peace and pragmatism
our life isn't meant to be lived in the time leftover
Like many of you, I spent last week visiting my family. This branch of kinfolk call one of the islands in the Northern Salish Sea their home.
Each morning, I’d awake to the dogs yowling as they took umbrage at the gall of the gulls flying from one rock to another in the cove framed by our tiny cottage window.
How dare they? I’d think, humoring them.
In an attempt to let my partner sleep in for once, I’d slip quietly from beneath the covers to facilitate our escape. Still in my pajamas, I’d collect warm socks, my winter boots, and a calf-length puffy coat to weather the cold that awaited us.
I’d summon the hounds to me and we’d venture out into a world full of plants and empty of people.
The sunshine snuck through the trees in beams of crisp, clear light cutting across the dark silhouettes of the woods beyond. The fields sparkled with a soft white sheen of frost. And the only sounds other than my boots crunching on frozen grass and the investigative snuffles of my pack, was wild birdsong.
This is what peace sounds like.
I spent the mornings pruning two old fruit trees - an Apple and a Plum - that we planted the year after my mom died. They are wizened now. Scraggly. Growing horizontally and vertically and back around again. The land has shaped around them and it was time I freed them from the wire fencing scarring their skin that they outgrew so very many years ago.
They’ve sired shoots that have become small trees in their own right and as my uncle tells it, the Plum still bears fruit on which the songbirds feast and make merry.
As I spent so many hours getting to know them and their bodies, I came to appreciate how they’ve magically made a natural archway that opens to the secluded pond beyond. Like an elven gateway they both hide the oasis from immediate sight while gently leading visitors who know where to look to its shores.
My friend teases me that I think “buying land together” is the answer to everything. And she’s right. I’m deeply superstitious that my chronic health challenges, money and climate anxiety, grief for an ever distant future, food sensitivities, and other ailments of the body and mind will wane if I move somewhere I can be surrounded by living earth instead of the manmade crowdedness and noise of cities.
And I am beginning to believe more and more deeply that this does not make me idealistic but undistracted and sincere. It is only idealistic through a worldview that has become so distant, so cleaved from our honest origin.
When I hop off the computer after eight hours of screen work I feel wholly wrung out like a forgotten sponge. Dry, brittle, and utterly weary. The tank has no gas left in it. I’m a papery ghost of my usual self.
There is a different kind of tired that comes at the end of a long day working amongst and with plants and soil.
There is still an ember-like glow to it. An earthliness. A warmth of satisfaction and solidity in my body. My mind still holds it’s moorings and my heart still roosts sleepily in my chest.
I am not so naive to think that the luster wouldn’t wear off if I had to work the land everyday, but I’d like the opportunity to find out.
I’d like to try out the life with the trio of goats, a couple of old mares, and a noisy gaggle of chickens. I’d like to see how we might holistically manage pastures to make way for the return of native grasses and wildflowers. Who might return to our shared home if we made it more welcoming? I’d love to see old neighbors move back in. Island Marble Butterflies, wild bees, White Oaks, and if we’re lucky, a healthy colony of Big-Eared Bats.
I’d like to experiment from season to season to discover who grows best on which slopes. I’d like to nurture more Western Cedars and Madronas to accompany the Douglas Firs and Lodgepole Pines and restore the symbiotic exchange of nutrients that takes place when they get to hold roots with one another below ground.
I’d like to plant more fruit trees for wildlife forage, and eventually human enjoyment as well. Maybe some native heritage Cherries so that they can trumpet the arrival of Spring with their shameless, clouds of blushing blossoms.
Sometimes it feels like I am trying to fit my aliveness into the time leftover. The time I’m not working, doing chores, or scrambling to get errands done. I feel like I have to steal time away from its true owner - a Job - if I want to spend any of it doing things like cooking, knitting, writing, gardening, or connecting with people I care about. All that wageless, wonderful, heart-lifting mumbo jumbo.
My soul has been mounting a protest that slowly keeps getting louder. Sometimes it ekes out as a childish whine, sometimes it erupts as an evening of unstoppable tears in the arms of my love, but more often than not it’s this constant, irksome static buzzing in the back of my mind.
I confess that I want to escape the ceaseless hustle of trying to build resource stability on a patch of earth where humans have made being alive cost so much. I don’t want to feel like part of a system that doesn’t know me and that I can’t know. I don’t want to feel adrift amongst these tarmac veins and concrete behemoths. I don’t want to feel so “separate from” the true wildness of being an earthly creature.
I want to save seeds and give them away. I want to cultivate plantlings and saplings and give them away. I want to disrupt the idea that plants are things we buy and nurture the idea that they are friends and neighbors with whom we commune. I want to feed my family and friends and the land that graces my footsteps. I want to spend my time being alive and human, holding what I work with in my hands. I want to be bored. I want to move slow. I want to warm my feet by wood fires and read an endless library of books just for pleasure. I want to get a landline and become quaintly unreachable. I want to spend lost hours fishing and be called home for dinner by a porch bell. I want people to think they are just coming over for dinner but get lost in conversation until the wee hours of the morning only to have to spend the night to then wake up to an honest, hearty, mouthwatering breakfast over fresh-brewed coffee.
And I want your version of this life for you too.
So yes, I guess do think that the answer to all our woes is to pool our brains, brawn, and beauty together to cocreate smaller, interdependent homes and systems with our communities. Build something that supports us AND works alongside the earth as an infinitely creative collaborator.
I say we run that experiment for a while and see what we find out.
Extra Goods:
I just learned that a third of the forest’s wildlife depend on dead wood. Instead of a burn pile, consider collecting your dead wood material into a wildlife pile or dead hedge. (Also, leave the leaves! Bees and butterflies rely on leaf litter to survive the winter.)
I am privileged enough to have known and experienced earthly spaces as peaceful and safe. In this country, many people with darker skin than I cannot say the same. Rural spaces in this country have been the erased sites of unthinkable violence towards people with black and brown skin. I’d like to be part of some repair work that makes the outdoors safer for minoritized individuals. If this concept is new to you, I highly encourage you to research BIPOC farming and homesteading as well as organizations that promote outdoor recreation for BIPOC folks. Seattle has a great farmers market where you can shop local and be part of this kind of neighborly community care.
My dad made pumpkin pie with the Sugar Pumpkins I grew in my garden. It was both delicious AND beautiful.
The day after Thanksgiving is Native American Heritage Day. A day chosen to recognize the indigenous first people of this land so many of us love with all the marrow in our bones. It is another chance to honor, learn more about, and celebrate the rich, ancient histories of the original stewards of Turtle Island. It is another chance for us to touch the ache that may arise if we are descended from colonizing populations. Dare to heal that wound, expanding your resiliency around discomfort, find the humor and awe so intrinsic to the native cultures woven throughout this country, and let yourself be moved.
A sweet song to kiss your mornings:
