Space to think (Utila, Honduras)

It's amazing that this has come to pass.  Starting about four years ago, I began laying awake at night, scrolling through the real estate listings on my iPhone, dreaming of moving back to western Massachusetts.  But I couldn't see the path to getting there.  We had good jobs in NYC, but we hadn't really been saving.  For 15 years, I had been in love with New York, and because real estate prices are insane there, we never really put much effort into thinking about, never mind saving for, a future home.  I figured we'd just rent forever.

But then, all of a sudden, I was done with "the city."  I needed to move, but couldn't figure out how to make that happen; to complicate matters, Anne was pretty happy with our life as it was. There was quite a bit of anxious paralysis as I tried to figure out everything in advance.  Eventually I learned that I just had to take a step, and trust the path to unfold before me.

I've written before about a trip we took in early 2009 to Utila, Honduras, and how I had an awakening about myself, the Earth, and the cosmos.  As if that wasn't huge enough, during that same trip I met a bunch of expats whose life stories made plain that it is possible to radically change one's life.  I loved talking with Ed, a man in his 70s who had worked in the midwest in radio and in the insurance industry, until one day a friend took him sailing.  He realized that all he wanted to do was sail, and so he did.  He gave away all his suits, quit his job, and took a job chartering trips in Florida.  That was 40 years ago.  And I learned so much from the example of Dave, a successful architect from Los Angeles, who one day decided he had had enough.  Now he lives cheaply and happily, building structures for himself and friends near Rio Dulce, Guatemala.  These expats showed me that it is possible to just walk out the existing structures and narratives of your life, and do something different.  You can't plan out each step, you have to make the way as you go.

Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace el camino al andar.
(Searcher, there is no road. We make the road by walking.)

--  Antonio Machado, Selected Poems ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)

Given our particular circumstances, Anne and I have made the way slowly, transitioning one step at a time, rather than leaping forward.  First, I quit a job in which I was finding little satisfaction, and moved to Bluestone Farm.  Anne and I adjusted to living on half the income we were accustomed to.  We started living more simply, and got used to seeing each other only on the weekends.  In the summer of 2010, Anne began spending more and more time at the farm, until she was mostly commuting into the city for work, rather than out of the city.  We happily readjusted to seeing each other every day.  Then, in early 2011, I took another step, finding a position at Open View Farm, here in Massachusetts.  As the months passed, Anne's weekend commuting got a bit tiring, and she began to work a few days a week from the farm.  Then, just a few months ago, she was able to find a great opportunity in Amherst, a new job with enticing challenges.  On February 20, we moved out of NYC--almost exactly 3 years after that fateful trip to Utila.

Our plan was to stay here at Open View Farm for another long while, saving money and eventually finding a place of our own.  I'd long dreamt of having my own farm, maybe even a small business.  Maybe in another year, we thought.  In preparation, in March I signed up to take a month-long course for first-time home buyers; Anne was scheduled to take it in May.  We had plenty of time to learn the ropes, we thought.  But you never know what's around the corner.

On March 17, we went to pick up some farm supplies in Belchertown, just south of Amherst.  I was feeling a bit under the weather, and was impatient to get back home, but Anne wanted to take the scenic route home.  A few minutes down the road, Anne saw a sign for an Open House.  I wasn't that interested, and rejected the idea.  But Anne was insistent; "What's the harm?  I've never been to an Open House.  It'll be fun!" she said.  So I turned the truck around and we went back.  Having no expectations, we were pleasantly suprised by everything we saw: a small grove of young fruit trees, well-established raised beds, a good-sized raspberry stand...a flat sunny 1-acre yard with lots of possibilities for small-scale farming.  A solidly built, clean, barn-red, 1500 sq ft Cape.  We could immediately imagine living there--it felt just right. Best of all, the house is right off the bike path to Amherst; 30 minutes ride to town.  Anne's commute would be just 10 minutes by car, or half an hour on the bike.

We chatted with the listing agent, and left with a bit of excitement.  And the more we thought about it, the better it seemed.  Although I had been imagining something more remote, and with more land, we couldn't stop thinking about the benefits of the bike path, and of the proximity to Anne's work.  We had been assuming that she'd need to drive 30 minutes each way, in order for us to find something reasonable in cost.  It felt like a really good spot for us, surprisingly.  And because the house is in such good condition, with a newer roof, replacement windows, boiler, and septic system, we would be able to start investing in the garden, rather than in repairs.

Over the next two days, Sunday and Monday, we talked about the house non-stop.  We drew pictures.  We searched the internet for any information we could find about life in Belchertown.  We applied to be preapproved for a mortgage.  We went to see the house again, with our realtor.  And on Tuesday we got a phone call from our realtor that two other offers had been made on the house--did we want to make an offer?

And we did, and our offer was accepted, and now here we are, a few weeks from closing.  We've done all the steps: the home inspection, the various water and termite tests, securing a lawyer, paying deposits, getting the appraisal.  We're waiting on the bank to approve the mortgage, and hope to hear from them in the next week or so.  The closing is scheduled for May 31.  I've already got someone booked to sand the floors in a couple of the rooms on June 1.

