Evening

9:00 p.m.

Bedtime. It has been a good day. We harvested the last of the September peaches--two flatbed trailers loaded with heaping bushel baskets.

For three weeks, at every meal, we’ve enjoyed huge crockery bowls full of sliced peaches with fresh cream, slightly sugared. No matter how many or how full the bowls, there is never any left over.

This week, the kitchen crews have been working amid steaming pots, canning peach nectar, preserves, and sliced peaches for tasty winter treats. They’ve prepared and frozen dozens of pie fillings, ready to thaw and pop in pie shells.

We all have our favorite peach concoctions, of course.

I like to blend a peach picked fresh from the tree with unsweetened yogurt, vine-ripened berries, and fresh squeezed orange juice for a breakfast smoothie or mid-morning snack. Frozen in ice cube trays or small jars with a stick, this beverage makes a delicious pop sickle for the little ones too.

Of course, the best peach treat is one picked fresh from the tree, so ripe it drops into your hand at a touch, so full of sweet juice that when you bite into it, you have to lean out, mouth over the ground so the juice doesn’t spurt onto your shirt.

The tastiest peaches are messy. You don’t just lick your fingers, you lick your hand, and if no one is looking, maybe your wrist, getting every drop of nectar.

Right now, I can hardly bear the thought of one more peach. My muscles are so tired from climbing up and down ladders and hefting bushel baskets that all I want to do is sit right here on my soft bed, pillows tucked round me, and drink this cup of soothing mint tea.

The air wafting through the porch screens is cool-warm, with the scent of rain after a too-hot day. My fingers smell of bruised mint leaves, picked from the herb garden beside the stoop not twenty minutes ago.

The trick with fresh mint tea is to pour boiled water, slightly cooled, over the leaves and remove them immediately. Mmmmmm. I inhale the delicate aroma. I can feel my pores opening as I hold the steaming cup close. The sweet taste of honey and mint almost tingles on the back of my tongue as the warm liquid slides down my throat, warming me to my toes, which curl with pleasure.

Near the open porch windows, Cheyenne sits yogi fashion on a cushion, pursing her lips as she does when absorbed in her work. She is weaving a pine-needle basket.

“The kitchen sorting baskets are limp and shabby,” she said earlier. “I’ll make new ones this week.”

She’s working on a sturdy potato basket, using grasses and pine needles she has collected from the hills and river banks. I love this pattern, a simple one, handed down to her from her grandmother, who got it from her grandmother.

Perhaps Cheyenne will teach the pattern to Balboa and Packer’s child one day. Balboa says they hope to conceive soon.

Which of course brings me back to the wedding. Noah pesters me daily for more on the wedding and the Village of Jasper. I tear my eyes from Cheyenne’s deft hands and glossy hair and return to task.

Not that I mind. There's so much to tell! I haven't enjoyed a celebration so much in years. It was one of those absolutely serendipitous weeks when everything clicks into place as though it had been designed that way.

But again, where to begin? The customs of the Village of Jasper are not so very different from ours, though there were a few exotic practices that delighted us.

As in Ordinary, young people in Jasper frequently choose to live in a communal apartment building. Balboa and Packer had lived for nearly five years in the semi-privacy of Jasper’s small complex.

There, nine private apartments consisting of a living room, sleeping loft, efficiency kitchen, and bathroom form the outer semi-circle of a compact and ingeniously layered structure.

Unlike most of the buildings of Jasper, which are of log or wood frame construction, the communal apartments are built of soil cement—much like many structures in Ordinary. This apartment building is a legacy of Balboa’s early years in Jasper, when she was an apprentice architect and introduced the concept of building with soil.

The building and grounds are constructed in adjoining arcs that fit the natural shape of the hill. The apartments are above and outside, in a large semi-circle on a hill which slopes toward the great Jasper Lake, so-called--like the village--for the vast veins of jasper found in the region. Each apartment has a generous view of the lake and the cascading vegetation before it.

The semi-circle is completed with terraced plantings stepping from the apartments in a gorgeous array of verdant shrubberies and luscious blooms.

Packer says you can find something blooming somewhere on the terraces every month of the year. Even in winter, he says, if you know where to look, you will find snow bells raising their heads through the icy snow.

The second semi-circle houses the communal rooms--music, art, reading, play, a small theater. Where the apartments are tall, with high ceilings, deep windows, and a sleeping loft, the communal rooms are single story.

Arbor-covered walkways link the buildings, their lush growth in summer shading the walls from the hot western sun. Sloping downward, like the hill, from the apartment arc to the communal arc, the arbors extend the vision of a terraced hillside, blending the earthen structure with its surroundings so you almost imagine you are in the woods as nature made it.

At the heart of the complex is a courtyard with delightfully whimsical settees, tables, sculptures, and other artwork made over the years by the residents, and tucked among flowering fruit trees, small maples, shrubberies and flower borders.

