(excerpt from the upcoming MENUCHA)

The “pig bucket” was a feature of the dishwashing room at Menucha Retreat and Conference Center. The words sound odd now, but I took it for granted back in the 1970s, after all my own family had raised pigs from time to time. Food scraps were scraped from guests plates into a 40-gallon trash can through a small rubber-lined hole to find its way mysteriously into some local pig farmer’s trough. I only saw him pick it up once, but I remember being relieved like when a mystery is solved, that the bucket’s name actually did mean something–wasn’t just rural slang. One Christmas, when I was actually living through a winter at Menucha in the Meier’s former dog kennel, I found myself there entirely alone for a weekend, iced in by one of the Gorge’s famous storms and unable to leave. While wandering through the silent stainless steal kitchen in search of food I heard an animalistic rhythmic gasping, gurgling sound. I was not alone. I was a teen obsessed with horror movies and I could work myself into quite a fright over almost nothing, so here alone in a big old mansion, hearing what I was certain was an alien in some kind of gagging death throw, I froze on the spot. This had happened to me before. There was that time in my family’s barn when, on a still night, home alone, doing my regular evening chores I was visited by a similar terror. That it was a still night is important because in Corbett, in winter, the wind is almost always blowing to the point of causing near insanity. What I heard when I entered the barn that night was the unmistakable sound of someone walking in the hayloft above; the sound of dry hay under boots on the wood plank floor—slow rhythmic crunch, crunching.  I froze in terror and listened for what seemed like hours, unable to move, but trying to work up the nerve to run back to the house, which I ultimately did. Alas, I was home alone, animals don’t feed themselves, and my sense of responsibility kicked into auto-pilot. I had chores to finish. I worked up the nerve to go back to the barn—not going wasn’t going to make the fear go away–the old farmhouse was also creepy. This time I made sure Bruno the wonder dog was by my side. I slipped quietly inside the barn and stopped to listen, holding my breath. The alien was still there walking back and forth above. This time though I gathered my wits and gave the phenomenon some more thought, and it started to not make sense. The entire barn was only about 50 feet long, so where, I asked myself,  was this “person” going, and why didn’t the rhythm of their footsteps change when they got to the end wall? As I pondered this, I happened to glance left where a few cows were standing. One was chewing her cud, as cows do, chewing her cud loudly to the exact rhythm of the “footsteps” – mystery solved, though I still had to climb into that hayloft of made up childhood horrors, real bats and owls to finish my chores.

Back in the kitchen of the mansion at Menucha and the alien gurgling sound, which was getting even louder. Having overcome fear nearly every night to make my way down the long dark stairs to the kennels where I was living that winter all alone in an ancient apple orchard once occupied by homesteading lepers, I braced myself and went in to find the source of the menacing sound. I soon found it coming from the dish room. Specifically it was coming from the pig bucket. No one had been in residence for a couple weeks that Christmas and the fermenting food waste was literally boiling in a grey lava-like glup glup of slop—a solved mystery and a science lesson in one. I put my hand against the plastic side of the trash can.  It was nearly molten hot. Impressed by my own bravery in solving the mystery, I celebrated by challenging my courage further—after making a sandwich—and proceeded upstairs past the carved wooden rams’ heads to the balcony of the Great Hall and sat down to play the old pump organ. With the first cord I played I was transported right back into that horror movie that played constantly in my head. It was pure Christmas joy.