Mietzke's Holden Adventure

It is Monday evening and I am out of the village for a few days to go to a doctor’s appointment for my ears. I have not been able to hear very well since I got sick in March and my ears have been painful. So, anyway I am staying at the Holden B&B and helping to prepare for the opening on Friday for the beginning of the May Youth Weekend. Dave is also out for the bus driver training course and the kids stayed in the village with our friend Gail who is our adopted village grandma.
I came down on the boat on Sunday and drove to Seattle to say good bye to our friends Keith, Karen, and Lyla who are moving to San Diego on Wednesday. The drive was amazing! The sun was shining most of the way and it is so springy and beautiful down here! There were flowers everywhere in Seattle and the trees are that brilliant bright spring green. It was such a nice drive! I was just relaxed and quiet most of the way taking in the colors and being amazed at every turn by the beauty of the mountains and the difference driving over a pass makes in climate.
I got into Seattle around 7:30 catching the tail end of the going away party. It was so good to be with Keith, Karen, and Lyla. Keith and I stayed up late chatting and hanging out. It was really great to be with him and to hear about the new adventure that lies ahead of them. Lyla came and woke me up at about 6:30 in the morning. She climbed in my sleeping bag to snuggle and told me stories and we played and sang songs until 7:00. It is good to be three and ridiculously cute! Then Karen and I took Lyla to her school and Karen and I got great time together at a coffee shop in Wallingford. We spent the morning hanging out talking and running around Seattle. It was so good to be with all of them. It doesn’t seem real that they are leaving.
Seattle was in full bloom. The tulips were out and all of the fruit trees were in full bloom. The sun was out and dew was sparkling on the lawns. Sometimes I forget just how beautiful it is on the west side of the mountains. It felt like home and it felt really good to go back even if it was a short visit. I headed back over the mountains at 11:30 and drove over Snoqualmie pass and again was astounded at spring coming to life everywhere. On the other side of the pass where the earth is red and orange and grey rocks push upwards through fir and pine wild flowers are blooming up to the edge of the melting snow in yellows reds white and purple. I stopped my car several times to take pictures. The contrast of the wet Seattle spring and the dry mountain spring surprised me. One is home, it is known, and the other one becoming sacred to my heart as I experience it for the first time.
I arrived at the B&B at three and started to work straight away clearing winter from the flower beds. It felt so good to work the soil in the sunshine! There are several people down here from the village doing the bus training with Dave and so arriving at the B&B is a little like arriving home. We all had a nice dinner of bratwurst with a sung blessing and collective clean up. Then Dave and I went for a walk at dusk holding hands and walking along the road near the lake. It was a beautiful night for a walk, and if felt like a luxury to be together like this.
It is time for bed now and I keep wondering how the girls are doing. I bet they are having a lot of fun with Gail! I get to missing them though.

Smoke hangs in the air above the valley
floating effortlessly ,
lingering
as if to hear the music from the village voices.
It waits patiently
for breezes to sweep and push
down the valley
carrying it on to new sights and sounds
These particles
of earth and thought,
newspaper and wood
gray clouds of time
hold onto their home
soon to pass onto something else
I watch the hover with gratefulness
knowing that each plume warmed a home
perhaps mine
those particles pass like villagers
into the greater world
maybe blessing it with a little bit of Village life
a memory of home carried on the breeze

A trickle slowly moves through the dirt
picking up sticks and bits of dry earth and sweeping them up
in tiny swirls moving steadily down the ditch.
Drips drop
making pools in the ice and snow
creating a symphony of sound that could only be orchestrated by God.
The river close by is rushing and dancing
around rocks
moving stones and sticks
in its downward plunge towards the lake
Birds call and swoop
moving in and out of view
I hear the whoosh of the crow’s wings
he passes overhead sending the squirrels into fits of warning chatter
A chipmunk pops in and out of the lumber pile
quickly darting this way and that
searching for bits of food
she sprints daringly between feet
The martin makes his way throughout the village
Across the snow
into a hole for a quick escape from watching children
With activity like this going on all around,
you can’t help but join in the movement and the song
Spring is on the move turning our frozen world into Eden

