Happy Fifth Anniversary, My Love

Thank you for being my wife, Julie.  The Permavegan wouldn't be possible, or worth doing at all, without you by my side. You give as much of yourself to this as I do; you are the other half of the partnership spirit that is at the heart of this blog.  I can't wait for us to start making it a two-part harmony - maybe in 2011?  Your voice is as important as mine to this healing song we are singing. 

I have it on reliable word that

"the strength of your marriage bond is represented by the traditional gift of wood for your fifth anniversary. Wood is strong and long-lasting...Ways to Celebrate Your 5th Anniversary: plant a tree together...Remodel your closet so it is cedar-lined...Put together a road map describing a trip to take together where there are forests."



I guess we planted a tree or two together this year, didn't we?





The clothes-closet remodel is coming along, 





and God knows this blog is my road map to a place where there are forests. 
For us and for them.  Take a walk down memory lane with me, Julie.
Take a journey that begins and ends in this little stand of sugar maple heaven
that we like so much up here in the County.




It's a piece of heaven you and I know well,
and it's part of the New England-Acadian Forest ecoregion
that we share with bear, beaver, bobcat, coyote,
deer, eagle, hare, moose, porcupine, racoon
and many other animal species.

 



Not long after we first fell in love back in the spring of 2003,
I took you on a hike up Buck Mountain,
on the shores of Lake George in northeastern New York.



  



I told you that I'd spent my childhood summers at Lake George;
that I'd climbed Buck Mountain as a five-year old;
and that I'd never stopped dreaming of a life in the north woods.



You led us north after graduate school,
and five years ago today,
at our first Maine home together in Augusta,
we were joined in marriage.



For our honeymoon, we snowshoed out to the camp your parents built,
where you showed me all the moxie,





heart and beauty of an English-French-Wolastoqiyik lineage
that has loved the New England-Acadian Forest
for more than a hundred generations,
bending each year under the cold winter wind and snow,
but growing ever stronger through the hardship.





We studied global warming in the spring of 2006,





And peak oil in the summer,





before choosing a critical path of energy descent



to an eagle's perch in Aroostook, homeland of the Wolastoqiyik,
"People of the Beautiful River."



There we got the lay of the land





and soaked up some sun;





I did some bonding with your father,





and you showed me the mountain you climbed as a girl
(Katahdin from the north ascent of Pamola).





We took our next big leap together in 2007, when I left my job as a therapist to start
preparing our home economy for the Great Turning.  We created an employment
vacancy for someone else; sold the second car; and started looking for a
handyman special - a bikeable, skiable, walkable, and telecommutable
distance from your outpatient office.





We found a place four miles from downtown Presque Isle, on five acres of long-idled
farmland with a gentle slope to the south.  We moved in late September of 2008,
and I started the first phase of a veganic permaculture retrofit that same week. 
In the process of tearing off the west porch, we learned the house used to be a granary,
and was probably built in the late 1800s - a fairly early structure in Aroostook County.





You took over most of the cooking, started studying plant-based nutrition,
and jumped right in when I needed a little help on the retrofit - even when it meant assistance as I dug out
the north and west foundation walls to lay insulation, drain tile, and gravel.





And remember helping me get the exterior curtain wall insulated and covered with Typar
just as the first really hard winter winds started to blow in?





I began tackling the second story north interior in the spring of 2009,





which originally looked like this;




gutted down to this;





framed back up to this;





and superinsulated to this  -





allowing us to get completely off oil this winter, even before we've started work on
the south half and added the sun porch on the east and the greenhouse on the south.





We've still got a lot of work ahead - on the soil, the gardens, the trees, the house,
your clinical practice, our community public health advocacy, and here on The Permavegan.



But my ecstasy is in the laundry,




and beneath the flowering plum;





it's in the views from Haystack Mountain,





the trees of health we plant at home,





and the trees we plant with friends in Aroostook County's
wellness and healthcare community (thanks for the great photo, Katie!)





It's a privilege to be with you on this journey, Julie, through the forests and fields of Aroostook,
where we stand with the trees for the people of Maine
on the eve of the Great Turning.



Happy Fifth Anniversary, My Love.  Here's to another incredible five years, and to many more thereafter.