Anchored Farms on Volcano Time
by Lynn R. Miller of Singing Horse Ranch
photos by Kristi Gilman-Miller
Our old dog Riley is a precious member of this family. For many years this odd sweet canine wonder has seamlessly shifted from comedian to protector. He has always had free reign over our ranch and locale. He can go anywhere he chooses and often does but he has an internal radar informing him where the shifting boundaries are. He has never ever ‘run away’ or wandered off. And he’s never ever been in the way.
The people we got him from as a pup claimed he was a mix of livestock predator breeds including Great Pyrennes, Mareema, and Komondor. He looks all the world like a poor example of an Old English Sheep Dog.
When Riley is happy he strikes a laughing pose, nose in the breeze and tail a propeller. Then he’ll duck his head, shake it and spin until dizzy, then all of a sudden leap in the air after imagined delights. It never fails to bring smiles to people even those of us who know and love him.
When Riley is ‘on duty’ he stands stiff and tall, moving eyes and head in tight slow control; and all the many hairs on his back and neck stand the same. When Riley is off duty, and with any of us, he will come stand and face us with the saddest deep hypnotic pleading stare. It’s hard not to find yourself utter “What buddy? What are you trying to tell me?” Or, Kristi will ask looking deep into the unblinking eyes “who’s in there?”
It has only been in the last couple of years that Riley prefers being in the house at night and we prefer it as well. Over these recent years we have the new dimension of packs of wolves coming and going. When Bobcats, or Racoons, Elk, Deer or Coyotes would visit us on night patrol Riley knew. He knew who they were, where they were, and what they were after. He would sometimes bark a thunderous rolling growl-bark, a Baskerville bark sans the howl. The sort of bark that would have passing bicyclists wobble, the sort of bark that coyote pups would shiver over, on a windless autumn evening the sort of bark that would fluff the fallen leaves. Grand.
But I’ve always been most taken by his rigid silent steely-eyed pose. I know this fine canine and he does not take things serious unless they are. And his silent pose, I suspect, is not silent to those out in the dark of night who are listening to and feeling him. Sometimes I wonder if the ghosts of former predators aren’t attuned to him. I know Riley is attuned to every sound and movement of the air. Three miles away on government ground there is an unofficial firing range where people sight-in their rifles. Riley doesn’t like it. When he hears those distant shots he goes for the cover of either his big dog house or our house.
Riley is very much like some fine horses I have known, who feel and see things far beyond our perceptive reach. As with my horses, past and present, he has traded ancient feral instincts for the promised safety of domestic service. Yet, in these heightened times of planetary whip whistle and rumble – in this haunted modern age I think of as Volcano time – I am ready to embrace and even lean on those feral instincts of both surrounding wildlife and our ‘service’ animals for they offer caution, alarm systems, and ‘linkage’ to the deepest environmental realities. Simply put; they feel the volcano shoulder rolls and the approaching storm whistles and, if we are sensitive to the signal from our friends, we learn of it ahead of time. And we must trust what we think they are telling us. Riley and the badgers and owls will not literally tell us what they see or feel, all we get from them are the stardust trails left behind by their worry grabbers.
Looking long and hard at Riley you might think there’s a message there that just needs translating. This dog’s eyes don’t talk, they may grant access to other dimenions, but they don’t talk. Riley’s eyes are both mirror and portal, and that’s quite enough.
Besides being in tune with the dirt beneath his paws, our old dog knows all the creatures which share his domain.
We do not know where or how certain birds, insects, burrowing creatures, reptiles, or amphibians just show up on our farms and outlands when environmental circumstances change. Decades even centuries of drought created that barren wasteland – over there – which, within what felt like brief moments, a drastic change in weather shifted the lubricant skies restoring a wide ancient lake. And creatures then arrived in almost biblical fashion. So much complex (some thought mythic) life long thought extinct, was waiting buried hidden, waiting for this moment? Would it, does it, return as if out of nowhere?
And, in other places, terrible infernos wipe out homes and entire ecosystems sterilizing the ground, neutering it. But then, with time, plants and creatures begin to return, but from where? Floods follow to carve the unprotected ground mercilessly, but later flowers come.
