“It decided to snow 2 feet up here so I turned to paperwork today. Many mountains, many switchbacks, my friends. I see turkeys in the road, ravens flying in front of my truck, turtles sunning on pond rocks, and then, this slight retreat towards shelter. I’ve felt the freeze, too, the chill of people’s codified beliefs, the wall of misunderstandings and fabricated divisions. How easily distance creeps in, & this current one is much harder to thaw. Truth is the only lay of the land, the outpost, after death & destruction have struck hard. Our reality’s taken a major hit. I haven’t seen my mother in a year, locked away, for “her safety”. Parts of the family have scattered, not revealing, not crying together. Being ridiculed to near extinction for wearing your emotions on your sleeve, will do that. I’ve adopted a new family, some might call “the wild”. Because where abuse still continues, & a culture of silence persists, the road out is nature, or continued victimization. My first “vaccination” via tick yesterday, a small critter attached just left of my collarbone, in the soft, fleshy skin on my shoulder. Not so fast, my insect cohort, do not think me such an easy target! But gardening for a living, well, you learn to live with things that creep onto you, sequester under your fingernails, or paint your pores with tiny buckets of miraculous vitamin D. My grandmother always said, you have to take the bitter with the sweet. How right she was. We pulled carrots together, before I knew how much she mattered. Barefoot, mocked for her devout adherence to her faith, and honored for her spaghetti sauce, she made room for every shortcoming, & each family member. Those who remain open to their childlike awareness, who love an unconditional entity like God or Jesus in the face of the world’s evils, are often discounted . She never went to a doctor and lived to be 94. And while, I didn’t start writing this to write about her, I can feel that she has something to say here. Maybe she empathizes with what I’m going through. Probably, yes, absolutely. She tells me to stand my ground, and be the realist I am, not a faker. Easy for her to say, but I’ll give her that. She more than shouldered her fair share and I loved her completely. I did a lot of driving this week, taking new routes and seeing what some might consider back-burner towns. There’s a lot going on there, a lot of energy moving. Might be good to know about. The wilderness is largely forgotten in Vermont, though referenced frequently, and lobbied for. It’s actually “a thing”. That can be met with, like I meet with clients, who are trying to connect with something greater. The earth we live on and with, in this incredible lost state, is still lost. It’s up to us to find it, and not let anyone, not anyone, make rules there.”
