Soon, drilling and fracking rigs were running up and down the newly cut-in roads, popping in wells every couple of acres. Janet and I helped where we could, but were more interested in digging up a large plot of ground by the trailer for the one hundred tomato plants we were nursing in their little boxes. We gathered red mulch from inside rotting logs in the forest, loaded it on our little three-wheeler's trailer, and used it as fertilizer.
The first three wells went in within one hundred yards of each other close to the mobile home. Only later did we learn that pump jacks are giant lightening rods! And we were in for it since we lived on a hill! Although lightening never hit the trailer, it regularly hit the pump jacks next to it, which made the severe storms that frequent Northwest Pennsylvania interesting to say the least.
Once a well was drilled, steel pipe casing was run down the hole and then pressure was introduced by the huge fracking rigs, shattering the rock strata below, and allowing the oil mixed with salt water to seep from the formations where it would be subsequently pumped to the surface. Rods with seals were lowered into the casing to act as a pump, and pump jacks were built above the well (looking like giant grasshoppers), to move the rods up and down.
After a well was outfitted, underground plastic piping and electrical lines were run. The piping ran from the wells to large storage tanks in the middle of the property where the oil and salt water was separated. The oil was stored in the tanks until a local distributor picked it up, while next to the tanks a large, deep pit was dug and sealed with plastic sheeting to hold the salt water until it could evaporate.
The salt water was produced at a greater volume than I expected, however, and I had a bad feeling about it. As the wells were completed, my job was to pump them making sure that each well was pumping twice a day for the appropriate amount of time so that it wouldn't pump dry. This involved all kinds of electrical and mechanical maintenance and repairs on pump jacks that were regularly damaged by lightening.
Janets brother-in-law was already in the process of drilling more wells in other fields, but when the price of oil dropped and legislators ended the cozy tax shelters connected to oil wells, it wasn't long before the oil boom . . . went bust.
One day I looked at the creek that ran through the property and noticed that everything in it, all the frogs and fish and water spiders, were dead. The salt water had leaked out of the holding pond and contaminated the ground water, coloring it a telltale red. The land was beginning to erode as well, with many of the trees now gone, and the pump jacks were rusting away. Our little hill was not the same.
Janet and I became disheartened. Things that initially endeared us to the property were changing, as all things do, and sadness was creeping in. I found myself becoming emotional quite often, feeling as if I was standing on a tarmac tearfully waving goodbye to a dear friend that I knew I would never see again. Perhaps this was a sign that my practice was deepening. I wasn't sure, and although the pain was melancholy, it was painful nonetheless. Now I understood why I had always been afraid to attach to things too tightly; it just hurts too much to let them go. But go they must, as all things seem to do in time.
Whenever Janet and I surrendered supports that we relied upon, we usually found ourselves navigating through turbulent waters. Giving up both the heaven we had counted on so desperately, and the world as well, was difficult without feeling a crushing loss. This always left us no foothold, but maybe this spiritual poverty was exactly what we needed in order to slide down that mountain we had created and have been struggling to climb. If need be, we were more than willing to live in both the poverties - material and spiritual.
This was a dark time for me. I was restless and began to doubt myself; perhaps my whole life had been for naught. Life had lost its appeal and I was depressed, and even though I always had Janet, I began to feel alone and abandoned. It was if I was waiting for something . . . and there was nothing I could do, except wait.
A shot rings out, a deer falls, the universe is diminished. After being exposed to two hunting seasons on the hill, it was time to leave, and like two rivulets of rain running into a stream that is happily returning to its Source, we ended up at the Zen Center in San Francisco. I thought that I had conquered any meditation related illnesses that developed at the Abbey, and threw myself into the practice, but I was about to learn that what I thought was of little consequence.
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