Mietzke's POST Holden Adventure

16.3 mies round trip
1100 feet of elevation down and up
87 minutes

First some Prom Photos

These are from a hike down by the lake.

Our Side Yard

Yesterday was a really nice day. I finished setting up the Village Center for summer and tied up loose ends. Everything looks completed and fun for which I am thankful! In the afternoon Jordyn and I walked out to the old minors village and hiked around the ruins looking for treasures and writing in our journals. We then went down to the river and spent some time painting pictures near a little waterfall. We had fun being quiet and reflective and just being together.
In the evening we gathered together at the house and played a game that Keith and Karen gave us called Kings Court. Our house mates played and we had such a good time together. Then Dave put the kids to sleep so I could go to Jenna’s good by party. When I got back to the chalet Dave was still awake and the stars were out in droves so we went on a walk up to second level in the dark and admired the stars and saw some shooting stars. It was nice to get time together and to fall asleep on the porch looking out at the stars.
I am leaving tomorrow for my teacher training and I am having a hard time going. I don’t want to be away from my family or miss out on the new experience of a summer village. Although I am excited about the classes I will be taking and seeing my classmates. I am packed and ready to go which make me anxious and nervous, but excited at the same time.

This day was such a good one. I spent the morning with Nyrie, I let go of my agenda and let her determine what we were going to do and how we would spend our time together. We made doll furniture and played cards and threw rocks across the creek. We laughed really hard and went on a walk to the falls with My friend Joy. It was a good morning and I loved spending it with my girl.
Jordyn has been out of sorts since school let out, with one foot in the eleven year old door and the other still trying to figure out ten. She tried the Narnia camp program up here but found she was just a little to old for the group, and she is still to young for the next step up. She has spent a lot of time helping Dave and I at our work sites or playing on her own, but has felt a little on the outskirts of everything. Today she decided to go and help out with the younger kids in the Narnia program and had a blast. She is fun and responsible and really knows how to hang out with little ones. She ended up really enjoying her time there, and everyone enjoyed the help. She seems to have found a niche! This afternoon I spent hanging banners, and trying to finish the ones we started. The space should be done by tomorrow, but boy has it been a lot of work. The butterfly mobile turned out great, and the space is looking really cared for. Anni has been an absolute goddess and so has Joy. Anni's mother even helped to sew things together. It really does take a village. I was exhausted by the time vespers was over and as I was preparing to leave I went over to hug my friend Gail who has become our village grandma. When I hugged her she pulled me onto her lap and gave me one of the best hugs ever. It was so maternal and caring and it felt good to be held that way even for a moment. I left feeling cared for in a way that I had been longing for all week, which allowed me to then give that care back to my own children. What a gift!

The baby ravens must have left the nest for the first time this morning, or a bear is climbing towards the nest. There was such loud commotion this morning, cawing cackling and hollering going on with a chorus of smaller birds in the back ground that sound like they are laughing. First the small raven voice calls and is answered by the parents with a chortling sound then it calls again and again and is answered with loud raucous encouragement. I can’t see them, but the sounds are similar to the crows we used to have in our back yard in Tacoma. The babies call of help and uncertainty and the encouragement of the parents, constant and coaxing. The only exception is that with crows, the whole community of crows show up for the first flight of the young. Sometimes I feel like I am writing for National Geographic’s when I write up here because I find all of this nature so stinking fascinating.

