Farewell to My Hills

This will be short since I’m composing on an iPad keyboard which is not fun. I’m on the plane on the way back from West Virginia where I had a wonderful time with my mother and my sister. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Did you know that the iPad has an auto-fill feature whereby if you type a word, it suggests your next words for you? Then, if you select one of these, it pops up word choices for the following word, and the one after, and so on. You can type an entire sentence using these auto-fill prompts. Here’s one: I’m so tired of this month in which the government has been in a row and I don’t think that the company has been the best thing ever.

No, never mind; I can’t type a blog entry on an iPad screen, even though I’m mortifyingly bored. This will have to wait till I have keyboard and mouse.

Next day, at my home computer…

Well, I had just a wonderful though all-too-short trip East. Here’s how it unfolded.

Thursday

Thursday night I flew into Philadelphia, arriving almost an hour late. There, I was met by Jack Quinn, a former major-league baseball player, but I didn’t find that out till later. Small (Mom) and Stella were awaiting me. Clumps of hair were falling out of Stella’s shedding undercoat, but Mom’s fur looked fine. She did, however, look very tired since it was way past her bedtime. We talked till quarter to one, at which point she retired, and I soon after.

Friday

I was awoken by the scent of bacon, followed by the appearance of Small at my door bearing the source of the scent, along with a cup of tea. What a way to wake up. Later I followed Small around as she did errands. For the first time in my life, I didn’t add anything to the cart at Janssen’s, a high-end grocery store that has fabulous stuff. We bought fresh shrimp and Emmentaler cheese, so what more could I want anyway? That night we dined at the old Greenville Country Club, where I inhaled a crab salad and organic salmon and French fries and asparagus and some really rich chocolate cake. Before we left, I proceeded, as is my ritual, to the ladies’ room from which I stole a stack of monogrammed paper towels.

Saturday

Once again I was fed in bed by my mother. What a treat. We gathered our things for our drive to West Virginia, and arrived at the kennel promptly at 9:00, only to find it didn’t open till 10:00. Annoying. At Ma’s prompting, we played word games as we waited: one of us names a state and the other has to think of a state that begins with the last letter. Did you know that a whole lot of states end with “a” but few begin with it? We played for countries and famous people too, and finally the hour was up. The drive to WV was long—about the distance from the Bay Area to LA—but we made good time and arrived six hours later, in time to see Ryan for a few minutes before he had to go home. When Kate and Ned returned, we ate chicken cordon bleu (which I pronounce bleh).

Sunday

In the afternoon, Ned left for his week of truck driving. I didn’t get to see him enough. After his departure, Katie and I jumped into the Kubota—an all-terrain-vehicle—and bounced down to the ponds.

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We parked and set off through the woods on foot, accompanied by Amos, the Kiblers’ very frightened dog. As I was merrily minding my own business, soaking in the beauty of the dappled forest, Katie shrieked and came barreling at me, smashing into me. A snake in our path had caused her erratic behavior. The next mishap occurred as we entered the great meadow. I put my foot in a groundhog hole and my ankle started to roll, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. It was rather entertaining, though that was the second wrench of my aged back of the day.

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Katie and Ned have done an incredible job maintaining the farm, mowing hundreds of acres of fields. But their tractor lost a wheel and has been out of commission, so the back holler was seriously overgrown, so much so that it was hard to find the old road. As we approached the McMillion house we had to resort to some serious bushwhacking.

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We’d brought a gun in our backpack to scare any aggressive wildlife we might encounter—last time Katie was back there, she was growled at by a mountain lion—but no creature made itself known to us, though I suspect one might have been watching as we tunneled through the brush.

We picked through the remains of McMillion, still standing after all these years, though the front porch—where we used to sit, listen to Handel’s Water Music and watch the mist roll in—is gone.

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We wondered if the wood upstairs was wormy chestnut. The jury is out. Using a metal bit from the old stove, Katie pried a window out of its socket and I knocked the remaining glass out.

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We shouldered the frame and hauled it the mile-plus back to the ATV.

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The walk was painful, much less physically than emotionally. It may be my last time ever to see the Blue Hole, where for years I believed I would build a house.

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I may never again go into Spout Cave with its underground creek, where we took our Christmas card picture in 1969. I should have gone in one last time, but I just passed it by, as I did a hundred other sights that are deeply engraved in my memory.

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We’re in the process of putting the farm on the market, because it’s just too much to keep up. It has to be done, I realize, but it breaks my heart.

Monday

After Katie left for work I hiked all the way down the steep hill to the old Boothe home place.

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Half a mile down, the old road is completely overgrown with briers, and inaccessible. I walked till I could walk no further. The overgrowth was a good deal taller than I, and every step I took I had to smash it down with my foot before I could move forward. That got old so I made my way back up the beautiful and precipitous hill. I tried to take pictures that would capture the ruggedness and steepness of the terrain, but the photos just flatten everything, and don’t begin to capture the depth.

