The New Place

I’m writing this on August 31, 2024 - and I’m officially a resident of Calaveras County. Mountain Ranch, to be more specific. I have another month of splitting time between my new home and my old job (in Auburn); on October 1, I’ll be working and living down here. And I’m finding that I’m finally catching my breath. A bit.

Placer County’s population is around 429,000 people at the moment - the county has grown by 5.7% since 2020, and has 305 people per square mile. As I’ve written previously, Placer County more than doubled in population since we moved there in 1994. Calaveras County, by contrast, has a bit more than 46,000 residents. While it is also growing here (2.7% since 2020), the population density is just 46 people per square mile.

Statistics aside, my new place is much quieter than our old home. I’m about 14 miles from CA-49 (compared with less than one mile in Auburn). I have more space around me (I’m on 6 acres here, and all of the properties around me are of similar size). Fewer people means less traffic - far less traffic! I can see more stars at night!

When I was in college, a friend from Calaveras County joked that they “didn’t have any traffic lights, but they had the colors picked out!” Nearly 35 years later, I think Calaveras County now has 2 traffic lights (at least that I’ve seen - one in Angels Camp and one in Murphys). Compared to CA-49 in Auburn, this is definitely more my style!

The house itself is larger than our old place; larger than I need, if I’m honest. It boasts three bedrooms and bathrooms. I’m working on getting a wood stove installed in the next month or two, but it also has central air and heat. And a great covered deck! But the house isn’t what sold me on the property (at least not entirely). The 6 acres is mostly grassland (including some native grasses, important to a grass geek like me). And there are conifers! Ponderosa pines and incense cedars, not to mention black oaks, white oaks, and elderberries. I’m looking forward to having my sheep and mules here - I think they’ll like it too!

“Our old place.” “My place.” I guess this is the gist of what I’m trying to describe. Sami would have liked this place, I think - she’d have liked the bigger acreage, the wood floors, the light in the house. But we’d have never moved here. We’d have stayed in Auburn until both of us retired, I think - and then probably tried to move somewhere closer to both Lara and Emma. I’m trying to wrap my head around this.

Early on, I’m finding that the change in my physical space has helped me focus on the good memories of my life with Sami. The physical reminders of her illness and passing (all associated with “our old place”) are still present, but without the daily visual (and visceral) reminders, I find myself recalling happier times. I hope this continues. I’m not suggesting that anyone who loses a partner should move, but the move seems right to me. For now.

Last night, when I awoke in the darkness needing to make a trip to the bathroom, I was reminded something Ted Kluszewski (who played for the Cincinnati Reds) said (and which is painted on a wall at Oracle Park):

”How hard is hitting? You ever walk into a pitch-black room full of furniture that you’ve never been in before and try to walk through it without bumping into anything? Well, it’s harder than that.”

So is grieving. So is moving while you’re grieving. But I’m hoping that learning to walk through my pitch-black room (physical and emotional) will get easier as I adjust to living at my new place.

Looking this in the Eye

Moving is exhausting. Moving 23 years of accumulated household and ranch shit is beyond exhausting. But with the first anniversary of Sami’s passing coinciding with my move from Placer County south to Calaveras County, I’ve also found that moving has allowed me to distract myself from thinking too much about what happened last year.

Over the last several weeks, I was often bone tired after spending the day cleaning the barns and hauling junk to the dump, or loading the trailer with things to take to Mountain Ranch. I found myself going to bed earlier than I normally do. And frequently, I found that I couldn’t fall asleep.

When I try to recall things about Sami in these recent weeks, I find my mind drawn to the events of the first half of 2023. To our trip home from New Mexico. To those anxious days when we knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what it was. To the nights holding Sami’s hand in the neuro intensive care unit after both surgeries. To walking by myself or with our daughters through the neighborhood surrounding UCSF. To eating dinner looking out the window of the acute rehabilitation floor of Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. To sleepless nights once we returned to Auburn. And to the wrenching days in the first half of last August. But I can’t seem to think back clearly to the time before. I find that I can’t focus on specific memories of the 33 years we were together before Sami’s glioblastoma diagnosis. To be honest, not all of the memories from those “before” years are happy, but I find that none of them (happy or not) come into focus for me at the moment.

On the actual anniversary of Sami’s passing (August 13), I thought I’d be sad all day. But I wasn’t. I was numb. Numbness, in my experience with grief, has been my mind’s way of getting me through the days I need to get through. Of helping me put one foot in front of the other. Last week, the numbness allowed me to finish moving.

But I re-read a small card that hospice provided me over the weekend titled “The Mourner’s Bill of Rights.” The last line reads, “You have the right to move toward your grief and heal.” I realized that while numbness may have helped me cope with managing my move (and life generally), I had been avoiding my grief. I couldn’t look directly at my loss. Somehow, part of me knows that I need to - that I need to stop moving long enough to sit with my grief. I feel as though looking my grief in the eye will help me move towards it - to acknowledge that my grief is present because of love.

