Living at the End of Time Read online

  Living at the End of Time

  ALSO BY JOHN HANSON MITCHELL

  Ceremonial Time

  A Field Guide to Your Own Back Yard

  The Wildest Place on Earth

  Walking towards Walden

  Trespassing

  Following the Sun

  The Rose Café

  The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston

  The Last of the Bird People

  An Eden of Sorts: The Natural History of My Feral Garden

  Living at the End of Time

  Two Years in a Tiny House

  JOHN HANSON MITCHELL

  University Press of New England

  Hanover and London

  University Press of New England

  www.upne.com

  © 2014 and 1990 John Hanson Mitchell

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First UPNE edition, 2014

  Originally published in 1990 by Houghton Mifflin.

  For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

  University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014932194

  ISBN for the UPNE edition: 978-1-61168-588-6

  ISBN for the EBOOK edition: 978-1-61168-589-3

  5 4 3 2 1

  For my mother

  Contents

  Preface to the New Edition

  Author’s Note

  1. Uncommon Ground

  2. In Two Worlds

  3. Beside the Green Meadow

  4. Scyther’s Complaint

  5. The Interior River

  6. My Lady of the Squirrels

  7. Autumnal Tints

  8. The Green Man

  9. The Other Side

  10. Life on Earth

  11. Journals in Dreamtime

  12. The Cruelest Month

  13. The Sea of Milk

  14. Living at the End of Time

  Epilogue

  Preface to the New Edition

  The tiny house in which I lived for two years is still in use, although no longer as a permanent dwelling. Not to give away the end of the book, but a larger house and gardens now occupy the land, along with associated garden sheds, a teahouse, a toolshed, a writing studio, pergolas, and similar small-scale structures, all in the architectural style of the original cottage.

  The development of these various follies, the creation of the gardens, and more to the point the square mile of forest and farmland surrounding the property are the subjects of five books collectively known as the Scratch Flat Chronicles. The first in the series, Ceremonial Time, is a fifteen-thousand-year history of this single square mile, which in the nineteenth century was called Scratch Flat. Living at the End of Time is the third book in the chronicles, and in some ways the most intimate, relating as it does my associations with the people who lived in the area and close observations of the immediate surroundings.

  All these volumes were written in the little cabin, which has now been in use, for one purpose or another, for more than thirty years. In the pages that follow, the construction of the little house (despite my general incompetence in matters of carpentry) is recounted in full. The book does not mention two later additions to the house.

  The first was a small lean-to, attached to the western wall, that served as a tool- and potting shed. A few years after that addition, my brother and I built a long, narrow, open-sided boat shed off the back of the potting shed. We undertook the project in order to house a collection of small boats, including the old kayak that has a walk-on part in Living at the End of Time. The main purpose of the shed, however, was to protect an antique Old Town double-banked rowing canoe, complete with sponsons and a rudder. After a few years, I sold the canoe, and the boat shed became a storage space where junk began to accumulate, alongside firewood for the woodstove in the cottage.

  I had laid out a series of gardens around the original cottage and had cleared a small open meadow on the southeast side of the property, as described here. Still, the landscape seemed to call for a more permanent dwelling place. After two years of living without running water or electricity, and heating the house with a woodstove, I decided to rejoin normal society. I built a real house on the property, based on the designs of the nineteenth-century landscape architect and house designer Andrew Jackson Downing. The story of that house and its encircling gardens is told in two books that follow this one, The Wildest Place on Earth and An Eden of Sorts (2013), which is about the natural history of the gardens.

  True to Andrew Jackson Downing’s landscape theories, the new house would feature even more structures. I built a little teahouse on the south side of the property, to create the focal point so important in traditional garden designs. That done, I started to lay out more allées and garden rooms. In one case a trellis was called for, at least as far I was concerned.

  Many of the trees, shrubs, and perennials that make up the gardens I “liberated” from construction sites. Driving around the countryside in this rapidly developing area, I would often see some perfectly sound house under assault: developers were intent on building in its place a vast mansion, almost any room of which could hold my entire original cottage. In the process, they tore out perennial beds and perfectly healthy ornamental trees and shrubs. While creating the gardens around the main house, I formed the habit of returning to these sites after hours. I carried home azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwoods, and even entire beds’ worth of thriving peonies and roses, some of which I later learned were antique varieties.

  At one of these sites I spotted a large nineteenth-century wooden trellis, lying on its side like a fallen rhino. I returned that night with a friend. We horsed it onto the bed of his truck and headed home with it.

  This same friend, a man who cannot bear to see any good outbuilding, boat, flagstone terrace, or other architectural element plowed under, found a modest garden shed one day as he was making his usual circuit in search of salvage material. The shed was about to be torn down. In this case my friend knew the owner and learned the history of his find before carrying it off. The old building, which came from the town of Concord, may have had some association with the cabin of Henry Thoreau: the owner thought the two buildings had been located on the same property for a few years. The shed had been moved several times already and had had many uses. It had even, the owner thought, served as an outhouse. It was a classic tiny house, no more than six by eight feet. My friend rescued it and sold it to me. Together we hauled it down one of the garden allées on rollers and set it in place. I now use it as a writing studio during the warm months.