There is something about a sunny Saturday that is so life giving. Today the street was filled with people sitting in the sun, and all of the village kids were our laughing and riding their bikes down the street. People were taking time to just sit and chat and enjoy the warmth of the sun. It was actually warm today and the snow was melting filling the ditches and walkways with little rivers of water. By this evening you could actually see a difference in the patches of snow that are receding from the paths revealing flowerbeds and new buds! It was warm enough for me to wear shorts. I have been such a grump this week but the sun can make anything feel better.
A couple of people were out hiking the ten mile falls trail and saw a mama bear with two cubs. Dave went riding his bike and saw deer in the valley below the village, and the birds are out in droves making nests finding food, going from building to building looking for the perfect place to build a nest. While I was sitting on the porch today I saw several humming birds coming to check out my feeder. I love the sounds that they make when they fly!
I got some work done in the library and opened the windows and could clearly hear the creek and the trickle of melting snow outside. When I was done working I took a group of kids down to the creek side to play in the water. There were even some butterflies out. The creek is rising and the sound is amazing. The water is cold and flowing rapidly. The kids took turns throwing rocks into the creek, building small dams, and hoping from rock to rock. I am constantly amazed when I look up from whatever I happen to be doing and realize how lucky we are to be here surrounded by all of this beauty.
I am going down lake tomorrow to go to a doctor’s appointment. I have had a lot of pain in my ears for the last few weeks and I feel like my ears are stuffed with cotton. I have been to a doctor but they suggested an Ear Nose and Throat specialist, so down I go. I was going to take the girls with me because Dave is also going to be out for bus driver training, but they both wanted to stay. They don’t want to miss school or anything else going on in the village. Gail, who is one of our village grandmothers, will be staying with them up here.
The girls were so fun to watch today! Jordyn was up one tree or another all day and Nyrie was in a gaggle of kids playing a burping game and laughing hysterically, Nyrie is one of the only kids in the village who can burp on command and she has been trying to teach the other kids how to do it. She has learned well from her mother, and it is possible that one day she shall carry on the family nickname of Foghorn for the loudest and longest burp. The girls have been flitting all over the village, dressing up, dancing, running, biking and enjoying the sunshine in its fullness.
Jordyn has really taken to helping me in my library window garden. She loves to go in there to check on the plants that are making a stellar appearance! We have peas and beats and greens and flowers and onions and lavender. Everything is coming up looking healthy and happy in village compost! I guess we just can’t live without a garden. I hope to get a couple of zucchini starts while I am out. Good night friends, blessings on the rest of your weekend!
Love, Angela

Today I went on my first big ride. I went 20.4 miles round trip, out and back I lost and gained 2300 feet of elevation. My plan was to ride from the village to the top of the switchbacks (about eight and a half miles each way), and then turn around and come back. When I got to the top of the switchbacks I was having so much fun screaming down the road I decided I’d go on down to the lake. I figured I could ride the bus back if I was too pooped to make it on the bike. Well I got down to the Lake and found out that that bus wasn’t coming back to the village until next Saturday with the first May Youth Weekend. Okay… so now I have to pedal my fat butt back to the village whether I like it or not.
It took me twenty five minutes to get down to the lake and three hours to get back up to the village. The switchbacks were the last five minutes of the ride down and an hour and ten minutes of the ride back. You gain nearly a thousand feet of elevation in just under two miles and then the other 1300 feet or so in the last eight and a half miles. The final killer was that the road had some really muddy patches just outside of the village. I’m still on road tires and these spots nearly drug me to a stop on the downhill run, I had to get off and walk through a couple of them on the way up. It was just too much work that late in the ride.
I saw two deer on the ride up just about half way to the village. They were a little surprised to see me. Oh and I bit it going down the switchbacks, the road tires don’t hold the corners on dirt quite as well as they do on pavement. The bike just slid out from under me and I hit the dirt.
All in all it was a great ride, but I’m going to plan a little better next time, take more water, and maybe wait for the road to dry a little more.

