Off On Our Own. Ted Carns
801 with a front-end loader and a Ford Dexta diesel too. I think it’s true, the only difference between men and boys is the price (and maybe weight) of their toys, but really, those tractors do work for us and they benefit others as well. I get
I’m told The Stone Camp is a special place but it’s hard for me to describe because I’m always here. I evolved right along with it, so it’s my norm. I said to Kathy one day, “There’s 360 degrees in a circle and I can turn around slowly and spot 360 things that need done, repaired or developed.”
People constantly ask me what it’s like to live in such a peaceful, utopian, idealistic, and heavenly setting. I tell them I’m like a man who had a plain black cape tied permanently around his neck in a world with no mirrors. Over the years people would drop by and sew jewels into it. Others would embroider it with beautiful filigree designs and still others would edge it with fancy knot work and macramé. The cape became so known for its beauty that people started to come by just to see it.
At first he loved the praise and enjoyed the admiration, but that got old real quick. After a while you started to see a wince on his face when people said nice things about his cape. He couldn’t see what everybody else was seeing. No matter how quickly he’d turn to see his beautiful cape he could barely get a peek at the corner of it because it flowed around behind him quicker than he could get a look.
Now you might want to jump in your car and rush to see this place, but before you do let me tell you about the opposite end of the scale so as to curb your enthusiasm a bit. Amongst the steady entourage of people who happen by to visit from time to time are many dedicated, seasoned spiritual seekers. I call them “extreme yogis.” Some of them refer to The Stone Camp as “The Fire.” I really don’t know what they’re talking about. I can only repeat what people say and comment on what I observe happens to them here. It may be so bright here that just a slight tremor can send you over the brink into darkness. Kind of like tears turning to laughter.
I do find it odd that there are probably 300-plus images of the Blessed Virgin Mary in this house and most people don’t even see one of them. It’s no doubt because there’s so much other stuff to look at, but 300? A short visit here seems to be cool for most people. Much more than six hours and the place can start to be more like a therapy session than a simple visit. Even the dreams people have here can be intense and meaningful. But when they wake up scared nightmare-shitless they tend to assume the dreams are prophetic. A close friend of ours has spent time with approximately 37 (his count) different spiritual teachers and masters in a number of monasteries and ashrams. He told me there’s no place he’s ever been that’s been harder to endure – but he kept coming back. Dave passed on four months ago in India on the eve of his birthday, the night before he was to fly home and retire here with Kathy and me.
No place I know digs out and unearths internal b.s. more than The Stone Camp. It could be any of several things that cause this phenomenon. Personally, I think it may be Mary’s immaculate presence. She’s an earthquake to bullshit, like a magnifying glass to the things we’d rather not reveal to ourselves. Whatever it is, there have been very few people who have seemed totally immune. I see it in people who come to stay for two weeks and leave in two days. Some come for the whole summer and are gone in a week.
I often think that our human culture is no more than the evolution of sophisticated escape buttons. Any time the real truth starts to surface in our minds any time we’re cornered to reflect on the construct of our self-denial, just push a button: Hop in the car, go shopping, turn on the tube or just grab a bottle, hit the chocolate or roll up a fat one. If I’m right, there’s not only no buttons here, but it’s a mirror wherever you look, in all directions.
I’ve witnessed some profound first impressions of this place and I’ve seen it put a match to many a person’s self-created, New Age enlightenment map. I’ve seen people begin to weep when they walked through the door and they can’t say why. I’ve seen groups of elderly Catholic women seeming to float through the yard proclaiming this to be a reflection of heaven. I heard a Catholic priest say, “Not since Assisi.” A few have been instantly offended by the place. Rarest of all are those who appear to be totally indifferent – maybe three at most but I only remember two. Many have said, “This is the way life was intended to be” . . . “I want your life” . . . “I’ve touched base.”
The outdoor kitchen cupboard which contains all our food processing equipment
South side of the woodshed complex, with library and summer kitchen
West side of the woodshed, with sugar shack at rear left
Lone Cabin Jr, our upper main guest house
I felt a tinge of the same when visiting the remote regions of foreign countries where life appeared full and simple. It was especially powerful in Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia – and in the countryside on Mt. Athos, the peninsula jutting out in the North Aegean Sea, where 20 ancient Eastern Orthodox monasteries have been built into the living rock.
I’m not a mystic by nature. I look for the rational explanations for mysteries, miracles and the supernatural. I’m only wide-eyed, wordless and stunned when I’m forced to be. But in my life the search for the rational often proves futile. When I try to find a rational explanation for the experience that people have when they come here I think of Ben Franklin saying, “Any person having witnessed and tasted the life of the savage would not dream of returning to white society.” It was also recorded that certain barricades were constructed not to keep Indians out but to keep whites from running away to join the tribe.
Delightful Necessity
Having grown up camping a lot, I remember the route of invention we traveled to make our campsite comfortable, convenient and downright delightful. It’s a very certain path or way of thinking that pursues utility in sight of transiency, a semi-permanence in what is passing. The main compass of that route guided us on an expansion and elaboration of necessity. We dressed what’s necessary with frills and filigree.
Transiency and necessity are like kissing cousins. When you know your mortality to the very core of your being, desires lose their power to grab your mind by the throat. Forget your mortality and you begin seeking the unnecessary. In truth, there is a point to necessity but there is no point in raw desires for excess. Necessity is like a deep water sailboat with a great rudder to guide it straight through random blustery winds. Cut off the rudder and you have a life of desire guided by random impulses.
I think The Stone Camp is like the ultimate delightful camp. It is a very high elaboration of necessity. I think in essence it’s the same “Ben Franklin” phenomenon, only magnified to stunning. It is the “life of the savage” synthesized with modern convenience but with little compromise.
People instinctively yearn to live in harmony with the land whether they’re aware of it or not, and whether they admit it or not. So how people react here may have a rational basis. There may be no spiritual or supernatural attraction whatever. But . . . when you see people begin to weep, begin to shiver – and I hear a recent visitor who’d just spent 12 years in the slammer say over and over, “This is