And so yesterday, I decided to take a day away from unpacking at my new place. I drove through the little towns of Rail Road Flat and West Point, and up Carson Pass to Silver Lake. The dogs and I played in the water; I had a picnic lunch and did some reading. We loaded up again and drove over the crest to Hope Valley - one of my favorite spots in the Eastern Sierra. And then we headed back to Auburn for the work week. I put John Prine on Spotify and thought about how much Sami would have enjoyed the short excursion. I cried some, and talked to Sami some - thinking about how much I missed her. For the first time in several weeks, I wasn’t numb. My heart hurt, but I felt more at ease last night. And I realized that I’ll need to do more of this in the coming months. The grief will always be there; acknowledging it - looking it in the eye - seems important to me.

This Little Place

Tonight, I’ll sleep at our little place on Joeger Road in Auburn for the last time. My real estate agent hired a cleaning service to clean the entire house; I’ll sleep outside tonight to avoid getting anything dirty. I still have several days of work left to move everything, but from this point on, I’ll sleep at the home of friends here in Auburn, or at my new place in Mountain Ranch. And tonight, I’m thinking about what this little patch of earth has meant to me and my family.

We moved here in March 2001 - the realtor who sold my house this summer represented us in that original transaction. This place was a step up from our first home in Penryn, CA (which we bought in 1994) - three times the acreage (at 3 acres!), plus 2 barns, a detached office/shop, and irrigation water. We quickly made use of all of it!

This little place saw lots of new life in 23 years. My mule Frisbee was born here shortly after we moved in. The next year, Sami’s mule, Boomerang, was born - and so was Flying Mule Farm. Over the next 2-plus decades, we had 3 litters of puppies, multiple broods of baby chicks, and countless bottle lambs. And, in 2003, our second daughter Emma arrived. This little place was the only home she knew until she went to college 18 years later.

Our first daughter, Lara, loved this place, too - she was 4 years old when we moved here. Somewhere, I have a wonderful photo of her with some of the first sheep we raised here. Later, she would ride horses, build forts, catch bullfrogs in the pond, swim in the irrigation ditch. And take prom photos. As would Emma. We had slumber parties and graduation parties (in both the front yard and the backyard). We “camped” at the pond. We sheared sheep and held harvest festivals in the barns.

This little place, like most farms, also saw death. There are four outstanding dogs buried on this property. My first horse, Cali, who I bought in college, died here, as did Indy, the horse that both the girls rode. And just a year ago, our family surrounded Sami as she passed away from brain cancer.

Curiously, we didn’t do much to improve the house - despite our best intentions. We put a new roof on, remodeled a bathroom, and replaced the deck. We re-roofed and re-sided the barns (Sami was pregnant with Emma when we re-roofed and remodeled the hay barn - she supervised!). But tonight, the house still features the dark green carpet and off-white walls that it had when we moved in.

This little place also grew food - for our family and for our community. For several years, we grew an enormous garden and sold vegetables at the Auburn Farmers Market. One of my favorite memories is when our nieces came to visit one summer when we had a big sweet corn patch. One Friday, the four girls disappeared for several hours. On Saturday morning, when I went out to pick corn for the Farmers Market, I found a 5-gallon bucket full of empty cobs. I can’t imagine the stomach aches that the girls hid from us! That much raw sweet corn can’t be good for the digestive system!

We also raised much of our own meat in the 23 years we lived here. This little place was the “home place” for our larger sheep operation - and so we always had home-raised lamb in the freezer. And on the barbecue. We also raised meat chickens - commercially for a couple of years, and then just for our own consumption. I processed several deer in the back yard, too - and once (at Sami’s insistence) we raised a hog. I loved the bacon, but I prefer lamb chops!

This little place was home to several small businesses, of varying degrees of success. Sami’s large animal veterinary business was by far the most economically successful of these endeavors; AgResource Solutions, Flying Mule Farm, and (recently) Flying Mule Timberworks were my own attempts at business ownership. And during COVID, I worked at my current job for the University of California out of our home office.

In many ways, our yard was a farmer’s yard. Green, colorful, and unkempt most of the time. The dominating features of both our front and backyards were the enormous fruitless mulberry trees. These trees provided so much shade that the last time we used our air conditioning was in 2003, when Sami was pregnant with Emma. But if we loved the trees from July through September, we cursed them in November and December. Our compost pile loved the leaves, but the 6-8 weeks of raking were not much fun.

As much as I’ve loved this place, there are things I won’t miss (in addition to the autumn leaf drop). I won’t miss being less than 50 yards from a heavily traveled county road, and less than a mile from a four-lane state highway (CA-49). Perhaps this a reflection of my age, but people seem to be driving faster as I get older! I won’t miss the dark hallway that feels like a cave. I won’t miss coming home in the winter to a home that’s as cold inside as the air is outside (we didn’t use the furnace after 2003, either).

