I have to say it’s been almost impossible for me to continue this series of reflections on leaving 928, the site of our net zero life in McMinnville.  There are so many more important leavings going on.  They’re all around us, among us, everywhere.  Catastrophic leavings—and grieving.  Ours seems so trivial by comparison.  The juxtaposition of these two photographs is what I mean. 

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Michael Cavallaro took the wildfire pics here and in the opening collage. He is Director of the Rogue Valley Council of Governments  (www.rvcog.org).  The scenes are the communities of Phoenix and Talent in Southern Oregon and the aftermath of the wildfires.  At least 40% of the homes, many of them very old single-wide trailers, disappeared in an instant, leaving no address.  The interplay of these two scenes, side by side, isn’t lost on us. 

While we truly grieve our separation from friends, neighbors and all we leave behind of our blood, sweat and tears, we leave by choice. And we go our way, entitled with the real estate value of a seller’s market. We carry with us boxes stuffed with keepsakes reminding us of the history we will celebrate beyond our little time.  In terrifying contrast, our neighbors from the burnt homesteads, towns and suburbs across our western landscape inhabit a different picture.  With our sisters and brothers from the obliterated boroughs and parishes of Gulf Coast hurricane lands, they had no choice.  And many fled with no time to grab but a few clothes or a cherished pet.  When we pay attention, we see that most of the victims this time, as in all times, are folks already on the margins with deficits of poverty and racism stacked against them for generations.  The photos of Phoenix and Talent show mainly trailer parks.  What little value they did have has vaporized from ground they didn’t own anyway.  Memories have vanished with incinerated photo albums and computers, those favorite t-shirts and Christmas decorations and all the stuff our family has safely saved in packing boxes for posterity in our future ownings.

Addresses tell us volumes about each other.  I think of the house numbers of my life: 1508 Pitney Lane where I was raised, 2770 NW Stewart where our children started school; 1205, 1243, 928. All  those markers still exist, still holding a place for people who look like me!  It speaks of incredible permanence in a world that, more and more, is inhabited with refugees whose address is long gone.  In McMinnville we even got to establish a new address.  Daughter Erin, the mathematician, studied the house numbers across the street during deconstruction and, seeing they were odd in the low 900’s, she suggested we ask for 928.  She knew we were married 9-28, September 28, 1974.  We made the request and the city gave it.  We are certainly not the first people ever to live in that spot but the first to live as number 928 NW Cedar.  Because of our anniversary, 928 wasn’t just where we live but who we love, and what we cherish and how and when.

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We marked the beginning of construction 5 years ago breaking champagne on the excavator.  We posed on that pile of gravel at 928 and, on 9-28 celebrated our 41st anniversary with dessert in our future dining room.  Then we did it!  We really did it!  We started building our destiny in net zero. 

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We layered 12 inches of insulation and poured a cement floor on it.  We fashioned 13 inch walls stuffed with fiberglass, surrounded by spun basalt for a moral-sized home of 1,014 square feet.  We wrapped it airtight in (Henry’s) Blue Skin and capped it with a red metal roof.

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We tilted into place the triple pane monster-windows journeyed from Lithuania through the Panama Canal.  We covered the walls, had a paint party. We reclaimed wood from that now address-less former home to build vanities, windowsills and floor trim.  Then, we stuffed the place with efficient appliances, LED lights and a small ductless heat pump.

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We placed catchment tanks and a rain purifying system. We learned to drink skywater from what became a kind of rainfall oasis.  We installed a heat recovery ventilator to completely exchange the air every 3 hours.  We began to really breathe in and breathe out with our neighborhood.

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Atop it all, we fixed the solar panels to generate enough power to run the house and fully charge our EV transportation and called it Net Zero.   This was our best shot, to pass along a beautiful and habitable Earthhome for all Earth’s children.  And the possibility, at every address, of a future free of fossil decadence and danger.

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Outside, we moved a lot of soil. We fashioned deep beds and did it with people who, through the pain of blood blisters and sore backs, still seem to love us, even as we’ve up and left.

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We tried to be good guests of that ground.   We made compost.  We planted crimson cover crops.  We built a coop over the compost and gave our chickens their names, knowing that, when all is said and done, the yolk will always be on us!

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We planted 75 dwarf fruit trees on that 60X100 lot.  There are apples you never heard of like Hudson’s Golden Gem and Westfield Seek-No-Further.  We harvested in humble gratitude.  We planted a native wetland to keep the gift of downpours from being lost down the street and storm drain. We gave thanks for the pollinators who make it all possible.

