Inbound

I get home this evening, and I'm greatly looking forward to it after five weeks on the road.

I'll see Ma'ikwe tonight for the first time (not counting Skype) since I put her on a train in Rochester NY three weeks ago, and I ache to hold her in my arms. When I pulled out of Missouri in late August the soybeans fields were still bright green. Driving through Pennsylvania yesterday, many of there trees were bright red.

Even though it's now October, the weather in Columbus OH was mild enough last evening that I was able to enjoy a rambling what's-life-all-about conversation around a glowing backyard fire pit with my hosts at The Midden (an income-sharing enclave of twentysomethings that owns a multistory turn-of-the-century brick duplex in a working class neighborhood just east of the OSU campus). But winter is out there lurking.

Three days ago I got an email from Trish (Sandhill's garden manager) asking, with some sense of urgency, how quickly I could get to the ever-growing collection of sweet and hot peppers mounding up in our walk-in cooler. The sorghum harvest is already underway at home and all hands are needed to keep up with the workload. I promised I'd be in the food processing kitchen with a sharp knife Wed morning.

• • •

For the past four decades, I've devoted my life to community: building it, promoting it, distilling it, troubleshooting it, and writing about it. Over the years I've gradually felt drawn to doing a lot of my work on the road, to the point where I'm in the ironic position of extolling the virtues of community, while being home only half the time to enjoy them. It's a dance.

I feel there's something essential about my community work being rooted in a living community experience (as opposed to a remembered community experience), yet I strain those connections in a serious way.

Here's what's in the mix:
o  I love what I do, and believe I'm effective at it. Both my community networking (as FIC's main administrator) and my work as a group process trainer and consultant. Further, there's only so much of that work that I can do at home; for the most part I need to be in the same room with my audience. So it makes sense that I go to them.

o  It's important that my community not be so dependent on me that I am crucial to essential functions. In response to my traveling, other members have stepped up to learn what I know about community operations. While there's still plenty of vital work for me to do at home—and they're happy to have me when I'm not on the road—my presence is no longer needed for everything to run well, and that's a good thing.

o  I have a strong constitution and am generally in good health. I can sleep anywhere, don't need a lot of down time to recharge, and can eat anything—all of which adds up to the travel not being that draining or logistically complicated. (Whew.)

o  Because most of my consulting and teaching happens on weekends (when others are not at work and can therefore attend sessions together), I generally have weekdays off, allowing time for writing reports, visiting friends living in the area, and traveling to my next gig. I especially cherish the visiting friends part, as I'd die of ennui if I had to rely on friends journeying to Rutledge to see me. So, just like with my clients, more often than not I go to them.

o  On the other side of the ledger, I am not as well-connected at home as I once was. Not only am I gone half the time, but a significant fraction of my time at home is devoted to avoiding travel (through phone calls and emails with out-of-state connections) or getting ready for travel—neither of which connects me with my fellow Sandhillians.

o  For the last four years Ma'ikwe has been battling the effects of chronic Lyme disease. Since the fall of 2009 she's had two really hard years and two years of semi-normalcy. In the face of her uncertain health, there's a serious question about how well our partnership can work if I'm on the road so much. She's adjusting her life to being home more and we're trying to figure out if I can reconfigure mine so that I still have the work I love and we can manifest a loving relationship that works.

• • •

Today though, I'm not worrying about the challenges; I'm just happy to be driving home. As one of my hosts astutely pointed out last evening, with the life I've created I get to experience the special joy of returning home with unusual frequency. Hah! 

Instead of dwelling on what I don't have, all day I get to savor the anticipation of this particular silver lining—peculiar to the life of a cooperative road warrior.

The Great Blue Heron Highway

I'm just back home after 40 days on the road and it was an incalculable pleasure to see my wife Tuesday evening and to have our bodies nesting again in the night. 

When I left Aug 23, it was still summer. Now it's fall.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I was technically home for about 18 hours Sept 5—just long enough to drop off the car, hand in my trip accounting, roast all the tomatillos that had accumulated in our walk-in cooler [to later be processed into tomatillo salsa, one of Sandhill's signature condiments], do my laundry, repack, and pay credit card bills.)