All that's left to do is wait, and try to be patient.  I'm not very good at being patient.  But I just keep reminding myself that soon we get to start putting down roots.  This has been my deep longing--to commit to some land, to settle into a home, to be in a place for the long-term.  I want to plant a tree, and be there when it begins to bear fruit.  Our lives have been in transition for so long, with so much uncertainty.  We've been moving, moving, moving, making the way one step at a time, and now, we will stop crossing distances and, instead, go deep.  I can sense that it will be a different kind of "making the way", and I can't wait.

It's been an amazing couple of years, and I'm so grateful to the sisters at Bluestone Farm and to Emmy Howe and all the folks at Open View Farm for holding me so well during these years of transition.  I'm incredibly thankful for all the learning I've gotten to engage in over the last few years.  I had never gardened before visiting Bluestone Farm in 2009; now I've got dreams of starting my own little farm business, and I feel confident that I can successfully grow vegetables, and raise chickens, and perhaps even goats and bees. 

And beyond all the practical gardening and livestock experience that I've gained, I've learned so much about myself--my strengths, my weaknesses, my true desires.  Here's what I know: I'm determined, strong-willed, and I've got a lot of physical stamina.  I can envision things in detail, making concrete snapshots of plans in my mind.  I can research a great deal of information quickly, sift and process it, and make decisions swiftly.  I learn fast.  I also am stubborn, unwilling to admit fatigue, prone to procrastination, and incredibly impatient.  I have very little mechanical or engineering smarts, and I get quickly frustrated in such situations.  I have a hard time slowing down enough to explain things to other people; I am overly independent.  And I want to create something of my own, something beautiful, something complex, something that lives and evolves, something I can grow with.

Knowing all this, in the visceral, embodied way that I do now, is powerful.  I feel like I'm coming into my own, and I have a level of confidence in myself that I don't think I've ever really felt before.  The anticipation that I'm feeling right now is about much more than just buying a house--it's an eagerness to get started on this new chapter of my life, it's knowing in my core that I'm ready to start.  Maybe this is part of being in my 40s: having a deeper sense of self-knowledge, and feeling the assurance and empowerment that comes with such knowledge.

I don't know yet, for sure, if I'm going to start a farm business, but I am leaning in that direction.  I've been researching a couple of possibilities (goat milk? specialty peppers? seedlings?), and will be writing more about that in the future.  For now, for this summer, I'm planning only on planting as much as I can as soon as we move in, building garden beds for fall crops, and designing a permaculture garden plan for the longer term.  I'm reading two great books:  Gaia's Garden and Edible Forest Gardens.  (For the home-scale gardener, I'd highly recommend Gaia's Garden; for those interested in landscape design and professional work in permaculture, Edible Forest Gardens is indispensible.)

Stay tuned--I hope to be updating this blog much more frequently as I continue making the way, diving into this new creation.

First of the seedlings

Which sets me to worry.  (Not that that's very hard to do...I seem to be prone to fretting.)  But I do worry about the impact of such a warm and dry couple months.  Especially when driving past the rivers, at such low levels.  Seeing no snowmelt streaming down.  Reading the forest fire warnings of recent days.  Witnessing the apperance of mosquitos in March.  These are not good signs.

But what is there to do, but go forward?  I'm thinking about all kinds of rainwater catchment--rain barrels off of gutters, improving the soil to be able to absorb the water when it comes, planting rain gardens with water-loving plants.  I'm thinking about reducing the strain on the well, about conserving water, low-flow showerheads, remembering to shut off the water while washing dishes.  I'm thinking about people who've lived with drought for years, who walk for miles to get fresh water.  I feel lucky, grateful, and still worried.

So today I'm going to soothe my soul by planting some seeds.  It's finally time to start the peppers and the eggplants, and next week, I'll start the tomatoes.  I love these little guys.  Who knew you could have such love for a whole family of plants?  But I do love the solanaceae, or nightshade family.  Those sun-loving plants that are so colorful and delicious.

When they are just the tiniest of seeds, it's hard to imagine them growing into a 3 wide tall eggplant, or a 5 foot tall tomato plant, or a pepper plant with hundreds of chiles on it.  But they do, with a little tending and attention.  And some water.

So let's give thanks today for the rain, whereever we are.  Think of the tomatoes to come.

As long-time friends know, I was for a time quite smitten with the TV show "The X-Files."  Smitten enough to videotape every episode off of network TV, in the process amassing a large collection of VHS tapes.  (Which are now in storage.  Can't seem to throw them away, even though we no longer own a VCR.)  In the show's opening sequence, text flashes across a gray-blue dusky sky, reading: "The Truth Is Out There", an allusion to Agent Fox Mulder's quest to prove the existence of extraterrestrials.  Well, I can't say whether there are aliens out there, but I do know that we are not alone in the universe within.