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After I plucked the brambles off of my entire cuerpo, I accompanied Small on a couple errands. That night there was a lovely thunderstorm that knocked the power out.

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Tuesday

Today I didn’t get to explore the farm, first because we had a lot of errands to do in town and second because it started raining hard. We signed some legal papers, including a contract with the real estate agent handling the sale of the farm. Mom bought both her girls almost-matching pocketbooks. For lunch I—ever the Californian—bought a Mandarin chicken salad, while my companions headed to Jim’s Diner for a drive-up egg-white sandwich and a Coney Island hotdog. We paid a visit to Dad at the church.

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I should have taken more pictures of Maw.

Finally we hit up the second-hand stores for stuff to put in the house Clifford used to live in, just below Katie’s house. Mom calls it “The Doghouse” and she and Kate have named each room after a type of hound. The two of them, especially with Katie’s labor, have taken a dark and dreary abode and made it nice enough that I wish I could live there. My contribution was to pick out two lamps and a table.

The view from the deck always lifts my spirits.

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Wednesday

Katie left for work at 7:30. Two hours later, Mom departed for Delaware. To drown my sorrows, I threw on my hiking shoes and descended yet another side of the hilltop, down to Ginna Valley.

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Amos followed me, circling me from a safe distance and running away if I looked at him or got too close. He desperately wants human companionship but is afraid of it. I’m like that too. I walked down the valley to the cove above which I’ve always wanted to put up a house—something I honestly believed I’d do one day—and then climbed the steep terrain back to the house through the woods.

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Katie got home around 2:30 and we took a mini-hike through Kate’s Field and the woods that border it, all the way to the edge of the property. I love the limestone outcroppings there.

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Kate thought she saw another snake but she was hallucinating.

After dark we watched Bernie with Jack Black and Shirley Maclean. Katie mixed red and white wine, embellished with bits of cork, to odd effect.

Thursday

I can’t believe the trip is over. In the morning I had a last chance to visit some part of the farm, but I didn’t seize the opportunity because I was worried I wouldn’t get back in time, though I didn’t have to be at the airport till 1:45. I regret not making a final pass over some favorite terrain. Instead, we packed up and headed one last time off the hill. We went into town to do some errands and then Katie drove me to the Greenbrier. She bought me a yummy lunch of crab salad and French fries with cheese and bacon. There were certain things on her plate that she didn’t want to eat, so she arranged them neatly around the edge, to the amusement of the wait staff.

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I’ve gained five pounds since I got here. We stopped in the Greenbrier bathroom, from whence I stole more monogrammed paper towels, and whose stalls are not meant for tall people.

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We bought some Christmas cards and party-poppers, again KT’s treat, and eventually made our way to the teeny airport with loads of time to spare. Though this airport is the size of your little fingernail, they made me pass through security a full half-hour before boarding, so I bade a sad farewell to KT long before I should have had to. Though we couldn’t see or talk to each other, she waited for me to board the plane. I could see her standing behind the fence on the runway. She gave me the big wave of her arms that Dad always used to do when I would leave. I crossed the tarmac and climbed the skinny metal stairs into the plane, giving my beloved sister one final glance.

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The rest of the trip was boring. I had a tight connection in Washington Dulles, but it worked out fine. I don’t know why, no matter where I’m sitting on the plane, I’m always in the last boarding group, the one from whom the gate agents take carry-ons and check them. I fought it this time and found the last overhead spot to stash it. Our plane was late, but Molly was perfectly punctual in picking me up in San Francisco, welcome indeed, since I had to be at work first thing in the morning.

When I got home around 10:00, I found a newsletter e-mail from the executive director at Berkeley Humane, which talked about all the goings-on at the place over the past month, including this:

Ginna Allison has joined us as part-time Community Outreach Coordinator. Ginna’s combined skills from three successful careers in administration, education, and communication will be a great fit for her role supporting our Mobile Adoption Outreach, PAWS, and Pet Food Pantry programs. She will coordinate the volunteer teams for all of these programs under the supervision of Dana Bushouse, our Volunteer Manager. Please join me in welcoming Ginna to Berkeley!

I went to work this morning and my boss said I was “competent,” which made me very happy. That was after I’d spent most of the day in the warehouse hauling 50-pound bags of dogfood around.

4 comments

  1. Great writing and great pictures! But — you WILL be there and see all those places again, even if the land is sold!

  2. Reading this, now I want Granny’s bacon too. I want it very much.

    I love the idea of you and Kate hauling that giant window all the way back to the farm. You brave and stubborn souls.

    I know you told me about all of the trip already in person, but it is nevertheless a delight to read all about it too. What a wonderful time—and I do love your photos, as well.

    It sounds like a bittersweet sort-of-farewell, but it does seem like it did justice to the Farm.

    Wuv.

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