Walking past olive trees you must be careful not to stop paying attention to where you are walking because indulging too much might lead you directly into a limb of the next one. Catching a particular color scheme displayed on forking limbs you will inevitably walk into something big in front of you. So this time I stopped. I stopped in my tracks. Pulling my head high, I followed one of the low lying branches as it snaked through the canopy and protruded on the other side with its silver leaves. (Silver on green with a pattern that convinces you some corporate sports team already stole it, patented it, and has it on display in every sporting goods store in the state.) One giant olive tree standing at least 30 feet took my breath away. Another no more than 15 feet seemed so powerfully confident with its wide trunk, below ground its feet must be planted firmly in the earth; a sentinel to Gaea's Garden. My eyes roam the ground and bodies of these trees for morsels of color to enjoy...
I come back to my senses. Remembering I was doing a job, I resume walking on down this dirt road framed by beautiful dark olive trees, my mind was lingering somewhere in the olive trees. How many years has it looked this way? How many other majestic places exist where nature is given space to make itself a home? The light shines through the canopy and catches my eyes. I wonder how many other farmers walked this same way and felt something similar. I relax my mind and begin working as I had set out to do.
The romanticism of farm life begins and ends with the intimate connection between man and nature and lasts for as long as man cares to please the land that hold his feet. Rationally I believe the separation from nature and the need to embrace it are both plausible human impulses. Why care for nature? How can a human 'care' for nature? But as reasonable as those two ideas are, the reverence for nature and it's pervasive human qualities can appear obvious. Human themes of pain and joy flood these fields every season. Capturing a crop here and there you feel the vulnerability that comes along with caring for a land seemingly founded on human customs, but then again not. Nature is not polite, the land unfolds in a trail of poetry from the crying eyes of God. Inevitably this force transcends time and we can trace it through literature dating throughout human history. Documenting tragedy and delight, we sip wine and savor the tastes of great meats but ought to remember nature can not be bound.
Human history too is full of genuine forces that remain unwavering. Human ambition, for instance, has not changed over the thousands and thousands of years we have been alive. We are asking the same questions as before. I wonder how civility factors in practically--does it imply progress? My wonder stems from the fact that I do work that is little different from the farming work done long, long ago. Or even the pride I feel... is it unique? In other words, have we progressed at all or are we more similar to nature's genuineness than we realize: unwavering. Can we learn from history not to indulge in materialism or to treat our bodies and minds poorly? Is such an exercise futile given our predilection to unending cycles? I do believe though that we can learn (on and individual basis) to diagnose recipes for disasters often manifesting in social anxieties. Our health becomes a question of not just a solitary pain to be treated by drugs but a more holistic look at what is missing in your life. I believe our culture is a map to finding the diets leading to unhealthy lifestyles. Like caring stewards we can creatively analyze warnings of dis-ease and work to alleviate them by finding the natural deficiency.
Our lifestyles are the result of millions of interactions predicated too often on competition. But while in nature competition is only natural, we humans can suffer from excessive amounts. Michael Pollan addresses the issue of biological health in his book Omnivore's Dilemma. Working the land of Polyface Farm in the Shenandoah Valley he heard much of how 'In nature health is the default. Most of the time pests and diseases are just nature's way of telling the farmer he's doing something wrong,' (221). I see a great overlap in philosophies of healthful farming and healthful living. You mighr wonder how such a connnection can be made across species and disciplinces, but I have experienced it myself. Reaching a symbiosis with your environment is essential to clarity. We exist as parts in a whole and if we completely separate ourselves from a complex system we depended on in the past we are invariably sacrificing what might have healed our bodies and minds in a different time.
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