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We tried every day to fall in love again and I’m not sure what she’d say, but I think it happened often enough to make us ready for the next awesome surprise. 

But you know life within walls, right?  In the everyday holiness of there, we made cinnamon rolls to share with neighbors and pickles to pucker by.  In there, we first heard our son and daughter’s plans to be married to the loves of their precious lives.  In there, we heard the first test results confirming our suspicion of Debbie’s Cancer.

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In there we saw her through chemo and radiation, celebrated her survival and welcomed a new grandson.  In there, we introduced Jackson to his Aunts.  In there, we implicated him in the drool of peaches and the necessity of protest to keep the bastards from getting us down.  And against those same lying bastards, we tried to keep our imagination alive in there for a world of real safety for the endangered and poor of all species.   That Black Lives Matter and maybe we can Make America Gracious Again.  And Good.

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It’s been said of humanity on this precious Planet that we all live at the same address.  I’m sure it’s morally true.  But I would never say it to a neighbor sifting through the ashes of their lives for just one tiny trinket of what used to be.  You see, in the living room at 928 was also where we began organizing for climate and immigration justice with the churches, to put our lives out there for something beyond our street number.  928 provided a security that allowed us to even consider civil disobedience. If we were going to be arrested at ICE headquarters, it was probably an idea born of some sleepless dark morning in that bed.  On the front walk we watched the eclipse with friends when the sun went dark at mid-day and we saw the stars.  There is a fundamental magic at that address.  That’s what we worship.  I suspect it’s there at every place, waiting to be found.

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Some people, especially those of faith, might say we are “blessed.”  Of course that’s just rude! Unless we believe those who escaped their incinerated dwellings are unblessed or somehow deserving of their unspeakable loss.  We’re just lucky.  Whenever those walls come down, be it next month or in 100 years, they might find where we etched our names in the foundation beneath where the kitchen used to be.  I’m real aware that refugees and renters don’t get to etch their names in cement.  Only owners (and cats) or maybe little boys get that chance.  There’s a permanence in etching that, while certainly a mark of privilege, must also be a promise, no?   If they uncover our names, they will rightly wonder if we did right by that address…if, in our permanence we found compassion.  When we had the chance did we build for the best Earth has to offer and a better humanity?  Did we vote, and for what?

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All we know is, the pandemic came, we needed family, we sold and we left.  At the end we sat on the floor of 928, emptied of the furniture of our short sojourn, saying goodbye the best we could without touching anyone. 

Friends, as I write this I’m flooded with emotion.  Big chunks of what we loved of Earth are just gone.  Some of them for good.  At least for our good.  And the route from there to a better here, like the incinerated route we used to drive from McMinnville to Bend on Highway 22, through the forest, is just jaw-dropping stark. We always stopped at The Cedars restaurant in Detroit, Oregon for breakfast so we could charge the EV at the chargers on their lot.  The Cedars is gone.  The chargers did survive but sit powerless.  Holy freeking Christ have mercy.  What have we done?  Our moral world is in flames, with a President and his creepy band fanning the wildfires of hatred and white supremacy, doing his worst to make us enemies of one another while we slide to hell in the same handbasket.  220,000 of us are dead with 200,000 more corpses to come and no apology.  Earth is on fire, with no possibility of compassion.  Science is mocked.  The land mourns.  Holy freeking Lord have mercy.

Most of what was tied down we left at 928.  But we dug up the peace pole. Erin painted it for her Mom our first Christmas there.  Anointed with winter snow,  it stood sentinel through everything, reminding us.  Que la paz prevalezca en la tierra.  We will need it where we are going.  We celebrated our 42nd anniversary in 2016 just after our house at 928 was finished, just before the Trump election.  In the past 4 years we often wondered if we’d be alive to see our 46th year together or, if alive, would we still be able to care.  But we’ve come to another place now in 2020 and we made it.  And I believe we will prove we are really in this together and we will all make it together.  We’re different than we were.  Better than we’ve come to be in Trump time.  I know there’s something etched so deeply in the cement of our moral lives, marked on our hearts that we’ll dig down beneath the rubble and rise from the ashes.  We will vote courageously, so someday love, justice and, yes, peace will prevail.  And we will build back better.  Holy freeking God have mercy!  Have mercy upon us.  All of us.  And grant us your peace.

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