying for. Worth repairing.

So we did. We took our time, delicately exploring the stuffed home, sifting through the piles of unavoidable and forgotten old things, remembering what we had stored away inside ourselves. Things too painful or too guilt ridden to address, things we wanted to forget, were smooshed and piled on top of one another. One thing after the next that was difficult to face or that we were ashamed of sharing with each other, were delicately stacked and tossed together in neglected chaos. Yet, here it all was. Slowly being excavated and revealed. We had no choice but to hold every piece.

There is a tenderness in the process of cleansing and clearing the parts of ourselves we hide and protect. At some point in our past, we decided to put aside a seemingly small insignificant thing thinking, "I will tend to that later. I don't have the time for that." Until, years and years of "not-right-nows" and "laters" become a wall, not only protecting what was painful, but also confining and hiding all of the beauty in between. At some point down the road, we are confronted with all of the parts we set aside. A dam of our past breaks and it all rushes in, flooding the present. Suddenly, those seemingly small insignificant things would have been a lot easier to address back then before the many detours.

Weeks of clearing went by, and with one room emptied, a little light in the brisk of autumn, began to shine through the single paned window. For the first time, we could see and touch the walls of our home. Suddenly, all of the work to clear away what was in the way was a flood of spaciousness. A refreshing reassurance and hope. Then something incredible happened. As we basked in the space we had created, dreaming of all we could do with this room to grow, satisfied by our hard earned work, we realized we were standing in a log cabin. Beneath the outdated wallpaper stood hand huned cedar logs from the 1800's, sturdy, wise and strong. Something special. Worth saving. Worth trying for. Worth repairing.

And isn't this what is beautiful about any relationship, to any person, place or thing... to honor and love its history... its beauty; all it has endured, all of the stories it has to tell, all of the lives it has touched. To respect and cherish the wisdom, pain and lived experience they carry until their last breath.

So we did.

We made a choice to preserve the wise elders amongst us, the cedar logs, the bones that held us together.

It's the trail of choices like these in life that redirect the path we are walking and transforms who we are becoming. A moment of the Soul whispering truth from the echoes of our heart. A moment of "Yes" that ripples like a single drop into a vast ocean shifting everything in its wake. A moment we wake up and listen. A moment we choose a path beyond ourselves which sets us apart from the rest. Because, in a world of paths chosen for us, paths we didn't take due to fear we would be judged or couldn't do it, paths we feel pressured or expected to take due to outside influences, choosing a path that is perfectly imperfect for ourselves, is the act of Soul. Our Souls calling.

A kind of calling that most do not hear. That most fear.

Because this path is not always the easy one. In fact, it never is. Yet, it is the path that alchemizes our healing. That tumbles our heart into love. The path that asks us to surrender and dive deep into the uncharted waters of the unknown. To choose to love and be loved again and again... to be humbled and tumbled because this is what carries us home. To truth and wholeness.

Love does that.

Over 4 months of clearing, 4 U-Haul trucks filled with junk, more trips to the dump than I want to remember, a little lighter and a lot exhausted, winter had reared its head. As the persistent snow tucked the earth in to sleep, we made our nest within the cedar logs, once sacred trees. Listening to the lessons these elders were still breathing.

Little eaglets learning how to survive.

With 30 below winds hissing through the crumbling chinking, loose floorboards and sunken roof, we did what we could to stay warm off grid in the UP temperatures; taking turns feeding the fire through the night. Waking up to our breath. Even the neighbors took pity bringing us a warm meal and a few blankets.

It was chop wood carry water times; Our woodpile became pieces of old furniture and wood paneling we piled up during the clearing. We took washcloth baths in the antique red rimmed bins with snow boiled over the fire, read books beside the kerosene lanterns and candles found in the piles of things, covered the hissing windows and stuffed any gaps exposed to the outside with the wool blankets, and collected our drinking water from the spring nearby, snowshoeing 2 miles with our little red sled filled with 5 gallon jugs... and I got pretty good at making banana bread in the cast iron skillet. Everything we had was salvaged from the clearing or provided by the wild around us.

Life was simple.

