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Holden Village main
street Dec. 18, 2011.
STOKING Many single women around my age (67) down-size, moving from large homes to a simpler life, where someone else will do the yard work and maybe even serve dinner. When I told a younger friend that I was moving to Holden Village, she asked with confusion: “What is that? Some kind of assisted living?” She wasn’t far off. Communities are, after all, about helping each other get through life. In that sense, Holden’s remoteness dictates especially organized and rigorous mutual assistance. The village nestles high in the North Cascade mountains on the edge of spectacular Glacier Peak Wilderness. Just getting here requires a two-hour boat ride up Lake Chelan. Then someone meets you for the twelve-mile trip up a serpentine road to the village. A retreat center, Holden draws some 5,000 visitors annually. If you’re a guest, you become a community member the minute you arrive. Guests, staff and volunteers eat, play and pray together. But long-term staff (of which I am one) and short-term volunteers get to participate in three additional activities: “dish team” (scrubbing up before and after meals), “garbology” (use your imagination), and stoking. * * * It is five o’dark in the morning, and I hit my alarm snooze button. This is the moment I’ve been dreading: my first stoking shift. I’d slept poorly the night before, worrying. The last time I’d felt this stressed was when I brought my stroke-paralyzed husband home from rehab, terrified that I would not be able to manage his feeding tube, medications, and tracheotomy. That was life and death, I keep reminding myself. This is simply a matter of keeping people warm and comfortable. Holden Village is powered by a delicate combination of hydroelectric, diesel and wood. The morning stoking shift requires firing up and maintaining three boilers, a couple of which are aptly named – Dante and the Dungeon. I meet up with my mentor, a compassionate18-year-old. He trained me yesterday, then gets up early on his day off to reassure me as I make my first round. He leads me into the very bowels of the village, the kind of places I’ve avoided all my life. At least there are no snakes or spiders to fear at 25 degrees F. Only mice. Embers still hot from overnight make firing up Dante easy. I shovel out excess ash and throw on a dozen or so logs. The Dungeon is more resistant. Not even paper will burn. It becomes a battle of wills. On the third try, I finally get a blaze roaring and slam the double iron doors shut with a triumphant “Ah-hah!” By ten a.m. the sun is burning blue holes through the morning fog. Boiler temperature gauges are slowly climbing – the contrary Dungeon reaching optimum level first. I climb to the top of the sledding hill to savor the view. Smoke curls from chimneys and disappears into the mountains that tower above the village. How affirming to move from apprehension to confidence in just one day. It takes some people a lifetime.
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