SYLVIA: IN THE BEGINNING
By MERZ
Sylvia made a life for herself among her trees


The middle of the Sylvia story appeared in Feb 02. This is the start.

Lawrence Ragland met Sylvia Simmons in college. She was a dancer but got a
degree in English because she thought that might need to become a
schoolteacher to support herself. Lawrence studied business and never
questioned that he would support himself, his wife, and an old family name in
a better style than his father had done. Three months before graduating Sylvia
and Lawrence married. They moved into his family home in the middle of June.

The house had been built in the 19th century, but part of it stood on
foundations from an earlier dwelling. With the house came many acres of
surrounding land. None of this meant the Raglands had been well off. The land
was too rocky for successful farming beyond a small household garden. A small
orchard had been planted once, then neglected. Previous generations had raised
a few farm animals: a cow, a few chickens, a few pigs. Most of the property,
however, was left to trees that had received varying amounts of attention over
two centuries. Some were natives and quite old, remnants of forests that once
stretched north into Canada. Others had been planted with a very long view
toward making modest amounts of money from selling timber a few trees at a
time.

For the most part the Raglands had been merchants in farm country. When the
small farms in the area went broke and the owners turned more and more to
working in nearby towns or the distant city, the family fortunes declined
along with the house and land. The city was too far away for the land to be
desirable for housing. Lawrence's father had commuted to a job a half hour's
drive away. Lawrence had always assumed he would drive over an hour each day
to work in the city and might be the one to free his family from the plot of
ground to which his ancestors had anchored them.

Lawrence introduced Sylvia around the little crossroads village named for his
family. With his parents retired to Florida it felt to everyone like the
eldest son was assuming his seat in the manor, a succession in the local
nobility regardless how far the nobility had fallen. Sylvia met the couple who
ran the general store and post office. She met the librarian in the tiny one
room library, which she was pleased to learn had access to all the books in a
much larger county library system. She saw the small grade school where she
knew her children one day would go, as Lawrence had gone, before they moved on
to the high school in the town twelve miles down the road. Lawrence introduced
her to Charles Steward who kept a farm supply and hardware store as well as
running the small farm where he lived with his parents. Lawrence mentioned
that Charles farmed with horses rather than a tractor. Charles and Lawrence
had grown up together. He was about an inch taller than Sylvia at five feet
nine inches, quiet in dress and manner, and solidly built. He told Sylvia that
like the library he had catalogues and could order any tools or supplies the
Raglands might need that were beyond his inventory. He commented that the
house and property could use a great deal of work to undo years of neglect and
that he would be pleased to help in any way he could. When they left the store
Lawrence told Sylvia that after high school Charles had joined the army. After
some bad experiences he had returned home the year before.

Her first months on the land Sylvia spent settling in to a new life. She found
she would need to gather wood for heat, although there was an old electric
range in addition to the wood stove in the kitchen. She made some attempts at
splitting wood from the large pile behind the house, and Lawrence showed her
how to swing the axe for the job. Then she began an inventory of the things
she wished were better in the house, what pipes needed repair, where the roof
needed patching, what windows needed replacing, where the porches had sagged,
the paint had peeled. She talked with Lawrence who explained that he would
have no time to take on such repairs and he hoped she would arrange for such
things. She talked with Charles Steward who recommended books she might read
to learn home repairs, and showed her how to use tools meant for the various
jobs. He coached her through some early projects and she was pleased to see
results from her work.

At the end of summer she began an inventory of the property, identifying each
species of tree and mapping its location. She worked from a book borrowed at
the little library to name the many types of trees. She noted the apparent
health of each tree, whether it looked crowded by other trees or choked by
underbrush or beset by parasite vines and insects. She checked the trees in
the old orchard and found a few healthy enough to save, then ranked the rest
by how soon she thought they needed to be removed.

Halfway through her survey work, while checking on some maples growing in a
grove on the high point of the property, she thought back to how much she had
enjoyed climbing trees as a child. Certain no one would see, she began
climbing the branches of one giant. She had been a dancer so her balance and
coordination were good. Soon she was near the top where the gentle sway of the
trunk in the breeze made her a little dizzy. Now the view around her world
took her breath away. She saw the tops of other trees on the property, the
roof of the house, the roofs in the village, the hills rolling away out of
sight. Returning to the ground she promised herself that view often from as
many of the trees as she could and in every season.

By the end of September she began to clean up some of the property. She
trimmed some of the better fruit trees, hoping they might produce fruit for
more than just the birds next year. She went back to some of the other trees
on the property to cut limbs and tear at underbrush. With coaching from
Charles Steward she learned to keep her axes and saws sharp, and how to cut
down a tree so it landed where she wanted it to.