Some of the plants and animals which show up, were they perhaps always there? Were we just were not allowed to know of them, to see them? Did we, do we prevent ourselves from these levels of sensitivity?
You may say ‘we know,’ or that you know, hibernating biology. A couple three dozen or more tightly wrapped scientists individually remind us that they, each, are one of the few that understood such things, and that there are no genuine mysteries in life, just questions that haven’t been asked. And then a few of us unwrapped farmers might observe – how very sad for those scientists.
(Even though we yeomen cannot bring selves to care about that sadness. Because perhaps, and if for no other reason, we are busy tending our anchorage on these farms. They are constant chore lines these farming endeavors, ones which we have learned give us humm when we allow ourselves to belong to them. Humms us to tired, achy, purposeful, focused residence.)
Choice made and embraced.
But back to that opening thought; frogs and water spiders and microscopic creatures have been waiting forever for the floods to come, to silt, to settle, to wash and pool. Are we humans not of that same ilk, that same chemistry, that same hibernating force? You cannot convince me that the mass of humanity is not right now in some somnambulent state of sporedom waiting for the waters to return, waiting for the great kelp river to return, waiting for the deserts to flower. If most tribeless people are completely disconnected from cognizant life would that not explain so very much of the absurd and terminal aspects of today’s dead-eyed homosapien-centric world? But to add hope to that picture, who is to say that when suitable environs return people will not wake up, go to their cupboards, gather the jars of tomato and bean seeds then head for the most likely sheltered garden sites? Head out to search for the bitter root, and the lamb’s quarters and the nasturiums. Who is to say that, as cataclysms (including war) result in abandoned farmlands, humans released from sporedom won’t make their way there to plant, gather, nurture, pray and reside?
There are those who, with fingers and heads wagging, admonish us, “Nature is resilient, this too shall pass. Don’t go all paranoid.”
Language in casual application is excremental. When it is observed that Nature is resilient, beneath that ‘learned?’ observation is the dangerous and mistaken notion that nature somehow serves us, answers to us, to outside pressures, to a higher math. It is to deny that nature is in us, as well as it is of a female Preying Mantis. When we speak thus it is – in and of itself – to deny that nature is one ultimate outside pressure as well as the purpose of swelling gases trapped in the magma pushing for release through the crust of the earth, is to deny nature is the higher math as well as the equation that put ice crystals on asteroids. That nature is the complex equation which brings all of life to life. Nature is essence and nature is the law.
Nature resilient? It is as if you are saying Life will be okay. Okay? Resilient? That puts us over here and Nature over there. How the heck did we come to the notion that we are above nature? It is evidence that not much thought has gone into yet another “brush aside.” It is evident that people have neglected to open the door, step outside, and take true and natural measure. Turn it around LeRoy! It is not that Nature is resilient, and at our service. Resilience IS Nature. And we exist because Nature alllows us to!
It is, for the working man and woman, of their nature to be resilient. For our chosen work, well done, is both arrival and launch, it is a form of self-charging impetus, the coursing defining delight and drudge we know as ‘purpose.’ And deep-seated within that purpose we have the opportunity to allow our senses to expand. We have the opportunity to smell more, feel more, see more. We are attuned because of our immediate connection with the working, ESPECIALLY when that work is out of doors and with nature.
“God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.” — Nikos Kazantzakis
We have a combination farm building that starts, to the south, as shop and then morphs to the north as barn. Doing winter chores we walk through the shop, gather feed stuffs, and then pass through the haystacked barn to the poultry, and cattle nurse pens. One morning we heard a mix of light sounds and looked up in the shop area to watch a tiny owl fly to the truss ridge and land. As we looked up at ‘her’ she looked down on us. Kristi called Sue Tank, a serious bird watcher, and the owl was identified as a rare and illusive Northern Saw Whet. For the next week and a half we were entertained by the owl which fed itself on the mice wintering in the shop. Then one day, when my wife went into the chicken run to do morning chores here was the owl, inside the netted yard, sitting on top of a steel post. It was daylight and the tiny raptor was nonplussed by Kristi who proceeded to take her picture. It was thought that this owl had gotten into the chicken yard and couldn’t get out so Kristi showed her the way. Next morning she was back in the chicken yard. This went on for a week.
