We were living in Heaven at the time — a small handbuilt cabin in the forests of Montana. I ate of happiness and drank pure spring water every day. My wife radiated wit and truth. I depended upon her for my wholeness. My daughter sparkled with innocence, intelligence and character. I delighted in her.
The cabin measured 12 by 31 feet. Living so close is very difficult without the lubrication of love. Wife, daughter and I had built the cabin of logs and had insulated between them and chinked them well. We cooked and warmed the house with an air-tight woodstove; it would hold a fire all night. The rippling ruddy light through the firebox window would light the kitchen and add another presence to our home.
Christmas snow covered every horizontal or approximately horizontal surface. A big ball of snow twice as large as the diameter of the stack sat atop the chimney of the old woodstove that stood outside beside the firepit. The snow cushioned the earth and silenced the interstate that slithered alongside the river barely a mile away.
Moonlight filtered through the light clouds as the snow continued to fall. The thermometer read maybe 20 degrees — not terribly cold, but fresh enough that the house felt cozy and safe.
We had no electricity, but kerosene enough and candles. We had all the water we wanted; icy water from the mountain spring running to our home by gravity. A winter’s worth of dry wood, mostly split and sized and sorted stood ricked in the woodshed … I always kept a bit to split so when I ached for exercise I could go out and work up a sweat. Staple foods were stored in glass large-mouth jars in counter space made to hold them, and beneath the floor in the root cellar plastic five-gallon pickle buckets full of staples were sealed against the damp. On the shelves down there were jars containing summer — filled with applesauce, plums, and garden — and carrots and potatoes were buried in the loose dirt at one end of the dark earthen space.
For luxury my wife and I had coffee, and for my daughter we made cocoa.
For us, tucked in, cozy, safe and warm, winter evenings felt like Heaven.
I think it was because of our love, simplicity and relative silence that we were accessible to the Spirit.
One evening, as I sat reading and writing, my wife crafted things of leather, and my daughter read and drew and maintained her part of the conversation, a knock came at the door.
Understand that this is a surprise. Our cabin crouched under the trees in the moonlit dark a mile from the county road. Our driveway consisted of snow-choked unimproved country road. Whoever came to see us must have a powerful 4-by-4 with good tires and some weight; either that or our visitors would have to walk in.
These folks had walked in. No casual drop-ins, these folks seriously wanted to visit.
Lawrence and Lynn — we’ll call them — were friends. I was delighted to see them out here but slightly amazed that they would come at night through deep snow while light snow still fell.
That’s crazy people for you.
Both Lawrence and Lynn graduated from Hot Springs, the local funny farm.
I cannot remember why someone had decided that Lynn needed therapy. Maybe she cared too much about things. I remember that Lawrence heard voices. He said he had been infiltrated and these secret agents planned to murder him. He could overhear them plotting and cackling over the eventual success of their dirty schemes. This made him skittish, nervous in society, and his actions appeared insane to some onlookers.
No one considered for a moment that he might be right. Later he died of cancer. I believe he really had heard those wickedly disposed cells plotting against him. What a gift he had. What a loss to all of us.
This night he had come to ask a favor of me.
He said he had conceived of an antigravity machine. He wanted to give the concept to me for safekeeping. He wanted it kept secret because there were agents who wanted the secret for themselves, either to hide it away or to destroy it, or — I believe he was mistaken about this aspect — to capitalize on his idea.
“Will you keep it for me?” he asked. “If you say yes, I will wash your feet. The people of the Bible often sealed a deal with the washing of the feet.”
I thought this a bit peculiar, but I respected Lawrence. For all his strangeness, I could feel the intensity of his intelligence, his belief, and his love.
“I will,” I said, and slipped my bare feet out of my sheepskin slippers.
After a few minutes it seemed no great show of footwashing was forthcoming soon, so I sat back and gave myself up to the conversation once again.
He told me his secret. It seemed no great thing to me; maybe I could be numbered among the unbelievers at that time. I expressed a couple of serious questions about his plan but he would hear absolutely nothing of my objections.
I agreed that a very close tolerance device should be built to test the idea and he suggested that I sell trees off my land to raise the money. He thought a hundred thousands dollars would do. Perhaps I could sell a few acres.
Here I drew the line. I am merely a steward and protecting the trees here is part of my job. I call the place we live Sanctuary Sylvan. I watch over the water and the topsoil, the wildflowers and the wildlife. We strive to kill nothing at Sanctuary, although an occasional necessity will arise.
Selling the land seems to me as odious as electing representatives to safeguard the national treasures and watching them turn around and sell their responsibilities to their friends, calling it privatization.
We laughed at politicians and ourselves as we sat close in the snug little kitchen and talked and drew closer.
The cabin has cold water in. Water must be heated on the woodstove, so there are always cast iron pots and coffee pots and enameled pots sitting on the stove. There is no other plumbing. A certain natural function requires a walk through the woods to the outhouse. Because we are miles from neighbors, the making of water can be done 20 feet from the house — use a different spot each time. My wife and daughter would pluck a wad of toilet paper from the back of the front door, go out under the trees, urinate, dab off, come in and toss the damp paper into the woodstove.
My daughter went out and came back in excited.
“Dad, Molly, come out and see this. Come see this!”
We leaped up and followed her out into the moonlit and snowy night.
She pointed up and through the thin snow-sprinkling clouds we could see the moon, brilliantly circled by a bright and perfect rainbow.
We gazed at the celestial beauty.
Then I looked down at my bare feet in the virgin snow.
Parris has an MFA from the University of Montana and although he has taught on a few occasions, still prefers his earthy life and stewardship of some forested acres in Montana, where he lives in a small hand-built cabin without electricity or phone. He makes his living as a freelance writer, tree pruner, and illustrator.