Woodswork

Kathleen Cramer

ixty miles north of San Francisco, among some of the world’s tallest trees, the Sequoia Sempervirens, is the property the Gurdjieff Foundation calls “the Woods”—six and a half acres with open spaces, cabins, a motel, a movements hall and a dining hall.

Trees look over it all and a creek rushes through it in the winter. At night the stars come down to meet the trees. This is the place where a group who had been given this task found a suitable property for our community’s weekends, work weeks and conferences. This place had seen a variety of former inhabitants, from a pottery collective with Bauhaus connections to a resort.

We were told by Paul Reynard to “make it ours,” and for twenty-plus years we have been striving toward that. At the beginning it seemed that Great Nature had done most of the work before we came, and, surely, it would be a work of joy to do the few things needing some attention to make it “ours.” As it happens, our understanding of M. Reynard’s injunction is still evolving.

It appeared at first that our main tasks lay in pulling the weeds, mowing the lawns, planting an orchard, doing some painting, improving the watering system and, most importantly, getting rid of the pernicious bamboo so incorrectly established, choking the “natural” plants, and threatening to turn the place into a make-believe Hawaiian resort—or a jungle. However, joining the Grounds Team revealed in some remarkable ways that an interest in botany and making the place beautiful was far from being all that was needed, and that the V-shaped, bird-like design of the cabins’ roofs under the dripping trees would eventually cause those cabins to melt.

“Great Nature” began to seem tricky, and nothing showed this more clearly than the animals who had already made the property theirs: the deer and their adorable fawns with those delicate—and sharp—hooves stepping so carefully, as if wearing high heels, through the newly planted beds. The deer who patiently waited until there were no humans in sight before lifting their lips to reveal the sharp little teeth they employ to bite the tender heads off the tips of the rose stems, like hors d’oeuvres. Hearing someone inside pounding on the window upon discovering them at their meal, the deer merely raised their pretty heads and slowly meandered to the next bush, making it necessary to raise fences that exceeded the height a deer can reach. Of course, when it comes to apple trees, the height a deer can reach rising on its back legs results in an attractive, tidy, pruned look.

“Making it ours” has meant listening to and watching and learning from what surrounds us as we work on the team. There are the birds who sing and call out to all who hear to admire the beauty of the day and to breathe. There are occasional tourist birds, such as the herons and others on their way elsewhere who fly over the newly built fish pond and must have felt lucky as they landed there and ate the entire collection of koi whose presence was not thoroughly thought through and whose disappearance evoked a question: What it would take to thoroughly think through a project?

Crows are never far away. They are breathtakingly quick and smart enough to wait in the trees during our breaks, hopping sideways and jostling for position to be the first to eat as much as possible of the leftover cheese and crackers or nuts the humans have left behind. Unproved is the theory that the bell rung to begin and end the break is involved. The chatter of the crows at this feast resembles that of the ones who consumed most of it first and serves as a reminder of the silence underlying all the chatter.

This is the country of feral cats, seldom seen and heard only from outside on the roof during meditations inside. The cat’s life here must be at least somewhat comfortable, judging by the rather large number of still uneaten mice striving to enter the pantry and make its contents theirs.

As a result of appreciating Japanese design in a book, we built a small curved wooden bridge, about six feet long, over a drainage ditch. The bridge connects a gravel parking area with a lawn but is seldom used. It did its best work when it became the sole property and denning space of a mother fox and her kits, the sight of which induced wonder and a protective instinct.

It is a matter of complete joy to see butterflies return after having planted their favorite trees: seeing the flowers of these trees in golden afternoon light, enveloped, as if by happiness, by swarms of butterflies quivering with what might be delight.

Banana slugs cannot quiver, and the sight of them does not immediately induce wonder. Three to four inches long and bright yellow with black marks on what-would-be-cheeks-if-they-had-them, they navigate by oozing at a rate below the human tolerance for comprehension. Even watching them for the shortest time gives the impression that a longer observation would yield nothing to an understanding of their deep mystery. When they appear on sidewalks or gravel or glass doors, the ever valid question arises: do they know where they are going?

As big as we are and as small as bees are, it is important to know that together, in a swarm, bees present a mighty force which does know where it’s going. They are going after you if you disturb their nest or hive. A friend, wise in the ways of calculus and statistics, did not have a degree in bees. When the furious little bits exploded from the tree, sizzling with righteous anger at the intruder, she discovered that she did have an innate degree in non-confrontation. Seeing that she could not outrun them, she wisely dove head first into the swimming pool.

Spiders are ubiquitous. They represent a subject each one of us can master or ignore. Not so scorpions! One cannot ignore scorpions simply because they are so seldom seen. Vigilance is required and grows quite remarkably when one becomes the victim of the little arachnid’s surprisingly painful sting, completely disproportionate to its size, delivered from the glands in its signature curved tail, without prejudice to any hand in a woodpile or foot in a shoe or boot, or in a slipper left under the bed. Or worse: a naked foot stretching out toward the dark end of an unrolled sleeping bag.

With gophers, a different watchfulness is required. They are soft brown creatures who signal their presence in finely sifted circles of dirt surrounding the myriad holes they have made in your laboriously watered, fertilized and mowed lawn and flower beds—holes made the better to reveal and devour the roots.

Surveying these holes, there appeared a kind of blessing: head bowed, knees in the dirt, sun on the back; a gesture of both supplication and praise and the air alive with birth and death and fragrant growth. A moment of all doing done. Past present and future all one. And with the feeling that we were, all of us, undocumented, itinerant, temporary workers in the fields of atmosphere. □

Kathleen Cramer, a long-time member of the Gurdjieff Foundation in San Francisco, has had a career in the theater. The drawing is by Peter Szasz.