“Only through a change within will there be a change without. Even if it is sometimes slow in following, it will never fail to arrive.”
-Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation
On any other day, or in any other weather, this "road" would've given me pause. Slick red clay sucked at my tires as I bounced through potholes so big you could baptize a baby in them. I've turned back from roads less harrowing than this one without a second thought; still, I ventured on.
"Follow the road all the way back - it's nine-tenths of a mile from the turn-off," Jeremiah had explained to me over the phone. Based on what little I knew about this guy, I wasn't sure what I could expect to find there at the end when the road gave out. Uphill and down, around clear-cut fields and past rusted tangles of hogwire just visible through the treeline, I bounced along and wondered (yet again) if I was even in the right place. Passing by a dilapidated old house, I remembered a "game" my urban explorer friends and I would play when scoping out locations: "Abandoned...or Shitty?" Admittedly, it wasn't the most PC pastime but, to be fair, sometimes it's really hard to tell, especially once you venture out into Rural America.
Please don't be it...please don't be it.
(Source: The author's own)
Beyond the sagging house, the road continued to snake gradually upward for another few tenths of a mile before cresting a ridge. Even in the dead of winter, it was a stunning sight. Stretching toward the horizon rolled acre after acre of the deciduous woods and pasture-covered hills for which Virginia is known. Hanging a sharp left at the top of the ridge and passing through a rusted bull gate toward the valley below, I caught a glimpse of solar panels in the distance and let out a sign of relief. Nothing puts the liberal mind at ease more than the sight of renewable energy deep in the heart of red country (rest easy friend; here be environmentalists). One panel became two; two become four; another row emerged and then, finally, a house from behind them. A single-story log cabin nestled in a field, painted a brilliant carmine red like a cardinal roosting in a gray winter forest.
Much better.
(Source: The author's own)
As I pulled up, a lean, gray-haired man with a mustache, flannel shirt and tattered baseball cap gave me a quick wave from the porch - this must be Jeremiah. Likely due to both his name and the fact that he had, at one point during our email correspondence, asked how I felt about wood stoves, I just automatically assumed he was Amish (Halifax, Virginia is home to a small Amish community, so in my mind that seemed like a reasonable assumption).
No sooner than I was out of the truck, he had me following him across his front yard to a small open air shed, with what looked like a crudely-constructed hot tub directly in the center. It was clearly some kind of DIY project, though for what purpose I couldn't guess. Clumps of spray foam sealant oozed from from various joints and a half dozen or so copper pipes dangled from below the roof, dipping just below the lip of the "tub." Inside, a black polyethylene liner formed a watertight basin, not unlike the above ground pond I had in my backyard in Nashville.
"It's the holding tank for my radiant solar collectors," he explained, gesturing up to a row of eight large panels beside us. Each was bolted atop a sturdy hardwood frame and angled toward the sun. "Each of those panels has a series of tubes running through them in a circuit; they come out of the tank here, pass through the panels where they're heated by the sun and then deposit incredibly hot water back into the tank. Once it's up and running, I'll be able to pump this water into the house and use it to heat the shower, dishwasher - you name it. That way, we're reducing the load on the solar panels here. Speaking of, do you want to see the battery bank?"
Um, hell yes I want to see the battery bank.
Minutes later, we were in the crawlspace under his house as he's showing me a refrigerator-sized metal cabinet with row after row of deep-cycle marine batteries. A rat's nest of colorful wires connected each battery to its neighbor before snaking out the back of the cabinet, up to the floor joists above us and off into the house. As Jeremiah enthusiastically explained the nuances of his system to me, throwing about electrical terms that sailed well over my head, I came to two conclusions: 1.) This guy is clearly not Amish and 2.) We were going to get along famously. A man who introduces you to his projects before introducing you to his spouse is someone I can relate to.
As I exited the crawlspace into the brisk winter air, looking down carefully so as not to trip over the threshold, a scrap of wood suddenly appeared at my feet. It was the mitered corner of a two-by-four, heavily gnawed around the edges and covered in drool. I glanced up to see a bright-eyed border collie starring back at me with a look of eager intelligence.
