“On our hands & knees, we bid farewell to summer. Remnants of her beauty and abundance linger, as we snip, and cut and tend to a soil, about to go under the mantle of winter. A few arresting colors, tangerines, burnt purples, and a odd magenta burn their bursts of emotion, onto the retina. It is a ferocious, bent, cacophonous last gasp; a signal of what will return, at the right time & place. Our brief meeting with Dan, the lone sounds of leaf blowers at a far flung neighbors property, the lack of viable water, pipes turned off, the jagged emptiness of everything taken from us, as gardeners, is what pushes our will into any action, that will preserve what we’ve done, and set it, like pylons, into the earth. Let the cold winds blow. We are no stranger to it, to the down time, to the enforcement of restrictions, and rest, and patient fortitude. I, for one, have been engaged in the goodbye, with all my soul. I feel more, and more, and more, as things are taken away. On any site, on any property, there is a dying time. It used to depress me. At my lowest moments, I would cry to the universe, burning with questions, and bereft at the lack of answers. But now, I just go down. I allow for the sinking into roots, and into the strength of those who must suffer in silence: for all we know, for all we must forbear, and be silent, within. This is no end, no ending. “We’ve had five celebrations of life this fall”, he said, as we spoke briefly, over the thrumming of a motor, amidst the hubbub & chaos, of a regular workday. It’s a given, that we all must walk certain trials, alone. The trees we felled, the ones that nearly fell on us, those of us who fell, and were not found, until it was too late. How cruel this season can be, or any season, we are not prepared for. And how could we be, only being human. Yet what keeps me going, is the smallness of life. How it is packed with unspeakable sorrow, and also, the complete diagram to continue on. Wherever we fall on the spectrum, our ingredients are radiant, and everlasting. I revel in my time riding shotgun, to the taking down of all that is tremendous. The sharp waves of frigid air that signal change, both invigorate, and send my consciousness, into an ineffable dreamtime, of love that transcends. I haven’t met a healer who knows more about what I need to heal. I won’t be expecting anyone to fill me with trust, beyond the lessons I’ve learned, of betrayal. My boots are anxious to meet the crust of where what I can do morphs into what I have no control over. It tests me, and I’m happy with the results, though no more comfortable, for the knowledge. This is not an easy realm. This is not a heaven on earth. This is a place where “on earth, as it is in heaven” must be discovered, by hook, or by crook. Sleeping in a car, languishing in a cabin with an incurable disease, neglecting others because the fight is all we know, living with the memory of inexplicable tragedy, or merely divorced from joy, due to some protective numbness, that goes on and on ... we are still, coping. It is enough. As I pound the miles in my truck, or lay my body on some ground, where I can sift through weeds, as if all my life depended on it, this is enough. You can’t keep blaming it all on your being here. You are here, like a renegade weed, or ditch dweller, or invasive species, or prized bloom on some else’s property, but in the end, we keep growing to gain strength, to escape the confines we’re trapped into. I love this freedom that can’t be stamped out. Bring it on, lords of darkness, your ragged facsimiles of life, that we know the better of, will be overcome. In the quiet illumination of what is left of natural sunlight, everything we stand for, is still intact. Our wholeness, not dependent on the latest food fad, or prescribed medicine, is raving, and ravenous, to return to health. Our natural state, our normal modus operandi, our go to, is home.”