  The last structure on the property was a garage. When I finally decided to add one, I designed it to match the main house—complete with two gabled bays, and without doors. I purposely left the bays open, to encourage barn swallows. The swallows have yet to appear, but every year a phoebe nests in the rafters.

  Shortly after I gave up my Thoreauvian lifestyle to move into the main house, a friend of mine found herself temporarily moneyless and living on her mother’s couch. The little cabin seemed sad without an occupant, so I offered to let her stay there. She and her cat moved in. They lived there longer than I did, actually. Interestingly enough, shortly after she moved out, I received an official letter from the local board of health, informing me that according to town bylaws, it was not legal to rent the little house. The fact is, this was a small town; for well over three years my friend had lived
there while board officials chose to look the other way. They also must have known that I had lived there without plumbing for a couple of years.

  After the publication of Living at the End of Time, assorted pilgrims began arriving at my doorstep to see for themselves what they had read about in the book. For many I seemed to have tapped into some unrealized dream with this project. Presumably they were people living what Henry Thoreau termed lives of quiet desperation. Clearly, the dream of finding a place apart, a place of one’s own, still holds appeal.

  Some of the pilgrims came from as far away as England and Germany, many from the West Coast, and a few from the heartland. Others wrote to tell me of their attempts to create a separate peace, inspired by my own experiment.

  I was not the only one living off the grid in those days. There were other cabin dwellers in Thoreau Country, as it is known locally. They lived in tiny houses, most without benefit of electricity. I knew some of them, and one year in spring I decided to hold a party for them in the main house. My wife and I have hosted many soirées in the house over the years, many book and garden parties, and even two weddings. But this party, I have to say, was the worst we ever had. About ten mostly single male cabin dwellers showed up. In spite of their commonalities, they seemed unable to relate to one another. In fact, the only spark of interest that evening was generated by the late arrival of my own cabin dweller, whose theatrical entrance created a stir. I later realized I shouldn’t have been surprised by this lack of sociability in my neighbors. These were traditional pioneers who, true to Thoreauvian form, had conducted their experiment in our local woods rather than on the latter-day Western frontier. They were obviously more comfortable keeping to themselves than appearing at informal social gatherings.

  Thoreau himself, incidentally, although he lived alone, was a decidedly social animal. He used to walk to town in the afternoons, just to see what was going on, and often had dinner with the Emersons or his mother and sister.

  After the main house was constructed, I eventually ran an electric line out to the cabin to supply the place with light, although it still had no other modern conveniences. As the years passed, the little studio became a guesthouse of sorts. Certain visitors, family included, actually prefer staying there, in spite of the relatively primitive conditions. And sometimes in summer my wife and I still sleep there in the loft.

  You’re closer to the world in diminutive houses of this type, closer to the natural cycles of the seasons and the comings and goings of the night visitors. Not a mouse passes in the forest behind the house but we hear the patter and rustle of its footsteps. And in late summer the night world is loud with insect calls, the nightlong hooting of barred owls, and the occasional yowling of coyote packs.

  Such is the wildness that preserves the world. In it is solace for our time.

  Author’s Note

  The events described in this book occurred in what we in the West, by collective agreement, refer to as the past. I have a good memory for past events, but I do not accept entirely the normal constraints of time and space. The past is an ill-perceived, even controversial state, and it is not necessarily compatible with absolute truth—if there is such a thing. So if I got things mixed up in this book, if I have somehow seen, in an otherwise unremarkable landscape, a mystic forest in which bears and Indians and events long past seem to coexist with industrial parks and superhighways, then I say blame the confusion of time. I am only setting down here what I perceived to be true during the year in which I lived in that forest, successfully disguised to the world as a normal twentieth-century man.

  Having said that, I want to take this opportunity to either thank or apologize to a number of people involved in the production of this book. I am grateful to the people at the Thoreau Lyceum in Concord for their help in the preparation of the Thoreau material, in particular Anne McGrath and her staff. And I would especially like to thank Thomas Blanding and Edmund A. Schofield for reading and correcting parts of the manuscript. I am also grateful to Brenda Palmucci for her laborious typing, Harry Foster for his laborious editing, and, finally, William Reiss for his constant endurance.

  Certain friends, allies, and acquaintances helped with the construction of my cottage and lent certain hand tools, which I hope I have returned in reasonably good condition.

  Finally, I want to apologize to those who appear in this account for any liberties, intentional or unintentional, that I may have taken with the stories of their lives. Those who still count themselves among the living will know what I mean; the others probably won’t care.