We are populated by bacteria--100 trillion bacteria by current estimates.  These bacteria are the main actors in our digestion, affecting not only the breakdown of our food and how much nutrition we gain, but are also implicated in the workings of our brains, including feelings of anxiety and depression. I've spent much of the past couple of years being fascinated by the outside world, the life in the soil, the cycles of the seasons, the impossible grandeur of the Universe.  What a joy to discover that there's a whole other, equally complex and beautiful ecosystem inside, what scientists call the "microbiome."  Wired magazine has a succinct breakdown of the different bacterial communities of our bodies--check it out here.  And if you're interested in reading more, I highly recommend the book The Wild Life of Our Bodies, by Rob Dunn.

So how did I get interested in bacteria, anyway?  Last summer, I started feeling like there was something wrong with me.  I woke every day exhausted, no matter how many hours of sleep I got.  My joints were stiff, arthritic.  I ached all over. 

I didn't want to talk about it to anyone, because I was embarrassed . . . and worried.  Here I was, a new farmer, and I was afraid that my body was not up to the task.  I should have felt healthier than ever--I'd been eating healthy, organic, home-grown food for more than two years, eschewing processed food altogether.  I'd been regularly working outside doing strenous manual labor, and I had improved my strength and endurance.  I'd given up cigarettes and alcohol years ago.  Yet I felt worse than ever.

At the end of July, I read a book review on BoingBoing.com about Gary Taubes's book Why We Get Fat.  Taubes is a reputable science journalist, and had reviewed thousands of medical studies in writing his 600-page book Good Calories/Bad Calories.  Why We Get Fat is the layperson's version of that larger, more scientifically written book.  His basic argument is that a diet high in carbohydrates means the constant release of insulin in the body, which leads to more and larger fat cells.  Cut out the carbs, stop the insulin flood, and the body will automatically begin to lose the fat.  (This is similar to the Atkins diet, but Taubes calls for a more well-rounded approach.) 

Feeling as awful as I did, this seemed worth a try.  I figured if I could lose some of the excess weight that has been my despised companion for many years, maybe I would feel better.  So I cut out all grains (wheat, rice, corn, oats, etc.) and all sugars, including almost all fruit.  Instead, I ate pastured meat and eggs, raw milk cheeses, and vegetables.  With lots of good saturated fats, like butter, cream, lard, and coconut oil.  After about 10 days of intermittent discomfort, as my body adjusted, and I suddenly began feeling better.  The near-constant hunger I had become accustomed to disappeared.  I became satisfied with much less food.

The discomfort felt in the beginning of reducing carbs and sugar is a result of "die-off", in which the bad bacteria in your gut that thrive on those substances begin to starve, and then die.  This results in headaches, fatigue, and sometimes allergy-like symptoms and irritability.  But getting these bad bacteria under control, and nurturing the growth of good bacteria, was worth it.  Within just a few weeks, the weight began just disappearing--no additional exercise, no grueling cardio.  And I wasn't ever hungry, because I was eating good fats that satisfy.  I felt so much better that I didn't even miss my old comfort foods: pasta, bread, rice, potatoes.

In the last few years, I've come to read a great deal of unconventional arguments about diet, ideas that go completely against the grain of most nutritional thinking.  Most conventional wisdom about weight loss says that you just have to eat less and exercise more, and eat low fat foods and more whole grains.  That's all.  But it turns out that that's not true, at least for some of us.  Over the years, I've dieted and joined gyms and paid for personal trainers.  And I always felt terrible.  Reading blogs such as Cheeseslave, Food Renegade, and The Healthy Home Economist have gotten me used to thinking about food in new ways, such as the healthiness of saturated fats, the presence of "anti-nutrients" such as phytates in grains, and the powerfully destructive effects of sugar.  Slowly these ideas seem to be gaining acceptance in more mainstream circles, perhaps as part of the rise in popularity of "Paleo" and "Primal" eating programs.  The best book I've found that explains the science behind "primal" or "paleo" eating--eating meats, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, like humans have for most of our 150,000 year history, and eschewing grains, which only appeared on our dietary scene 10,000 years ago--is Primal Body, Primal Mind, by Nora Gedgaudas.  In addition to discussing insulin, leptin and other hormones that affect weight, this book describes how our psychological health is affected by the foods we eat.

There's a lot more to this story, which I'll write in bits and pieces in the coming weeks, including learning that I have a thyroid condition and an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's Thyroiditis.  And, happily, that after 6 months of intense research, dietary changes, and new medicines and supplements, my most recent bloodwork shows that my Hashimoto's disease is almost under control.  It's been an intense bunch of months, since I first read Taubes's book in late July.  In that time, I've spent countless hours reading and researching, and experimenting.  I was lucky to find a good doctor on my second try, which has made a huge difference.

I'm also lucky that my life right now has allowed me to focus on healing from this disease and improving my health. It's been like a part-time job, sifting through all the information out there.  Our medical system too often creates situations in which the patient feels powerless and uninformed, and dependent on experts for healing.  Perhaps it's just in my makeup, or perhaps it's because I've been reading the things I have for the last few years, or perhaps it's because my disease is poorly understood by conventional medicine, but for whatever reason, I've been able to be empowered around my health.  Maybe my bacteria are naturally inquisitive too . . .