Holden is a bit like living at a circus minus the elephants. At night you can always count on the big top performance, and you never know what tricks the animals, or the people are up to, and all around there is action and commotion. This morning I was awakened by a chipmunk scurrying across my head. I jumped, so did he and he rushed to get away from me but got caught up in the mosquito netting and I had to shake him out. It was a funny way to wake up. About ten minutes later a squirrel made its way up to the bottom of my sleeping bag where it was joined by another one and both stared at me for a while.
It was warm on the porch this morning. The sky was blue and the mountains had that early morning sunshine glow. I took my time getting up and sat on the porch for a good chunk of time taking in the beauty of the mountains which never cease to astonish me.
My friend Joy worked with me today to install a butterfly mobile in the Village Center where we gather for our evening vespers. Three of us have been working on butterflies for the last few weeks in preparation for the summer decor. The butterflies are made of thick cardboard/poster paper with cutouts filled with colored tissue paper that looks like stained glass when lit from behind. It ended up looking really beautiful and I was pleasantly surprised. Anni and Joy helped to position the cherry picker and then I pedaled my way up the forty foot ceiling and I spent several hours suspended hanging butterflies and getting positioning opinions. It is so fun to have a vision and see it materialize! It was up by vespers and people seemed to like it.
This evening felt really nice. Our house guests were around and we all sat on the porch and told stories and ate popped corn for a while. It felt comfortable and fun. Then I went down to the ice cream parlor and filled a tub with Moose Tracks and brought it back to share.
Dave and I also went for a nice walk through the woods up to the third level. I haven’t been up there since the snow melted and I was amazed by the amount of junk, both from the mining days and years of donations to Holden. Lots of metal scrap. There are a couple of people in the village who are working on trying to sort and get rid of some of that waste, and a good portion of it is recyclable.
Jordyn did not go to any of the organized programming today. She really loves her freedom. Tomorrow she is going to take a stab at helping with the little kids in the Narnia program for the morning. She is just in that awkward space between being too old and too young for the programs. Nyrie, on the other hand seems to love her time there and has been having a lot of fun with her friend Emily. The program lets out at noon so the kids are free all afternoon anyway, which is good.

The village if filled to the brim and overflowing with people. Sometimes I feel lost in the sea of new faces as I seek out the familiar. This week has been rewarding and tiring. A lot of work was accomplished and it was amazing to see how many people are dedicated to making Holden a better place. There are many families up here now and lots of new playmates for the kids, but we haven't quite figured out how to be a family in the midst of all of the commotion. We have twelve people staying in our chalet, luckily all of them kind thoughtful people that make this transition feel good, but it is difficult to find those moments of alone time where no one is around and you can relax into being. The faces are still new and the get to know you conversations are interesting and fun, and sometimes a little bit of quiet or familiar goes a long way. All of this is such a contrast to the winter with its quiet intimate connections. Although I can see why summer is so magical for so many, the adjustment and letting go that it requires to make the transition is hard and tiring. The vespers service starts at seven thirty every night which makes getting the kids to bed in a timely fashion difficult. We are still trying to find our sea legs, so to speak and figure out a rhythm that works for our family. How do you meet and interact with new people every day and still invest in the relationships you have. It is a little bit like tight rope walking.
My family has let me know in no uncertain terms that I have not found the balance yet, but I am still imperfectly striving. Our friends Joy and Emily are in the village and staying in our chalet, which has been a lot of fun. Yesterday Dave and I brought up some old mattresses from the basement and set them out on the porch and hung fabric to make a little porch tent, because staying in the girls room was feeling cramped and sleeping on a hill makes for a lot of rolling. We hung up the fabric and brought out our sleeping bags and had a lovely sleep on the porch last night. I wrote a poem about it and you should stop reading if poetry is not your thing.

Porch Sleeping

We made a makeshift tent on the porch today with blankets and old mattresses.
We created a little space where we could be together
private, yet still a part of it all
We put the children to sleep in their beds and then snuggled up in blue sleeping bags surrounded by mosquito netting
It took a while to settle in as we listened to the sounds of a village that was preparing for rest
As we lay there a breeze lifted the fabric up and over our heads in a breathing pattern giving small glimpses of the sky and setting a rhythm that began to lull me to sleep as I snuggled warm in my husbands arms
The sounds of the village blended with the rustling of tree leaves in the wind and the scurrying sounds of animals
A guitar was playing off in the distance notes carried on the breeze
Stragglers walked up the hill quietly talking the last of many to head off to bed after a long day
Laughter broke the silence standing on its own in the darkness
Each of these things I took with me into sleep
the people and this place that I love giving me a little bit of the peace I had been craving all day long.
Sometimes there are prolonged moments in time that make all the little hardships of the day feel worth the effort
And fill you with a deep sense of belonging that carries into your dreams.

