My Happy Place

“Why did you come to Willits?” asks the bartender at Diggers, a bar named thusly because the owners also own the Willits cemetery.

“I am a forest witch and I want to eat fresh fruit, attend festivals and hang out with my people.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” the bartender smiles and slides me a frothy IPA. I clink beers with my man and then he proceeds to win four pool games in a row, but how we laughed made it all worthwhile.

I am in my happy place when I am snuggled into the Hollows. Life feels closer, more real. Our home is 800 square feet on 44 acres with a coastal breeze and a southeastern view of 20,000 acres of privately own forest. We watched a bear from our kitchen window while drinking coffee one morning. Later in the afternoon, we found the bear den in a burned-out redwood tree. I thought the Fairy Ring of ten or so redwood trees could be my ritual spot, but the place is already holy ground.

In this visit we have tackled an amazing amount of projects:

1.       We removed plastic nets and the dowels, held by eye-hooks from the ceiling that the former owners used to dry Cannabis. This 400sf back room is now our bedroom/living room. Joey put in two windows that look out onto a fern grotto because our first two visits felt like we were sleeping in a gambrel-styled container, except for the bad drywall job that I have covered with tapestries. You could not see your hand in front of your face and had to trust the motion detector light to go on before you ran into the wooden beam in the middle of the room. (I’ve covered the beam with a scarf to soften the blow in case of the accidental collision). Next is a sliding glass door onto a deck. I am so excited about this! 

2.       Our sweet cottage is at the end of a two-mile dirt and gravel timber road that Joey is repairing with the wisdom of 25 years at CalTrans. We have whacked the weeds growing in the middle and sides of the road before they become brush, a dangerous fire hazard to drive over in summer.  He piled the big rocks over the potholes filled with rainwater, then the little rocks on top so the water drains better. I did the same thing to create a step off the front porch. Joey improved the old timber road for nearly quarter of a mile with French drains, ditch lines, and rock bridges. I never knew road maintenance could be so sexy until I watched my man haul the tenth wheel barrel of dirt and rocks, all glistening. 

3.       Over the last three trips, we unplugged the irrigation, removed t-bars, pulled weeds, and turned over the soil from 60 grow pots. This trip, I shoveled dirt from the majority of the pots which we raked into mounds for a garden of wildflowers and formed a spiral path to the center where we will make a stone-built firepit.

4.       We discovered that it takes about a gallon of frozen water per day to keep the icebox cold. Joey is going to create a container that perfectly fits the shelf for ice because one large block holds it temperature longer than one-gallon jugs.

5.       We painted the door turquoise and created a sweet garden right off the porch that I can easily tend and feed the morning’s coffee grounds. Last visit, we planted rosemary, calendula, lavender and chamomile. I was thrilled to see that had all grown in our two-week absence. We added holly, rose geranium and red clover to the garden and they all got a good raining so I am hopeful they will do well. The plan to plant lavender all over the house to keep the ticks away.  I’ll transform the hill I look out upon from kitchen window or porch from grow pots into a vegetable and herb garden. I will forest bathe every day.

I returned to our cottage one afternoon after weed whacking a path in the tall grass to my chair where I get one bar for morning texts. I sat down on the deck and a tick fell onto my writing desk. Joey said we had to kill the tick or it would jump on us and he described the whole bloody mess. He told me how to roll my thumbnail over the bug until I heard a pop. I couldn’t do it at first, but then I thought of a Waldorf mom who had gotten Lyme disease and was afraid to go outside afterwards. So, I rolled my nail over the tick and literally screamed when I heard the loud pop of the bug’s protective shell cracking. Then we laughed.
My happy place is always where love and laughter live.