Past and Future Lives

The vineyard held out against the summer drought.   Other lands were scorched.   Farmers don’t bother to doubt climate change; they live it.

So far we’ve been lucky.   Longer growing seasons and sunny summers bring grape maturity.   2020 is already heralded to be an excellent vintage.

Nonetheless.   We walked parched earth in September

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so it was profoundly moving when October brought a miracle of life after death.   Some rain dance prayer was answered.   Fields were carpeted in new green, the last fruits and vegetables resuscitated. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m always gobsmacked by miracles.   They seem to happen against all odds, from some mysterious source that forgives our transgressions.   Generous and powerful, they mitigate my recurrent, past-life nightmares.   

Like this one:  A time before war…  a time of peacetime bounty tinged by the foreboding of gathering clouds.   Sensing we should prepare, but not knowing how.

My childhood wish was for a fortified castle surrounded by a moat.   An old friend describes her past lives as a soldier and a noble, same family repeated for centuries.   If it’s true that we continue to inhabit our ancestor’s circles, I have no precedent for chateaux forts, except perhaps as a prisoner.   My ancestors were serfs in Poland and potato famine exiles from Ireland.   They knew well that “time before war.”

I wish I had met my great-great grandfather.   He was the manager of a large property when his young wife and baby died in an epidemic.   He saw how things were and saw what was coming.   He encouraged his serf friends to leave for better lands.   They said, it’s a foolish dream, you don’t know anything about that Promised Land.

That was true, but he left anyway.   

He found bounty on a mid west farm before industrial agriculture, before the dust bowl, before chemical pollution.  His sense of having arrived was to own the land he worked.   I think about the courage of such a voyage; launching into the unknown with no one to support you.   I hear his voice:  “Go.   You’ll make it work.   Good people lend a hand when they meet the honest and hard working.   Just don’t give up your integrity.   It’s the only currency of long term value.”

Years ago we launched on a foolish dream.   Somehow it worked.   But today I shudder, considering all we didn’t foresee.   Political and climate winds bring drought and floods, charlatans and plagues; we’ve lost the moderation that prosperity requires and I sense those shadows lurking.   That visceral “time before war” feeling.  

So I walk the land.   Pluck a persimmon, an apple.  Species we planted for resistance to drought and disease.   Collect the last tomatoes, the ones we reseed to adapt to our climate and soil.   And the miraculous, self-regenerating kale, mustard greens, rainbow chard…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I no longer dream of castles.   People walled in, people walled out.   When I dream now, they’re land dreams.   Group dreams.   In October, as the wine beds down and bodes well, we catch our breath and dream together.   We aren’t farmers as my ancestor was, but we’re learning.   We dream of becoming competent and experienced.   One day we could teach children to grow their own food.

What better antidote to fear of lack, than learning to create bounty?