Yesterday was blitz day which is the day where we prepare the village for summer. We began the day with a few inches of snowfall to add to the three feet or so that we have left on the ground. Normally by now most of the snow has melted and green grass is starting to come up all over the place. Not this year. We spend time taking off the window grates that keep the snow from breaking the windows during roof-a-launches in the winter. We cleaned out the dining hall and brought in the long tables to accommodate larger groups of people. We did a deep clean of the dining hall and moved the games tables back into the Village center. For some people it was an emotional letting go of the winter village, but for me it just feels like another unknown step in our Holden journey. We had a work crew of about forty people aside from the staff working in the village, and it was fun to see the camaraderie between all of the people working together to make the transition go smoothly.
We had a feast to celebrate the transition with steak, fish, and veggie kabobs and brown rice, plates of cheese and rolls and salad, and a really yummy desert of pastries with whipped cream topping. Everyone dressed up and we had a wonderful vespers in the dining hall surrounding the meal. The kitchen staff really went all out and made the evening memorable!
We have continued to have pretty cold weather and do not have enough power yet to heat the Village Center building and the lodges, so we are really hoping for a heat wave before the first of the May Youth Weekends, where we have 80 some odd teenagers and their counselors coming for camp.
Dave and I ended the day with a movie and snuggling on the couch. Nyrie played games at her friend Ellie’s house while Jordyn was out playing in the snow with a big group of kids. This is a pretty amazing community and I am so glad to be a part of it. I often wish that I could share this place with my community in Tacoma, and our families. We get lonely for you all and at the same time we know we are exactly where we are supposed to be.

We’ve had about fifty volunteers up for the week helping us change over the Village from winter mode to summer. When the bus came up and dropped them all of I think the average age of the village went up by twenty years. I have had two guys with me for most of the week in the walk-in cooler. They’ve been a great help, It’s been really nice to feel like I’m finally making some headway on the project. We’ve gotten the worst of the rot cut out and are shoring up all of the patches we’ve put in. If all goes well tomorrow (the last day of work) we’ll have a good jump on the new framing, and I might just get this project done before the end of May. Next week I have the down lake portion of the bus driver training, so I won’t get any work done on the cooler. It’s going to come down to the wire.

Okay perhaps you have noticed a dearth of Blog posts for the last ten days, and then a glut a couple of days ago, yep my fault. I have been in a ten day Wilderness first responder course for the last week and a half. Before we started the course everyone said that we weren’t going to be able to do anything else while it was going on. I thought that just meant work, nope it meant anything. Ang has written a bunch of posts, but she hasn’t learned how to upload them yet, and I was so busy that I didn’t get around to it.
Wilderness First Responder is somewhere between first aid training and an Emergency Medical Technician course. Wilderness First aid is 16-24 hours, First responder is 80 hours and EMT is 180 hours. The course was a blast, I enjoyed everything about it. We had two instructors trading off on the classroom portion of the course. A good half of the course was outside performing practice scenarios. We started off learning basic patient assessment, and went on to the many and varied injuries, and medical emergencies that occur in the back country.
We had two big scenarios; the first was a mass casualty drill. There were four patients with ranging injuries from a kidney bleed to an amputated hand to a femur fracture. The second was my favorite we went out at 7:00 in the evening and were with out patients until well after dark. Once we got our patients out of immediate danger we were able to monitor and plan what we would do in the morning. We’ve been sworn to secrecy on exactly what the scenarios are, so I’m not going to give too many details, but suffice it to say that it was a great class and the scenarios made it a lot of fun. I'm thinking that when we leave here I may go take a wilderness EMT course.

