I haven’t posted for too long, thought I might add this message I sent to a friend in Sweden.
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Greetings from deep in the woods, on a quiet rainy evening, home alone and watching the fire in our wood stove. Sipping blackberry mead just bottled, one of eleven batches this year made with some of our 350 lbs of honey from nine beehives. Six now, after a bear found our apiary in October. Room to expand again in the spring…
Life continues apace. Our landlord is reclaiming his house in the woods at the end of March, and Elizabeth and I are buying a home on the edge of town. I will miss the solitude, but not the driving and car-dependency. I am still working for Wild Garden Seed, a small organic vegetable seed company. I do many things, but I most enjoy the engineering aspects – I’m currently working on building an improved seed cleaning machine. My current plan is to move toward more consulting work in agricultural/renewable energy engineering.
Beyond these woods, much is afoot. A group of armed men has taken over a bird refuge in eastern Oregon, claiming that the government has no right to own and manage public lands. A true demagogue is leading in the presidential polls, gaining popularity by proclaiming hatred. Anxiety and cognitive dissonance grow thick, as our populace tries ever harder to see things as they believe them to be rather than as they are. The real patterns – the ever-renewing cycles of the seasons, of the moon, of our mother planet, have been too long ignored.
Our supposedly-great nation is beginning to come apart. We are too young to be united by culture, too reliant on the concept of progress as our aspiration, our highest goal to be pursued with religious zeal. From the days of manifest destiny, of plowing under the vast prairies, we have built a nation on progress. Oxen to tractors. Steam trains to airplanes. Telephones to television to the internet. Progress has been the rule, and so progress is ever expected. The economy must grow, stock prices must rise. We as a nation do not, and seemingly can not, grasp that progress must be temporary. Over cycles of deep time we humans must find meaning in the cycles of nature, in our families and communities, in our own personal growth. On a planet that is finite, any linear or exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely.
Our world is filling up. Population growth is slowing. Fossil fuels are dwindling, and renewable energy while expanding cannot support the level of wasteful consumption to which we have grown accustomed. The economy has nearly stopped growing, but those at the top have found ways to maintain high rates of return at the expense of everyone below them. The federal deficit has grown beyond possibility of ever being paid off. Health care costs increase each year, but without any detectable improvement in health. We averaged around one mass shooting per day in 2015, suicide rates are increasing, 36% of Americans are obese, and we are increasingly overmedicated – legally and illegally – with stimulants, narcotics, antidepressants, and painkillers. Such are the symptoms of our existential crisis as a nation founded on progress awakens to the reality than all progress must be temporary, and this particular round of progress is coming to an end.
As if on cue, a demagogue has arisen to revive the American Dream, to “Make America Great Again.” A charismatic personality, overflowing with emotional rhetoric and light on practical solutions, eager to blame any and all problems on minority groups. A bully, leading those who would feel valuable at the expense of others, who would identify with a mythical American ideal as so many so-called Aryans did once before, before most living memory. History threatens to repeat itself…
At the same time, there is an awakening underway. More small farms and smiling faces at the riverfront market each year. Every year a new crop of gardeners and beekeepers, eager to get their hands dirty and brave the inevitable stings. Bright eyes of newborn babies, arriving into the lives of loved ones. Every year more solar panels, more focus on local food systems, on resilience, on building trust and relationships in community. More people experiencing nature, rediscovering a sense of meaning in cycles and plant and animal consciousness. My heart is joyful to be a part of this awakening, and I hope to find a larger niche in this unfolding moving forward. I fear for our country, and were it not for our family here we might be trying to join you in Sweden. For now, though, I am well, and I aim to focus on the local-scale developments while steering clear of our expanding national craziness.