December - My Evergreen
What does it mean to be connected to a land? Some seem to think it is about values and ideals represented by flag and map lines. The history of a people becomes embedded in the land until its fire matches their anger and its hurricanes their fear.
What about familiarity? Hiking the same trails every day. The familiar sight of the reflective pond, a horizon of evergreen against a cloudy sky. The uphill section that sometimes leaves you out of breath and the elm sapling who seems to grow every day. Knowing that spring means the boletes are coming back to say “hi,” and fall meaning that the extra crunchy leaves make a pleasing sound under footfalls. Feeling a connection based on that understanding and knowledge might have you feeling like a place is “yours.”
Or what the indigenous peoples say about their connection. One of both heritage but also of caretaking and gratitude. Not only knowing about the flowers that come in spring but pulling back bamboo so native grasses can return. Planting and helping native wildflowers spread so pollinators have more to eat and will eventually stick around long enough that there is enough harvest to share.
I feel as though I have been sick for 2 months. This was one of my more exhausted Decembers yet. But it has also left me with a restlessness for spring. The frost is important and I am grateful for its renewal of the soil, but I am craving to help life grow again. I am tired of bearing witness to destruction with no ability to lend a hand to alleviate or help things regrow. But as with anything, patience and timing are important virtues to cultivate in winter.
I think we all feel this way and find our own rituals of trying to manage our anxiety. But I think our paralysis and inaction are not only failing us but contributing to the earth's response. It is time to learn a more holistic approach to our patriotism. It is not enough for us to only serve ancestors who may have never thought of our problems, or in some cases, of us at all. We must also learn to serve each other, our descendants, and the actual land itself, all together.
Any decent fisherman will tell you about the problems we face in our oceans and streams. They remember their grandfathers stories of lakes full of fish now hard to find. Any hunter can tell you why it is a key part of the ecosystem that we facilitate a reduction in a deer population unconstrained by a dying wolf population. Everyone has someone who can tell a story of winters full of frost and snow that no longer come. Farmers can tell you that their yields are directly linked to changing rainfall patterns and yet we are hesitant to ask for the changes that must come.
There is a greed that can consume people who don’t pause to have gratitude. There is a greed that becomes all consuming when no one can tell you no. If we don’t tell people no, there will come a time where we no longer have a say. How many houses can one person own? How many yachts and jets and things that consume resources beyond the average person's imagination? How many houses can one business own? There are enough empty houses to house every house less person in America plus more. So why are there so many empty houses?
When do we decide that a land we call ours, a land we call free, needs a change from the people who live on it? No one is coming to save us, except ourselves. We have every resource to do just that, to prepare as needed for the coming changes (e.g., floods and fires we already start to see now), to feed and house our people.
I will not disown you, don’t disown me, and don’t disown each other. I haven’t met one of you I wasn’t willing and able to love. I believe in your ability to do that too.
This land is worth cultivation and caretaking and so are we. Plant some native wildflowers, eat sustainably (reduce beef consumption at least), take a walk and notice who and what is around you. Find little things to be grateful for because in our darkest days that will keep us going forward. Just start somewhere with a ritual that you can call your own.
If the soil is always there to catch you or your children when they fall, aim to have that same constancy for each other. And because we don’t have enough hands for every person who falls, try to take care of the soil so it stays catching us and everyone around us.
No pop psychology in this essay, just good old fashioned ecology. Go read a book like the latest recommended to me (Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer) and more importantly, go touch some earth.
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