it’s still early spring in Wisconsin – the trees are a haze of green but still bare enough that you can see through them to the next ridge and beyond. ferns are just springing up, bright green pushing up between a carpet of grey-brown leaves, uncurling into the sunlight in the weeks before the white birch and maple trees unfurl their canopy of leaves and block the sun from the forest floor. at night i could hear owls calling to one another from opposite sides of the campsite, and when i woke in the morning it was to a cacophony of birdsong, tweets and warbles and three-note trills, bellied by harsh bass caw-caws from a crow.

this is the land that Korinji, the zen/martial arts foundation of which my aikido dojo is a part of, has purchased in order to found a rural zen monastery, meditation retreat and martial arts training center. it’s 17 acres of steeply sloping and wooded ravines in the center of Wisconsin. this past weekend a group of aikidoka and zen students spent the weekend breaking trails, clearing trees from the building site, clearing rocks and debris and tree stumps from what will be the parking lot, and laying out the building foundation. it was backbreaking manual labor, shovels and sledge hammers and chainsaws and machetes, blistered hands in work gloves, muddy boots over wet feet, always the threat of rain but sunlight peeking between passing thunderclouds. that the zendo will be built entirely by the members’ own hands, donated sweat and labor and talent and time, will make it something we all share a pride and sense of ownership in. when i come back to train here in the future, i’ll know: i built that trail. i surveyed the building’s foundation. i stacked fire wood and cleared rocks and brush. we built something with our own hands. in the cerebral world i live in, one in which writing is something i do not with a pen on paper, but with a keyboard and ones and zeros, where even the art i make is constructed mostly by email and spreadsheet and phone calls and meetings, this is something solid, that i can touch, that will last. it will shelter from deep snows in the winter and summer thunderstorms, it is concrete and lasting and real.