At any rate, I'm working hard to care for my microbiome, to think about how I'm nurturing those trillions of critters inside.  I'm eating homemade yogurt and sauerkraut, filled with good probiotics.  I'm taking a powerful probiotic supplement called Bio-Kult.  I'm avoiding all sugars.  I'm cooking with lard, and drinking lots of bone broths.  It takes some discipline, but I feel better than I have in years, and the weight keeps coming off.  As the Wired infographic shows, lean people have more than 200 additional species of bacteria in their gut than obese people.  More diverse and better bacteria . . . less excess baggage.

My bacteria and me--we are going to conquer this thing . . .

Last week we got about a foot of snow, which remains blindingly white, and hard-crusted.  Even though it disrupted some of my plans, I was deeply grateful for the snowfall.  Not only because it promised much-needed eventual moisture for the gardens, but also because it meant that it was winter, still.  At least for a few more days...

I do not remember ever wanting the winter to linger as I have this year.  I paced through the unsettling warmth of January and February, wishing for snow, snarling at the brown dead grass, and fretting about the unseasonable temperatures.  After the giant snowfall (maybe 18"?) in late October (and the devastating hurricane of August), the absence of snow this winter seems to confirm that our seasons are all twisted up, and that I should be prepared for another blizzard in May.  Wouldn't surprise me now.

It's distressing, this tumultuousness, this inability to count on dividing lines between seasons.  I worry about our being able to reliably produce food in an increasingly uncertain climate.  Bad timing to have a new passion for growing food, as it appears to be headed for an even more challenging future. 

In the face of this reality, I am chagrined to find myself resisting the calendar, trying to deny the fact that it's March already.  Wishing that somehow it was still January, that we had 8 more weeks of winter ahead.  I should be excited to start celery, parsley, and onion seeds, but I'm dragging my feet.  I'd rather sit by the woodstove and read a book.

I know that part of this longing arises from the sheer busy-ness of this winter--I want to hibernate still.  It's been an incredibly busy couple of months--December was consumed by a big vacation (learning to ski!), and the holidays.  January was also intense--I joined a writing group and began a new health regimen, and Anne was in the throes of deciding whether to take a new job and to leave NYC.  And then in the first three weeks of February, her decision was made, and we had to find a moving company and a new storage unit, pack, and vacate our apartment.  In the midst of all this, there were seeds to order, beans and corn to shell, and dried peppers to grind.  The winter went too fast.  And people wonder what farmers do all winter...

But, in the end, no amount of resistance or desire for rest changes today's date, or the fact that it takes a long time to germinate celery and parsley seeds, and even longer to get those little plants sturdy enough to be planted outside.  I've got to start now, even if I'm not ready to go.  At least it's bright outside, clear blue and shimmering white...

I remember now: New York City is a heartbreakingly beautiful place to live.

I am so grateful to remember this.  When I started going to the sisters' farm, back in the spring of 2009, I was so tired of the city--of the packaging, the garbage, the pollution, the noise, the incessant concrete.  I was tired, bone-tired, and feeling so unhealthy.  Getting my hands in the dirt, and breathing deep under an wide-open sky, I began to revive.  And now, three years later, I'm revived enough to appreciate the beauty of NYC again.  There is so much to love about NYC: the amazing density of so many life stories, the limitless ability of people to live alongside and to befriend those who are unfamiliar, the skillful street art of countless hands, the unfathomably deep human drive to build and build and create.  I love New York.

But it's no longer home.  Something shifted in me some years ago, when I felt called to get close to the land, to get close to food, to simplify.  And over the last few years, Anne and I have learned so much--about growing, harvesting, preserving, and preparing food, about the Transition movement, about the New Cosmology, about permaculture, about natural building, about prayer and meditation and being deep-down quiet.  About being creatures of this world.  And as we learned, our center of gravity kept shifting, slowly, slowly, but inevitably away from the city.

Sometime during the last year, Anne began to feel called to work on environmental issues once more, as she had done many years ago, with me.  The Universe works in wonderful ways:  In April, Anne will begin as the national staff development director for the Public Interest Network (TPIN), and will be based here in Amherst, MA.  TPIN is the umbrella organization of all the state public interest research groups (PIRGs) and related organizations; Anne and I met each other nearly 20 years ago, working as campus organizers for the Massachusetts PIRG.  In the last 14 years, Anne has been blessed to have truly enjoyed her work with the Episcopal Church Foundation and she will miss her great colleagues there.  But we are both thrilled that her work will now focus on staff development, one of her true talents, and that she'll be based in Western Mass.  We'll be able to live together full time, again.

You know, we have this idea in our culture that time progresses in a linear fashion, that we move along, inexorably, in one direction.  But I'm learning that perhaps our lifelines can be more curved, that they can circle back, arc and bend.  Perhaps more like a spiral, than a line.

