DETOUR ~

What I Found on the Detour





That there are other ways to go —


That the Zimmermans sold their cows
And now there is a hillside of sheep

 
That the fellow who saws and sells firewood
That his work horses look healthy

 
That there are other towns
One growing & selling the best tasting corn of the summer

 
That there are small town libraries
That there are small town post offices

 
That there are people in both ready to help
That I feel robust seeing and knowing this

 
That everyone, everyone! pulled off to the side
Of our narrow river road and let others come first

 
That only one fool barked his car horn because
He won't talk, but he was the only one

 
That the river is shallower south
Than it is in the north

 
That there are footbridges with cameras
God help us

 
That engineers describe a bridge plan 600 feet long out in
Splendid nowhere, and drop it like a lead weight

 
That others actually propose moving the covered bridge
That was certainly built where it is for a reason

 
That it has earned and survived a 100 year flood to
Stay where it is, more than anything we know

 
That a state pond has a morning mist
That floats our eyes

 
That a working farm, open to the wind, has
The only light shining when I pass at 5AM

 
That a house I also pass, used to be a slaughter-
House I knew, and what a legacy

 
That at a corner store my wife met a friend for the first time
They started to shake hands, which fell into a big hug


That passing an abandoned sawmill, quiet as a ghost town
A fisher cat could be seen scrambling where logs were yanked

 
That the day the Green River Covered Bridge re-opened
Reggie from Colrain stopped, both of us driving trucks five

 
Miles south of the bridge, and pointed to a bald eagle stone
Still in a tree along the river — he wanted to take a photograph —

 
And instead the eagle flew

~ Bob Arnold

photo & poem 2014  © bob  arnold

NEIGHBORHOOD ~
( CODA / SORTA )

THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
—Oscar Wilde 

Dear Hanne and Lars Amund,

Ah, it's already been a very good day —

I rebuilt the lid on the woodstove tea pot. I think that means winter can begin since that tea pot will heat water every day until probably May (for tea), and the woodstove won't go out until a likewise May. One lit match starts our winter fires, which begins sometime in the end of October and never goes out. Ted Enslin and I used to compare notes, in weekly correspondence for years and years between Vermont and Maine, at just how well our wood fires and wood piles were faring. 

At the same time we dropped a bone dead elm tree that was nicely losing its bark and showing its hard rock wood. Brought it down and bucked it up and between Susan and me, we lugged the tree in firewood lengths home up the hill in fifteen loads, right through the opulent poison ivy and into the woodshed and eventually into the house where it will burn and heat the rooms immediately. Now, that's a friend.

I know you asked me weeks ago what had happened to the trouble we've been experiencing on our road and neighborhood. A clumsy resolution, of a sort, has occurred — maybe the only possible resolution there could be considering the circumstances — but no part of it really feels any good. Nobody is perfect in this neighborhood tale, so let's not kid ourselves. It's a search for what has happened to basic truth and rightful decency. There are countless facets to the trouble, and individuals, and it has only grown in number as some have displayed very unwise judgment and actions. I'll get into that with you. First, let me sum up, again, ever briefly I hope, how it all started and where it has come to. Not quite a finish line.

You know we had Hurricane Irene visit over a year ago now. This storm swept in and turned our valley and road topsy-turvey for many months on end. The high point of the storm is our neighborhood did get behind themselves to work together at hurdling some obstacles — from rebuilding wiped out sections of the road (the flooding river took the road down to a vanishing point, nothing there), to offering rides, drinking water, phone, electricity, a field where I once helped a local farmer cut and put up 50 bales of hay was now there for stranded neighbors to park their cars and hoof it home over a bewildering passageway, plus some comfort. All of the highest value, and all showcasing to me that this road hasn't gone to pot, and has the ability to work together in a common crisis. A bravo signature.

The problems for us began to occur with individual judgment, all bad judgment, and all directed primarily right at us, or our land. There were a handful of incidents: the cleanup crew that had all good intentions but with way too much force and little foresight came onto our land (2000 feet of river frontage) and started to cut trees and do as they pleased at what they considered a cleanup process. All good intentions but never thinking the land is owned by someone(s) and they may have some other idea how they wish their land to be treated. In fact I was working right up on the other end of the land that day cutting away dammed up trees and any one of these folks could have come and seen me and talked out their plans. This doesn't happen much any more; people just do what they wish to do. If they have a band of followers or supporters, all the better for all of them, but it could be pitched in the wrong direction. Susan went up and confronted the work crew to stop what they were doing (midway with saws), and they did (someone was actually filming the event), but when Susan wanted to have a conversation and explanation from the crew leader, he bulled past her and snarled he had no time for talk. Keep that in mind, it will be the mantra and heartache of much of the problem in this back country tale.  

The second incident was about a month later, again a neighbor, trespassing on our property and removing rocks (small) right in the vicinity of a stone staircase I built down a river bank to get to the river and land where I was daily cutting these flood damaged trees and removing them by hand. The stone staircase was built for my use retrieving the firewood out of the river basin and up to the road and into my truck. This neighbor used my staircase to get to what rock she was taking and the rock she was taking would be sold in a business she runs with her husband. I don't have any problem with this, I just wished she had asked permission to go onto our land to take the small rocks. We had no idea what she was doing down there. As I've said many times, there's plenty of rocks — less good manners. It was my turn to confront a neighbor who lives up the road and right across from a smaller stream that I would never think to bother or remove anything from before asking her permission, but there you go. It became an ugly scene which I've described in detail in an earlier essay on the Birdhouse. It was so ugly that when I left and the woman was turning her vehicle around in a huff to go home (I let her take all her rocks), I asked Susan, who knows the woman, if she would head down and have a talk with the woman. And this happened, and the woman was just as unpleasant with Susan. She stormed away. Later a phone call or two ensued where Susan tried to educate the woman about private property and land rights, and that she might want to call our town clerk to get the skinnny on who owns what and where. There is a large town map in the town clerk's office that anyone can visit, big on the wall, and property and boundaries and ownership is well-detailed. One of the hardships of all our problems happened when the woman did make a phone call to the town clerk and received not the town clerk but an assistant who went ahead and gave her an earful of wrong information, on top of a character assassination of what he only assumed was the party this woman was complaining about. The woman caller never identified herself to the town official, but she did give our name. Everything was just a loose bunch of change. This woman then called Susan back to unload on her all this enlightenment, which of course made no sense, and already with a trigger-anger agenda, both the woman and her husband unleashed on Susan their feelings. I could hear it blaring from the phone standing five feet away. I later thought it best to drop this couple an email invitation to please come by our place for a visit and let's iron this all out, and like the work crew organizer before them, they wanted nothing to do with any conversation. A second possible conversation denied.

Okay, it's all merry and bright.

