Green Tribe of Belonging

 Here's a poem I wrote when my daughters were little, our family living on a mountain ridge in the Black Mountains of North Carolina.  Sitting with the Cabbages It happened at dusk one summer evening,   resting on the soft grass   in the margin between garden and lane,   my children quietly playing in the distance. During the day   I weeded this garden,   hoeing, tending. Now, during shimmering moments    between day and night,   I sit at the feet of cabbages,   strong green leaves stretching upward,   radiant in the subdued light. What is this intoxicating influence   that leaves me rapt and motionless?   I sit in still-point,   boundaries blurring,   feeling my breath,   in and out,   as if we all,    plant, tree, human,   are being breathed by something larger. For many moments, or maybe only a few,   I forget who I am,   held in an invisible    web of all that is. And then (can I believe my eyes?)   the cabbages begin to glow. Nan Fawcett

 The ancient geological history of our planet reads like a science fiction thriller. We have to truly expand our minds to take in what scientists tell us about the tumultuous changes the earth has experienced. And no living thing has been alive long enough to tell us about the kind of upheavals that have churned our planet. Even to the thousand-year-old tree in Siberia, earth changes have been comparatively mild in its lifetime.  When I step out my front door and stand on the earth here, I like to imagine what this place might have looked like hundreds of millions of years ago. What we do know is that the geological history of Iowa includes millions of years being under the sea, more millions being swamp-like near the edge of large bodies of water, and more recently periods of being covered by glaciers. The land masses of our globe have shifted around too, which makes the underwater epochs in this central state more understandable. The part of our deep history that most interests me is

I do better in life when I can step back and see from a wider perspective. When I was suffering from the isolation of this pandemic, it helped to think about cultures and peoples down through the ages that suffered similar situations, and yet life went on for enough of the population that civilization continued. I also stepped back in my mind when the extreme cold of this past winter seemed to go on and on..... Even though it felt like it would never end, I could think more widely and know that spring eventually does come. I've noticed a primal worry in myself each late winter when I wonder if this is the year that spring won't show up. I imagine that kind of fear is what triggered many closer-to-the-land cultures in the past who practiced rituals to help bring in the turning of the season.  A similar stepping back has happened to me these past weeks regarding the land we live on here at Prairie Hill. Now that the snow has finally melted from my garden spaces, I've been loo

 Have you ever witnessed so much beauty that it hurt? Hurt so much that you wondered how you could handle it, how you could stand it? This happened to me yesterday. I was walking in my favorite cemetery, the old, old one with many huge trees. It was late afternoon, and the trees on the west were back-lit by the sun starting to drop to the horizon. There was a stiff breeze, but the temperature was balmy. It was wonderful to be walking with the warm air swirling around and the trees standing out so clearly. I always love to see trees in the winter, before the leaves grow in. There is a forcefulness, and a clarity of presence to trees during those times. So it was not new that I looked at those intricate shapes of branches reaching out and marveled at them. But yesterday there was a new intensity to them. Looking at the trees on the hillside in front of me, I found myself coming to a full stop and slowly taking it all in. It was so beautiful that it hurt. I actually wondered for a few sec

I finally sat myself down yesterday and started looking through all the seed catalogs that come to my mailbox. Usually this happens in February, but somehow it took March's sunny weather to convince me that spring was actually going to come again this year. I looked through 5 or 6 glossy colorful catalogs, marveling not only at the fancy display but also at the high prices per packet. And then I came across my favorite seed company's catalog: Fedco. And yet again, my search stopped there. Everything would come from Fedco again this year. I love its philosophy, its detailed descriptions of plants and their known history, the company's cooperative practices, their acknowledgements of the folks who developed certain varieties, and especially the beautiful drawings on every page. There are no photos. The paper is not glossy, and the illustrations are all black and white line drawings of superlative quality, many on each page. When I started looking at the Fedco catalog, I relax