It was like this: one time, I was having a beer at the Grill; there’d been an abrupt and violent fight in the parking lot when I’d arrived, not unusual on a weekend night, and ruminating on the scuffle, I asked a hulking tower of tattoos and black leather beside me at the bar, “How does that stuff even _start_?” and Menace Incarnate shrugged and shook his head: ” It starts _so easy_! You can be just—minding your business, and some asshole comes right up in your face and says, ‘You want a piece of this?’ and you say–y’know, because you gotta– ‘Why yeah, I think I do!’“

At the time, that rationale seemed insane, a psychosis born of testosterone x Budweiser. But I was hearing that voice now, on a bright and mild September afternoon, that challenge to my grit and my womanhood, and I was answering, gods help me, in the affirmative:

“So–you’re looking for a project?”

“Why yes. Yes, possibly I am!”

I have characterized the mission of this blog as “Earth-Craft, Herb-Craft, Witchcraft and Wordcraft” because you have to set boundaries. Home repair is not within the purview of this already-pretty-broad umbrella, nor is it one of my talents.

Spring House has many, many, many problems. She sits on 4+ acres in one of SW Virginia’s poorest and most sparsely-populated counties. No hospital, fuck, not even a McDonald’s in the whole county! The county seat is a town of fewer than 1,500 souls. “Keep America Great!” and “F**k Biden” signs are as common as buzzards, which are…common. Missy mentioned as a selling point that zoning was almost nonexistent here, meaning–I think she was suggesting– that within the boundaries of federal law, I could do what I pleased with the place. A year into my tenure, I had exchanged the lean profits from my old city house for a non-leaking roof, non-rotted insulated windows, light fixtures which were not single suspended lightbulbs, and several necessary repairs/excavations to and of the primitive spring-fed water supply. Adventures continue incrementally as the cash flow permits, although often, in this age of plague and inflation, it does not.

Do you understand when I say the trees spoke to me? And here we enter most directly into the legitimate scope of this blog: Earth-craft. Witchcraft, too–all of it. Leaning against my gleaming, still-warrantied blue city sedan that day, chatting with Missy about the viability of the septic system, and the negotiability of the asking price, I could hardly follow our conversation for the voices of the trees–notably a massive scarred maple in the front yard with outstretched arms and a face like a woman singing, but also Chinese chestnuts, strung in a ragged zigzag to where the land sloped sharply down, 200 feet to the springhouse; a windbreak of pines to the south; hickory wreathing the side yard, and fruit trees too: plum and pear and apple. Their voices surrounded me like a mother’s cradle song, telling me I was home, home, home to a place I’d never seen before. My fate was clear before I’d been there half an hour, hardly a fair fight. Do you want a piece of this? Kid, I am a piece of this.

So: Does the poor fool in the parking lot think they made a mistake, crumpled on the asphalt with blood and snot on their shirt, or even–brighter outcome–nursing bruised knuckles at the back bar? Do I, now, five years later? Am I still all in? Dammit, yes, I said. Yes. I want a piece of this. I still do.