Hogan Journal: The Naming of Gentlewood

By Dennis Lantz

The following begins the journal entries from my three month adventure in the woods, twenty five years ago. I could give a dozen reasons why these experiences are relevant and important in today's world, but I won't. I'll let you decide.

5/15/1995 (all dates listed will be 1995, unless noted)

I’m in the woods.  I came down yesterday.  I would have been down sooner had I not had responsibilities to my family. These include caring for the fire in the outdoor wood boiler, feeding the cows and just general help around the house. Finally I am to that place of which I have written with longing. The planning and building took over two years, but it is now a reality.

Today I woke up in the hogan to trickling beams of sunlight stealing their way through the cracks of my manufacture.  I was not alone. Jon and Mark slept here as well. Jon for a visit and Mark as a summer co-inhabitant.

In the latter part of mid-morning we journeyed north and west to a piece of land on my family’s farm just east of the maple sap house. Here we finished constructing the framework to a sweat lodge. Not yet attuned to nature’s time clock or to its law concerning the conservation of energy, we stumbled around, once making a trip to the house and then going to the hogan for a bucket and more rocks and another time hauling the still damp wood, wet from yesterday’s showers, to the giant fire where we heated the rocks.

We covered the lodge with blankets and began our woodland journey with a very hot sweat.

After the sweat we ate noodles with garlic mustard, winter cress buds and dandelion greens… and some Amish bread that Mark’s mom had made.

After we had eaten we lay upon the ground resting. A couple of deer ventured through the stream near us.

We went for a walk up the creek on Shores’ land and then onto the old Fassett farm whose new owners I do not know. I believe their name is Palmeter. We glimpsed a large grayish unknown creature.

We lay in the field and picked dandelion greens.

Before Jon left, we smoked the pipe at the hogan.

Mark and I carved eating utensils. A turkey flew into a hemlock tree over our heads and just disappeared into the branches.

We were cooking food when my cousin Jason stopped in to visit. He didn’t stay long. He may come up to take a sweat with us on the weekend.

Mark and I ate rice mixed with chili.

I went to the house to check the progress of the family history that is being compiled by my relatives so that I can write it and submit it as an insert into a Bradford County history book. While there I put wood on the fire.

5/16 - Glorious sunrise! A junco was collecting milkweed insulation from the doorway of the hogan to insulate its nest.

Today Mark and I brought much of my goods from the house to the hogan. I got everything except a few items of clothing. We drove to the spring along the road on James Street Hill and filled seven gallon jugs and one seven-gallon jug with water.

Afterward we went fishing at Elliott’s pond. We took just a stick, ten feet of fishing line and a hook. We caught 20 nice sunfish and cleaned then on the spot. (No fishing license!!!)

Back in the woods below the hogan we cooked dandelion head fritters and twelve of the fish. We feasted like kings! I took the other fish to the house. The dandelions fried in flour tasted just like fried squash.

Up at Tom and Joyce’s trailer, I threw manure around what will be Joyce’s garden. I intend to rototill it soon.

My ties to society do not seem to be weakening. Maybe it is good that they never sever, but hopefully around June 4^th, after my cousin Aron‘s wedding, they will diminish for some time.

Bathed and washed in tub using cold creek water.

Sat around philosophising with Mark.

Notes: We saw a vulture flying around the pond as we fished and it was magnificent. Vultures are not usually viewed as magnificent or beautiful, but in flight they truly are.

While we cleaned the fish, flies were like guests arriving early, eager to eat when the food wasn’t even prepared.

I must take time to identify certain flowers and trees and other natural items that I see and do not recognize. I mustn’t just be satisfied only with their names, however, I must learn them for their value and abilities.

We decided to call this land Gentlewood as a play on Ghent Hill and how peaceful it always is, especially in the area around the hogan.

(8/22/2016) Mark came up with the name. We were sitting down near the creek, our backs against large majestic trees.  I believe we were putting the finishing touches on our wooden spoons so that we could eat easier. Ferns waved gently in the breeze. Deep wood birds chirped merrily and the smell of damp earth set the spirit into a meditational peace.

“This is such a gentle woods,” he said.

“That is a great name,” the light went off in my head. Ghent Hill. Gentlewood.

And that is what we called it from then on.

Until next time,

Read, Learn, Live

We went to the woods in the spring, when the dandelions thrived