After two days of great mid-sixty weather, we got shafted with freezing cold weather, wind, and a winter alert advisory. Unlike in Maryland where a winter advisory could mean an inch of snow, here, we were looking backward to 6”-12” with the ability to screw our travel plans. We woke up normally and left for the worksite at Gene’s with a whole bunch of new wood to finish the porch with and get a whole bunch of the roof done. We immediately started “screwing” away (by the way, a construction site is by far the best for “that’s what she said” jokes) and Angela, Jane (from TowsonU), and I finished up the porch together. Despite all the hardship she has been through, Gene just has a spirit around her. A spirit of hope, I suppose. She says she can’t sleep at night and wakes up early just because she is so excited about her house being built. It feels great to be a part of her happiness. She was able to drill a couple of screws into her porch and was able to understand Angela and my new found love for power tools. I can’t believe our workdays have ended and that we are already ready to leave. The more you look around, the more you see how much help this place needs. It’s a weird feeling. The people here don’t come across as desperate and have so much hope and so much connection to this land. A girl asked Gene why she doesn’t want to leave and she said that she thought about it but she doesn’t want to because she has her children and her husband buried in the backyard. Yes, the fact itself was sad and it struck me hard. But more importantly, it was a testament and a perfect demonstration of the groundedness of the native people—of their reverence for land. For Westerners, land doesn’t mean much at all. We strike the ground with no sense of us hurting our Mother. It is amazing that she is giving up the opportunity for a better life elsewhere simply, or not so simply, because of her children and husband. I love that. The more history that I learn, the more I despise what has been done to these people and their rich culture. Out of all of this though, the thing I think I learned the most is that I cannot live my life without powertools. I will end with a that’s what she said:
“I need a 66 inch piece of this!”
“Oh yeah, how ‘bout I give you a 66 inch piece of THIS (insert gutter motion here)”
Classic.
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