But I will miss the laughter and the celebrations. I’ll miss waking up before Sami. I’ll miss seeing my sleepy (and sometimes grumpy) girls emerging from their bedrooms in the morning. I’ll miss the fire in the wood stove after a long, cold day of lambing. I’ll miss the lilacs and daffodils in the spring. I’ll miss that first morning in August when I can tell that fall is on the way. I’ll miss my garden and the lawns I mowed every week from April through October. I’ll miss this community.

One of the things I’ve tried to do over the course of my adult life is to make the little patch of land where I’ve lived better. To increase its fertility. To help it grow more food. To improve it’s ecological function. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded with this little place. But I do know that I’ll miss it. I do know that I’ve loved this place. And I know that I’ll walk around the house and the barns and the back pasture this Saturday with a sense of gratitude. And I’ll see Sami at every turn.

Anniversaries

Over the course of the last year, I have found some measure of comfort in music - music that reminds me of Sami, music that we enjoyed together (especially early in our relationship), music that makes me laugh. And, sometimes, music that has the power to make me cry. 

Our daughters introduced me to one of the artists I’ve come to enjoy a great deal in the last 18 months - Jason Isbell. And as I approach what would have been our 34th wedding anniversary (on August 4) and the first anniversary of Sami’s passing, one song in particular stands out - “If we were Vampires.” Here’s the second verse and chorus:

“If we were vampires and death was a joke, we'd go out on the sidewalk and smoke and laugh at all the lovers and their plans. I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand.

“Maybe time running out is a gift. I'll work hard 'til the end of my shift and give you every second I can find. And hope it isn't me who's left behind.

“It's knowing that this can't go on forever. Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone. Maybe we'll get forty years together. But one day I'll be gone, or one day you'll be gone.”

I know I’ve referenced this song in previous blogs, but it’s a song that I keep coming back to - much like coming back to some of my favorite authors (Ivan Doig, for one), I find it comforting to know that artists more articulate than me have thought and written about similar emotions. And similar trauma.

Looking back on that incredibly hot August day in Sonora in 1990 when Sami and I were married, I don’t recall our exact vows, but I know our wedding was pretty traditional. I know there was something about “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” I also know that at the age of 23, I still felt invincible - the “until death do us part” portion of our vows didn’t register with me at the time. Now, 34 years after we each said, “I do” to those promises, their weight takes my breath away. I think intellectually I knew all along that “this can’t go on forever,” but emotionally (at least at 23), I had no capacity for imagining what this experience would be like (does anyone?!). Over the last week, I have found that I have flashbacks to Sami’s last two weeks. Looking back at my journal entries from that period, I am struck by how emotionally and physically exhausted I was. And yet I also feel - I don’t know how to articulate this without it seeming like bragging - a sense that I saw the vows that we took 34 years ago through to the last. I worked “‘til the end of my shift.”

I was traveling on August 4 and will be working on August 13. Both days are important to me; both days are also just regular days to much of the rest of the world. In some sense, I feel like the world has moved on. I can’t - I don’t want to move “on.” Forward, hopefully.

These anniversaries also happen to coincide with my move from Auburn to Mountain Ranch. Today, Auburn Moving Company came to move most of the things in our house; for the rest of the week, my family will help me move everything else. But tonight, I’m sitting alone in a very empty house.

For the last week or so, my emotions have been very close to the surface - a recognition of these difficult first anniversaries, I’m sure. Simple things - like catching the scent of Sami’s favorite perfume while packing our bathroom, or coming across a photo of her from early in our marriage, bring tears - as does knocking around a house that has been full of love, laughter, sadness, anger - in other words, life! - for more than 23 years. 

Reminders of the trauma we endured as a family are equally difficult. On Sunday, as I got off a plane at the Sacramento airport, a young girl who’d been seated in front of me suffered a seizure. Her mom helped keep her safe; her dad had already taken their other children up the jetway. I rushed to him to let him know, and offered to help with the other kids. I know my response must have seemed odd (even troubling) to these complete strangers, but I was immediately transported to the seizures Sami suffered last spring and summer. I wanted to help. I wanted this family to trust me - to know that I had experience with the trauma they were going through. And I can only imagine that they found our interaction disturbing. I was surprised by how much this incident shook me. Two nights later, the memory still brings tears.

My sister has told me on several occasions that she thinks I’m incredibly brave - brave for moving to a new house, brave for having faced what our family faced in 2023, brave for simply getting up each day and putting one foot in front of the other. I don’t know. I don’t feel particularly brave. I feel like I simply got up each day during Sami’s illness and tried to figure out what was needed of me that day. I’m still trying to figure this out a year after Sami left us. And I still don’t know. I still feel as though I’m stumbling through a room I’ve never been in before, in the dark.

While I’m moving all of our things to Mountain Ranch this week, I won’t officially live in Calaveras County until late September, when I transfer to my new position with the Central Sierra region of the University of California Cooperative Extension. Some friends have graciously offered me a room in their home in Auburn during the week; on the weekends, I plan to work on putting my new home together. But I’m looking forward to making the move permanent - to no longer living in the limbo of not knowing where I need to be, or what I need to do. After the incredible disruption of the last 18 months, I’m looking forward to being settled.