THIS IS HOME

The garden is partly in. Tomatoes, peppers, and onions; lots of onions. Probably three times as many as we planted last year. Some nice lettuce and other veggies have a nice spot all picked out and prepped. After almost no rain in April we had two inches in the first week of this month. Of course with not much rain we were able to get the beds nice and ready for the good rain. And that good rain does make a difference. You can water all you want with town water and it does ok, but get some good rain and a little sun and things just take off like crazy.

There’s a peculiar satisfaction in watching that garden change and grow. I still believe that anyone who wants to go into politics or command in the military should have to spend a few years working in the dirt. No rototillers, no fancy equipment, nothing with a motor. I’m talking pick and shovel work here. I want blisters. Maybe they’d be less eager to destroy when they’ve learned how hard it is to nurture and protect what’s growing and have those blisters to prove it. Heck that garden they’ve planted on the White House lawn is a good place to start.

Along the way I learned that knitting, baking, buying local produce and ripping out the grass may just be radical if not revolutionary actions. I wonder what would happen if we bombed the Afghan and the Pakistan border areas with loaves of bread instead of explosives? So I'm a dreamer, sue me. Although, I've pinched a few artisan loaves that would be almost as lethal as dynamite if they were dropped with enough altitude. :-)

Along the way I’ve come to realize how much of my identity is tied to the land. Although not just the place on the map that carries the label “Oregon.” It wouldn’t matter what it was called. I wish I could post the pictures that are in my mind right now. But, I did try to put it into words.

This is my take on living in a part of the world caught between the hammer of Oregon’s volcanic heritage and the anvil of that great western ocean. That wonderful, wild not so Pacific Ocean.


I am fire from the heart of the earth;
I am the sun, caught in flowing stone;
I am a pillar of steam, born when glowing stone met foaming breakers;
I am a cloud, gray white and heavy with rain;
I am a drop of rain, fresh water become salt;
I am a wave breaking on wind whipped cliffs;
I am a grain of sand caught in the ebb and flow of the tides:
I am the wind;
I am the land;
I am the sea;


Here I am home.