I picked up the block and chucked it off into the woods. "That's Buck," Jeremiah said. "Our other dog, Nickel, is around here somewhere. He's older, so you might not see much of him."
I laughed. Nickel and Buck? Surely that was intentional.
"Oh it was," he said. "Our first dog was named Penny." A rimshot sounded somewhere in the distance.
Jeremiah led me around to the front of the house, walking briskly but with a tight-shouldered stoop, as if shaped by a lifetime of hunching over tiny circuits and wires. I glanced over at the solar collectors again as we passed – they were held in place by some seriously sturdy heartwood timbers, which appeared to have been assembled by hand. The guy may be retired but he could still throw some weight around.
As I stepped into the living room and shed my coat, I felt a sudden serenity, as though all of my senses had been calmed at once. The warm, earthy scent of a wood-burning stove filled the room, emanating from a central stone fireplace. Folksy prints and colorful country knick-knacks hung from the golden cedar walls. Two sofas, back-to-back, sat in the center of the space – one facing the stove and the other toward a wall of houseplants in front of the picture windows.
What struck me first, however, was the Buddhist shrine visible directly in front of the door as I walked in. A set of decorative shelves about six feet high, arranged in a spiral pillar of oxidized-copper. Each shelf contained a carefully curated assortment of Eastern idols and trinkets – jade beads, lotus flowers and Buddha figurines. A strand of prayer flags adorned the top, just below the trailing vines of a golden ivy plant. I wondered if this alter might have been subconsciously responsible for the peaceful feeling I experienced walking in. Maybe that's what they were going for.
(Source: The author's own)
From the kitchen, situated at the rear of the house behind the massive fireplace, a woman who I assumed to be Jeremiah's wife approached me with a welcoming smile. He introduced her as Huong Lien (just “Lien” for short). She spoke with a heavy Vietnamese accent, gesturing enthusiastically as she spoke. Wearing her hospitality with pride, she launched into an explanation of dinner plans and encouraged me to make myself at home. In a place that cozy, it would be hard not to.
That evening, over a made-from-scratch dinner of chicken soup, salad and sourdough bread, Jeremiah and Lien reminisced to me about a trip they took together twenty five years ago for their honeymoon. With more than a hint of the familiar, I listened to them explain how they converted the back of their pickup truck into something halfway sleepable and drove it across the US. What a feeling that must have been - young and proud, getting to show off your new spouse to folks all over the country? I hung on their every word. After volunteering to take care of the dishes (by hand – there wasn't enough solar energy stored to run the dishwasher), I retired to the guest room to catch up on some writing.
Like most of the house, this room also radiated with the soft warmth of cedar logs above, beside and below me - even the furniture was a golden yellow to match. I felt like a cigar in a humidor. As I laid in the bed that night, with Gabby snoring rhythmically beside me, I stared up at the ceiling and thought back to the various people I'd met during my travels, both on this trip and ones past, who had, themselves, taken a transformative road trip in their youth. Every one of them spoke of it as a defining point in their lives. When we swap stories, there's always a hunger to our words, like a dog breaking free from his leash, finally allowed to run free to wherever his nose takes him. That is the freedom we feel when we drive and the vigor that pushes us to keep going when the going gets rough. Or ruff, if you want to keep with the dog metaphor.
With a snort, Gabby kicked at my hip and brought me back to the present. Her dreams are more frequent now, I've noticed; there's more running and less barking. I hope that means she's enjoying herself.
The next morning, as the sun set to work burning off the fog that had rolled across the farm from the hills above during the night, I curled up on one of the sofas in the living room – the one facing the picture windows, themselves facing the front yard and solar panels beyond – and opened a new book. Having already tuned into the calming effect of these kindred spirits and their country haven, it seemed fitting to begin a new book: "The Heart of Buddhist Meditation: The Buddha's Way of Mindfulness" by Nyanaponika Thera. If I'm going to be a wandering hippie vagabond, I might as well pull out all the stops, right?