Know the woman above is friends with another woman on the road and by early springtime, after a fairly mild winter, this other woman will take Susan on as Susan is walking to the mailbox a quarter mile up the road from our house. This is the mother of three sons in their early twenties, all living at home, who trespassed on our land to build large campfires, whip up drinking parties, and whatever hoopla they wished to perform out of our earshot. One day we found the campfire, all the beer bottles and general mess, and Susan asked the mother (who she knew) to please have her sons cleanup the mess and leave the premises. This she refused to do. This meant we went and cleaned up the mess and busted up the stone campfire ring and ended up with two of the three sons in direct confrontation with us on our land. One fellow was benign enough. The other liked to use the word "asshole" directed at me, four times. It made Susan uncomfortable enough to leave the scene and like Lillian Gish in the film The Night of the Hunter, phone the "troopers" (state troopers). This is what country folk often used to do. We've lived here forty years and have maybe called the state troopers a handful of times, and this was only the second time we called on a neighbor, and coincidentally, both neighbors had lived, separately, in the same house at one time or another. We have a theory about that we'll leave for another tale. 

Long story short, a state trooper came out, ever polite, listened to our problems and went and sniffed things out. For whatever reason the local sheriff's department then got involved (we didn't call them) and they took over from the state troopers. The sheriff's department advised and a decision was made (again, not ours, but we agreed on their recommendation) to have an official "Notice Against Trespass" served on the woman and her sons. Everyone wanted to include all three sons. I balked on that idea, because only one of the three sons had caused trouble, so the notice was directed at only the mother and the oldest swearing son. Neither could step on our land, or use our swimming hole (which has never been posted as No Tresspassing to anyone, please keep that in mind). In time, during court proceedings with the woman and the State of Vermont (we were not involved) the State decided, watching the woman's actions in court, to put an order against the woman not to have any contact with Susan or me. She had to stay 300 feet away from us at all times. She had to leave a building if we were in the same building etc. The sheriff's department had left their mark. They made one small mistake at the start of things which turned out for the better because it dropped away a novice deputy and brought into the forefront a Captain, to tidy the mistake, who turned out to be a solid arm to work with.

“It's your life – but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.”

—Eleanor Roosevelt

None of this took well with the woman or the three sons, so after the No Trespassing Notice was put into place, she confronted Susan on the road as Susan returned from the mailbox one morning with our mail. It's important to know at that time no one was a witness to this confrontation but Susan, the woman, and a friend of the woman who quickly departed in her pickup truck. But she was there. Hold that thought.

The woman lambasted Susan. Did her "Fuck You!" rant at her, then ran across the road and jumped up and down onto our land, mocking Susan and the law, and screamed "Call the Police! Call the Police!" and as you know by now, Susan complied. The sheriff's department came out again which only made things more convoluted, gnarled, and put this woman into some months of visiting the court, having been charged with a criminal action and now facing the State's Attorney.

Vermont has a very fair legal system where this woman could have taken the route of an easeful admission of her actions, apologizing to Susan, and perhaps / or not, doing a minimal amount of community service. I can't tell you why it is, but some people on this road are arrogant and quite foolish: this will be the third individual who refuses to admit to their poor judgment, won't talk and move toward reconciliation, and in this woman's case will push ahead and steamroll the State into countless man hours in the court, sheriff's department involvement,  drawing in other legal offices, never mind what is happening to us and the continuity of this road and neighborhood. She will also forego legal counsel and defend herself, a nightmare for the State's Attorney.

Now what happens next is fascinating, if you like to be fascinated by clownish acts. Instead of acting toward any reconciliation with us (talk), and now she can't because of the court order against having any personal contact with us, the woman conjures up an idea of getting "witnesses" attesting to her good character. This will be in the form of signatures via a petition. It could be used in the final leg of her court case if all of this came before a judge and jury. It might, it might not. It's all fair game. We hear about the witness list from the sheriff's department who now have to come out and interview each of the nineteen witnesses. It shouldn't be lost on anyone what time and expense this is costing the taxpayers. We're on the other end wondering day by day what has kept the cleanup crew organizers from ever talking with us, the woman and her husband and the stolen rocks, now this woman and her teenage sons. All a no-brainer since all can walk and talk and sit down and hold a conversation, but they won't. None of them. In fact it seems so obvious to both the state and the sheriff's department (except for the Captain) that any idea of reconciliation is impossible! Each deputy and sheriff have war stories on the failure of neighbors in similar situations ever getting along. I don't at all agree and have been pushing for reconciliation since the first day when that cleanup crew went screwy. I thought for sure, since I knew the organizers once upon a time, that they would call that evening and want to smooth things out. I may as well of been living on the moon. We had been writing a timetable of correspondence with our town officials (all directed to the Selectboard) from the very start regarding these upsets with neighbors so there was an actual time-line as things occurred, trying to make them aware at what trouble was brewing down here in the valley. Not once did we have a letter in return from any town official. The only favor we got was a town assistant making matters a million times worse. We asked the town to explain that town assistant's actions. They have so far refused to.

"It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear."

— Henry David Thoreau

Sounds peachy, eh?

So now we have this staring at us: neighbors who can cause mayhem because of their personal unraveling or during a fit of momentary madness. Whereas an exercise properly and fairly addressed, on equal ground, neighbor to neighbor, they want nothing to do with. In fact the cleanup crew organizers sent a short letter to the town, after we shared with them, practicing full transparency, our letter to the town about their actions — in their eyes it was Bob and Susan who were being "derisive." Classic. They trespass, begin damaging our property, we confront them, wish to talk it over, they refuse, and we're derisive. 

We now have a sheriff's department who are visiting us like family members months into this ordeal. They're down here getting familiar with the problem, attempting to address the perpetrators, and later interviewing the nineteen "witnesses". While the nineteen witnesses are being formed, we heard on good authority the woman with the young sons who is carrying the petition around is not wasting time but forming her own party of conspirators to go against Bob and Susan. It's a harmless and lawful petition that's gathering names — but also a sneaky allegiance ploy, kind of mob mentality. We know some of the names on the list and when Susan runs into one of the signers while in a hardware store he tells her, awkwardly, that the woman is the "victim" and Susan is the one bringing a lawsuit against her!  Yes, in a nightmare, this comment and scenario would be true. In fact, typing it out here, I can see it in so many words, and it's all the more absurd. People aren't after a truth and understanding; they're moving in circles of familiarity, similarity, and prejudice.

It only gets better.

None of the "witnesses" on this list are witnesses to any part of the woman's assault on Susan. None. And just to show you how no one seems to know how to play fair, Susan knows there was ONE witness at the assault on the road by the woman that day, and since the woman isn't honorable enough to put that name on the list of bogus "witnesses", Susan puts that name on her list of witnesses. A real witness. It's the woman who drove away that day in the pickup truck. She saw everything start to spark-up from the offending woman and so she hightailed it out of there. In fact, once I hear this woman has nineteen witnesses, I assist Susan to round up her own "good character" witnesses, and with no intent to conspire or play dirty, Susan ends up after a general circulation of the neighborhood and surroundings, with sixty 'good character' witnesses. Pretty good, girlfriend! This includes signatures, written testimonials and some quite long letters that span from the oldest resident in all this valley (whom we've known for decades), to a long time regional logger at the other end of the valley, and a family doctor inbetween. Plus all of our many friends, writers, artists, hand laborers, and even a Presidential gold medal winner if I may so myself for Susan's benefit. It was beautiful to behold.

