The house stands, or stood, on the north side of the old Gorge Road, not far from Bridal Veil Falls. Some find it scary, spooky. More level-headed folks say it’s just an old, unoccupied house. The earliest memory the house can recall consists of visions of two-legged animals carrying objects large and small from a much smaller house with wheels into the spaces inside the bigger house, itself. Over the following months, the house learned to call the wheeled house a truck, the large objects furniture, and the two-legged animals people.
For five decades the house lived with those people, sheltered them, kept them warm in the winter and protected them from the rain. The house gave little thought to its role in caring for the people—indeed, it sometimes seemed the people gave more thought to caring for the house—but it took care of them all the same. The house particularly enjoyed the smaller ones, who ran in and out of its doors and made more noise than the bigger ones. After fifty years, and long after the little ones had become big ones, those people left and others moved in, and the house began taking care of them and their noisy little ones.
Another four decades passed, and the other people, new no longer and the small ones small no longer, moved out. With a subdued sense of expectation, the house waited for other people to move in, but none did. The house, not surprisingly, possessed no concept of government or human society. Even if someone had told the house that a government agency had acquired the land as a part of a park, the house would probably not have understood. The house listened to the quiet murmur of conversations among the trees and bushes surrounding it and felt only a little lonely for the noise and activity of the small people.
A storm eight years later wrenched a branch off a neighboring red alder. On its fall to the hillside below, the errant branch smashed one of the house’s upstairs windows. The tree apologized, slowly and at length as trees are wont to do, but the damage was done. The house’s discovery that it could converse, albeit slowly, with the trees and bushes around it more than made up for the damage, although rain wetting the floor of that upstairs bedroom made the house uncomfortable, when the wind blew from that direction.
The surrounding flora expressed surprise, in their slow and unhurried way, to learn that the house missed the two-legged animals. The house, for its part, felt horrified to learn that its neighboring trees feared the people because two-legged animals had cut down some of the trees. A long discussion, and “long” between a tree and a house means years or even decades, ensued regarding why people cut down innocent trees, but neither trees nor house could venture an explanation.
The house did not know any Oregon White Oak trees, because they favored drier, sunnier spots and the nearest one stood half a mile away. The house did know three young and therefore fairly small Sitka spruce and half a dozen young Black Cottonwoods, and they all shared horror stories about their parents and other relatives being cut down and hauled away. The young trees seemed to harbor no lingering grief for their lost relatives or active resentment toward the two-legs, but remained uneasy about people.
One of the Black Cottonwoods grew close to the house, physically and, over time, emotionally, if the feelings of trees and houses can be called emotions. When the house had stood vacant for three decades and become quite friendly with its neighbors and especially the nearby Cottonwood, the tree extended one of its branches through the broken window. The intimacy pleased both, although the branch could not grow much in the gloom under the forest canopy and indoors.
The Cottonwood’s branch provided access for a family of rats to move into the house. The house appreciated the company but disliked the rats’ habit of chewing on its baseboards and doorframes. The same winter as the rats’ appearance, a female raccoon took up residence in one of the upstairs rooms. A week after her arrival, the raccoon gave birth to four healthy kits. The house liked the baby raccoons more than the little rats, finding the kits less likely to chew on the building that sheltered them than the rat pups. The aging house also found the raccoon kits more playful and thus more like the small people it had known.
Occasional people, always big ones, visited the house over the course of its vacant decades. Some walked all the way around, but none entered or performed any maintenance. Cruel winds ripped shingles from the house’s roof and flung them down the hill to rot on the forest floor. The openings and the intrusion of rain caused the house mild discomfort in wet weather but no anxiety. The openings also allowed a pair of House Sparrows and a pair of Tree Swallows to build nests in the attic. The house liked the birds but found them messy.
A protected window ledge on the north side, the side away from the road, provided a nesting spot for an Oregon Junco family. Two pairs of Barn Swallows constructed nests under the eaves, as did a pair of American Robins. Although many other birds visited the house, none of them chose to nest there. The Cedar Waxwings, Black-Headed Grosbeaks, Western Tanagers, Western Wood Pewees, and Bullock’s Orioles chose to build their nests elsewhere in the woods, as did the California ground squirrels, Western Gray Squirrels, Douglas’s Squirrels, Least Chipmunks, and Townsend’s Chipmunks.
Northern Flying Squirrels regularly visited the house from its earliest days, when the first people lived there. The flying squirrels would land on the house’s exterior walls or roof several times every night but nested elsewhere. A family of skunks and another of Cascade Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels made their residences under the house, and a Pacific tree frog took up residence in one of the upstairs closets but left a few weeks later to find a mate. Black bears, bobcats, and deer paid occasional visits but never for long.
The house felt mild discomfort when some of its constituent wood developed severe rot. That led the house to worry, especially when the rot affected some of its structural timbers, such as the floor joists beneath the wet spot inside the broken window and some of the ceiling joists under the missing shingles. Remembering the people, who had repaired anything that looked as if it could become a problem, the house vaguely and mildly thought that kind of attention would be nice. In a gradual and rambling conversation spread over three years, the house mentioned that longing to its arboreal neighbors.
Some of those neighbors, perhaps the more contemplative or maybe the ones with clearer memories of their own parents, said that rot wasn’t bad, was only temporary, did not hurt like ground cone or broom rape or mistletoe, and was all part of the process. What is “the process?” asked the house over the course of two weeks.
An old Black Hawthorn explained that the process referred to the way everything became part of the great resource. A few months later, the house asked, What is “the great resource?” over another two or three weeks. The hawthorn, with contributions from a western red cedar, a hazelnut, and a little Red Osier Dogwood, explained that the great resource consists of the medium upon which they all stood and from which the trees and bushes drew their sustenance. A multi-decade conversation ensued regarding the extent of the great resource. Even the tallest trees said the great resource extended as far as they could discern, probably forever.
The house interrupted that discussion a couple of times, the first to ask, Everything? Really everything?
His friends and neighbors would have hurried to assure him of the affirmative, but trees and bushes never hurry. Nevertheless, in only a few days they all said, Yes, everything.
Me, too?
Everything.
The house felt comforted, even pleased, to learn it would join its friends and neighbors as part of the great resource. Even so, and unusual for a house, it felt curious and so interrupted, albeit very gradually and gently, the deliberation for the second time: Even the two-legged ones?
The old hawthorn reiterated, Everything.
The dogwood, the nearest red alder, a small Lemonade Sumac, and a usually-taciturn Oregon ash all said, The four-legged ones do, and a Western Red Cedar added, Even the big ones.
The house liked the prospect of joining people as well as the animals and plants as part of the great resource and therefore felt even better when the oldest of the nearby Black Cottonwoods, a much older brother of the house’s nearest neighbor and friend, repeated the hawthorn’s assertion, Everything.
Learn more about Harlan on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photo: Carol Von Canon/flickr.com/ CC BY-SA 2.0)
- House in the Woods by Harlan Yarbrough - February 24, 2022