"Only through a change within will there be a change without. Even if it is sometimes slow in forming, it will never fail to arrive. If there is a strong and well-ordered inner centre in our mind, any confusion at the periphery will gradually be dissolved and the peripheral forces will spontaneously...hey!"
A slobbery piece of wood dropped into my lap. As I lifted my gaze to meet his, Buck's entire body broke into a wiggling wag.
"HELLO GOOD MORNING THIS IS FOR YOU"
(Source: The author's own)
I've never been one for religion but there's something inherently spiritual about looking into the eyes of a border collie whose entire universe is centered around whatever it is you're about to throw for him. I tossed the scrap across the floor, where it skidded to a stop at Jeremiah's foot as he walked in through the front door.
"Do you know how to use a soldering gun?" he asked. I replied that I did not. "Come on, I'll teach you. We're going to add a couple of thermistors to the solar collector." I didn't know what that meant but I was excited to find out.
From atop the weathered scaffolding, I zip-tied the thermistor to a copper pine, jutting out of the solar collector beside me. A portmanteau of “thermal” and “resistor,” this little sensor would provide feedback on the temperature of the hot water as it exited the collector and moved into the holding tank below. I meticulously guided the sensor cable down along the collector's support structure, zip-tying it in place as I went. After maybe two hours of “work,” Jeremiah turned me lose, saying that was all he had for me today since the forecast called for possible rain showers. Really, that's it? It hardly seemed fair – I wanted to earn my keep. I told him as much.
“I suppose if you're up for some bushwhacking, you could go replace my property markers. I try to do it once a year around this time – fewer snakes.” He handed me a roll of pink surveyor's tape. “Take this and just retie any marker you come across. If you ride the four-wheeler out to the gas easement, it shouldn't take you more than two or three hours. You know how to use a four-wheeler, right?”
I feigned offense.“Whaaaa? Of course I know how to use a four-wheeler!”
I did not, in fact, know how to use a four-wheeler. But hey, I owned a motorcycle for a while - I figured it couldn't be that hard.
“Great. Grab one of the orange hats from the hall closet so you don't get shot and have a good time.”
After several minutes of trying to start the damn thing, I was racing across the rolling fields of the Virginia Piedmont with a pack of dogs in my wake, trying to hold down my bright orange baseball cap in the wind.
Not getting shot, courtesy of Ray's Key & Lock
(Source: The author's own)
When I came to the bull gate at the edge of the gas line easement, I parked the four-wheeler, hopped over the gate and tromped into the woods. Following a rocky creek along the north end of the property, the dogs and I clambered around fallen trees and thick drifts of rye grass, with the pups taking frequent detours into the creek to play. The forest was sparse and quiet, save for the sporadic beech rattling its dried leaves in the breeze and the hollow knocking of a woodpecker. Every few hundred feet, Buck would deposit a pine cone at my feet and drop to his belly, waiting for me to take a hint.
*fetching intensifies*
(Source: The author's own)
Deeper into the woods, I stumbled across the rusting hull of an RV trailer – probably an old hunting outpost. I peaked inside. Bird nests spilled from the cabinets and a sizable snake skin stretched across the burner knobs on a compact stove. The smell of rotting wood and flurocarbons hung heavy on the air. I moved on.
Replacing a few markers here and there as I went, we walked the perimeter of the property – all fifty-one acres of it – without incident, aside from briefly sending the four-wheeler careening into a grove of saplings when I forgot for a split-second how brakes work.
That evening, Lien prepared phở tái from scratch and I can say with reasonable confidence it was the best phở I've ever tasted. After hand-washing the dishes, I retired to the kitchen table to knock out some trip planning logistics. From behind the stone fireplace, I heard Lien laughing quietly between half-hearted “Noooo's.” I leaned over to see her trying to knit a pair of socks with a fifty pound dog in her lap – my fifty pound dog. Gabby cocked her head back at me, as if to say “We're going to be here for a while, right?” Not long enough, I'm afraid. I tried to shoo her away but Lien didn't seem to mind.