So, you may be wondering what in the world happened to the Mietzke family for the last couple of weeks. And I will tell you. Summer happened and happened big in the village. We went from having 150 people in the village to having just over 400 people. It has been a little overwhelming and exciting all at the same time. Last week was work week and we had hundreds of people here working on the grounds, repairing porches, finishing trim, building stairs, dry walling, painting, digging, installing, moving beds, cleaning, sorting library books, and garbage building yurts and staircases. It has been a long full week with the kitchen staff working their tails off as well as everyone else. The village is really starting to look nice. Meals have gone in shifts or we have been eating outside. Everywhere you go there are people committed to making Holden a better place.
This week Dave oversaw seven work crews, who were doing everything from repairing siding to building yurts out at the ball park. I have been working on banners for the VC and butterfly’s, working with a team in the Library to get it ready to move into the new space and helping with worship set up. The village normally overbooks in the summer because there are often cancellations but this year there were no cancellations and we are really stretching to fit everyone in the village. Some of the staff have even moved out of their rooms and are camping to make room for all of the guests. We have twelve people living in our chalet this week. Dave and I are sleeping in the girls room after a failed attempt to sleep on the hill next to the chalet. Dave and I slept on the bottom bunk of the girls bunk bed and were joined in the morning by Nyrie which was a little squishy but fun. After Nyrie headed down to breakfast we were joined by Jordyn for a snuggle.
It is a strange thing to let go of the winter village. All of the staff that we have grown to know over the winter are hard to find amidst all of the new folks, although there are many new amazing people that have come up here. My friend Joy and her daughter Emily are up here for work week and it has been fun to have them around. Emily and Nyrie have been constant companions. They have been having a lot of fun pretending, playing dolls and dressing up. They participated in the kids portion of work camp this week which is called Narnia where they made crafts and sang songs and explored and went on hikes. They seemed to have a really good time at the camp. Jordyn tried the camp and found that she is kind of at an in between space in age, so decided to only go for portions of the day. The other parts she spent helping Dave and I in our perspective work places. Jordyn also got to partake in acting out a creation story that was both tragic and beautiful. She is so intuitive and creative and was an asset to the performance.
We have had Peter Mayer, the lead guitarist from the Jimmy Buffet Band in the village on teaching staff this week. He gave a seminar on Healing by Fascination which was a writing workshop geared at opening our creativity. It was a lot of fun going to the workshop and I felt challenged and inspired by what he and others in the seminar had to share. He also led a guitar workshop which was amazing to watch. I was amazed at the way he could draw people out of themselves simply by anticipation. He would invite people to participate and was not daunted by hesitancy or insecurity, he would simply wait for the participation and people would come, volunteer, and allow themselves to be stretched and vulnerable. It was fun to be around someone with such a passion for music and life. His wife, Patricia, felt really familiar to me from the first moment that I met her. She is kind and compassionate and solid in who she is. There are some many other talented people here, sharing thoughts and vision. I have loved the group discussions about theology, and learning about word origins that completely change some of my understandings about biblical texts. We have an amazing array of artists and musicians coming through the village this summer and I am going to try to take advantage of as many of the seminars as I can.

I have been riding an average of five miles after dinner most every night. I have been doing a figure eight with the second and third level loop trails. That means that there is a fair bit of hill climbing involved, but it also means I get to blast back down the hills too.
It’s kind of funny to be surrounded by all of this wilderness and not be able to ride in most of it. I pretty much have to stick to the road or the trails on Holden property. Of course the one time I went out into the wilderness area I ran into someone right away who told me that the "no motorized vehicles" sign meant bicycles too. I couldn’t even play dumb and, pretend not to know the rules after that. I’m not sure if I can ride the trails in the National Forrest or not (don’t tell me at least I can play dumb there if caught).
I much prefer to ride uphill at the beginning of a ride, or at least mix it up a little, which limits me a little too. I’ve been having a lot of fun with the loop trails, there’s enough flat to catch your breath, and enough hill to make it both a challenge and fun. The drilling crew that is here working on mine remediation stuff has part of the second level loop closed off so I’ve been detouring around them on foot carrying the bike on my shoulder. I tried to climb the D-dam road the other day (the route Keith and I took up to Copper Basin last winter) but it was just too steep. Not much fun to go up or down. There are some other trails on Holden property I’d like to try out, but they’re still covered in last winter’s fallen trees.
The road goes down to the lake, but that means that the whole second half of the ride is an uphill slog. It’s slow going enough that I have found some really pretty spots on Rail Road Creek. I keep trying to get Ang to come with me, but the only time I can go is between dinner and vespers, and that’s one of her busiest times of the day.

I am standing on the edge of fine
Balancing between thoughts of past and future
Too attached to either to let go and dive into now
It is crippling really,
standing here both feet steeped in the opposite
Let go says a voice… you don’t have to stay this way
Split down the middle, trapped by your own indecision
You don’t have to stay this way
You could taste the waters of in between
And be quenched of your desperate search for peace
The riddle of future can only be solved in this moment,
and the past is already fading into dust
The waters of now are eroding your foothold
So let go, let go, sink into the water and be