Gray skies, rain, and 40-degree temperatures greeted me this morning, but I’m not complaining. It’s only the second day of rain since I started this trip almost four weeks ago. Pretty amazing!
The couple I’m staying with at the Air BNB here are artists. Elliott works with metal and forms finished pieces designed by other artists as well as his own designs. He created the steel table where we ate breakfast. Janet makes jewelry, often using scrap metal from Elliott’s projects. She also makes rugs from plastic bags and experiments with many different art forms. They moved into the farm house several years ago from Chicago and love the peace and quiet and the joy of harvesting their own food. The night I arrived, Janet had just caught several fish from the pond on the property and cooked them up for dinner tonight for herself and Elliott. This morning’s breakfast, which I enjoyed immensely, consisted of homemade granola, yogurt, raspberries from their backyard, robust coffee, and grape juice made from grapes grown here.
Alas, the solitude they prize has come at too high a cost. Living here in central Indiana on five acres of farmland has brought them peace, but it has also isolated them from the community of artists in which they thrived in Chicago. So they’re making plans to move to North Carolina, near Chapel Hill, to another farm where they can work in peace but which is near Chapel Hill, the university, and other creative folks.
I understand their dilemma, since I need silence and solitude when I’m writing, but my brain most certainly needs stimulation from other people when I’m not working. Sometimes it’s a tough balance to achieve, but necessary all the same.
Today’s adventure took me to Wabash’s downtown, where a collection of shops and interesting architecture line the main street. It has changed for the better—now a charming downtown—since my visits here as a kid in the 1950s and 1960s. Sherilyn drove me past her old homestead, sold after her mother died, and to the family’s lumberyard, owned and operated for many years by her brother Don. I had last seen him and his family when they visited my parents in Maine in the early 1980s. We know we’re lying when we say no one has changed since then, but it makes for a better intro than saying, “My god, Sue, you’ve aged 30 years!”
Sherilyn and Phil are great kidders. It’s a challenge to keep up with them, though I’ve learned that what they’re saying is probably the opposite of the truth. We’ve shared a lot of laughs over the past two days. Makes me miss my partner in humor back home.