Yeah yeah yeah, Bob, but what happened at the end of all this?

Hold your horses, I'm getting there.

Tying this rat's nest up ain't easy.

First thing, the three sons of the mother start harassing our home and property with their vehicles late at night: horns blaring, shouting, thrusting middle-finger salutes, swearing. They've also been on our property moving things around. They start to get braver and switch from middle of the night carousing to evening hours, when we can see them busy at their sport. Since we've been told to inform the sheriff's department if any such tricks occur, we do, and they assign yet one more deputy to the cause. We are now up to two deputies, one Captain, and the sheriff involved with this case. This newly assigned deputy seems to have a certain skill to curtail the vehicle sport because it stops for the time being.

Despite the fact we can't have any contact with this troubling family, I keep asking the sheriff and the State's Attorney (via Susan) if we can form some sort of meeting with the family and begin a human touch reconciliation process. I'm determined it can work. I'm told by both agencies it may be possible at the end of the court proceeding, when all is said and done, and the damage is done — which I find the worst time. The best time would have been at the start, and my idea was shot down then. Midway was also a possibility, just as the nonsense cars were squawking by. Hit them in their stride and well, talk? Nope. The legal process is in full bloom, the mother is in court, the sheriff's department and everyone has put in a great deal of time, we can't have this solved by neighbors suddenly getting along with neighbors. It's a serious legal issue at this point. If you feel like it's all at a loss, it's because it is all at a loss.

Yet, there is hope —


You remember the folks we had some trouble with using many sessions of fireworks south of us, past our woodlot? Well that has only sweetened slowly but surely into something quite healing and nourishing. On account of all of us wanting to keep our heads, keep our cool, and wishing to talk, apologize, make amends, have a mug of tea together, and straighten whatever had become crooked. It's the pure daylight moment in all these many seasons of rotten stuff, legal action, terrible gossip, bullying, back-stabbing etc that has come to us. It was a glowing reminder of what we always practiced on this road in the decades we lived here when neighbor could almost always talk with neighbor. No need for cops, lawyers, outsiders, who really would rather not get involved if they don't have to. People should be able to work things out.

 
So the woman with the three sons went through her court case, now being prosecuted by the State of Vermont, and this is what was decided. In a letter from the State's Attorney's office : "This is to inform you that on October 16, 2012 the above named case was resolved in the following manner: The State agreed to dismiss the criminal charge while the defendant agreed to write you a letter of apology and abide by any current trespass order. The criminal charge was dismissed without prejudice which means it can be re-filed in the future based on any new criminal conduct [by the defendant]." In October, there was a status conference conducted by the court, the charge was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it is basically on hold for the next three years, and can be re-instituted, but for now the case is being de-criminalized. The woman with the three sons wrote her letter of apology at the court hearing and agreed to abide by the Notice Against Trespass. Otherwise, the State of Vermont would have gone to an expected two day trial. As someone who was close to the case said to us, it's"a far cry from true justice, but at least she was forced to tell the truth with an apology." "

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I met up with one of the workers from that original work crew (not one of the two organizers), and we had a solid talk one day on the back road where I could explain things about our property and he could be sincerely mindful, and that was nice. We like to cut logs together and share the lumber made from the logs off his portable sawmill. It all works.

The woman who steals rocks, and her husband, have done a number by spreading around the initial misinformation from the unfortunately misinformed town worker and that has stitched its way, mile by mile, through parts of the town, family by family, where we get to be on the receiving end of cold shoulders, cruel and revengeful pranks on-going, and outrageous comments. It's a barrel of laughs (not). The town Selectboard who refuse to address our concerns, or the many letters to them, have now publicly told others that our problem is a "Swimming-hole problem; where they don't allow people onto their land. They think they own the river." A perverse and ludicrous statement. Poisonous. The kind of false statement, spoken by the chairman of the Selectboard never mind, that causes deep-seated resentment within a community that then takes years to unwind and mend. When, in fact, we have the only swimming hole on the road that isn't posted "No Trespassing," and never has been and never will be. It's free to use for all. I won't say: "Go Figure" because it won't do you any good. It's a Selectboard that refuses to recognize their negligence concerning now two fellow town workers speaking through their employment, as the board now magnifies the damage done by these spokesmen by following suit. We have tried now for almost two years to go figure, go attempt communication, go to a dead-end, and we're hardly giving up. Outrageous is a big word to play around in.

We just learned that both the sheriff and State's Attorney were incorrect in their counsel to us during this trouble and proceedings  — there is, in fact, a department in the judicial system available solely for mediation. This could have been setup for us and directed toward the troubled family at the onset, or anytime, and would have maybe caused us all a lot less grief.

We were never looking for hardship for anyone, but likewise we weren't about to take hardship all on the chin, and find ourselves and property abused. We took to the "high road" during all of this. The sheriff's department asked us to, and we were already there. We were sworn at, land abused, land trashed, character diminished up and down the road with lies, and a string of months where we had to endure a lockdown procedure of no contact with almost any neighbor. And when those "19 witnesses" were drummed up, we actually couldn't contact any of them. As if we had done something wrong. And, of course, this is all wrong. Luckily a few from the nineteen witnesses caught wind of its phony presentation and personally got hold of us and wanted to apologize and be told the truth of the situation. We gladly spilled the beans.

I'd still like to talk with the work crew organizers, the woman of rocks and her husband, the woman and her three sons, plus the Selectboard so I could plainly explain some things. Susan certainly wishes to. We have a piece of property and a lifestyle, quite quiet, wooded and serene, that we would like to protect and have it be respected, as we've always practiced this same respect to others. It does no good to get into other peoples faces. We'd also like the Selectboard to listen well and then write a letter of clarification describing what their office has done, including the harm, in the hopes that it may never happen again to others. In all my years in Vermont, I've certainly had positive and enriched excursions and travels and meetings with many selectmen. It should be a winding and rural rich, two-way driven connection. Like these back roads we live on.   


Bob Arnold
21 November 2012 

      

___________________________________________________________________________

I believe the character-witness letter written in support of Susan and provided to the Vermont court from our observing Norwegian friends and colleagues best describes the ramifications:

    "To whom it may concern,
    We are very sorry to hear of this strife which shows great lack of concern and  insight on the part of the trespassers. This is  classical, but nevertheless painful . In Scandinavia we talk of the "Jante Law" as defined by the Danish-Norwegian writer Aksel Sandemose, which states that it is dangerous to be different and competent for then you can easily be the target of ill-will.
    We want to testify that Susan Arnold is a highly competent and very reliable person, she is truthful and considerate, careful and industrious. We have collaborated with Susan and Bob Arnold for many years now; they have published our work in many booklets with their press Longhouse Publishers and Booksellers. Through this we have learnt about a great and selfless project, a life’s work which is of utmost importance also internationally. They have done and do an invaluable job for literature.

