Springing
As it does its part…,
…we’re doing ours.
A concern for, and consideration of, place.
Spring—doing its thing.
It takes me a while to emerge from winter’s sleep (which I LOVE!), but when I do, like the hostas that populate so much of our landscape, I do so with gusto. Once I get started, I remind myself it’s fun and beautiful to be outside participating in “life’s emerging” yet again.
So, reliably, Spring’s doing its part right on schedule.
Caretakers Of A Different Sort
For those of you new to my space, this Substack series was started two years ago come this June to chronicle the days and Elderings of my Dad as he joined our home full time so that I could assume 24/7 caretaking. I like that word: caretaking. Taking care. (Are they the same thing?) For me, it implies a slowing down of life so as to meet and attend to the moment in front of me with reverence and my full attention—as a result, there is mutual, benevolent benefit (for me, and the moment, and anything else in the vicinity). THAT which I care for is enriched in some capacity; THAT I have cared means I, too, have been enriched. Caretaking, as I learned from my care of my Dad, is in large part a selfish act. Selfish not for the ego (that would never be called caretaking!); selfish instead for the growth and spiritual development that results when one gives oneself over to another, completely. In other words, selfish for the Soul.
But you gotta pay attention, slow down, and attend with intention. Minus any of these, even though we may be engaged in the exact same activity, and caretaking won’t result. Minus any of those and you’re just putting in time to get the job over with.
If I go out because I just had 10 yards of compost delivered and I HAVE to get it off of the driveway by shoveling it into our garden and flower beds, then I’m just out there trying to get rid of the load of dirt. If I had delivered 10 yards of compost because I know, like good farmers know, like my dad knew, that one doesn’t “grow a crop” of anything, one cultivates soil so that whatever gets planted has everything it needs to become its full self, then I’m doing something different from work. So I will go out and spread 10 yards of living, organic soil so that an unknowable number of other organisms, other beings, will benefit (flowers, vegetables, plants, insects, birds, deer, humans, etc). I go out to take care of my place in the world, and all those who inhabit it with me, because I care. And I should care. I should care more. We all should. Because, something’s going on on this Pale Blue Dot that is disconcerting; and I feel a deep need to do my part to mitigate what feels like the onset of inevitable, dire consequences of humanity’s indifference to the caretaking of our planet.
I can only take care of our little place on this Pale Blue Dot. But I CAN take care of this place.
Our Part
We wrongly believe we own the land we live on. We know, really, that we don’t—we’re just renters and squatters believing that an exchange of money to get a document that has our name on it, so that we can pay taxes to the local government, gives us the right to say “we own this land. THIS is ours!” By human law, this is true to a degree (I won’t get started on Eminent Domain). It’s the way we’ve decided to inhabit our own places in the various landscapes of Planet Earth. We could have decided differently, because we had different models that were pretty darn successful in living in harmony with the land:
“The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land.
The Great Chief also sends us words of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him, since we know he has little need of our friendship in return. But we will consider your offer. For we know that if we do not sell, the white man may come with guns and take our land.
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them from us[?]”
(Attributed to the great Pacific Northwest’s Chief Seattle, he of the noble Duwamish First Nation’s Peoples, in an 1854 speech to a gathering of dignitaries, including the governor of the Washington territory, prior to the US government’s full take-over of the land for statehood. Washington became a state in 1889.)
There were entire Nations of people who knew, who still know, how we could have lived differently upon the land. But we’re here now. And I think we still need to do our part. Our part in the caretaking of the parcels of land we temporarily “own,” for the mutual benefit of all Souls and Beings.
How?
Through intention.
