Things That Were...Or Rural vs Urban?

INDEPENDENCE

Hardscrabble Farmer

For most of June the weather was hot and dry. All of the gains we’d made with the hayfields slowly dissipated until the grass was gold and brittle. We had to bring the herds in from pasture and put them back on bales much to their disappointment. We continued to irrigate the gardens, rotate the turkeys and chickens onto new grass twice a day and make do with the circumstances that Nature provided. We dug the water lines for the new greenhouse, a two-day affair to get down below the frost line through a maze of buried boulders and into the space where we’d soon be able to grow our own food during the Winter as well.

We work up here, every day. Not because we have a job to keep or a boss to please, not for the paycheck- for there is none- nor for the benefits and retirement, neither of which we expect nor receive, but to feed ourselves and to remain together on this small piece of rugged ground on the side of an obscure mountain in the foothills of New Hampshire.

The very idea of being part of an uninterrupted chain of blood that recedes so far into the past as to be imperceptible fills me with a reverential awe at the privilege, one that I embrace and take pride in rather than feel shame for and try to erase. We know what is happening outside of our sphere, in the larger world of men, but it does not concern us in the way it does for those who are still enmeshed in the fabric of the manmade world. I have preferences without politics, understanding the nature of human behavior as well as that of my chickens and cows.

I understand on a fundamental level that the disquiet and seething animosities are not ideological or party driven, but rooted in the dissatisfaction of living beings being trapped in an unnatural world that chafes and bridles at every turn. In all of the conversations I have ever had in the course of my life I have been aware of either the calm of a well centered soul or the torment of someone in pain and I could see- if not in that moment, but over time- the behaviors manifested by those deeply rooted instincts either in harmony or turmoil. And so we made the conscious decision, with no real idea of what we’d encounter, to head in the direction of our own true North to try and discover the peace of settled souls at one with their environment.

Last year we threw our first 4th of July get together on the farm for our friends and family. It was meant as a gesture of goodwill for everyone who had helped us through our times of crisis and want when we were back upon the road of recovery and plenty. The endless casting of bread upon the waters that has defined our lives and our fortunes was owed to no one but received by all whether we realized it or not and in recognition of that endless well of succor we committed to making the American birthday our day of thanks. I have always loved the 4th of July, long before I understood its significance and despite what has happened to our country, perhaps because of it, I have committed to making it a symbol of our gratitude for having had the kinds of opportunities that have been laid at our feet throughout our lives.

This year, despite the trepidations of a world locked in its own form of emotional and spiritual confinement, we opened our gates again to anyone and everyone willing to make the journey to our farm. We planned for the worst but hoped for the best and our reward was one of the most significant and memorable experiences of our lives. The number of guests who travelled long distances to be with us and share the day was humbling; from Alaska, and Maryland, New York City and Virginia, Albania and The Netherlands they came.

We had one of the most diverse cross-sections of the American experience present in a space that took up only a few acres of well-tended eskar and the only human feeling present was one of joy. There was plenty of food and drink, cool shade and warm Sunlight and the weather was with us from the first hour before dawn as we rose to prepare for the day until the last embers of the bonfire burned down 24 hours later. People came bearing gifts of food and tools, time and helping hands and on every face that came up our lane there were smiles instead of masks, handshakes and warm hugs instead of distance.

They shared the products of their labor and initiative, people told stories and inquired about one another. Old sat with young, crowds of twenty-somethings gathered to shoot arrows at hay bales, and everywhere was the sound of fellowship and congeniality. My son and his friends manned the barbecue pit roasting joints of beef and split lamb as the blue smoke rose into the bluer sky. My neighbor came up with his friends to see the farm he’d been telling them about and they asked if they could come back and get married here. People waked down to visit with the herd of cattle and the piglets came out to run with the children along the fence lines.

As the evening came down on the mountain the food was served and the wine flowed and behind it all was the sound of music from another time, a more settled past when the celebration of America was the happiest day of the Summer. I had more conversations with more people in that time than I have had in the past year and I listened attentively as people shared their stories and spoke when I was asked about my own. The sound of my wife’s voice could be heard talking happily about whatever it was that she was involved in and there was at all times a constant chatter punctuated by laughter, authentic and deep.

As the sky darkened and evening fell upon the landscape the moon rose, fat and full the color of an orange on the eastern edge of the forest and the boys set off fireworks up and down the driveway. I sat with a woman in her nineties who had not been out since early April, and I saw on her uncovered face one of the most heartwarming smiles I have ever seen as she sipped on a small glass of local beer at the edge of the garden.

We watched as two little girls with red, white, and blue bows in their hair bounced gleefully on the trampoline holding glow sticks in the fading light while the flames of the bonfire rose into the blue-black sky, a pillar of sparks rising up and joining the stars above them. Magical does not begin to describe the feelings I am left with from that moment and I will never forget it.

I’m sorry for what is happening in the cities of America as it enters its terminal decline. In place of celebrations and appreciation for all of the good things we have, all the benefits and exceptional fortune laid at our feet is an unquenchable anger, a seething malevolence borne of isolation and indolence, simmered in ignorance of a past and a hopelessness for the future. There is nothing that I can do or say to turn back the rising tide of violence that pours out of those cauldrons of vacuous stupidity, nor could there be if I had wanted to. I only know what I can do to carve out a small space in the midst of the madness that grows in The Fourth Turning and make it shine enough to reflect the face of God.

As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings, “Some believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check but that is not what I have found. I found that it was the small things. Every day deeds by ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay.”

We celebrated the birthday of the Nation in which we live on the 4th of July on our little farm on the side of a little mountain. And we did it in the company of the children of its founders and the late arrivals to our shores in a thousand small ways built upon a foundation of every day deeds, and it was amazing.

We hope that you’ll join us next year, whoever you are.