While packing up all our stuff the last couple weeks, I've been listening to a lot (and I mean A LOT) of Ani DiFranco.  She's been my long-time favorite musician--scrappy, earnest, huge-hearted, and fierce.  Listening to her music these past few weeks was a kind of retrospective on my life, and I enjoyed remembering all her different phases.  Seeing her the first time in '93, alone on the stage in Somerville, tiny with a huge guitar and black duct tape securing her guitar-pick press-on nails.  Driving the back roads of Massachusetts with my friend Shannon, blasting Ani on the tape-deck.  Buying "Dilate" and playing it for Anne in our apartment at Union Seminary, saying "Wait, wait, you have to listen to this song..."  Waiting in line for hours for her open-admission concert at SummerStage, with Jeni and Ryan.  Seeing her at Irving Plaza, with Vince and David.  Driving to her concert in New Haven with Brian and Jim riding the whole way in the back of the truck.  Her band growing from one drummer, to drummer and bass player, to having Maceo Parker on the trumpet.  Her sound evolving, changing all the time.  And then going to her concert this summer, with just Ani on the stage again, alone, tiny, with a big-ass guitar.

The circle loops back on itself, but is not the same.  The empty room is not so empty after all.  I feel as if I am in love with the past and the present; I can hold them both in my heart.

While we were packing, Ani's song "Buildings and Bridges" came on the queue, and Anne remarked about how this song captures her love for the city, and for life:

buildings and bridges
are made to bend in the wind
to withstand the world,
that's what it takes
all that steel and stone
are no match for the air, my friend
what doesn't bend breaks
what doesn't bend breaks

Coming back from a long break, and it feels like I owe an explanation.  I don’t have one.  Somehow I just stopped writing, and I don’t really know why.  Lots of things happened to distract me: a giant garden, feeling lousy and then getting better, settling into a new farm and home.  I could have been writing all the way through, but didn’t.  Maybe I needed to nourish my introvert.  Maybe I was feeling “off my game” and didn’t know what to say.  Maybe I took on too much, and I was just pushing through.  Maybe it was a bit of all of these things.  And I don’t know why I suddenly felt like writing this morning.  Maybe it’s because I’ve had a month of down-time.  Maybe it’s because I just started participating in a fabulous writing group.  Maybe it’s because I recently quit Facebook, and I want to stay in contact with you all.  So many "maybes."  Here's what I  know:  I’m happy to be back.

I am enjoying the fruits of the summer, with snow now outside my window.  I love this about farming—the opportunity to preserve and enjoy the harvest the whole year through.  Right now I have a big bag of tomatoes defrosting on my counter, which I’ll turn into sauce or soup.  Most every day I have a bit of homemade sauerkraut from this summer’s bumper crop of cabbage.  Yesterday, I added some roasted sweet peppers to my eggs for breakfast, and then had some green beans with my dinner.  And I’m eyeing that container of Baingan Bhartha (Indian-spiced eggplant), prepared back in September, for tomorrow’s lunch.  Those summer flavors just stretch on and on.

About those frozen tomatoes:  Most people blanch their tomatoes and can them.  Canning is smart, because you can keep that food on your shelf, and use it even when the power goes out.  But canning also destroys about 50% of the nutrients of the vegetable.  Canning also takes up precious time during the height of harvest, and uses a good deal of energy.

When I was bringing in wheelbarrows full of tomatoes this summer, there was no way for me to process them all (i.e. dry them, can them, or make sauce and freeze it).  The garden demanded all my time, and so, after some research, I decided just to freeze them whole. Frozen whole, tomatoes keep their wonderful flavor.  But freezing them whole only works if you’re going to turn them into sauce or soup; freezing ruins their texture, and after thawing they are like canned tomatoes. 

Like everything, there’s pros and cons to freezing tomatoes whole—pro: you don’t have to process them during the great deluge known as “harvest season.”  Pro: once defrosted, you need only use a little energy to cook them.  Con: you have to think ahead when you want sauce, and let the tomatoes defrost overnight. Con: you have to hope and pray that the electricity doesn’t go down, and spoil the contents of your freezer!  But in this very mild winter, we’ve not even lost the electricity once, and all our goods are still happily preserved.

But what I love about freezing them whole is that when they defrost, they lose most of their water, which reduces cooking time immeasurably and conserves energy.  I let them thaw overnight, and when they are completely thawed, they’ll be sitting in a big pool of water.  When I’m making sauce, I toss that water, and then sauté up some onions in butter.  While the onions are turning translucent, I quickly peel the skin off the tomatoes and pinch the stem core out. When the onions are done, I throw the tomatoes in with some salt and ground black pepper, and simmer for about 10 minutes.  This quick sauce tastes heavenly: fresh, light, sweet and just acidic enough.  A bit of summer, in January.  A bit of perspective on the whole year.

