SAS CAREY

Sitting at Quaker Meeting one recent Sunday morning, I heard messages about the horror in Israel and Gaza and how we as peacemakers might help. I could not focus on this big topic, though. I was thinking about wood. Yes, wood. Lumber. Boards.

My partner Lee is clearing out his possessions to move here. He is a home designer and builder and is consolidating his possessions from a condo and some storage units to fit into my furnished home. He is trying to be ruthless so we can fit everything into the house. While sitting in Quaker Meeting I envision the wood he piled into his trailer yesterday, ready to take it to the transfer station.

Before leaving for Meeting in the morning, I had looked at the load and seen the maple, pine, and mahogany boards. Any one board could be made into something beautiful.  

“If you take these to the transfer station, what will happen to them?” I asked. I was hoping for a different answer from what happened when we had recently taken some of my furniture and papers there after water from the August rains in Middlebury sluiced into the basement, flooding and ruining everything. 

In August, I had to let go of three file cabinets and their contents. When we delivered them to the transfer station, we threw them onto a wet, grimy, concrete floor. The files were a repository of my life’s work — of meetings with teen groups at the Addison County Parent/Child Center, of my role as a health educator for the United Nations in Mongolia, and as a facilitator of groups for the State of Vermont. When the manilla folders made little piles on the wet floor, I swallowed hard. Gary, transfer station worker, pointed to them and said, “This is your whole life,” as a backhoe pushed everything into a gaping concrete hole. It was horrible to imagine the boards there, but Lee didn’t have a place for them, nor had he been able to give them away.

In the hour of silence at Quaker Meeting, I got to thinking of where wood comes from — its journey from being a seed in soil, the ensuing sprout feeling the rain and sun in its long process to become a tree. Growing for many years. Then cut down, sawed, and planed. My heart asked is there a connection between destruction in war and destruction of wood? Resources and lives unspent. Unfinished. I tried to avoid seeing the wood being bulldozed into the concrete pit, but it was clear in my mind’s eye. It was painful, but I couldn’t say anything out loud. What would I say about wood in the face of a terrible war? But, also, how could I not say anything? Quaker Meeting ended and I had said nothing.

Many of the Friends in our Meeting circle stayed an extra half hour to meditate on the Middle East. Only a few were leaving now, as I was. As we few got to the door, I couldn’t hold back. I said, “I know we are thinking about the Middle East, but I am concerned about some boards that will end up in the transfer station.” 

Denny asked, “What kind of boards do you have?” 

“Beautiful ones.” 

“I could use some boards,” he said. “Maybe I could come over this afternoon?”

While loading the boards into his truck, he told us that he has a new interest in woodworking. His wife gave him a present for his last birthday to spend three months with a professional as a mentor. His project was to make stools for his workshop. At the end, he had two cherry stools. 

“The stools were too beautiful for a wood shop,” he said, laughing, as he transferred more boards. 

Our shoulders relaxed as Lee and I investigated the trailer. We didn’t change the course of the war, but with nothing left to be bulldozed into the pit, something precious was saved. Maybe this was one tiny way for a peacemaker to help.

Sas Carey, energy healer, author, and filmmaker, will discuss how early experiences described in her memoir “Marrying Mongolia” prepared her for her life’s work in Mongolia. She will screen her 2006 film, “Gobi Women’s Song” at the Residence at Otter Creek on November 28 from 3-4:30.