I was heartened and intrigued by how, once we had been introduced to this magnificent little creature, we could sense its presense even when we did not always see it right off. Had we developed ‘Riley-eyes?’
To ‘feel’ a thing, separate from seeing it, I believe that’s a capacity we have when born – one that we lose, by pressurized disconnect, as we become adults. But if we are lucky that capacity comes back. I know that for people who work at human scale activities, who work with their hands, often who work out of doors, such as we farmers, we are given daily opportunities to rekindle that sensorial capacity. I don’t know where this comes from, nor how I know. But I definitely feel it, especially these days. There’s evidence all over the place.
You walk outside on a dark night and you feel something. Do you shake it off right away? Or do you stand there and try to take a reading. Me, I’m an elderly instrument of nature, one that perhaps thinks too much, so when I sense something I tend to wonder how much of that is because of my tinnitus, or my natural constant dizziness, or my hoping my beloved wife doesn’t catch me standing barefoot on a cold winter’s night outside with my head cocked to one side and a question mark on my whiskered face?
Our ramshackle old house was, according to tax records, built in 1907 by Greek homesteader Paul Vileotis and a handful of native friends. It has on-again off-again foundation bits and chunks and squats down near a pond that captures spring waters and snow melt runoff. We’ve been here for 37 years and counting. I can tell you this house captures evidence.
We live in the shadow of the volcanos that constitute the Cascade mountain range. Scientists keep measurements of the rise and fall of these mountains, as well as rumblings, quakes, tremors, etc. Lots of activity. But, for the most part, of little or no interest to the general public. It should be though, as we live in a new heightened time of earth’s unrest. Which brings me back to our old house.
We hang quite a bit of stuff on our walls, artwork, display pottery, old cowboy bits and spurs, hats, fragile shelving stuffed with herbs and spices, bunches of herbs hanging to dry, and all of that stuff has position. The pictures we prefer to have hang level. And, over these four decades, we regularly have to straighten those pictures. Our house moves. Or more accurately put, the ground moves and jiggles the house which rides thereon. The way I know this is the floor. Our floor is not level partly because over time it has become a wavy surface. Once, when the kids were young and we played with things that roll on the floor you could count on marbles moving in a curving arc from the NE corner to SW corner of the kitchen. Then I began to notice that the patterns and direction changed, ever so slightly. And the travel patterns still change as our house, akin to a living thing, hugs a moving landscape and changes with each geological insistance. Which causes the pictures to shift and the marble roll to arc the other way.
All of that goes into my register when, as I walk out across farmyard and field, I ‘sense’ the ground shuddering, murmuring, whispering. I sense our tiny piece of the earth talking to itself. And these last few years it is less of an argument and more of the earth making plans like cattle in the early spring with itchy hides. Those bovine look for low branches, jagged fence posts, anything they can rub or scratch against. But this planet has a larger challenge; to find ways to shake or blow or wash away the itch that is man’s wasteful selfishness. So this planet employs its surface and subsurface atmosphere in storms, earthquakes, floods and yes, volcanic eruptions. Only way we humans have of surviving these increasing catastrophes is to ‘weigh’ less, to use less, to destroy less. To live in homes that ‘ride’ the earth rather than insist themselves upon it. To live in smaller humble towns of obvious if selective gratitudes. Our successful and purposeful residence, our anchorage, requires that when we pray we include with our expressed gratitude a request for ways forward. To hug the earth and ride the vibrations like this old house of ours. Best way I know of to do that is as conscientious, listening, busy, tending, sensing farmers.
Before my legs, knees and ears gave out on me, one of the most superb magical experiences I have ever enjoyed with regularity was the use of a walking plow with my horses. Once the process was mastered and became somewhat automatic, everything slowed down and the breath of the team, their footfalls on land and in furrow, the squeak of my grip on handles, my breath, the slice of plow share into soil, the roll and crumbling flip of earth, all of that was background to the sound of the sunlight, the birds, and the sleeping volcanos. And the scale of it all. Infinitesimal. Tiny. One person two horses, mules or oxen – a simple plow a few acres; making music flipping strips of ground with joy, surprise, sadness and vitality all in hand. And dusted with organic gratitude in perfect apologetic synchronicity with the earth’s whispers.