And now during these quieter days, I’m thinking again about garden design, crop varieties, seed quantities.  Part of me wants to turn back the clock a month or so, and rest up all over again.  But the part of me that is relishing those summer flavors is also dreaming up next year’s palate…

The challenge will be to dream up a smaller garden, one that’s more manageable for one intern and me.  I took on too much last year—it was doable, but just.  This year I want to integrate more perennial plants into the garden, and use more permacultural techniques for building soil, improving water retention, and controlling pests.  I have a lot of ideas…

But I also have just a few weeks of “dreamtime” left; we begin starting seeds at the end of February.  Then it will be time to prune trees, set up the greenhouse, start sheet mulching.  So while there is still time for napping and sleeping late, and time for reading books in the bath, let me get to it. 

Anyway, the book came out in April, and I've been strangely reluctant to tell people about it.  At first I pretended to myself that I didn't want to spoil the surprise, as I planned on giving a copy to my mom for Mother's Day.  So I kept it hush hush until then.  But now it's been another couple of weeks, and I have to face the fact that I've been avoiding the topic.  Thinking a bit about about it, I suppose it's because the book is about faith, and I'm still so uncomfortable, even nervous about being constrained within a religious framework.  "But I'm not like that," I want to protest...

What is this about?  I've long known that I dread being perceived as belonging to any one group.  I can trace this back to high school, at least, when I would worry a great deal about which hallway I would choose my locker from, because location=identity, and I didn't want to be trapped.  There was "jock hall," and "rat hall" (for the metal-heads), and "band hall," and "honors hall," and "theater hall," and so many others.  I didn't want to be any one thing.  I wanted to be many, many things.  I never wanted to be nailed down, fixed in one place, defined by one group.  This driving desire affected my relationships, as I jumped from social group to social group each year, and even each semester, throughout college.

And now I see this drive again, in this moment, as I uncomfortably announce that some of my writing is in this book.  That should be a cause for celebration, right?!  And yet I watch myself trying to hold back a flood of caveats.  

How about some context, rather than a caveat?  

What I'll say is this:  I have found it difficult to write about my spirituality.  I am hyper-conscious of not wanting to offend people with all my gripes about religion.  I am reluctant to use overtly religious language, but I want to be honest about how such language has moved me.  I am sensitive about the risk of pushing people away by talking about my spirituality, a subject that exposes me as earnest and quiveringly full of hope (there go my witty, ironic friends).

And once I get started talking about my spirituality, which is mostly about being in love with the universe and in awe of life, I betray the fact that I'm not really in line with the vast majority of mainstream religious thought (there go my church-going friends).  My writing in this book was an attempt to speak honestly about my experience of faith, without alienating anyone.  

Today, an old friend posted a link to an essay that finally motivated me to write this blogpost.  The essay was written by a young man, paralyzed from the neck down, whose mother fiercely fought for him to survive his illness and to have every opportunity to achieve success.  The young man wrote that writers need to fight for their ideas in the same way, to bring them fully into being, to breathe life into their words.  I suppose I'm guilty of abandoning my ideas, too afraid to talk much about my conception and experience of faith, fearful of upsetting others, of being simplified and categorized, of being alone.  But it's time to claim the terrain that I'm traveling.

So there you go.  My first published non-academic writing is in a book called Wisdom Found: Stories of Women Transfigured by Faith.  You can take a look at samples of the book here (one of my pieces is the fourth sample down the page), and buy a copy of it online here.  (PLEASE NOTE: I don't receive any money from the sale of the book, FYI.) 

I hope someday to be less discomfited by the whole identity thing.  To care less if people mis-recognize me, to keep my caveats to myself.  Maybe it gets easier in the second forty years?  If I can get quiet enough to feel the thrum of creation, if I can slow down enough to marvel at the unfolding of a fern, I know it doesn't matter in the least.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
Gaze at the moon until I lose my senses...

"Don't Fence Me In," lyrics by Cole Porter 

Freshly prepped garden bed

I'm especially discovering some of my less attractive qualities.  Did you know that I can be surprisingly stubborn?  Well, I can be.  And did you know that I really don't like asking for help?  Well, apparently I don't.  And that I have a hard time letting go of a plan, once it's put in motion?  

If I'm not careful, I can work myself to exhaustion.  

Let me tell you about this past week.

After a few weeks of intermittent rain and cool weather, we finally had a long stretch of sunny, warm days.  I was determined to make the most of it.  Six full days of outdoor work.  That's a lot, after a pretty quiet, sedentary winter, and only a few days really working in the garden since April 1.  I bought and spread amendments, learned how to use a push tractor, tilled up two big patches, hauled many, many wheelbarrows-full of compost around, dug out about 400 row feet of mounded beds, planted 150 brassicas and 72 lettuces, and sheet mulched a 15x15 area around an apple tree.  I had a lot of help, thank goodness!  But for most of the time, it was me and the garden.

What I learned over the course of this week is that I like to set goals--over and over again, I created a benchmark, and then once I reached it, I set a new one.  As each day wore on, the benchmarks grew smaller and smaller, as I ran out of energy, like a top spinning down, slower and slower.  I'd start out by saying, "Ok.  Let's dig out four lettuce beds, plant the lettuces, and then till the onion bed and amend it, and then plant the onions."  By the end of the day, I could be heard to mutter, "Just one more load of compost.  Just get the compost, and spread it on the bed."  