Many mornings she woke with sore muscles from her work trimming trees or
working on the house or clearing underbrush. On those days she might just walk
about the property taking closer notes on the conditions of different trees or
making more detailed maps. She noted details about the property, the trees,
the many stone walls that had been built to get rocks out the way of plows a
series of Raglands had tried to use on the land. When the weather turned wet
she spent time indoors reading about each species she had found, and about
managing trees for income and the environment.

By mid October she was talking in the village about "my trees", "my shed" "my
house", "my land".

When winter came on she knew her work among the trees would be done for the
year. She could take on small projects indoors and there was always wood to
split for heat, but she was facing hours each day of idleness. One day as she
was chopping wood for the fire she reflected on how much easier the task
seemed compared with even two months before. She paused and felt her arm to
confirm that it felt larger and more firm. "I've gotten stronger working as I
have been," she thought. "If I spend the winter doing nothing I will be
starting all over when the snow melts and I can get back to my trees."

She had exercised and even lifted weights for fitness in college. Now she
decided to do the same thing to keep her strength through the winter. She
easily persuaded Lawrence that they both needed some exercise equipment in the
basement, knowing he would never use it during the weekends when he was home.
Lawrence brought home a 200-pound weight set one evening and they set things
up in a clean corner of the basement. Sylvia diligently set aside time each
day for exercise as the air grew chill and the rain and snow began falling. At
first it was an hour a day, but she found she enjoyed the solitude indoors as
much as she had learned to enjoy it working outside and her sessions increased
to two and three hours. The time she spent with the weights also cleared her
mind to think through a plan for taking on the massive amount of labor the
trees, house and garden would need when the snow melted. In the evening she
devoured books and magazines on trees and land management and home remodeling.
She emerged from her first winter stronger than before and with a detailed
campaign for attacking the many projects she had identified the previous year.

She greeted the coming of spring with pruning saws and tools to attack
underbrush surrounding her trees. Each evening she mapped out her next day's
labor before going to bed with Lawrence. Each morning she saw him off to the
city, then gathered her tools and marched to whatever part of the property she
had targeted for that day. She would work to exhaustion, then go to town to
shop for dinner, to pick up books at the library or to visit with Charles
Steward on tasks that might be made easier with additional tools. Sometimes he
had a tool to suggest and sometimes he was able to show her how one she
already had could be used differently to do the new task. Returning home she
prepared ingredients for dinner, then went to the basement to lift her weights
for an hour and think through her next day. By the time Lawrence returned home
in the evening she was showered and ready to cook dinner.

In May she learned she was pregnant and she began a series of projects on the
house. She prepared a bedroom, hanging sheet rock and painting through the
June heat. She reroofed in July and rebuilt the front porch. In the autumn her
belly slowed her pace and forced her to concentrate on smaller tasks like
wiring and plumbing. Parker was born in the winter and she quickly devised
ways she could carry him with her as she went about her many chores, and ways
to keep him safely out of the way while she worked. All in all, her routine
through the winter wasn't much disturbed by having a child. Through his first
year he began crawling to discover more and more in the world at ground level.

By her fifth year on the land Sylvia took most of the vegetables she needed
from her garden and sold fruit from the remaining fruit trees. She had
installed a furnace so could choose whether to burn fallen wood for heat or
turn up the thermostat. She had repainted the house and was turning her
attention to the outbuildings, choosing which to restore and which should be
pushed down. Every tree had received some individual attention and was fitted
into a plan of harvest or preservation that stretched forward for many years.
New fruit trees were taking hold, new trees about the woodlot were growing
well. Sylvia felt proud of her land and her house. She had created a life for
herself and shared it with Lawrence and Parker, even if Lawrence thought he
was the family provider.

When she became pregnant with Petra she took the news and the limitations
pregnancy imposed in her stride. She adjusted her activities and stayed busy
until delivery. This birth was harder than Parker's had been. Petra was a
large baby and reluctant to leave the womb. Women from the village helped
around the house for a week and then she was ready to resume her tasks.

She saw in the next year that Petra and Parker were different children. Parker
liked to toddle about the property, investigating everything. Petra preferred
staying close to Sylvia, watching her work, and ignoring most distractions.
Petra soon learned to play with blocks and could be left to amuse herself
playing with the small stones that littered the ground.

The years passed into Sylvia's first decade on the land. Every acre of ground
and every room of the house showed the effects of her labors and her love.
Lawrence was doing well in the city; his business grew and prospered. He
bought a building for his office. He hired people to do work for him. He
stayed later and later working in his office and often traveled to other
cities on business.