Breath.
Some years ago I implemented a farming routine designed to gather information for ourselves that would speed a process. That process centered on the need for answers to basic yet specific questions about crops and tillage procedures on our glacial mountainous farmland. And because of how I think, and how any of us might use our thoughts, I presumed to need both empirical and anecdotal information to allow the best chance that usable answers would / could become malleable, changing often, and in this way skirting the limitations of logic to land squarely on a wobbly right likelihood.
This is how I went about setting the whole thing up. I divided a forty acre field, quarter mile by quarter mile square into 150 foot wide, long, small acreage lands with eight foot wide access strips between each. At the beginning the entire field was in wild meadow grasses with volunteer clover varieties and scattered other legumes.
The western-most strip I worked up with a cover crop disc and spring tooth harrow combination; many passes until I had a seedbed four to five inches deep.
The next land, parallel and adjacent, I plowed straight away to 10 inch depth before discing, rolling and harrowing.
With the third land I disced the sod up well, before plowing to a 7 inch depth, and then finishing.
The fourth land I went native, overseeding with a conventional double disc drill.
Then I repeated the scheme ending up with 8 lands across that 40 acre field.
To render the entire multi-year experiment somewhat moot, I arbitrarily mixed up my seedings.
This routine served up marvelous results and experiences. In good ways we became integral to the biological memories, sounds and movements of this tiny patch of earth. And the adventure offered additional questions – more questions than answers.
One of the questions which came without an answer has stayed with me. I, as explained, had set these strips up to do comparisons, to test for answers. Originally I thought I might do this one or two years maximum, then get on with the gathered answers to a more extensive approach to my farming. But the enthusiasms, and the unexplained successes, and the rampant increase in fertility and the pure joy these lands brought me pointed to this: Why are we not always and forever doing our farming in this way — adjacent lands of different approaches / different plantings talking to each other and encouraging the earth to relax and smile?
If we are fotunate we are anchored to a piece of land that is our farming. If what we do each and every year is the same thing, same routines, same crops same challenges aren’t we cheating ourselves and the land? Aren’t we at risk of depleting our land and genetic base? We need to find ways to embrace appropriate variation and possibility while keeping our endeavor human scale.
If you’ve read a few of my scribblings you may have discovered that, aside from attempting to behave whenever assigned the describing of form and function, I have a comic and exasperating disregard for grammar, syntax and intelligent company. That comes from experiences outside of curried essay. And it is who I am, how I think and interact, and comes of my embrace of humor as a way to make the synthetic imperative inherent in logic into something humane and human.
When I used to travel and do talks, lectures, keynotes, etc. on those occasions, when my wife accompanied me, she would regularly observe “you really should throw those note cards away and just talk. You know what you want to say, and when you do it without notes people get to watch you think.”
“Watch me think?”
“Yes, it’s like you’re having a conversation with them. That works best.”
Intriguing. I took a small jump with the idea. Could it be that watching a person at the lecturn try to find the right words is akin to an opportunity to get him or her to say what you want them to say? Conversation? Or comedy? Hmm.
So when I set up a series of adjacent lands, obstensibly for cross measurement and fact gathering, denying the tight controlled scientific window it could provide, am I allowing that those lands start to influence what choices I make next? Well, of course they would in any case. But, inside and beyond that, do these lands want me to till or seed in a way I would not logically do, so that the lands then find themselves invested in the process?
Ok, intelligent company excused.
I planted that first field in a pasture-grass mix commercially prepared for our region. Then the second land into a nurse crop of oats, canadian field peas and that same perennial grass mix. Then the third land into a nurse crop of triticale with alfalfa grass mix. And the fourth, native, land into an overseeding of grass and alfalfa. Then the fifth land into Buckwheat dedicated as a green manure crop. Then the sixth land left fallow, then…
So as crops grew, or didn’t, I measured in the overlays. ?. Nordellian it was not. Boswelian perhaps. Well, I rode my instincts and, maybe just maybe, came to some of the conclusions I wanted. For it must be confessed, I was determined not to be controlled by the empirical evidence alone. Alchemy, after all, is in the flavored fogs lingering around “what if I…?”
