Adytum

Yerba Santa joins the gardens that survived the fire…a wonderful place to wait for contractors.

“Sometimes, the fastest way to get there is to go slow. And sometimes, if you wanna hold on, you’ve got to let go. I’m gonna close my eyes, and count to ten. I’m gonna close my eyes, and when I open them again, everything will make sense to me then.”

~ Tina Dico, “Count to Ten”

Every time I visit the property, I’m overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead of us to create a home on the land where we’d laid our weary heads to rest just eleven months ago. The effort and infrastructure it takes to prepare for the tiny home delivery; the trenching and cutting into the land, the filling of those trenches with pipes and conduit, and dealing with the different contractors needed. The planting of privacy bushes, privacy fences, dealing with the dead left on the ground by PG&E, dealing with PG&E to turn the electricity back on, dealing with them to make sure they don’t slaughter the few living trees we have left as they finally get around to installing the powerlines that burned down a year ago.

That’s just the emotional work. Then there’s the standing dead, the garbage and debris still here—shards and wires that cut you when you least expect it—the acre of bare soil, Earth’s skin in need of cover crops and mulch. It’s endless and ironic, since the goal is to create a sanctuary for both wildlife and humans, a place of peace, beauty, and magic. The end goal is alive and well in my imagination, but standing here now, at the camp site we’ve built, I want to cry out with frustration. How are we ever going to get this done? Especially now that the trees are gone. It’s 90 degrees already and it isn’t even ten in the morning. The sun beats down on my skin and I add another thing to be careful about—skin cancer, or worse, looking like a Florida prune as I approach fifty. Thus the recent investments in SPF 50 long-sleeved sun shirts, lightweight enough to wear in the blazing sun while also preventing sun damage. How in the world do I build an apiary at the same moment the megadroughts and heat waves of the west have come into full force?

“I’m already here,” the land whispers on the wind. “Slow down. There is plenty of time.”

I look around at the bare earth, steaming in the hot sun, so golden it hurts my eyes and I’m wearing sunglasses.

“Close your eyes.”

I do close my eyes and at first, try to remember what was once here.

“I’m still here, and I’m gone, and I’m beginning.”

I can’t smell the pines anymore, but I smell the sun on the lavender instead. The hint of warmth on the bark of the madrones is sweet. The air is fresh, as it has always been. I feel the tickle of the wind on my cheeks as it dances in the tendrils of my hair while also stirring the leaves of both the dead and alive. The sun may be hot, but in the shade, the crisp mountain air can still be felt. I taste the water from the well and it is clear and fresh, a delight after city water for a year. I taste the lemon balm and oregano leaves, the parts of the garden that survived the fires, now blooming forth. I hear the bees buzzing in the lavender and the oregano. Since the fire, a different part of the land has produced for these gentle beings—first the madrone blooms, then a sweet wild lettuce with a white flower, then the lavender, thyme, and oregano. Soon, the lemon balm, Melissa officinalis, will be next. There’s a new sweetness on the air, something else that has arrived since the fires.

“I’m already an apiary.”

I open my eyes and turn slightly to see the swathes of Yerba Santa growing around the garden. A volunteer since the fire, it is known as a “fire chaser” meaning it arrives on land after it has suffered a great burning, covering the burn scar with its deep green leaves, bringing nourishment to the soil as its roots dive in and connect in all directions, drawing the invisible organisms needed to renew the lands. Providing shelter and privacy for the birds and other critters and eventually even us humans. I smile as I realize the wish I had for privacy from the road ever since PG&E took the oaks of Robles Drive. The Yerba Santa will grow to nine feet. It appears I asked and the land has answered. According to the website Of Sedge and Salt, “Yerba Santa is a land holder and patcher, so your harvesting of her should not disrupt what she needs to do for the land. So take heed.” Take heed. Alas, it appears that life is here, and even though it is wild and untamed, it is still beautiful. Best of all, bees LOVE Yerba Santa and just as the lemon balm blooms die out and start to seed, these plants will blossom and usher in the fall honey harvest with all their glory.

“You see?”

It gets me thinking, does this land even need us? We’re cutting into the soil, undoing nature’s magic, in order to return to it. In spite of my best efforts to create a bedroom with the bees in the least impactful way, I still have to have plumbing and electricity, it’s required by the county to be allowed to return to the place I called home less than a year ago. In the bureaucratic mind, there’s nothing worse in California than to live off the grid—isn’t that ironic? I walk down to the place where my home once stood and take inventory of my soils project. I have offered up this site to the bees and other pollinators, perhaps as penance for the damage I have done, and must do in order to live there.

“I will create an apiary in exchange for the machines that you have endured for a year. The chainsaws, the tractors, the trenching. Please, forgive me.”

The cover crops wave in the wind and little white butterflies and bees zigzag amongst them. My experiment has been successful—it appears we can remediate this soil—and the life around me proves it. We will seed it entirely this fall, once the trenches leading to the septic system are filled and the machines are done tearing into this land. Yet is it a good enough offering to Big Trees, this one little garden?

“This was my idea, remember?”

I sense a shiver down my spine. It was by watching and listening to the land that I developed this plan of rebuilding the soil and creating an apiary first rather than focusing on a million dollar plus attempt to recreate the house we lost.

“Keep listening. You have plenty of time.”

I close my eyes again and take in the scents, sounds, caress of the slight breeze, sun tanning my skin.

“Thank you for tending to me.”

When I open my eyes again, a raven settles in the branches above me. He is quite vocal. A second one joins us, and then a third. They fly over my head in the brilliant blue sky, a color so vibrant it reminds me of the Caribbean Sea. There is a word in Greek, adytum—the inner sanctum of the temple—a place so holy it can only be entered through a profound and studious relationship with the divine. Taking in a deep breath, I feel that divinity on my skin, below my feet, and glistening in the skies above.

“Yes,” I say out loud, my eyes set upon the tall redwood sentinels at the edge of my property, green and lush even though their lower trunks are black as coal. “You are beautiful, even now. You are already an apiary, already a refuge for animals and humans alike, and I’m grateful to be here with you in this moment in time. Let us enter the adytum together.”