I'm sure I made quite a sight, grunting and growling as I struggled to push an over-full wheelbarrow (it's one of those deep, heavy duty, super-big kinds) up a slight incline through tall grass.  It just didn't want to budge.  And I didn't have any more arm strength to pull it.  So with sheer teeth-gritting determination and a lot of noise, using my hips and my whole body weight like a force of nature, I eventually made it up over the "hill." When Suzi, a friend of the farm, offered to push the tiller out of the garden for me, I was surprised to find just how resistant I was.  Even though I barely had enough energy to direct the tiller, I couldn't let go and let someone else do it for me. 

The downside of this kind of determination and stubbornness is that I wore myself out.  The next day I went to farm down at my friend Leslie's.  I'm spending one day a week working in her garden, gleaning as much as I can from her farming experience.  And I could barely lift a shovel for more than a few minutes before I'd need to rest.  And each time I bent down to plant, my back and my knees creaked.  And my hands were stiff and sore...  I was disappointed that I didn't ration my energy better, so that I could put in a good day's work with Leslie; toward the end of the day, I went off to the greenhouse to do transplanting, where I could sit and still be productive.

It reminds me of an experience I had on an Outward Bound trip, when I was about 20.  I spent three weeks hiking in Colorado mountains with a group of about 10 other young people, and it was hard work, but amazing.  About half-way through the trip, I developed an uncomfortable twinge in my knee, and when we stopped to re-stock our (60lb!) backpacks with food and supplies, the doctor there cautioned me to take it easy.  I wanted so much to participate in all the activities, and I didn't want to be seen as weak . . . so I kept pushing myself, asserting that I could do more, willing it to be so.  Well, the trip guides asked me the night before we made our ascent up to the highest peak of the trip if I was really prepared to go all the way, and I should have backed out.  But I didn't, stubbornly refusing to listen to my body and wanting to be just as strong as everyone else.  The morning of our ascent, we woke at 4, packed up and began moving at first light, but after just an hour or so, I could see that the terrain was going to be too difficult.  And so I had to turn around, and someone, I can't remember who, had to accompany me back to base camp, forfeiting their own climb.  Not being satisfied with good enough, I overstepped, and that had repercussions for the people surrounding me.

Good enough.  This is the key phrase I need to remember.  I have to learn to be satisfied, when I know I've done as much as I can do.  Maybe it's the case that I'd like to be stronger, more fit, able to do more, be more experienced and able to plan my time better.  (I didn't account for having to weed out quack-grass for 2 hours, and that threw EVERYTHING off!)  But given all those wishes, I have to learn to be satisfied with the results when I know that I honestly have done my best.  I couldn't have done any more.  And so it must be good enough.

I have to remember that farming, like many things, is really about the long haul.  It doesn't do me any good to work myself so hard one day that I can't get out of bed the next.  The garden is teaching me to recognize my less-attractive tendencies: bullheadedness, compulsive overwork, not recognizing limits, lack of groundedness in my own body's wisdom.  

It's been a huge week for the garden, and a pretty big week for me, too.

I’m going to write for two hours every day.  Preparing that garden bed will take me three hours.  I’m just going to read for 20 minutes then go to sleep.  This will be a quiet week.  I have five full days free for garden work. Let me just look online for a few minutes to compare prices.  I can write that letter this afternoon. I’m going to walk in the woods every day.  And meditate.  And get up early.  And . . . 

I have a running list of expectations for myself.  Some are big resolutions, and others are just little hopes for how the day is going to go.  Looking at this list, it seems they have a lot to do with the idea of “managing time.”  But I can’t really manage time.  Or, at least, if I’m trying to manage time, I end up projecting myself into the future and critiquing my handling of the past, and I’m not really experiencing the present moment.  I have recently learned that I walk around with a furrowed brow, looking angry (I’ve seen pictures!), without even knowing it.  And all because I’ve set myself up by making expectations about how things are going to be, or how they should be, instead of just accepting how things are.

I am struggling a lot with this problem right now.  Every new beginning offers a chance to make a change, whether it’s a big move, a brand new job, or just an annual New Year’s resolution or Lenten observance.  I tend to put a whole bunch of great expectations on my plate all at once, and then--surprise!--I get stressed out.  That doesn’t really help me in making the changes I seek.  Instead, I turn inward, blaming myself, wondering why I can’t make good on my intentions.  That starts a vicious cycle, because then I end up promising myself that I really will make good, that I really can keep my resolutions, that this plan for the day really should work . . . More promises, more good intentions, and more blaming and criticizing myself later.

Who’s with me on this?  I want to grab a pitchfork and go marching right up to myself and say “Stop it!  You’ve been trying this method for 40 years, and it doesn’t work!”  This constant seeking to do better, do more, make a better plan--it’s all just so much stress.  And as one of Anne’s friends once wisely remarked, “What good is stress?  You can’t eat it.”  