It was a nice day today. Dave, David, Mary and the girls all came and helped me take apart the periodical portion of the library and set it up temporarily in the new library area so that the work week people could build a stairway up to the top floor of Kononia. It went pretty smoothly and hopefully we will move into the new Library space soon. Then we played around at home for a while. Mary and Nyrie made new sweat pants for her baby doll while Jordyn played with Ellie and Rachel in a couple of huge boxes in the attic. Dave and his Dad hung out for most of the afternoon relaxing and reading. It has been such a blessing to have Mary and Dave here. It was a cold day and the snow fell again on and off all day.
The vespers was nice. Pastor Eric spoke about how the Bible has been used as a weapon in many different settings and that as followers of Jesus, we need to stand against using the text for anything but spreading love, compassion and understanding. It was an uncomfortable topic for some, but something the “New church” has to address. Violence in the name of God is still violence and as followers of peace we need to live as such and stand against those who use the words of the text to alienate or discriminate against other humans, animals, or the earth. This topic of Non-violence has been on my heart lately as I have been thinking about the war in Iraq and many of the other atrocities done in the name of peacekeeping. As the elections draw near and there is fighting going on within us, as well as with our candidates, I wonder do we really want to be voting for people who resort to verbal violence to manipulate or distort the view of someone else. Why can’t we just focus on the issues at hand, and state what it is we believe without having to cut someone else down to make our point. I think that I am so bothered by all of this because I recognize the violence in myself, in my reactions to situations sometimes where I don’t pause to think before speaking.
As I have been at Holden I have been able to step out of the cycle of stress that surrounds so much of what we do in our world. I have really been able to slow it down and take time before reaction. It seems that in the outside world much of what we deal with is reaction oriented. We are not able to be as creative and we find ourselves getting into the mindset that quicker is better, that saving money or making money is the only way to get things done. What a blessing it has been to get away from that way of being.
As much as I can’t wait for spring to come what I have experienced in the snow is a sort of quite balance. It seems to wipe the slate clean, and allow for an experience of the subtle. Right now at the edges of our paths there are growing patches of grass and gardens. Next to the dining hall the snow around the paths is receding daily revealing bulbs pushing up through the ground. Herbs and greenery are peeking out from beneath the snow banks and every day there is something new. This morning as I was walking across the hill I saw a bench that I had been walking across all winter that I hadn’t even known was there. I love being able to take the time to be witness to change, both within people and the world. I keep thinking about how many times in my life I have not stopped to notice something or someone. This experience at Holden has given me the opportunity to really be with people and to begin to see them a new each day along with the changing world.

Dave’s folks are here right now and it is so good to be with them. The girls are beside themselves with joy. We had a nice evening playing games and looking at photos, and the girls spent time reading with the grandparents. I love to hear the stories of their adventures in Mexico and it is fun to have a few stories of our own. It is sunny but cold today and we are going to take the folks on a hike. This morning Dave and I got up at around 8:30 to the sound of laughter in the attic. The girls had gone and awakened Grandma and Grandpa and they were having a tickle fest and having so much fun. When Dave and Mary came up they brought all of our bikes so the kids are down riding on the main road and having a blast.
We went up on the third level loop today which was a lot of fun. It was cold and the wind was biting and blowing, but the valley was clear and beautiful. Dave drove the snow sprite up there and dug up the wood-pile while we walked around and then the girls rode down with him in the sprite while Mary, Dave and I hiked down.
Afterwards we went back to the chalet and ate birthday pie with the folks and then gave ourselves crazy hairdos and dressed up silly for dinner. It was fun, but I think that only a handful of the Holdenites got the dress funny memo.
Grandma and Grandpa were good sports and seemed to have fun with joining in the sillies.
I got to sing for vespers tonight. We did a musical service called vespers 86’ or Holden Evening Prayer and I sung with my friend Daniel. It is the first time that I have sung that service and I really enjoyed it. After vespers we came back and read books and hung out together. I have been needing family and it is so good to have Dave and Mary here.