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.