  Living at the End of Time

  1

  Uncommon Ground

  JUST TO THE EAST of Beaver Brook, in an area known to geologists as the Schooly Penaplain, there is a low ridge that rises from the swampy shores of a small lake and runs south-southeast for half a mile or so. Coming on that place from any of the four quarters of the globe, you would not say that it was in any way unique. To the east, a patchwork of overgrown hay fields rolls up from the flood plain of the brook; to the west and south, sheep pastures, hay fields, and plots of vegetables rise to the forested higher ground; and on the north you can see a dark woods of oak and pine and hemlock. Except for the fact that the aspect of the place is generally rural and pleasing to the eye, the area is not unlike a thousand similar ridges that interlace the coastal plain of New England.

  I once spent a year living in a small cottage I built on the eastern slope of that ridge. The place was hardly new territory for me; I had already lived on the hill for some fifteen years before I built my small house. But the more I got to know the land in that area, the more I walked the woods and the edges of the fields, the more the ridge drew me in. The place became a center for me, the very core of my personal universe; it seemed impossible for me to live a full life anywhere else. The world was unbounded there, as if all experience, all history, had somehow concentrated itself in this singular spot. I was forever stumbling on new adventures, new landscapes, and improbable occurrences. The ridge invited improbability.

  In the woods behind my cottage the land broke into a series of small, angled valleys and deep hollows. Here, a century ago, there were three or four farms, and in the deeper woods I would find sad little remembrances of past lives—dooryard lilacs, beds of daffodils, irises, and lonely stands of poppies and peonies. I discovered running walls, old foundations, the skeletons of cars and farm wagons and hay rakes. There were owls and coyotes, foxes and eagles and hawks, and it seemed to me that even wilder things could be found if one bothered to look—fishers, bobcats, bears, perhaps even Indians. It was a haunted land, deserted now, unlived in, unloved, untracked, and as yet undiscovered by the working population of the community in which the ridge was located.

  I used to have experiences in that forest that did not make sense, that didn’t mesh with our vision of the way the world is supposed to operate here in the rational, scientific West, Inside the depths of the woods things seemed to change overnight. An old wagon road at the bottom of the ridge, deserted since 1893, would alter its course of its own volition. A huge oak tree near the road would shift periodically and reappear somewhere else. There was an Indian burial ground among some boulders on the western slope of the ridge; people used to say that well into this century Pawtucket Indians could be seen in that part of the woods. The ghost of a soldier, slain in King Philip’s War in 1676, used to appear on the ridge. Once, a hundred and fifty years ago, the last bear in the region was killed in a hemlock grove on the north slope, not far from my cottage. It was said that after it died, it came to life again and, just before it expired for the second time, turned itself into an Indian.

  I never knew who I would meet in the woods. Once, years ago, I encountered a man there who dressed in the skins and furs of wild animals and claimed to subsist by hunting and gathering. I would occasionally see a family of serious-looking people dressed in corduroy, picking mushrooms in the woods. They turned out to be Eastern Europeans, immigrants who maintained
a self-sufficient small farm in a four-acre clearing just south of the lake. Nearby lived a woman who would always dress impeccably to do her gardening work and spoke with a clipped Anglo-American accent. Her land was a veritable Eden of blossoming flowers, trees, and shrubs; it used to be said in the town that she had the ability to make plants flourish by simply staring at them. Occasionally I would see her in the woods as well, always under unusual circumstances.

  One afternoon in September I was crossing a meadow just below the hickory grove where I eventually built my cottage when I heard a tiny bell ring out from the grasses beside one of the stone walls that interlace the ridge. I listened for a second or two and then realized that the bell was nothing more than the singing of a meadow cricket, not an uncommon sound in September in this part of the world. But as I stood there, I noticed that other crickets were calling in the meadow, and that they were singing with far more intensity than they normally would do. The volume increased until the sound was almost deafening; the high, insistent ringing filled the space above the grasses; it shimmered in the upper air; it surged against the wall of woods beyond the stone walls and rolled back on itself. Crickets were everywhere; I had never heard such wild singing. And then, in the midst of this frenetic calling, the sun flashed and the forest wall turned an impenetrable black. I had a sense that something momentous was about to happen. The inner nature of the ridge, the nature of reality, perhaps, was about to reveal itself to me. In the dark interior of the woods I could see moving shapes. Birds flew past. Branches swayed in spite of the stillness, and I thought I saw something large rise up from behind the stone wall and lumber off into the obscurity of the deeper woods.

  I went after it. I crossed the wall and walked a few yards into the trees; but as soon as I stepped into the shaded interior, the crickets in the meadow behind me fell silent. A long corridor of flat ground opened in front of me, carpeted with partridgeberry and mayflower, and at the end of the hall of trees I saw the figure of a woman in a print dress holding a white rabbit in her arms. She appeared to be fifty-five or sixty, and had her gray hair tied in a bun at the back of her neck. She turned and looked at me directly. Then she gathered her rabbit closer to her and walked away.