What a friend of mine would call, "the magical mundane". When you show up day after day to do the work, step into the flow of consistency and rhythm. Letting life take you... have its way with you. Finding pleasure in the practical.

The magical mundane is not usually exciting or profound but over time it seeps into your heart and bones as an unconditional presence that sustains and stabilizes you.

A dance of devotion and discipline.

Love in action.

Letting a little sweat, tears and laughter cleanse you.

So we did.

With the initial impact of the clearing faded, we found a rhythm of our off grid systems and settled into the company of the fire and snow. The magical mundane, filled with hardships and challenges, chaos and clutter, love and joy, trickled out into the landscape that embraced us all along. The generous presence of the untamed wild held us through the uncovering, repairing and cleansing of ourselves. The piles of silent snow became a place of solace amongst the piles of things. The forgiving forests, amongst the cedar and birch, fox and grouse, became a place of silence so loud we could no longer hear our thoughts. The gentle stream a place that brought us together. When we felt at a loss, lost or longing, we turned to the overflowing love and revitalizing power of Lake Superior. Her crashing prowess, pounding against the stones, became a place of reflection and understanding when our hearts felt like they were breaking.

Her ever changing nature reminded us of the ever changing nature of life.

Reminding us to keep going.

There were winter days I would go to write with her, frozen in fear, crackling with anger, my hands writing until they were numb... and she too would be covered in layers of dense ice, only hearing cracks and shifts of what swelled beneath. What was she afraid of? I thought. What does she have to say? I listened. What are your hurts? I asked. There were other times I would go to greet her, to clear my thoughts, confused of my path forward, and she too would be covered with a fog so thick, I could not see where she met the shore. What was she hiding? What was she protecting? I wondered. Then, there were moments I visited, swam naked until the trees became little slivers waving back at me, and she would be beaming with light, glistening from ear to ear, pattering my cheeks with sweet kisses. "You are free," she would smile, "You are free." And again, days I turned to her when I wanted to give up with grief, but there she was, as calm as silk, filling my heart with a horizon of hope that kept me going. "Thank you. I love you." I would whisper to her... "I love you so much."

"I know

in my bones

if I no longer could feel 

the power of a wave

crashing into my tender flesh

I would no longer

know the power of my Soul."

~ Hannah Rapp

Black Creek Nature Sanctuary

October 2023

Some say, "Build a house, lose a spouse." 

Making a home stretched us in ways we were not prepared for and while it transformed us in beautiful ways, it also revealed what wasn't working. And isn't this exactly the fear that prevents so many from choosing the path that is our Souls Calling? Because we know when we answer this call, we may not receive the answer we are wanting. We don't want to face the hard truth. To let go of a dream, a way of life, someone we love, a home... because it means we have to feel the loss, be with the loneliness, give gratitude to the experiences and lessons it gave us and learn more of who we are.

After two years of excavation and repairs, we parted ways, the house still underway and the dream of home remains. Our Soul's calling us in different directions.

Choosing to leave, I chose to grieve the loss of the relationship to partner, place and home. To feel the loneliness. While also choosing to celebrate this chapter of profound learning, growing pains, adventure and wonder. A chapter immersed in the many seasons of the UP transformed me and is forever imprinted in my body; Picking service berries for the first time in June on the corner of our street, collapsed into wild blueberry bushes like hungry bears gorging ourselves for hours while backpacking on Isle Royale, harvested chokecherries and delicate thimble berries by the stream in August, filled our shirts with apples of all kinds in September, and I would sneak away to my favorite patches of hawthorn and rose hips in October. We made jams, wine and tinctures as the leaves turned to a symphony of autumn. Biked in the summers and snowshoed in the winters along our favorite path to the Gratiot. Treated ourselves to pastries at the Jampot and pasties at the Superette. Attempted cross country skiing with your grandparents gear until my shoes fell apart. Took out the canoe to Copper Harbor and Lac La Belle, cold plunged and bathed in the lake until she froze over. We might not of had a house yet... we might not of had much money or many things, yet we were rich with belonging.

We were a part of the landscape.

She was our home.

Something special.

Worth saving.

Worth trying for.

Love does that.