   
    It pains us that there are people who have no insight into this,


    Hanne Bramness and Lars Amund Vaage
    Sunde, Norway 12th of September 2012"

 

stone sculpture © bob arnold

PERMISSION ~

If you've kept up with my recent three essays on the Birdhouse, it has attempted to describe, sometimes with redundancy (cohesion comes strange), what has been happening around here, of late, with our back road and one troubling spot with one troubling family. There are a few outer satellites of people who have contributed by way of their private animosity and contempt, which has perked up and burped up and flubbed as they try to make something out of nothing, while a small but determined police force takes a look around. If you've got nothing to hide, you got nothing to worry about. The law says they are looking for the truth. So give them some. A police force in the woods is only as good as its leadership and assistance.


For ourselves, the police's presence has forced some of our neighbors to wake up, finally, to how they have been manipulated and duped, by a desperate individual (and perhaps associates?), and to maybe see what damage and heartache it has done to others, which may soon include themselves.


Speaking for myself, as a neighbor, and husband to the victim (Susan), I don't take any of this lightly. One wise old friend of ours, from far off, advises, "Hold your cards close." Nope, not this time. I mention no names, and won't, ever, it isn't my place, and I respect everyone's privacy, but I will zero in and nail down and sleep with you, if I have to, without touching, just to show what injustice and cruelness won't be allowed, to get to the bottom of this because, no one hurts the one I love. Woman, or earth.


When there were "19 witnesses", all bogus — because there were no "19 witnesses" within miles or ear shot of the altercation of this woman onto Susan on the day it happened — I watched Susan spiral and sadden into a deepness, which isn't good, at what had happened to this woodlands and river she loves. Her home. Nothing was making sense.


So it was time to make sense, real sense, not by simply watching lawmakers set up for their catch, but to enlist true spirits and doers and activists and workers and writers and educators and so many of them beautiful friends, to say a word or two as a character testimonial, at whatever their chosen length, for Susan. For fellowship. Believe me, everyone who has contributed: you are beautiful, and I know you have a very good idea what your contribution and precise timing has made for us right now.


It isn't enough to watch the lawmakers excel at their duties and diligence, often fitted into play by strict authority, intimidation, and shocking and obliging good manners. It's everything and blueberry pancakes to see people — the you's and me's — stop a moment and draw up from our pockets a skill at showing such enduring brotherhood. Thank you, every one of you. I hope this road I live on will one day wake up and see and feel and show they could be made of the same moxie as all of you.


And before these words were out of my mouth, some neighbors showed us this very thing. Just the other day, and this is how —

you know the folks I have often described as those using "fireworks"? Well, this morning they called us up and asked for a meeting. . .as soon as possible. They, of course, are not the troublemakers, but folks who seem confused and caught in the crossfire of bad acts and worse results. They wanted to come clean. Good friends had just left after a lovely day and overnight visit with us, and this visit was a blessing since it had been a long time in the making, and allowed a certain dark passage of time (the trouble here) to get shook and poked at and maybe broke open. I can't tell you how, I can only tell you I felt something. It was the start of maybe something better and better, maybe even a buckling to the crap, and a re-awakening for many involved.


We walked over to our neighbors, by sunshine, then into our woodlot, on a narrow path, out of the trees and onto their driveway and up to their kitchen door where we were welcomed inside into an immediate apology of profuse and genuine explanations. Followed by their questions and a vigorous conversation, minted by deep mugs of tea. This meant they wished for us to stay. Wished to get things off their chests and likewise take on some solid facts. We gave them the facts. Then we were shown all the home, upstairs and down, many of the rooms were private, and we were being welcomed. It was a thorough and remarkable repentance, with a generosity as if they were doing it from themselves, plus a world incapable. We could only feel calm and calmer.


Little did they know, and why should they? when they showed us one room, it was the very room I held a dying friend with cancer twenty-five years ago, as I helped move him down the hallway from there to the bathroom. I hadn't been in the bedroom or on these blond varnished floors since. Little did they know, or did I, when we returned to our home from this house would we find a phone message from his widow saying today was the anniversary of his passing. And my wife and I haven't heard from her since the cow jumped over the moon. While a half hour before, I was standing in the room where my friend expired. I don't need anyone to tell me it was my dying friend who brought us back to his house today via these lovely new neighbors, his calling widow, his guiding hand. My old friend doesn't like seeing what he is seeing. My old dying friend, as when alive, is trying to help us where he can. Help the new neighbors where he can. My old dying friend would never be called a ghost, but more a guardian angel. I could never call him dead.


Sometime, in the afternoon, looking at one another, it made Susan realize and start to cry.


No one should be trapped in a greater hopelessness.


We feel there is a break through — amongst all our friends, the pursuit of some neighbors, the living and dying who will assist. "Often I am permitted to return to a meadow."


Permitted.


Yes indeed.

Robert Duncan


photo © susan arnold
"green river early 70s"

"I'M YOUR WITNESS" ~
(Rural Coda)

Two old friends, Green River Vermont
(the day after Hurricane Irene, 2011)

"You have kingfisher, fox, maple, and a thousand poets on your side: no
contest!" — Malcolm Ritchie

Dear Malcolm,

I've wrung this subject out to dry for most people — the few neighbors and the some troubles — never using their names, of course, to respect their privacy, but I do wish to gain a portrait at what I believe has happened to the new rural lifestyle. So let me say a bit more since I've had some friends write me back today after reading my second essay and asking, "Hey, Bob, what the heck is going on up there?"


Here's what's going on: for an urban wise guy reading these essays and in the city, I'm sure I'd be one myself, I can imagine someone saying: "So you got a few naughty words said to you both. Your wife was picked on by someone bigger. A bunch of fools trespass, make a mess for awhile, swear at you and leave. One woman steals a pail of rocks. Some knuckleheads do some cutting. Some out-of-towners shoot a stack of fireworks off from their relatives' land with no idea really where the fireworks are going but it happens to be into your woodlot. Yeah, that's dangerous, but not the end of the world. Maybe a chicken got killed by a city slicker's dog when he came up to your woods region to play Paul Bunyan, and another woman who runs-with-the-wolves (dogs) had her pack get out of control and pester your farmyard ducks. Big deal. Stop being crybabies."


Right-o. And here's the difference — in the city you want a pack of cigarettes: a minute walk. A beer? Right around the corner. How about a slice of pizza? No problem — almost any corner. Need more milk? Got it! Want to go to any store? Hundreds of stores? Thousands? Right at your fingertips. Out in the countryside it's a long walk or drive to anywhere so we have ourselves, the essential community, or what you can make sense of existence. Some can do with a circle of squirrels. But to be healthy, wealthy and wise, without money, you want one another. And you should have one another. Otherwise, speaking for this place on earth: it's big woods (find my place by Google map, it's in the trees), and the slim, beautiful river. Steep eastern hillside and bundles of low hills to the west. When I came here forty years ago I hiked in on my own two feet, a knapsack on my back, no vehicle, a borrowed hut in the woods, and no one lived on this road but one other person and he's now long gone. Maybe dead. When he was here we built two houses together. Put up fencing, cut logs, sugared. My community. We hayed fields together. I hiked a mile up river to his place at 5 in the morning to catch a ride with him to town and shared cold pancakes with cold syrup on white paper plates. When we were done eating he 'did the dishes' — by tossing the paper plates to his pack of dogs out in the mudroom and they licked off the sweets. Two weeks later I'd find these same plates and others blown far away from his crummy shack contraption. The plates blew and sailed across a wide dismal field of rock, grass tuft, weeds and now and then potatoes. Yes, we worked that field together, too. He and I were community. Essential.