So many extenuating circumstances. First this ground had not been worked in 20 years. Second, Winter before that first round of test lands was warm and dry, very little snow. Spring rained a lot. Summer was dry and hot. We used irrigation on those lands. I have learned over half a century of farming that heavy snows on dry parched yet frozen ground may have a tremendous fertilizing effect. As the snow melts it is drawn in slow and held by the dry ground, rather than running off. And that dry ground, if it is frozen hard, will impede that snow melt. The snow, some scientists tell us – depending on the atmosphere and character of the snow itself, may contain more or less actual nitrogen which can / will / does feed plant growth. But that first year, very little snow. The second year, we had three feet of snow which hung around for a month and half. Slow snow. And when it melted, it was a slow dripping melt, a slow feeding.
Three, four or five varieties of legumes reside deep in this soil. They include Crimson Clover, White Clover, Alsike and Birdsfoot Trefoil. It was taking a two to three year plantation of the perennial mix for those latent legumes to join the growth. Deeper I plowed, oddly enough, the quicker they came back.
But, what I did and did not do to those lands(?) – I do believe therein was the dynamic of most dramatic effect. That third land, the one where I disced up the sod then plowed and harrowed, that land grew the very best crop. Though from the standpoint of appearances, the lands with the grain nurse-crops showed off best. And the Buckwheat lands, the improvement to the nitrogen levels of that green manure crop was obvious and two to three years in advantage.
The idea that we might take a quasi-scientific, test plot / control plot, approach to small batch farming and make of it the process AND purpose of our operation brought me to realize that I was planting myself deeper into this small farm, deeper and wider, every single day. Anchored if you will.
And, if we are fortunate, the ways our anchorage strengthens should be various and come from our entire identity.
What would drive a crusty old farmer to go, on a brisk February day, into the desert woods with a rusty folding chair and a paint box to ‘understand’ an old tree? The day in question, three years ago, was my 75th birthday and I had promised myself I would, weather permitting, go to the woods to paint. As farmer and as an artist, I have been fortunate that for fifty years, without the words to describe it, I have known the connection between the two disciplines to be powerful, not perhaps in the outcomes or products but most certainly in how it arms me and charges my observational batteries and my gratitudes.
We are on the edge of the great basin, with ‘high desert’ being the common name people use to describe our region. Our land varies from 2600’ elevation to 3,000, and we are where Juniper and Sage overlaps with Ponderosa Pine forests.
Walking into this rangeland forest domain, with its two-tiered timber, the arid openess has always intrigued me. I can, from my view point, look under and through. I can see for a long ways. Even so, the rocks, bitterbrush, sage and small junipers offer ample hiding spots for deer, newborn calves, coyotes, occasional black bear, bobcats, porcupine and wolves to name but a few.
Looking ‘through’ these woods, less than to what hides there, this old artist/farmer is often drawn to the twisting knarled toughness of the older Juniper trees. There are stories recorded in their surface and turnings. I feel the stories more than see them. So, as a painter of record, I trust what I see in the trees and work to capture their identities. Are stories, even lives, hidden deep in those trees just as with that visiting owl or our dog Riley? Just as in the whispers and tremors of the land itself as it releases those deepest seeds and that inherent soil chemistry to rush new growth to the surface. Pushing through to the surface. Just as with the volcanos we call mountains.
What I have left of that glorious celebratory day painting are a few of Kristi’s photos, the painting itself, and the memory etched on my outer and inner layers, my bark and my soul.
I have, in my advanced (still questionable) maturity, directed my brain to walk backwards into and past the future. If there be natural places on this Earth where “the local time is variously marked by the movement of toads and the fluttering of moths, by the scent of oranges and coconut, by “bear births, eagle marriages, and salmon deaths,” * then what is past belongs most certainly to what we have right now today. The careful view of what we have done, it holds time to the mark. That which is ahead of us, however, does not exist, not now. Today exists. May I suggest that the strongest notion of where we are today must come from walking backwards into the future, walking backwards and taking record of what just happened as well as what happened some time ago? Perhaps the view forward should be more than a little circumspect?
