The Gatherer

Wasn't that old when I  started contemplating what I  might do when I  was. Been frequenting dumps and landfills since childhood when Jane, Robin's mom, drove us to the Idyllwild town dump in her old Model A Ford pickup truck, out on the Hemet side of the San Jacinto mountains, amidst great islands of majestic smooth as a baby's butt, deep dark red bark that defied the term bark, more like the skin of an exotic temptress; manzanita groves.  Jane always had a silver bell leather strip tied to one of her flesh side out round toed cowboy boots, jingling to scare off rattlesnakes, maybe or maybe just to be different.  We were the two poorest families in town and so scavenging was a survival skill.  More fun for me and Robin. Sometimes we even hiked down there through the manzanitas, unchaperoned. 

Later, in Palmer Lake and Colorado Springs, Colorado; Tesuque, Santa Fe and Eldorado, New Mexico , I continued that habit, building my first house around an old 30 foot trailer that I wrested out of a tight location where they kinda built their house blocking egress of the temporary shelter they called the 'Pink Palacio', gathering all kinds of scrap plywood,  pine boards and odds and ends from the Tesuque dump, commingling with Joe Blea and the Tesuque Pueblo governor, and also found other cull sources like old 2x10 fence rails and cottonwood short, round stove lengths for insulation. By the age of 24, had my own passive solar house for under $2000 and it even made it into a color glossy book on solar homes.

In those halcyon days, before transfer stations and the like, there were often old codgers, scarecrows that sort of were Mayor Domos of the pits and we helped them put out occasional spontaneous fires and the like, sort of like old geezer greeters who sat in their old pickup trucks while not conducting dump activities and directing people around.  I figured I might be suited to end up one of them in old age...or sell kindling on the side of the road; one or the other; if worse came to worst.

I am now approaching 70 and have a little ranch in the PJ/ ponderosa/gambrels oak/cottonwood bosque along the Galisteo creek and have scavenged all these years, creating a sizeable boneyard, hoarding boards and wire and trucks and what have you and making me feel like I overdid it all a little. I had also converted the cool custom donkey shed into a quintessentially funky casita made from repurposed and recycled materials from the boneyard and shop and shed; that was the design criteria; had to be repurposed or recycled; earthship style rammed tires, strawbale, cables and old steel, roots and sticks, paper and stones.

They don't have dumps any more and young ‘kid’ sit in air-conditioned guard houses at transfer stations so that leaves me out of a scarecrow job. 

So now I was decluttering the kitchen after Belle 'passed' or died, actually, and, of course I kept her too and buried her out here, which is another story. In the process of decluttering, decided to unclutter the old antique chrome, cast iron and sheet metal wood cookstove still in the kitchen since the early days on the homestead and actually use it again...to cook with!  So I jolted and started and was amazed today as I  found myself casually and instinctively gathering sticks from everywhere on the ranch floor, for the woodstove which thrives on kindling, as I  poked around doing chores and trompsing about and around the boneyard and realized that I  had many lifetime's supply of kindling lying all around the ranch, just everywhere, in little shanks and branches, just begging to be garnered off the land,  fulfilling my first and second choice of geezer occupations,  except that I  was the scavenger, the employee,  the boneyard mayor and the recipient/ best customer for the kindling...and the cook!  What a success story; reducing the wildfire 'burden’ as they call it, and cutting down (love that term) on the electric bill and getting good body stretches and heart healthy exercise, for the rest of my life!  Come on over, sit by the warm kindling-fed fiery cookstove and drink Cota herbal tea, ('Indian tea', Hopi tea,Navajo tea, Zuni tea, Greenthread) that grows wild out here on the land. Happy Gatherings !!