Balboa says, because this is one of the first soil-cement buildings in the region, people come from villages for hundreds of miles to see the structure and learn how to build from the earth.

She and her building crew regularly teach classes on building with soil cement, cob, and adobe. She shared portfolio after portfolio of beautiful designs. Most of them so simple and elegant that her students can go home after a week of classes and build their own.

“We love living here, Ma,” Balboa said, as we toured the art and music rooms. “I will miss hearing Charlie’s guitar or Laurie’s dulcimer when I step outside the door. I’ll miss taking my morning coffee to the table under the honeysuckle and having a quiet chat with the other early risers who like to watch the sun up with me.

“But Packer is not as social as I. He grew up in the forest, where the loudest sounds were the roar of the wind in a storm, or the thunder of a herd of elk across the meadow. He needs a home at the edge of the village, where he can hear the trees breathe.”

Balboa smiled at the thought of Packer listening to the trees.

A few faint lines creep near the edge of her black eyes. Her wide, deep smile comes as readily and mischievously as ever. My darling daughter! So wise, so full of ambition, love and life.

“But I want a home now, too, Ma,” she said. “I love how we build homes in Ordinary from mud and straw, and that is what I wanted here. I miss that cozy womb-like feeling. I need to burrow!”

Log or wood frame is the custom in Jasper because trees are so plentiful in the forests there. Before Balboa brought her soil-building skills, the people of Jasper had not thought about building cob or adobe homes.

“And I want the climate control that thick walls and domed ceilings provide. These wood houses are hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter!”

“Ah,” I said, winking artlessly. “So you miss the moderate weather of our southern clime?”

“Do I ever!” Balboa laughed. “Though I am much more acclimated to the heat and cold than I was. The cold is easy, really, because you just bundle up more. I love the snow and skiing! But you cannot escape the summer heat.

“I’ve been teaching the builders how to incorporate passive heating and cooling into their homes so they do not have to waste so much time and energy creating a comfortable environment.”

For two hours that day, Balboa showed me her ingenious designs, many of them taken from ancient architecture around the world.

Indeed, I had enjoyed the marvelous cooling properties of the house she designed for Beryl and Ronnie. The temperature was over 95 degrees while we were there, but inside, though there was plenty of light and fresh air, the house was always cool.

“Your buildings are your sculptures, like Cheyenne’s baskets are hers, or Janine’s tapestries hers,” I said, “but you work on a larger scale.”

“It’s true, Ma. I often think of the buildings, especially the ones made of cob or soil cement, as sculptures. I’m so grateful for all that Merilee taught me growing up, about the properties of clay, and how to coax a beautiful shape from an inert blob. Most of the time, I’m just a big kid playing in the mud!”

She grew silent a bit, while we pored over her drawings.

“Packer and I are going to start a family right away, Ma,” she said, smiling shyly. “By this time next year, you and Cheyenne may be grandmothers.”

“Lucky Beryl and Ronnie!” I say out loud to Cheyenne, dropping my pen and laughing out loud at my envy, “to live in the same village with the children and grandchildren.”

“Guess we’ll have to get used to taking more trips,” Cheyenne says. “You enjoyed the flights, didn’t you? You were like a little kid, watching the patterns of the earth change below us.”

“I do like to watch the earth from the vantage point of the clouds,” I smile, remembering the stark brown hills as far as I could see for miles and miles through the tiny airplane window.

“Despite the barrenness of the desert, it amazes me how many tiny lakes there are, all across the land, so late in the year! There must have been a huge snow pack last winter to leave so many puddles in that withered landscape.”

“Yes and the people who choose to live so far away from other villages,” Cheyenne says. “Do you remember how, wherever there was the thinnest trickle of a stream greening the clefts between the hills, you could just make out a tiny farm--a house, one or two outbuildings, and a long, lonely stretch of track leading up to it across the plateaus and through the valleys.”

“Aye. The loneliness!” I pick up my tea cup, inhaling a long breath of mint and wild honey before I sip another satisfying slurp that trickles down my throat in a hot ribbon.

“But imagine the stillness. The quiet must be profound, with only the wind and a wild animal or bird call to break the silence.”

“And the drone of a pesky airplane overhead,” Cheyenne smiles and winks, setting aside her reeds and tools.

“I’m tired,” she yawns, covering her mouth with her broad, blunt fingers.

I had intended to write about the wedding, once and for all, but I am distracted as Cheyenne slips into bed. Her hair is fragrant with my favorite scent, lavender, and her fingers smell of pine needles.

I switch off the light and set the notebook aside.

Breathe.

I give gratitude for this peaceful day, for the soft hint of light staining the evening sky behind and through the maple tree, for the friendship and love of this dear woman, so soft beside me.