The Mountain Homestead was founded by Chip and Clara Boggs, two truly amazing people. They bought the land, about 350 acres in south-western Oregon, back in the 80s for something like $100,000, but didn’t really do much with it at first. They brought in some heavy machinery and put in the main road, formed the main terraces, and cleared a few trees, but they weren’t really in the Permaculture mindset back then (who was?). It wasn’t until recently, maybe the last 5 years or so, that it has turned into the place it is now.
A few years ago Clara was diagnosed with dementia. When I first visited the Homestead last September, she was already living in a different world than the rest of us. She can’t hold a conversation, but we all still talk with her and touch her and do everything we can to keep her with us. She smiles and laughs on a daily basis and is just as sassy and spunky and tricky as ever.
Most of her days are spent just walking around the Homestead: smelling flowers, going in and out of all the different buildings, and (one of her favorites) stealing toilet paper from the poopers and then stashing it in a hiding place that we’ve still never found. Since the beginning of the Permaculture course last Monday, she started making passes through the classroom in the afternoon, just to make sure the lectures are going alright.
Clara is one of my favorite parts of the Homestead.
At times I think about how sad it is that Clara has this condition and that she and Chip can’t just grow old together on this land. Their life is different now. But then I realize that they are incredibly lucky to have gotten has far as they did before her dementia set in. Now Clara has this amazing community to support her instead of some random care facility.
One of the newer things that Clara does is repeat things that she hears around her. The other day I saw her standing in the old outhouse that’s being converted into a storage shack, and I said to her, “Hey Clara, do you like it in there?” She replied, “I like it in here. I like it in here.” She also has a deck of cards that she carries around, constantly splitting the deck in two and then sliding it into itself. Recently I’ve started calling her the Queen of Hearts.
The other day during the lecture portion of the Permaculture course, Tom Ward (the teacher) was explaining the Sphere of Epistemology or something. He was talking about how the very center of the sphere is detailed, specific, and clear, and how the farther you get from the center the fuzzier it gets. Just as he said this, Clara was making her pass through the classroom and she said, “The fuzzier it gets. The fuzzier it gets.”
It took a moment for what she said to set in, and then we all exploded with laughter. It was shocking. Could it honestly be a total coincidence that she walked through the classroom at that exact moment and then decided to repeat those exact words? It was like she was confirming what Tom had said with actual experience, like, “He’s right, guys. I spend most of my time out here, and it gets really fuzzy.”
