Make mine mulch

Hollis the Mountain Man misses being down in the dumps

by Sally Cragin

Years ago, Tritown created the dump. And it was good. On the seventh day, Tritownies shoved their metal rubbish barrels in the back of their station wagons and motored to the edge of town to an open pit so fragrant with rot, so gleaming with discarded appliances, so ripe with possibility, that everyone looked forward to the weekend trip. When Hollis the Mountain Man was a boy, the entire Mountain family -- mother, father, and brother Mason -- squeezed into the dilapidated Country Squire and spent a remunerative morning "dump picking." It was a rare day when they didn't bring back at least as much as they dumped, and there was always some unexpected treasure.

As a Mountain Boy, Hollis found green glass insulators twinkling in the rubble, while brother Mason searched for broken bikes and hardware for his endless tinkering. Their parents had an eye for salvagable wooden furniture. Throughout the years they found plenty: ladderback chairs (needing only new thatch), a pitted and stained oak sideboard that a belt-sander and vinegar revived to a gleaming patina, deeply graffiti'd school desks, picnic furniture, and Adirondack before it was vogue.

The word "recycle" didn't officially exist until Hollis entered adolescence, but by then the dump was endangered. Of course, some of the environmental revisions were for the best -- the heap of car batteries leaching acid into the water table and the brillantine pit of discarded crankcase oil weren't healthy for children and other living things. But the end result of landfill costs and sweeping reforms were two words: municipal pickup. Everyone got sturdy polythene tubs, so the stack of newspaper moved from the broken kitchen chair to the back hall. Another bucket was provided for bottles and cans, so an enjoyable evening could be spent with a pocketknife scraping off labels.

But Hollis's parents yearn for the dump -- not a Saturday morning passes that Hollis's father doesn't sigh mournfully and say, "Should be going to the dump, right about now." His utterance is met with a similar exhalation from Hollis's mother who says fondly, "Remember when we found the Chesterfield bureau?" Still, there is pleasure in the new arrangement. How convenient to drag the bag and bin out to the curb -- the easiest household chore, especially when you look up at the eaves and notice the gutters hanging down. Yes, most people adjusted to the municipal pickup just fine.

Except for people living beyond the reach of the licensed trash collectors, like Hollis the Mountain Man. Now, if you visit Hollis, you'll probably be prompted to ooh and ah at the beauty of Picture Pond on a still day, ringed with birch and maple. You'll sigh with pleasure at the lumpy peak of Mt. Magoonamitichusimog (an amalgam of French, English, and Algonquin meaning "my idiot friend who lives by the bog -- he likes it"). You'll admire his vegetable garden, laugh at the scarecrow with the Nixon mask, and then realize you have to make your way through broken barrows, sawn logs, milk cartons filled with mystery cans, and broken tools to get to the front door. Your questions might be, "How much does it cost to plow that driveway in a storm?" or "Mind if I pick some blackberries?" But no one asks, "What the hell do you do about your trash?"

The truth is that Hollis is still working that out. In his logical way, he divides all discards into two grand categories: organic and inorganic. Then, those categories are further subdivided thusly: Will Rot Eventually (food rinds, corn husks, apple cores), Will Poison Water Table (batteries, motor oil), Legal To Recycle (beer and cat-food cans, newspapers, magazines, WantADvertisers, pizza cartons), and Sorry Mother Earth, Its Gotta Go (everything else). The WRE pile is easiest to deal with -- a quick trip to the mulch pile out back. The WPW isn't difficult either -- his neighbor Old Man Tarbox of Tarbox Automotive ("Collisions? A specialty") has a contract with a registered toxic-waste disposal, so Hollis can bring those items over to the garage.