It is backwards I go: As I write these words, it is the last day of the year 2023, warm winter continues. 5:30 am. 31 degrees, supposed to reach 44 today. I write conscious that I plan to tuck these observations away and add to them, to build in actual time, a record of this year or so. Hay supply is almost gone. Will have to have more brought in. Evidence that elk have been eating around the edges of hay stacks with force. Don’t see them, but the dogs let me know they are coming and going at night. Along with the mule deer which do so little damage. I try to fence out elk with tall panels but the particular exhaustions of cold weather on aging bones limits. Cattle are doing well. Warm enough to keep them just a tad anxious, in around and under grasses are trying to grow. Green shoots are like little children anxious to get outside and run.
Coyotes quiet for now. We have lots of them. Think they go quiet when wolves are passing through.
Last day of the year and glad not to feel it. No break in my step to next ones. Lots of farming to plan for. Winter is when thoughts of what’s next rises to the top of needs. Should February give me a false Spring, I need to pounce on discing and plowing. Layer on the clothes and go for it.
Early January 2023: awake at 2 am awash in a revelation. Feel I am cousin to volcanos, feel that this core of mine goes deep into the earth and into time before me and reaches well beyond us with heat, force, insistence and some kind of unquenchable hunger for primordial certainty. Maybe, always maybe.
Is any of this held in common? Is all of this outside of common?
There are layers and layers, many semi-transparent, to what I am seeing as overlapping realities. And the tangled filaments of thoughts and thinking, webs and root systems from each individual and intertwined in this time, overtime and beyond time. How these roots, invisible to all who do not want to see or feel them, evidence what is above, what are the simpler presentation of the facts of each living adventure. I once thought that this wider expanse of human life in complete interconnectivity made up as it is from ‘ foreign’ languages refusing to be read, refusing access, that this expanse is what some see and say to be God. And that the language barriers aren’t barriers, they are crude records and record keeping systems which all of humanity to date, adolescent as it be, uses as cognitive pacifiers and attention getters. I had once thought that, but some notions do sluff off with time.
It began and begins with exhaustion. To find myself too tired to even worry about what I am not able to complete, not able even to begin. And to realize in moments of rested brain that I may so easily take false measure, to assign myself as lacking, when self is not the thing to measure. The thing to measure is the need to measure at all, the comparatives are all falsehoods. Except in this regard: my ‘working realities’ are my own or perhaps, better put, they are identifiers above ground influencing and influenced by my hidden roots, influenced by my vast and varied parentage, by the residues and acids and stains which stole rides in my makeup, hitching up with those of my beginnings that began before my possibility aligned itself. And now, as I wind down, as I pass myself coming and going, I see residues as they attach themselves to the vague outlines of other magnificent possibles long ways forward in my grandchildren’s future when they as grandparents themselves look down and catch glimpses of their residues leaving trace. Volcanic?
Mid January, cold and snowing. Two to three feet of crystalline, flawless white altering everything. Fortunate to have got extra hay in. Will need to work here all day to secure feed trails and make sure fences tight. Check water tanks. Survive. We choose to belong and to be of service, rather than to be survivalists. We choose to be stewards of life, our pursuits ever mindful of our ignorance of and our absolute dependence on nature
They imagine we farmers as put upon by nature. While it is humanity en masse which insists itself, at its own peril, against nature.
And now I jump ahead a year, still backwards in time, to this February morning. Eric and I go out in 5 inches of snow to feed the cattle hay and find them gathered in a tight circle mid open field. I recognize this as evidence that over night they were threatened by wolves and knew for self preservation they needed to leave the cover of their tree-ed bedding ground, that the calves were to be gathered in the middle with the senior cows forming a circle shoulder to shoulder and looking out. In this way, as the wolves made lunges the cattle were ready to defend themselves, to return the attack. We saw this written in the beat down mud and snow. And, in the encircling pristine expanse of new snow we now saw the predator’s tale, five wolves circling the herd in the night. We did not see the wolves but the evidence was chilling in its clarity. Large distinct tracks. Some made in short deliberate steps ever so slightly tilted to indicate these wild canine heads were turned sideways watching for any opening. And then other tracks spread to show where this and that wolf had broken into a lope to try to close the circle.