Times changed. My old buddy, born here, moved off. His son took over, but they were like night and day. I got married to a girl I would never be apart one day or night the next forty years. The valley grew people, not quickly, gradually, and a new community got sprung. Many of us did things together, even communal cookouts, families grew. Some of us protected the outer reaches by saving our covered bridge, river preservation, and of course shooting down the co-generated power plant that would have ruined the solace of this place on earth. It took togetherness.


More changes happened the more people arrived, tucked away into pockets they settled. By now I was happiest with my family, working at the manual trades of stone work, carpentry and treework, and I had plenty of work. A good deal of it right where I could walk or hike to a job from my back door. I had people who hired me for twenty years at a stretch. They could have hired anyone, the work wasn't that specialized, and they went out of their way to hire me. Not that I was special; I took it that they were special, and in my eyes they were. I could talk to you all night around a fire about the people and couples that saved my life, enriched my life, gave me more life, and it's still happening. I'm in the home I'm in today, and for almost forty years, because of the good man who fell for me and my wife. He could have made triple what we paid him for it all. He liked our work skills, he liked us. Even married us. Because we restored the house on more grit than money, and tamed the wild yard and prettied up the joint and seemed to be home all the time because of our work and lifestyle, it was said, by some, we must have money. Inherited money. Maybe one of those to be envied "trust-funders." This was even said by people who thought they knew us. Rumors ripple and slip under doors, sweep past cracks in the windows. Fly up trees. Here's what we have: my wife's family who disowned her when she moved to the woods and married this life, and $1000 gifted to us from my family when we were married in our young twenties. Period. Like good soldiers we put that $1000 in the bank where it is today. You see, what we were rich with was each other and some guardian angels.


We started our bookshop when one lovely person and then another donated whole sections of their private libraries to us. And I had already donated part of mine. There was no talk of money. We supplemented our incomes while gaining a bookshop by every job almost there was out in the countryside — from farm work to landscape work to house building house dismantling treework sugaring painting stone building snow-shoveling dirt-shoveling junk jobs. If it needed doing and no one else would do it, we did it. Made a living. Pushed our way forward, and people always people helped us. Many many communities.


I'm about to release the next four chapters of a bibliography detailing the last many years of Longhouse showing what we have printed and released to this date — 400 items, which comes to over 1000 poets over forty years at networking and out of those 1000 poets I can't think of much trouble except here and there. We all survived. We kept small. Our motto: if it makes sense we want it. If it doesn't, it'd better be real interesting. We cared nothing about holding a ratio of women to men to black to white. Immaterial. Just make it float. Many many people lent a hand. Earlier in the spring, still in winter coats, I met a friend who we are working with on our next book project. Out of his old coat, in a sleepy parking lot, he handed me notes for a manuscript that he is holding as an executor. I took it. He asked me the cost on the book. I told him. His next unexpected move was to unroll half of that amount we would need, in cash, into my hands. We nodded. Job done. Better than a handshake. Certainly better than any contract. If I cheat him, I'm the cheater.

So what happened down here in this river valley, after all? Some people got out of hand. The simplest thing in the world to do. And as simple to repair. You just stop and know what you've done and act on it. A bunch of knuckleheads get caught on our land cutting trees and acting bigger than their britches. They're meaning to do well, but they're ignorant as to where they are. Stop them. Okay. Now try to talk to them, reason with them. They want nothing to do with that, and now here's your problem. Watch it escalate for the next year. Listen to them tell their own version of the story, spread as bad gum gossip. When here's the only version: you were trespassing, damaging land, and you should have stopped, apologized and mended ways. It's simple.


Woman who steals rocks is next up and she's heard about the first ruckus. No problem with her wanting rocks on our land, but why not ask us first? She doesn't think she has to because "it isn't your land", she informs us, though it is. Go check the town land map, I offer as advice. Check the town records just who pays the taxes on this land. Believe me because I'm telling you, politely. She doesn't. Calls me the Most Unfriendliest Man in All the World. I think of using it as a book title. Asks me if she has to dump her bucket of rocks out? I say, of course not, keep them, but maybe ask next time you wish to come and take. She calls me the Most Unfriendliest so-so again, even after I say take the rocks. Scowls. Drives away. Before she gets too far I ask my wife to try her hand at smoothing things over with the woman; the woman leaves her, as well, in a huff. The woman then calls the town clerk when she gets home. The town clerk is away and a young man is substituting in her place. The Friendliest Woman in the world asks about our property and the river and its land mass, "who owns this?" The young man is in uncharted waters. He says things he shouldn't say, mostso to this woman. This woman takes what she hears as verbatim and calls my wife and they begin a screaming match on the phone. The woman's husband, who knows nothing of what has occurred with me on the river, jumps into the act and begins to scream, too. They are both working on the information given by the young man at the town clerk's office. He's a nice fellow. A school chum once upon a time with our son, but he's over his head, and so is this screaming couple. All are now fueled on misinformation. When the screaming stops, and a day later, I wrote and asked the couple to come by for a talk. Nothing doing. The young man working at the town clerk position loses his job for an undisclosed reason. The mess just gets bigger and bigger.


This woman now teams up with another woman, never mind the folks kicked off our land for woodcutting, and the buzz is "You (Arnolds) don't let people on your land." Funny, we have the only unposted swimming hole on the whole road from here in Vermont to Massachusetts. There aren't many, but they're all posted, but not ours. The person who tells us we don't let people on our land uses our swimming hole. I have very intelligent friends who just about now in this story are asking me, "Bob, what in the fuck are you doing dealing with these people for?" Because they're my community. It's what we got. I'm in my home.


You Don't Let People On Your Land woman has a true chip on her shoulder. Though a somewhat friend with my wife this won't stop the woman to pick a fight with my wife. You see her three sons have built a fine looking circle of rocks and quarter down on our land, they think hidden from our view, and this all happened after Hurricane Irene. Quite a time for us all. The young men have made a special place to meet and have parties. It isn't on their land, it's on our land, but that doesn't seem to matter to them. They like the spot. It's along a brook that feeds the river. This brook happens to be on their own land as well. No matter. They like it right here, stay here. Their mother knows it's our land but the three sons are out of the house, out of her hair. Little do they all know we hike our land, all of it, and discover the stone council ring. It's well-built, made of hefty stone, some elaborate chair models and a circle campfire. Very King Arthur. Because of the Hurricane and all that we went through, we let this go since winter is coming on. It'll disband on its own probably over the winter. We don't say a word.


