Getting to This Place: A Life Explained by Nature

By Helen Olson

Our daily thoughts and actions are challenged with aspects of the past, present, and future. This understanding reached a deafening crescendo when Helen Olson left her lifetime home and moved across the country. The abundance of nature on the border of Vermont and Massachusetts provided a crucial refuge. As she learned about her dynamic new family of plants and animals, the environment became a trusted mentor. Helen had a passionate need to make sense of her past, feel content with the present, and find hope in the future. In her memoir-turned-life-guide, fascinating facts about mother nature, and human nature, melded into valuable realizations about her life—and the lives of many others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647506452

Helen Olson

Helen Olson has been an advocate for children and animal rights for many decades. She’s been a nursing director, high school nurse/counselor, and has owned and operated a nature-themed art gallery.

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About the author

Helen Olson has been an advocate for children and animal rights for many decades. She’s been a nursing director, high school nurse/counselor, and has owned and operated a nature-themed art gallery.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to the wisdom of children and nature.

Copyright Information ©

Helen Olson (2021)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Olson, Helen

Getting to This Place

ISBN 9781643788166 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781647506452 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021904313

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

Thanks to my dear Pebbles Group writers and the forever missed Thunderbird Book Shop for supporting my worth as a writer. Thanks also to Nora for patiently teaching and coaching needed skills. And thanks to family and friends for their encouragement.

Introduction

I didn’t have the Hollywood looks or popularity but my aspiring spirit matched the 1966 Beach Boys’ song California Girls. The eternal image of fun in the sun with its sundry enticements was the carrot that dangled endlessly in front of many believers in California life.

I had lived most of my life there, except for the eight years I was struggling to get back. I believed there were two groups of people in the country: those that lived in California, and those that wished they did. That was until June 2009 when I had the best idea in my life since leaving my first husband—for the second time.

Bob and I had flown to Hartford Connecticut, rented a car, and headed to visit his son’s new home at the Southern tip of Vermont. Our arrival became increasingly questionable as the curving tree-lined roads narrowed and the light faded. I had almost given up faith in the comfort of our awaiting country bedroom when my husband found the house.

The next morning, I awoke to a pageant of trees, birdsong, and vibrant color everywhere. I felt like Snow White in a Walt Disney wonderland!

Much of New England is in the reverse state of development from California. New England forests had sacrificed their wellbeing to human interests a good two hundred years before nary a house was built in the golden state. The 18th century saw the trees replaced with fields for crops and livestock. The miles and miles of intermittent rock fences are a testament to the segmented farms. On one of our walks, a local historian explained that during the winter farmers would determine where the rocks needed to be moved. They used stone boats to move them. A wooden boat loaded with hundreds of pounds of rock, many an average of 50–90 pounds, could most easily be pulled by a horse along with the snow. In the spring they stacked the rocks to make fences.

The 19th century brought factories and manufacturing. The fertile land and contributing rivers gave all they could while the benefit to New Englanders lasted. Later in the century, the South learned how to manufacture their own cotton, leaving New England textile mills without adequate work. People with a wealth of skills moved west in search of fresh land and water, and a greater American dream.

Vermont and Northwest Massachusetts’ land has enjoyed rest and rejuvenation over the last one hundred years. Seasonal nourishment of rain, snow, and sun allowed millions of tiny seeds to become plants and trees. There was again shelter and food for animals and birds. The moderate tracts of farmland for grazing and feeding animals coexist alongside undisturbed nature. Maple, birch, hemlock, and pine have reasserted themselves. They mingle with the rock fences, shade the many creeks, and gather around cemeteries where farmers, soldiers, mothers, and children were laid to rest.

Arik walked or drove us to every postcard-perfect place in the area: babbling brooks of crystal-clear water, meadows, and roadsides splashed with flowers and old mills that exuded the history of so many, so long ago. Rolling hills of trees were our constant companions along the way. No housing developments, no shopping malls, no billboards, and few cars. But we had local choices for good food, entertaining music, and pleasant shops within a 30-minute drive from his home.

As we sipped our California wine looking out on the Vermont beauty from Arik’s deck, I declared, I want to live here.

Looking directly into my husband’s quizzical eyes, I added, Let’s move when you retire next year.

Bob and I had some serious disagreements in our history together, but we were on the same page about this idea. We talked to a real estate agent before flying back to California!

Next year became 18 months, and we still didn’t live in New England; but we found a house one mile over the Vermont border, in Franklin County Massachusetts: 30 plus acres of meadow, forest, stream, and pond that we would never afford in California—even if it could be found. We cajoled a bank to give us a mortgage on a second home, still owing on the first one. We’d have to sell our house in a buyer’s market—and both of us about to retire! Was it crazy? Did we really want to do this? To move all the way across the country, 3,000 miles from friends, family, and the California life we’d known for 40 years? And what about five or six months of cold and snow? Friends thought we were nuts!

To be sure, our decision was not without trepidation. There would be sadness and fear when I cut the umbilical cord of 30 plus years with people we loved. But I liked the friendly, unassuming reception we’d experienced from people in Western Mass.

The richness of New England’s nature is an ideal companion to education and the arts. Seven colleges are within 40 miles of our home, and the hill towns around them reflect like-mindedness in the fascination for education and culture. There are always creative venues available in music, theatre, and other creative presentations to nourish our spirits.

The growing cottage industry of small farms that provide tasty, healthy foods contributes to a pleasant sustainable life at less cost than living in California.

We can walk for miles or drive for tens of miles surrounded by rolling hills covered in forests and fields. I found a kinship here where nature takes center stage: trees are many and cars are few; nonhuman species outnumber human ones; and a venture out our front door, across a meadow, and through a forest yields sounds I know are from wind through trees instead of cars over the pavement.

These rich offerings seemed a more than adequate trade-off to the dread New England winters. It seemed no more challenging than what I’d already experienced in my life.

I thought being immersed in the intensity of nature and leaving behind the equal intensity of my past would free my mind to enjoy a new life. I could be more like the person I’ve imagined for many years—and my marriage could be as well. It felt serendipitous while shopping one day to find a plaque that read,

Never let yesterday fill up today.

I brought it home and enshrined it as a daily reminder to halt uncomfortable memories that clouded my mind. But the more I tried to do that the more forcefully they pushed through. Was it because I had more unclaimed time? Was it the aging thing that caused my disconcertedness?

As we walked the trails, nature answered my questions: The trees, birds, and unfettered environment gradually opened my consciousness. What I learned about the natural environment enlightened me about my own life. What I learned about human nature completed the picture.

My journey was difficult, but the place I arrived at was more than worth it.

The Journey

Chapter 1

Dark Forest

Towering grizzled trees close ranks like the Redcoat soldiers who came before them. Poorly armed colonists fought to survive on the same ground that sprigs of grass and inklings of plants now struggle. They stretch for meager rays of light to gain what strength they can. The domineering trees are no friend to the young and insecure. The defiant pines, hemlock, and beech claim the sun and rain for themselves.

Walk to the edge of a beckoning forest when the sun simmers on your body. The canopy of tall trees offers cool shade—an idyllic place you think. But if you tear your sight from the seductive patterns of light and look down at the ground covered deep with discarded needles and leaves, you will see their troubled lives.

I first became responsible for my mother when I was four. It was the day she fell to the ground, her whole body shaking and jerking. Her face became a grotesque Halloween mask. An epileptic seizure would confound any child, but I