The Knife Blog 1: Everything has a Start

Somehow, I got sick.

I had just come back from a carpenter gig where I was spending 5 nights a week out of town and was about to ship out to my very first Permaculture Design Course.  I had been lusting after the course ever since I'd heard of the stuff.  I bought books and read through them violently every night in my little hotel room. I dreamt of swales and thermo-syphons and water levels during long days in boots, covered in saw-dust.

And now I was sick.

It was T-minus 2 hours and counting until my bus to Nelson and I felt like melting into a small pool and pouring myself down the kitchen sink.

A few of my wife's friends were over and as the sun began to set, they started a fire in the back yard, as I lay in bed.  Their presence reminded me that I wouldn't be able to do any gardening for the next two weeks, reminded me that I had promised to finish the little cold frame before leaving town.

Guilty, I dragged my aching frame from bed, hobbled out to the shop and after a convulsive moment spent trying to unlock the door, went in and got a saw and nailer.  What followed wasn't exactly a flurry of action, it was more like what happens while trying to balance a glass of water, play trumpet and win a staring contest at the same time: between careful, strained movements there were deep breaths.

Eventually, the frame was completed and I found myself on a Greyhound Bus with a canteen of ginger tea my wife had made, I was headed West.  Watching occassional lights glide past the windows, I settled in, body warming with each sip of ginger tea. The interior of the bus, lighted only by the glow of a few computer monitors and the aisle lights, was the perfect place to sleep.  So of course, I couldn't.

Unable to resist multiple calls of the bathroom, I tried my best to stealthily climb over and around the various limbs and torsos blocking the aisle.  With a leaking nose and head filled with pressure and little spinning things, the result was less than graceful.  It was more the performance you'd expect from a fish.

The night wore on.  The bus hummed along, people slept, I tried every possible position to get to sleep.  Finally, adopting something of a narcoleptic yoga pose: laying across the two seats with my legs stretched against the windows, feet in the air, I fell asleep.  My arm joined the rest of the dispossessed body parts in the aisle.

Not long after, I woke with both legs and one arm completely numb.  I tried to let my legs down gently, but being numb, they fell to the floor with thuds as I attempted to sit up.  How much sleep did I get?  20 minutes? An hour?

Dawn was starting its work as the countryside out the window slowly lighted.  I clenched and unclenched my feet and fists, trying to regain a bit of feeling, and use.  The bus roared on, the countryside slipped past.

By the end of the journey, a few hours later, my body parts were working normally and the cold I had suffered through seemed to have disappeared.

At the greyhound station, the bus emptied.  I met a fellow Permaculture student, Jester, and not long after introduction, we were picked-up by our hosts and one half of Verge Permaculture, Michelle Avis.

As we drove up the mountain that overlooks Nelson, we were welcomed to the course but warned not to expect our lives to change.  Exhausted, rocking back and forth limply as the car went over bumps, I smiled.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.