In the spring we discover the council ring is larger, the campfire is larger, looks dangerous, is dangerous, it has been a dry spring. No one is thinking about the danger of fires. My wife while hiking up to our mailbox one morning meets this mother and tells her about the campfire and says it was a good thing after the Hurricane, drew together people and raw emotions, but now we'd like the land returned to the way we like it. No more dangerous fires. The trash is everywhere, please pick it up etc. The mother cares nothing about hearing any of this. It's been a good thing, why stop it? is her plan. My wife says, fine, we'll be here Thursday (it's now Monday) to see it's cleaned up and put back to its original way. Please tell your sons.


This mother doesn't tell her sons because her sons told us they weren't told a thing. We find this out when we arrive to dismantle the site and meet one son bewildered by the news and shaking enough to go fetch his older brother who comes down swearing and fussing and calling me an "Asshole", four times, itching for a fight. No one told him either. I shook his hand when he arrived, and with those same hands took the camp site apart right before his eyes. He showed no interest in helping. Because of his assault and his mother's neglect and enabling, my wife called the law and the law came out from town, investigated, and posted a no trespassing order on our land only for these two family members. There are two others sons, but they caused no problem (other than taking part in the campfire).


In our experience, the mother and the oldest son cared nothing about respecting what we wished for our land, nor willing to return the respect for us allowing their use and now returning the land to its original way. And of course it only got worse. Weeks down the road, one morning, again my wife was hiking up for mail and the woman lay in wait, with a friend of her's briefly hanging around. This friend saw the start of things before she took off. How the woman provoked an argument with my wife who wished to avoid any contact except a friendly hand wave (it's pathetic for me to think of how much grace my wife still could share). The woman admonished my wife for calling the law in, putting up the trespassing order, and of course she's mocking its rule. My wife tried to explain how she patiently went through the reasonable route of asking the woman and her sons to clean up their mess from our land and depart. Simple? Nah, of course not. The woman screamed "Fuck You!" at my wife, stormed across the road onto our land, broke the trespass law and began to jump up and down on trash she often throws from her land onto our land and screamed some more, "I'm Trespassing, I'm trespassing. Call the police! Call the police!" she sang like a crow. Arms flailing. My wife shook off the swear words, studied the woman jumping up and down and noticed and was reminded by her trash on our land, saw this woman's personality had grown way out of proportion and was now a threat, and said, "I will." And she did.


The chaos that has ensued since then is a carnival ride out in a big black nowhere. Elsewhere I detail what the law has done. Law, court appearances by the woman, bogus witnesses she has enlisted that had nothing at all to do with the altercation with my wife, scowling looks by all the family at us, from other neighbors, cars that drive by us dangerously fast. Loud car horns in the night passing our house. Fun and games. The lousiest form of gossip about us, like how we have brought "a law suit against" this woman. All untrue. It's the State of Vermont who has taken a close look at this woman, her son and their actions and they are drawing a bead. I wonder almost every day what keeps her from coming to see us, except she can't (court order, not my order) and talking this out, mediating as they say, apologizing, and rebuilding a relationship. It's simple if you can do it. Except it gets worse and worse. Not one person on this road ever comes close to us to ask what in the world is going on? Of course they have heard things. No, this care and query will arrive instead from Scotland, Japan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Venezuela, Florida and other world locations. An old friend from the Berkshires says, "watch your back." Only the oldest friend we have in the valley, who lives two miles up river from us in the village, and is the oldest person in this valley and a person whose family owned all the homes in the village once upon a time, so she has seen some things, been through some things, knows the region with a fine crystal ball, asks Susan, "Why are they picking on you, dearie?" When she hears why, she winces and then winks and says, "I'm your witness."


I have friends who ask about my earlier essay and this landlocked land I wrote about. Lots of good people have little property spots and they're landlocked. Tough to get to. Often they need help and an abiding landowner to let them slip through. You bet, I'm all for it. I've done it with abiding landowners all my life down here. But the landowner I was writing about in my essay was someone looking for a land grab; something more when she sold her house and property and then this extra landlocked piece, and it didn't seem to bother her in the least to tell the realtor to just go through our land. There wasn't some cabin in the woods there that some old prospector or hermit couldn't get to because the big bad wolf wouldn't let it happen. It was a landowner reaping more for her benefit and against our wishes of not wanting one more driveway and development where it was quite happily wild and content.


Over this summer, those "fireworks" folks I've written about from time to time, who neighbor south of us, sauntered up the road while Susan and I were on the river cutting an old downed maple tree on the rocky shore. Lots of work. They asked if we knew where our boundary line ran with theirs because they saw a swimming spot right in the vicinity of the border. Not only did we know where it was, twenty-five years ago we taught our son how to swim there. We later abandoned it like good Indians and found another swimming hole and another, moving our tent around. Leaving the places unharmed. Grown in. We told them, "Sure — the boundary line runs right through the swimming hole and it's on both our properties." They asked, "Is it okay if we make a small path down and swim there?" We said, "Absolutely, go ahead. We used to swim there all the time." End of story. Very simple. They thanked us and walked away. They came for something, got it, left. We didn't hold it against them. We don't hold anything against anybody playing fair. We wanted to show them how easy it was to ask and how easy it is to move along.


Bob Arnold
8 September '12

top photo : "susan & eleanor"

photos & art © bob arnold

HABITAT ~

THE ROCK IS MY HOME

another essay on rural life and neighborhood

"Keep you heart clear and transparent
And you will never be bound."

— Ryokan

____________________________________

Here's one thing I can tell you — I'm never wrong, when I'm right; and I'm never right, when I'm wrong. Yes, it sounds like a country bumpkin simpleton message. But just try to live it, straight down the middle. Knowing how to admit and stand true when you are correct, and knowing how to back down gracefully and admit when you are wrong. Mistakes. Lies. If it gets to lies, and you believe in your lies and have convinced others of your lies, it's a bad spot. Best to awaken.


Believe me — in this time of bizarre weather patterns, rising political and social fanatics, alienation to one and all — I'd rather be together than apart.


This is where the second part of my essay on rural life and neighbors has taken me. Taken us. I'm thinking of Susan, too. In fact she will be a key player in this tale.


I'll link for those that don't know my first essay on rural life and neighbors:

http://longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/search/label/Hurricane%20Irene

and move on. After reading that essay, you might want to read this one.


You know of the neighbor who stole our rocks, who defied our owning and honoring our property rights. It should be measured that we don't care so much about ownership. It isn't a power game and the fact of owning. But owning a piece of property which we are attempting to protect and keep as natural and free as possible, is our intent. Free as natural, not necessarily free for man to do as they bloody well please.


Along with this rock-hustling neighbor, there was the small gang of tree cutters and interlopers on our land believing they were doing "good" by, of course, having absolutely no communication with us, who own the land, and work the land and should be included in anything to be done on our land. They didn't think so. In fact when confronted, they bullied their way past us and stormed away. Why talk? Why learn anything? Why show grace?

“Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.”
— Henri Poincare

Let me introduce that we had a reputable town realtor trying to sell a landlocked piece of property on an abutting neighbor's land, and this neighbor was selling out and thought she could make a little more by selling a little extra. Naturally, she didn't want to use her property for access to her own landlocked haven. That would mean opening an old woods road past her home that would wind up and go past a neighboring home, and they certainly didn't want to see this old road taken up. So she told the realtor, and the realtor just went ahead, that they could track through our land, up back, out of sight; and actually advertise the piece of property this way, and show this access route through our land to all prospective buyers. Crazy, huh? But true. I want to think the reputable realtor didn't know these shenanigans were being carried out this way, and I'm pretty sure he didn't, because the field worker realtor was either let go or fired shortly thereafter for his truancy act. Yes, he had convinced prospective buyers this would be their way through to the landlocked piece, right through our land. Where we have a woodlot. Where we go to cut wood, hauled out by a truck. They were probably imagining our small woods road could be their road. No one, again, came to ask, came to talk. It was only after this realty company was caught in their stupidity that this neighbor selling-out came to visit us to propose, properly, what she wanted to have happen. As soon as we said it wasn't a good idea, she rolled up her map and was heading out the door. No need to be friendly, no need to be neighborly, no need to catch up on other news. When she sold her house and land, and her deceased husband had been a friend and a fine fiddle of a man, she made sure she left the new owners with all the historical "facts" of people and places in this river valley.


Those new neighbors shot bottle rocket and headbanger fireworks into our woodlot, though they have two spacious mowings to expand their resources and showcase their entertainment. Since fireworks are illegal in Vermont — and I thought we all lived out here in the woods because we like it quiet — we all had a talk and we all agreed it'd be best to snuff the fireworks. Now they strike, from time to time, a resonant gong which ripples on all the woods leaves, and through the rain, past the snow. Kind of nice.

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” — Henry David Thoreau

This brings us to the woman up river from our place who accosted my wife in the road one morning after being served a "Notice Against Trespass" papers by the sheriff's department for trespassing on our land previously, starting fires, leaving trash, enabling other family members to do as they wished on our land, and finally swearing at the top of her lungs at my wife, "Fuck You!" My wife was hiking up to our mailbox and returning home, purposely walking along the roadside on our side of our land and staying clear. The woman taunted her over. The mistake she made is someone else was there, and I'll get to that down the line. My wife had already endured this woman's mocking and disregard for our land and wishes. The woman hadn't taken part with that other gang of woodcutters on our land, but she was there as it happened and was also there when my wife arrived and asked everyone to leave the land, cutting tools and all. This woman wasn't ignorant after that point as to who owned the land. Still, she used it as she wished. She has also used the swimming hole on our land, and we never had any problem with that, or anyone else using it. The pine needle path down to the swimming hole has always been there for anyone to use. It’s a country thing.


Long before the bullying incident we fully communicated with the woman and her family members about their trespassing and damage to our property, and we were ignored, dismissed and finally assaulted by all parties; so, folks, what would you like us to do? No one should ever be allowed to run over someone else.


Now here comes the rub.


After one woman stole rocks to her heart's content on our land and disregarded our attempt to educate her as to whose land it was and how easy it would have been to simply ask permission (and it would have been given); after overly zealous woodcutters and a dutiful neighborhood cleanup crew stormed onto our property and made damage and then felt no need to talk and reconcile after their assault; long after the neighbor and her realtor squad, and her neighbor and friend who now wouldn't benefit from this landlocked sale; after the fireworks folks who bought one of my books (Yokel) and read it and then worried by email "Will you write a poem about us?" (be careful, poets). After some of this crew then talked and bemused and instigated a whole other bunch, who we don't know at all, but we see them, they're the ones who don't know us but speak about us. Load all of them into a sauce pan and what do you get? Including the guy who a few weeks ago took spruce saw logs from two trees I dropped on our land and I'll share with him the lumber we get off his portable mill — they sure look good — but he joined this sauce pan bunch to sign a petition to the "good character" of the woman up river who accosted my wife, let her sons run amok on our land, screamed "Fuck You!" From now on let’s call this woman the Defendant. The court, not us, has said she is.

"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts"

— John Locke

The story gets wider. Well over twenty years ago, before a good deal of these people even moved out here, I organized, yes momentarily solo, a grassroots organization to stop a co-generated power plant from moving into this river valley and ruining for good this habitat. I raised a solo ruckus for one day until my wife joined, and then we quickly enlisted some neighbors, and this reverberated rapidly throughout the woodlands until we had the webbing of at least three other neighboring towns. Where the co-generated plant was to go was on a sawmill property, still active, and the lumberman was a friend. Not only to me, but my family of five generations lumbermen. Most of them thought and lived just like this man: business. A co-generated plant was good for business, which is true if you don't live ten miles away from the nearest business to tie in your facility. So we all fought the madcap plan for this one out in the boonies. Our community of neighbors drew together tightly, we all wanted to save our homes and quality of life. It was exhilarating. The co-generated business minds were from faraway Michigan. These suits sent out their henchmen to work the towns over, smaller communities, individuals. Sweetener was added (money) and nobody budged. More exhilaration, more bonding, a tight hold was won. Long story short, we beat the pants off the corporation. The owner of the business actually made a personal call to me and told me his news, and furthered it by complimenting me, and those I worked with, on just what a community could show. They left. Where to? A week ago I was down in my old home ground of the Berkshires and this plant, I heard, had set up at the old G.E. plant in Pittsfield. Already a long ruined spot, though tied nicely to an urban locale and service. Ideal for a co-generated plant. My family had a lumberyard a stone's throw from the plant at one time and I remember unloading boxcars from the same rails that ran through the plant. Small world. There is a proper place to put a co-generated plant. There are also people who will protect mother earth.


Today one or two of those people I grass-rooted with, maybe three, are on this petition the Defendant up the road is passing around to showcase her stable and neighborly character. I don't at all doubt she has one with any of them. It's not my position to doubt. But I can tell you she is a threatening, menacing, and a pathological liar when dealing with us. It's a shame. If the court, the state's attorney, the fine sheriff's department are able to do their job thoroughly, this will all be found. The witness list, which is only a witness list on this woman's character, has been now spoiled by the Defendant introducing the 'fact' some of the people signing the petition have had a difficult time with us. No shit. I just described it all above. Come to me personally and my wife or I will elaborate the scenario for you. These "witnesses" seem to confuse whom exactly is the victim(s) here.



“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” — John Wooden




For the state's attorney and the sheriff(s), they only care who was a "witness" that day when the Defendant accosted my wife in the road and hurled verbal abuse and trespassed. My wife has studied the list of names. NO ONE was anywhere nearby, or some weren’t even in Vermont! when the event happened. My wife only wishes there were witnesses, and those witnesses could be petitioned and be interviewed by the state and the lawmakers.


But what is curious about this list of mighty "19 witnesses" — while none are even holding a shred of merit about the accosting and cause, the Defendant has left off the very ONE witness who was there. Back to the early part of my story where I say there was a third party, just leaving after a visit with the Defendant, but she was there long enough to hear the woman accost my wife and provoke an argument. She was left OFF the witness list for obvious reasons by the Defendant: she will be pulled in by the law, be known, and be asked questions pertinent to that day. If she is wise enough to tell the truth, she'll tell the same story my wife has told. It won't be pretty about this Defendant.