I watched and looked at the tableau dreading the possibility that I might find bright red stains of snow, but happily there were none. And we counted the herd – all were accounted for – and, better yet for me, all of the cattle now started to wander comfortably out of the circle to get to us and the waiting hay.
In those brief moments as we walked backwards into our small immediate future, working to understand the evidence of what had happened, time did indeed stand still.
We took photos of the tracks and I called Aaron Bott, our regional wolf biologist with Oregon Fish and Wildlife. By late that afternoon he had positioned a couple dozen Foxlights around the fields. These randomly flicker after dark in different colors. When we look outside at night now it looks like Tinker bell and her army are all around our field. The first thing we noticed that very next morning is that the cattle stayed in the wooded bedding area and the coyotes could be heard arguing. When the wolves are present the coyotes are smart enough to go silent. The wolves for now had retreated.
Pick the nit: move me rather than impress me.
Do we trust the unbelievable?
Everyday and in every unfathomable way
That massive magnificent crisp black and white Bald Eagle flew so low along the ground, within two dozen feet of me, that to watch him I had to look down. The perspective reminded me that invisible layers exist above ground as well as below. Somehow all of it is fastened together.
Wind, water, fire, they would take hope with them if hope be ‘fastened’ to our security, to our survival. But faith, now that is sheltered flame. Hopefulness is brittle – faith is energy.
Our planet, our world, has always held, at it core, a miraculous living heat. For our natural world a held flame is all. Our atmosphere, air and water pressurized – releasing – swirling, is the hold. Cheap thoughts separate these three and ignore the fasten. Instead, can we reach for expensive even expansive thoughts and hold the fasten, the flame if you will, close to our chests?
The spin of this planet, with other planets in concert, has at its core the miraculous heat of our sun. That wider system of centrifugal cloy. And yet even that is a small part of something unknowably larger, inconceivably hotter. So for survival we turn our backs to the mystery and look inward imagining control. Remind you of that comic posture of the threatened ostriche? Hiding its head? If the cows had turned their heads inward in that defensive circle the wolves would have had easy prey. Today the planet, and all of humanity needs, in every corner of its open farm and wildlife lands, to circle its proverbial courageous cows (let’s call them farmers), with the future – their offspring – behind them, their heads out to witness what has come and is coming. Know that the vulterine wolves are cowards, and they are, after their own fashion, lazy. Make their lives difficult and they will move on. Not unlike large corporations, take from them their ease of profit, their liscense for treachery, their absoluute deniability and they WILL move on. Perhaps poof?
Farming, good honest relational work with nature, towards multiple goals including the creation of food and the humble care of tiny pieces of the earth, that work which we each of us know as genuine farming, that work is a volcanic bargain made with God. It fans flames deep within, carefully warms the soil, coaxes seed and frees the worms all while watering to create a humming, writhing pressure that is released as plants erupt from the ground.
If it works, each worthy story illumines the bargain. I know, I saw it in those eyes of the little owl. And I felt it in Riley’s eyes.
* Only a small fraction of mankind’s time on earth (maybe 800 of the last 200,000 years) has been spent in the close company of mechanical clocks, remanded to the custody of a machine unrelated to anything other than itself. That the association has not proved to be a happy one is the conclusion drawn by Jay Griffiths from her researches among peoples native to the Andaman Islands, the Alaskan wilderness, the highlands of New Guinea and Peru, territories in which the local time is variously marked by the movement of toads and the fluttering of moths, by the scent of oranges and coconut, by “bear births, eagle marriages, and salmon deaths.”
As it is now at the margins of the twenty-first-century global economic imperium, so it was everywhere in antiquity, in Egypt and Mesopotamia as in Africa, India, and China, when time was understood by its human companions not as the measure of an abstract quantity but as a particular and concrete experience. Myriad sorts and kinds of time, all of them vividly alive in wind and leaf, bird and water, shifting with the change of mood or weather, marching to different drums in different directions, turning on the wheel of fortune that is the revolving of the sun and moon, flowing into the rivers Nile and Styx.
– Lewis Lapham, Lapham’s Quarterly