The following morning, with the threat of rain no longer in the forecast, Jeremiah and I decided to get an early start on a different project – one that I'd been eager to help with ever since he pointed it out during his tour of the house.
If you'll recall, he and Lien keep a set of shelves with various Buddhist icons in their living room, front and center as you walk in. Jeremiah had explained previously that, when she visits, Lien's mother uses the shrine for prayer and meditation. Needless to say, trying to find one's well-ordered inner center is probably difficult when you're kneeling halfway between the drafty front door and the kitchen. So, as a solution to this issue of space, they decide to build an addition on to their back porch – a ten foot by ten foot room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the forest and pastures that surround their home (with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Jeremiah refers to it as “the Buddha Hut”).
While most of the structural work was being handled by a local Amish contractor and his crew, Jeremiah and I would be spending the next couple of days fitting the exterior with cladding left over from the construction of his house. Perched atop a folding latter, itself balanced precariously over a rickety set of scaffolding we'd assembled at the base of the structure, we took turns fastening row after row of cedar cladding to the exterior walls – one of us would cut the boards to size while the other fastened them in place with a pneumatic nail gun. We seemed to work well together, settling into a productive rhythm that allowed us to make up for lost time from the previous day's looming rain clouds. Jeremiah was a patient teacher and a good foreman – he struck that perfect balance between offering guidance without micromanaging and trusting me to get the job done, at times unsupervised for several hours. I recall one point - when I was up near the eaves of the “hut,” some fifteen feet over the lawn below – feeling completely validated in my decision to take a sabbatical from my desk job life. A breathtaking view, 70s classic rock on the stereo below me and a dangerous power tool in my hand – that was my meditation. Buddha would be proud.
From Left: The author, Jeremiah and Buck
(Source: The author's own)
Following dinner that night, the three of us retired to the living room – me with my laptop on one sofa and Jeremiah and Lien on the other, with their backs to me. We talked about a little bit of everything – from our conflicting views of cell phone towers disguised as trees (Jeremiah being pro and me against) to our similar political views and the general good-nature of mankind. They really are just the loveliest people. There's something about that sofa orientation that encourages you to open up more – it's like lying on a therapist's couch, speaking to someone nearby that you can't see. I made a mental note that I should try a similar setup in my own house one day. We soon turned to the subject of youth and uncertainty – it seems Jeremiah as a young man was not too dissimilar from me, always striving in some way or another to prove himself to himself. As John Denver's “Thank God I'm a Country Boy” filled the room with the sound of fiddles and the toe-tapping beat of a stand up bass, Jeremiah hummed along behind me as Lien knitted in time. I tapped my bare feet along, enjoying their company. Though it was my last night in Halifax, I didn't want to leave.
Staying with Jeremiah and Lien showed me what a near-perfect WWOOFing experience could be – comfortable conversation with a generous family, meaningful work and a well-earned feeling of serenity and accomplishment. Having said our goodbyes, I climbed into my truck and took a brief moment to reflect on my surroundings and mental state; it's a mindfulness technique I'm trying to make habit – to be more cognizant of my feelings at any given moment. I gazed out the window, through a wooded patch of sweetgum saplings and broomsedge. As the young trees shuddered naked in the wind, I felt a similar sense of exposure in myself, like this winter was stripping me down and building something else in its place, though I'm not sure yet what form that new growth will take. My soul feels a little more full these days; my mind, a little more settled.
“Only through a change within will there be a change without. Even if it is sometimes slow in following, it will never fail to arrive.”
Bouncing up the driveway toward the ridge, I glanced back in the rear-view mirror. With a pine cone inches away from his nose, Buck crouched on his belly and watched as I drove away.
"HELLO GOODBYE THIS IS STILL FOR YOU."
(Source: The author's own)
CWO