The State of Vermont prosecutor offered the Defendant the diversion-program wherein she must admit to the fact of her trespass and actions, which means she violated our "notice against trespass." She could have stated, "okay it was a bad hair day, and I did do everything she [Susan] said" etc., the Defendant would then have to do brief community work and/or write a letter of apology. The whole criminal case would be removed from all records upon completion of the Defendant's court required duties. Pretty mellow.


Instead, she denied any wrong doing, absolute. In my opinion, a terrible decision on her part, and the state continued with prosecuting. This was not our wish. We had hoped she would admit to her actions, mend fences with us, and move along as neighbors. Instead she has thrown up a smoke-screen of "19 witnesses", many, I believe, ignorant to what she was attempting to do here, and now the state's attorney is obligated to waste many days, time, and tax payers money to investigate. They will find out no one (but our one witness, and a friend of the Defendant) was at the scene of the crime that morning with my wife, and all have been used. The Defendant will then raise a stink that none of her "19" are factual witnesses, but some have had trouble with us as well. Can you see how "trouble" starts down here? It's selfish, manipulated, provoked, instigated, bullied, and it breeds contempt. That contempt in the wrong hands, untruthful hands, gathers a mob.


Just in case, by an off-chance, someone from our neighborhood cares to read this essay — please understand what is happening here: we and our land have been assaulted, now lied about by cowards, and lied about further into the community. Not once, twice or three times, but in a pattern. The Defendant in this most egregious case is actually spreading rumors that we are filing a lawsuit against her, when the truth is the state of Vermont is charging her and her actions as criminal. This is their decision after studying the case and her actions. Any sheriff visiting your home (neighbor), or interviewing you, is the Defendant's doing. She supplied your name as one of her "19 witnesses". Lucky you. You've just been manipulated by the Defendant the same way the truth has.

“Anger is one letter away from danger.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

Once upon a time, quite long ago, I was hired by neighbors to put down an interior sun room floor on the back of their house. I worked the first day on this, installing v-joint 2 x 6 tongue & groove spruce. The folks had been away all day and when they returned I was gone, but they called concerned that I had maybe put the floor down wrong for them. The last time I had done this for people they liked the v-joint exposed, rather than boards flush. In hindsight I should have asked, in hindsight the customers should have told me, but we made things work. I went back to the job to work late into the night right after my supper and apologized to the people, and they were fine about it, and all was well again. I took up what flooring had been put down and made things right. They helped me along by understanding mistakes do get made. A fluency returned. The trouble with the Defendant, her trespassing, her foul language, her son's foul language and belligerency, all could be handled by talking. Admitting their mistakes. Repairing some very bad moves, and continuing. This can't always work this way, but in this case, I believe it could.


Like the "19 witnesses" believe, I would agree the woman can be a positive example and offer much good to a community. I've seen her away from this region, at a college arboretum in fact, like us, at the end of a long winter in the woods, enjoying the fragrances and sight of everything-spring. Like many out here she has a green thumb for gardening and renewal. Unfortunately, like some out here, she has a stubborn streak and selfishness to do as she pleases, which has contributed to enabling her family to strike out against us, with little regard to the consequences. As if there are no consequences. Not one of the "19 witnesses" ever took the time, or care, to approach us first, before signing this petition of goodwill about the woman's character, to listen to what may have happened on our end of things. It maybe won't surprise you to know that half of these "19 witnesses" are parties to the escapades I've described where trouble and abuse were involved on our land, and the other half I don't even know or have ever met. In fact, one person I notice as a "witness" to the woman's "good character" described her to me, with his own enthusiasm, just a month ago, in the most unflattering and derogatory language. Ain't life grand?

“To live outside the law you must be honest.” — Bob Dylan

One can even surmise that while the state may prove all "19 witnesses" immaterial in regard to the assault by the Defendant to my wife, and her trespassing onto our land (because none were present), and all to our benefit; there is no benefit remaining when you have a mob mentality formed and gaining purchase for one, while going against and assisting the demeaning of those who are the victim(s).


It's like watching a legendary and quite aged and brittle minded actor on a stage, demeaning a President of the United States (Barack Obama) who does not demean. It's not playing fair. It's playing to the crowd, it's playing to the mob, it's people ganging up with their insecurities and grudges and contempt. Don't be fooled by numbers. A zero's beautiful emptiness and roundness (O) holds up all the rest of the numbers.


We're all used to politicians sometimes lying. State's attorneys and the like are politicians and we await to see if they will actually do their job, or veer from the truth, not settle this case where it belongs fixed square in the teeth. So far they are running a tight ship and barring no expense and time. We haven't provoked this time and expense: a Defendant wanting to smoke screen and lie has done that for them. I'm being so candid and bold at this juncture because I don't like how any of it smells. Only the sheriffs seem on the up and up to us. They drive out, investigate, work the bushes and rattle the cages. You have to rattle cages when you're in a lie. And I never want cops roaming these woods since the woods culture has always had the ability to take care of itself. With a code and civility and fairness. No more. Just look at what we experience with political events. Hoopla and stretching the truth is one thing to empower the troops. Down right malicious lies and mockery and personal assassinations is quite another.

"If it is acceptable for leaders to take drastic action on the basis of a lie, without an acknowledgement or an apology when they are found out, what should we teach our children?" — Bishop Desmond Tutu

We sense a kangaroo court out here, a bubbling to the surface timid lynch mob, with a roiling rooster romper room list of grudges. Those who believe they can live as they wish and where they wish and how they wish. It's just the woods, who cares? "The Arnolds hassle us," we have heard this said. You mean after you've been stealing, woodcutting and damaging, building fires, trashing, swearing, marauding, threatening, shooting fire into our woods et al. You mean that? You mean you got "hassled" from us over that?


This is where I live. This is whom we live amongst. Certainly not everyone is this way. The crybabies and grudge masters always stand out.


Over twenty years ago when we won our homeland back from the co-generated planners, we celebrated, but it wasn't long before my wife and I saw a small group and then another small group break off and want to start their own grass-roots movement. They couldn't do it, naturally, without trying to malign or blackball the original group. That's when I decided I was done with this community, mostso the types that operate this way. I'd keep individual friends and acquaintances, and we have. But we retreated. I'd build a few more stone walls for people and put on a few more roofs and cut a few more difficult trees as a worker for hire, but I was done. We raised a son, meshed with the public school years, we started a bookshop, deepened our publishing house, worked on our two-century old house, I wrote a bunch of books, and we traveled all over the country by saddle tramp trains. I also worked with a neighbor and his fantastic yet poorly planned and failing junkyard, until he was driven out of this valley on a rail.


How about the neighbors with the fireworks? — we offered awhile ago they come by for a visit at our picnic table for some lemonade & pie. They never answered. Though we hear their gong rise out of what appears to be from nowhere right where we sit, where the sun is warm.


Bob Arnold
7 September '12

“Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.”— Horace

photo © bob arnold