A friend recently lent me a thin volume by a Buddhist author, Cheri Huber, entitled There Is Nothing Wrong with You.  It’s a great book.  The basic idea is that in our society, we’ve been taught that we always need to better ourselves, and this has resulted in a constant stream of internal criticism and attempts at self-discipline.  That negative barrage blocks out our deeper voice, our true impulses, which are inherently good--and if we could only get out of our own way, we would end up acting in ways that are caring to ourselves and others.  I imagine there would be a giant, global sigh of relief if we all could surrender to the idea that, at heart, we are essentially good.  That we didn’t have to try so hard to fix ourselves, to do better, all the time.

I have moments, from time to time, when I can shut off the flow of “shoulds” and just get in the flow of present-moment-life.  When I do that, things are simply easier.  The tasks get done, relations are warm, difficulties unwind themselves like a knot loosening and simply sliding apart, falling to the ground.  And I wonder, “why did I think this was going to be so hard?”  But most of the time I forget this wisdom, and sit there battering myself with unkind commands and judgements, as if straining and struggling and pushing harder will loosen the knot. (Pssst:  it doesn’t.)

So here I am, another morning, looking out upon the rolling hills, and faced with a choice: I can be peaceful and grateful and accept the day as it comes, or I can berate myself for not getting up earlier, for having coffee instead of doing yoga, for all the things on my to-do list I thought I’d get done yesterday, or the day before... Giving up all those great expectations means letting go of so many things--the idea that I’m really in control of whatever happens (I’m not!), the belief that I need to always do more and better, the notion that life as it is, in this moment, isn’t already just fine.  Engaging the present moment as it is means letting go of any expectation that it should be different.  The great Zen poet Gertrude Stein* said it best, “It is what it is what it is.”  And my long-time favorite Ani DiFranco has a lovely lyric about this very thing, in her song “As Is”:  

When I look around, I think this, this is good enough.  

And I try to laugh at whatever life brings.  

‘Cause when I look down, I just miss all the good stuff. 

And when I look up, I just trip over things.

*Just kidding.

I haven't been able to dive into setting up my space, getting subsumed with unpacking, rearranging, and putting everything in its place. The ground here has been too wet for working the soil, which has prevented me from diving into farming, and exhausting myself with outdoor work.  And this farm has a somewhat slow internet connection, making it difficult to stream TV or movies.  I'm left with watching myself in transition, and learning what I can in the process.

In addition to taking care of the animals and carpool duties, I've been cooking up a storm, which is like meditating in a way.  I get so much pleasure out of making good food!  We've used up some of the farm's stores of meat for Shepherd's Pie, meatloaf, breakfast lamb chops, Hoppin' John with ham, and spicy sausage ragout.  And creamed kale, roasted root veggies, and lots of butternut squash everything.

And it's while I'm standing there, chopping vegetables, pots simmering away, that I mull over what happens each day, my reactions and hesitations, my enthusiasms and doubts.  It's a challenge to pick yourself up and start again with a new group of people.  But it's also an opportunity, a chance to peel back another layer or two of the onion, to try to be the best self you believe you can be.  I think, in my heart, that I can be more easygoing than I have been in the past, that I can learn to let things go, that I can live well with uncertainty and things in disarray.  I think that I can learn new things without a lot of guidance, that I can figure out how to fix things, use tools, find my way around, see what's needed and respond.  And that I can finally stop trying to win people's approval, and just be.  I've watched myself, in the last two weeks, bump up against life-long patterns--my desires to control things, to make sure people like me, to make everything good and safe.  And I've watched myself deal with long hesitancies, the holding back, feeling insecure, not wanting to make a mistake.  In this liminal space, I can see that getting beyond these things is the key to my opening up creatively.

Being in limbo has given me just the right amount of discomfort, and the quiet hours, to bump into all these feelings and take a good look at them.  Walking in the woods, in the slippery snow, I see my fear of falling down and "looking stupid," and how much that actually stiffens my gait, makes me totter.  Standing in a well-used kitchen, with jackets and homework and hay on the floor, I sense my desire to create order, and I can feel how that desire can actually distance me from what's happening with the people right there in the room with me.  Getting a lesson in pruning trees, my need to "do it right" nearly gets in the way of being able to make any cuts at all.  Seeing the pile of winter squash in the back room, I can feel a compulsion to pack it up and freeze it, in the hopes that doing so will "win me points" somehow, from someone, I don't know who. Being in limbo makes me see that I'm having a whole conversation in my head about falling, cleaning, pruning, the squash--and that it's all just projections, phantoms, the same old demons.  

Rather than trying to be the good girl, the neat girl, the one who doesn't make mistakes or look foolish, I'm working on letting go, just being me, and remembering that the more interesting my life has grown, the more I've fallen down and the messier things have become.  So here I am on the waning of this liminal phase, seeing glimpses of my better self, and feeling ready to start.  I'm going to grow these gardens, build some things, get confident with the animals and the tractor, and make some art.