A Year of ...

Art and I leave Holden Village two months from today. In many ways this year has gone by very fast and in a few ways, very slowly. After completing ten months, I am beginning to take stock of what we expected and what we are leaving with. I hope this to be the first of a few inter-spaced posts on our experience.

A year of:

• Sleep - It might be the mountain air or the lack of sunlight in the winter or possibly the fact that everything here is uphill; even the downhill, but we sleep a lot here. I get eight to nine hours of sleep every night. Oh sure, there have been a few sleepless nights but mostly it has been lights out by ten and awake at seven.


• Good Food - Warm fresh bread baked every day, fresh cookies or brownies a couple of times a week, seafood pasta or buckets of freshly made soup; what can I say? My thoughts of losing weight and dieting went down the drain very quickly.


• Water - Holden's water comes right out of Copper Basin; pure and fresh. Water is served at each meal in pitchers and I must drink 3 or 4 glasses a meal. In addition I grab a glass most of the time I venture through the dinning hall. They say that it takes five years to totally refresh the water in your body, well I have added a high quality 20% this year.
• Exercise - As I said before everything here is uphill. Life in the mountains means a lot of work and walking. Days off mean a hike and now that summer is here evening walks are in order most nights. We spend a lot of time outdoors. We eat outside if we can, we take coffee outside and since we have no cars, we walk everywhere. All year I have helped unload the bus each day as it comes up from the lake carrying luggage and food for all of us. I am stronger than I have ever been before. I do hope that I can carry this health into my life back in Ellensburg.
• Small Spaces - Art and I live in a two room apartment upstairs in Chalet #14, 14 up as we call it. We find that this is more than enough space for the two of us. We have a very small two burner stove / sink / refrigerator combo. The washer and dryer (and larger kitchen if we needed it) are downstairs. We honestly don't spend a lot of time here because we are so busy with other activities. When we move back we hope to look a bit closer at our physical space and needs and cut back the clutter.
• Worship - Daily worship, oh I mean twice daily worship. Matins is a very brief time for any of us to share thoughts, poems, experiences or simply read a bible verse. I have done many of these this year and have found this sharing of my thoughts to be very rewarding and makes for some good conversation. Each evening we have a 30 minute Vespers service as well. We all gather for songs, hymns, prayers, reading and almost any other thing that can be formatted into a worship service. Vespers is a great way for all of us to stop and check in with each other at the end of the day.
  
• Less Utilities - Holden generates its own power from Copper Creek. In the summer we have power to burn and can run dryers, lights, take long hot showers and even use and electric heater on chilly days, but in the winter we do with a lot less. Often Art and I would sit in the evening reading with 2 lights on, one for me and one for him. Our living space was usually about 60 degrees and this did not bother us at all. I was surprised to discover that my body acclimated to the colder weather and I suffered very little. We had a wood stove in the basement that we would light early in the morning but we never had a fire at night, our down comforter was all we needed.