A thesis (indeed, an axiom): A half-dozen solid friends and allies in the real world (within reasonable distance, preferably walkable) are worth more than 12MM online âfriends.â
Many thanks to Chris & Evie for a warm and wide welcome, and to everyone who helped facilitate (VT Gothic, Livio, Ron, Adam, the Marks, etc.) or put energy into creative and practical presentationsâtalks on small organic farms; energy-positive homestead and siting; scythe & sickle & seed; living in Gaborian collapse; hog and rabbit processing; first aid for wounds; wine & cheese making; homestead defense; outer & inner landscape; knitting, kung fu breathing and yoga chant. Garden harvest and potato-pulling & sorting for primes, greens, and unsolicited vole dentition.
Connections made and fine ideas heated and hatched (like chicks in the henhouse); including a PP dating app (swipe up and downânot left or right); where and how to live (right here, right now, freely); a palpable relief that folks could pull in, pitch a tent in the grassy field and find that no, we are not nutters after all, and even if we are, weâre not the only ones (and our numbers increase dailyâand when they do, thatâll be the new normal); encouraged that thoughtful, decent people are concerned about the same things; hereâs a tribe that wonât imbibe the Orwellian victory gin; helpful people lending a hand, a stove, a chair, hot coffee, a jump start); and as a barometer of sanity, a full weekend without seeing much of those danged phones ⊠flashback to the unplugged eraâumm, yes, the one that extended two million years from the Olduvai Gorge to about 4 1/2 seconds ago.
And of course, the ultimate antidote to all the electronic blue-light crazy-making: the mesmerizing ancient pleasure of the fire, everyoneâs gaze swept into the crisp and pulsing white-orange innards; the crumbling ramparts of brilliant seething coals; the bright tongues of up-curling yellow and the fugitive jets of green and blue; the frank wholesome heat on our faces like sunlight skipping off a beach; face prickly and sun-warm while the middle and lower back feels cool and damp from the dew descending on the outer field, the dew-bank low and broad-brushed against the mountain rising black and humped like the back of a whale; some ancient thing happening here, in this bonfire, this warming circle, the atavistic imax after hunting the ibex, the memory going backâway, way, way backâa mystery unbraiding, the DNA of security itself, the coiled fire salamander in the heart of the blaze.
Tasty dishes and stories shared and consumed. Trading recipes, websites, leads and tips: vendors for IVM and vanishing necessities. In conversational snatches, snippets of mythology, mycology, hydrology, ornithology; passive solar, overgrown rabbit molar, peeling away pig shank and shoulder; ham-smoking, apple-roasting, seed-batching, Blasket Island roof-thatching; beekeeping, maple-seeping, hula hoop fire-sweeping; rammed-earth housing, spirit-rousing, rod-in-hand water dowsing; peeper-to-frog, jumping the bog, shingling the wooly bottomland fog.
Nigella sativa, growth and Shiva, the Federalist Papers and circular kiva; the Faucian bargain of good and evil, tracking the ablative absolute through the forest primeval ⊠[OK, enough is enough, mateâŠ] ⊠all while long, booming freight trains hummed and shuddered behind the screen of trees, blaring their horns off the reverberant quartz of the valley.
On Sunday a bald eagle sailed high across the late afternoon sky ahead of the rising moonâŠthe national bird tipping its wings to a huddle of citizens aiming not to âbuild back betterâ but to save their minds and souls and families and some fertile patch of their country.
Resisting, in a simple human way, the insidious project of the brain-battering propagandists to divide, demoralize, isolate, alienate, confuse; and to reaffirm and rediscover the real-as-dirt community wisdom that Wendell Berry identified as the best bulwark of the Periphery against the mad parasitic Center.
As Bari (and Derek Mahon) said, everything is going to be all right.
Thanks again to everyone, and a hat tip to all other people everywhere constructing their parallel structures wherever they are, tunneling on through these shortening days to better times ahead, but also to the abundant gifts of now, now, Now.