One Saturday when the leaves were again turning golden and beginning to fall
from the trees, a neighbor met Lawrence in the village and asked about buying
a tall straight tree he could use as a timber when he repaired his old barn in
the spring. Lawrence agreed to a price and told Sylvia they could cut it the
next day and carry it to the house where the neighbor would collect it in his
truck. On Sunday they walked to a far corner of the property where the
specified tree stood. Sylvia disliked cutting a healthy tree, but knew it had
been planted years before for just such an end. Lawrence began the attack with
clumsy axe strokes. Sylvia watched for a few minutes then suggested they take
turns. As Lawrence sat to rest she quickly finished the job, adjusting the
angle of cut from Lawrence's beginning so the falling tree would miss a fence
nearby. They limbed the trunk and prepared to carry it to the house. Lawrence
took the thick end and soon needed to rest and set the trunk down. Again
Sylvia suggested they take turns and she took the thicker end for their second
effort. Shortly after they resumed Lawrence announced they had made it halfway
to the house, a good achievement for one day. They could finish the next
weekend. Sylvia watched him mop his sweating face as they gathered the tools
to carry back home.

After seeing Lawrence away and straightening the house the next morning Sylvia
looked off at the trunk where they had left it. She put the children where she
could keep one eye on them near the house. She brought a towel to pad her
shoulder and walked to the trunk. Raising the log by its smaller end she
walked her hands inward until she stood under its balance point. She eased the
trunk onto her padded shoulder, every muscle straining under the weight as the
larger end arose. With deliberate steps she walked to the house and set her
load on the ground. She looked at the trunk for a few minutes, rubbing blood
back into her shoulder. Then she once more raised an end and walked her hands
to the middle. This time as the trunk was balanced she let it rise off the
ground with it's whole weight held in her hands above her head. She felt the
weight of the trunk driving her into the soil, seeking to crush her. She
looked up at the trunk balanced in her hands and at the blue sky beyond and
she smiled. "The trees have made me strong," she shouted to the sky. She eased
the trunk down into her arms and then back to the ground. Every muscle sang
with joy and energy. She felt every fiber quivering with her strength.

She brought the children into the house and went to her bedroom. She undressed
in front of her mirror. For the first time she studied the muscles that she
had grown year by year as she worked her land and her trees. She saw ropes
coil when she bent her joints and stretch when she straightened them. She
tensed her straight arm and watched deep seams appear between the cords in her
forearm and cut between her biceps and triceps. She watched veins press to the
surface throbbing with blood and life. She flexed the arm and watched the
muscles knot into a tall rounded peak on her upper arm. She rubbed it with her
other hand, then gripped it to prove it could really be so hard and so alive.
She studied her chest and saw her breasts, which had always been small, now
stood atop solid plates of pectoral muscle that she could flex and bunch. She
rubbed her hard stomach, her chiseled legs. She doubled her fist and pounded
it against her tensed abdomen, and smiled. She lunged forward onto a bent leg
and hammered her fist against the thigh, the force making the floor sound like
a bass drum but not hurting her. "The trees have made me very strong," she
said softly. She felt desire grow as she studied and probed the muscles of her
body, frontside and backside.

She banked her passion as she worked the rest of the day. When Lawrence came
home she laid before him a special dinner she had worked on for much of the
afternoon. She wore a dress he had always liked to see her in, and she smiled
to feel how tight its shoulders had become on her. She imagined letting her
strength explode the weak fabric from her, but decided to see one day if she
could just let out the seams to fit. After dinner she put the children down to
sleep, then with looks and caresses led Lawrence upstairs.

At first Lawrence was pleased that Sylvia was responding so ardently to his
lovemaking. Her passion quickly brought him to climax and he spent all his
energy. A few minutes later he was flattered when Sylvia aroused him again and
took position astride him. His pleasure turned to surprise when he felt the
strength in her hands and arms and legs as she maneuvered his body as she
wished and as she slammed her hard torso against him in passion. The third
time she simply took what she wanted from him as she held him helpless to
resist her. She slept after that, while Lawrence lie awake for hours wondering
what had just happened. The next day he didn't mention their lovemaking. He
never asked about the log that had been moved next to the house without his
help.

In years to come sex with Sylvia became something Lawrence approached
carefully or when drunk, and only infrequently. Sylvia sometimes treasured her
body in private. Sometimes she stripped naked among her trees where she and
her children watched her muscles work the land and cut the wood. Lawrence's
approaches became for her an excuse to launch herself into powerful sex that
had little to do with him and often left him aching and bewildered.

Sylvia lived with Lawrence for seventeen years, and then it was time he left.