LTR gets packed into brown paper bags and hauled over to the recycling plant, but the SMEIGG pile is still a puzzle. On Monday nights, he can bring his SMEIGG bag to his parents house in Tritown for the trucks to pick up on Tuesday. In a pinch, he could bring a bag to his great-aunt Winnie's house, or heave a discreet package into the open lip of the dumpster behind Happy's Coffee and Qwik-Stop, but that was illegal, not to mention easily observable, which, in Tritown, is always worse.

Sometimes he's lucky, and Lorencz the Hermit emerges from his wigwam in the woods. Lorencz doesn't mind picking though Hollis's garbage and invariably is mesmerized by a pasta box, an empty catsup bottle, or the spool from a reel of thread. Where he takes his treasures, Lord only knows, thinks Hollis, and I sure don't want to. But Lorencz, despite his wild eyes and rambling conversation, is a picky trash picker and can't always be counted on for thorough disposal (though he always makes off with some of the cat-food cans).

There are weeks when Hollis stays on top of his trash, as it were, and has a small, neat package ready for discarding at appropriate intervals. But most weeks, this is not the case, and it would take weeks to make the Mountain Lair tidy enough for a "Bed & Breakfast" sign. At least the brush pile is slightly screened by a grove of slender birch trees, and the mulch pile hidden by the stone wall.

Brush and mulch -- so simple, so tidy, so clean, thinks Hollis one afternoon as he surveys his tiny empire. Anything made by human beings needs to be handled excessively, he muses. Take a soda bottle -- there are cap, label, and bottle. Metal caps go one place, bottle (without label) another. Unlike a bottle of homebrew, neatly decanted in a recyclable Grolsch ceramic-topped beer bottle. Just fill, and drink and fill and drink, forever.

He scoops up an armload of brush and throws it on his tarp (one of great-uncle Wilton's worn candlewick bedspreads). When the tarp is heaped with brush, he drags it toward the brush pile. There's no better method -- carry brush in your arms, it goes in your eye, load it onto a wheelbarrow, branches invariably fall out or get caught in the wheels. During the last bad storm, one of the birch trees was hit by the dead branch of a nearby maple, so Hollis has taken his chainsaw out to clean up the mess.

Just as he begins to saw, he gets an unlikely visitor. His great-aunt Winnie is an independent soul, sister of his great-uncle Wilton who left Hollis the Mountain Lair. She always fly-fished at the Mountain Lair when she felt "the call" and usually hauled out a mess of bass or even trout.

"Hey there!" she calls cheerfully, striding down the path. She carries a creel that Hollis knows contains her secret box of invincible flies, some made by her grandfather that date back nearly a century. A small, trim figure of indeterminate age, Winnie wears rubber boots in all weather and is the most self-sufficient sane person Hollis knows.

"Hey Winnie!" he replies, gratefully setting down the saw.

"Figured the blueberries were out, so if the fish are ignoring me, I can still bake a pie," she explains, advancing toward the pile of birch logs. "You're not throwing these out are you?"

"Just to the brush pile," says Hollis. "This garbage thing gets out of hand so quickly."

"Don't I know it," says Winnie. "Well, if you've got some of those cat-food containers, I'll take some of the birch bark off your hands."

"Help yourself," he says. "What are you going to do with them?"

"Christmas presents," she says. "Might as well stay on top of something!"

Great-Aunt Winnie's birch bark votives

You need: cat-food or tuna-fish can (cleaned out, for sure), votive candle jute or rough twine bark from a dead birch branch, glue, and clothespins. Peel the bark off the branch -- try to keep it in one piece. Fit it around the empty can so it fits snugly. Then, liberally coat the can and concave side of the bark with glue. Fit into place. (Clothespins will help.) When dry, a day later, take a length of twine and wrap it around birch bark by the middle. Tie in a bow, snip ends so they're even. Trim the birch bark around the top, and place candle in can. A pair of these make a fine holiday gift. Cost: $0. Hardcore crafties can wrap a candlewick around a pencil and place over can, melt paraffin, and fill the container.

Sally Cragin edits Button, New England's tiniest magazine of poetry, fiction, and gracious living.

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