When Kristin and I “bought” the 1 acre plot of land we live on, a small portion of the land that was the Sacred land of the Snohomish and Tulalip Confederation of Tribes, land in the Snohomish watershed adjacent to the Salish Sea (aka Puget Sound), we made a commitment to take care of it in an intentional, specific way. In our mindfulness and respect for the sacredness and beauty of this place that we want sustained, we engage in the following practices:
Land and soil regeneration and restoration
100% organic—we use NO synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers
Native plant growth
Growth that promotes the land’s use by other Beings (eg habitat, food, water, shelter, access)
Sustainable practices like composting, gardening, and carbon-repurposing
Maximizing use of heirloom, traditional (ancient), non-GMO seeds
Wise use of water as irrigation which includes several conservation measures and practices (I aim to integrate additional water catchment practices over time)
Lawn conversion from cultivated grass to moss and other native ground cover species (we don’t take active measures to produce a lush, green grass for our lawn)
Because we do all this with intention, we took steps to have our parcel of land designated as a “Certified Wildlife Habitat” by the National Wildlife Federation. And so we are! In order to keep our certification, which we are very serious about, we continue to engage in 100% organic practices while we maintain, sustain, and nurture, as naturally as we can, areas for shelter, nesting, water, food, nectar, and protection. And it’s paying off—for our mutual benefit.
We know we share this land—and we know some in other places take steps to keep other beings away from “their” property, steps that poison those beings as well as the land. No judgment here.
My Dad was not an organic farmer—not enough was known of organic farming practices during the time of my Dad’s active farming to raise crops in abundance for a sustainable life with the amount of land he “owned.” So, like the vast majority of farmers (still), we used chemicals and long-term unsustainable, non-conservational practices to grow a mono crop while managing all the various “unwanted” organisms (animal, insect, and plant alike) in order to produce a harvest that ultimately fed us.
Part of what is intriguing about this way of living more in harmony with the land is how much indigenous knowledge that remains available to truly live in harmony with all beings. It has been amazing to be a student of this knowledge. We continue to learn and study. We continue to do what we believe is our part.
It IS a humbling practice—but the payoff has been huge in the amount of beauty we’ve been gifted. And absolutely—it is pleasing and rewarding.
As a result, we’ve been graced with the presence of many other beings: deer, raccoon, nesting ducks, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, butterflies, coyote, opossum, rabbit, squirrel, owl, crow, bats, bees and other insects, spiders, worms, and on and on. None are “pests.” All are fellow beings trying to do exactly what we are trying to do.
We also maintain a compost pile even as we use green-recycling services, and we grow a humble garden not so much to harvest a lot of vegetables and fruit, but more to keep our hands in the soil as a reminder we are a forever part of this land and that, soon enough, we too will be returning to it in order to fertilize the next generations of life.
“If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”
~ Vincent Van Gogh
Effort, Not Work
We are best served when taking care of the land we’ve been given to think of it not as work, but as wise effort. Wise or Right Effort is one aspect of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path toward the end of suffering. With this mindset/attitude/intention, going outside to tend to our land is not work—it’s an engagement, a relationship, with the world and its inhabitants in a very intimate way. It’s doing our part. Here, all we’re really trying to do is be good and responsible stewards of place. To not act so selfishly as to believe all this exists solely for us; but rather that we are here because of, and in communion with, other beings and the sacred land itself.
We, humans, play a part in our world, we always do. The part we play is up to us.
We know we live in a special place (spoiler alert: everyone does!). To make any space you inhabit the place you want to be is among the highest forms of spiritual practice one can have. Because of the relationship I intend to have with the land I live on, and what we are trying to create here, every time I drive onto it from being away, I feel the difference. Every time.
It feels like Sanctuary.
Always and Ubuntu,
~ k
Ahimsa 🙏🏼
Postscript:
I humbly live on the unceded, Sacred, Native Snohomish, Indigenous and Ancestral Tribal lands of the Salish Peoples in the Sultan Basin/Snohomish watershed and adjacent to the Salish Sea in Washington state. I honor and respect all the great Spirit Elders and Ancestors past, present, and future—and I ask for their guidance, protection, and forgiveness.
You’re right, Kert. All land is sacred. I try to remember when I step out into my driveway in Hyannis, Mass, that my land is as sacred as, say, the land where the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree, or the Grand Canyon, or the camino de Santiago.
Always enjoy your post, Kert! Jennifer and I just landed in Flagstaff. Will be here for a week visiting her mom