One of the natural pleasures of this time of year is witnessing the fall migration. This year I experienced my own migration, with the great blue heron as my totem. I've always had an affinity for large birds, and a sense of awe in the majesty of their presence. While great blue herons are not a rare bird and have a wide natural range, I don't tend to see them that often. Interestingly, they were a guidepost for me this past week.

The last stop on my 40-day peregrination was the opening weekend (of eight) for a new round of my two-year facilitation training, centered in North Carolina. Auspiciously, the host for this training was Blue Heron Farm in Pittsboro NC. My training partner for this venture was Alyson Ewald of Red Earth Farms. While I flew from San Francisco to Blue Heron (arriving more or less as its namesake would), Alyson took the train from Missouri.

When Alyson and I departed the Tar Heel State this past Monday, we boarded the northbound Crescent in Greensboro, headed for the nation's capital. As we approached the outlying DC suburbs Monday morning, we glided by a reservoir and there as great blue heron walking along the spillway, trolling for breakfast. Apparently that was an indicator that we were going the right way.

When we detrained Tuesday evening in La Plata MO, we had only a 60-minute drive home to complete our journey. Imagine our shock when we encountered yet another great blue heron on the winding and quiet blacktop of Missouri Route 11, this time standing purposefully in our lane, gazing across the road. Alyson was behind the wheel and managed to swerve out of the the way just in time. Night or day, I'd never seen a heron standing in the middle of the road before.

What was up with all the heron energy? When Alyson and I shared our big bird adventures with Ma'ikwe the next morning, my wife glibly reported:

Among the Ojibway, Heron is the orator. Heron waits in silence to catch prey, and must know both silence and true stillness of self, as well as the appropriate timing to strike. When Heron does strike, it is decisive and without hesitation.

It is time to stop waiting for the "right moment." Heron may be asking you to speak your truth. Either there is no such thing as the right moment, or Heron is helping you see that the time has come. Be forewarned: Heron speaks the deepest truths of our lives and her voice is not pretty. Once you begin to speak, you may find your words to be more harsh than you expect. You are in a situation that calls for this. Heron may be telling you that the time has come to draw boundaries.

Holy shit. What truth am I supposed to be speaking? What is it the right moment for? I figure it's got to be powerful juju when the totem crosses the road.

• • •

There were also a handful of other special moments glimpsed on the journey home. Let me recount three more:

—Sunset on the Mississippi
Yesterday Alyson and I stopped talking mid-sentence as our train slowed to cross the Mississippi River and enter the rail yards of Fort Madison IA. Magically, the sun was at half mast just as we eased onto the bridge—a smoky red ball midway into its graceful descent into the horizon—and the time need to complete its journey exactly mapped onto how long it took for us to reach Iowa. Wow.

I've been fortunate enough to have seen this celestial miracle twice before from the train. Once as the westbound Empire Builder crossed the upper Mississippi at La Crosse WI, and another time on the Hudson, as the Lake Shore Limited chugged upriver on the eastern shore en route to Albany. All three stand out as highlights of my 25-year career as an inveterate traveler of the iron horse.

—Sugar Maples in Full Fall Raiment Knowing that we were now into October, Alyson and I were alert to signs of fall foliage as Amtrak fetched us home. Our best moments came from brilliant red-orange sugar maples that would occasionally pop up in the front yards of suburban Chicago homes, happily visible from our seats on the Southwest Chief as it gathered momentum for the run to La Plata. 

—Dinner with Zoe
Our final evening on the train, Alyson and I chanced to eat dinner across from three-year-old Zoe and her vibrant, tattooed mother Roquel, who were halfway along in their trek from Maine to southern California. Zoe evoked for Alsyon her four-year-old daughter Cole, whom she'd been separated from for eight days—more than doubling the longest they'd ever been apart. It was tender and sweet watching Alyson come alive in Zoe's presence, which invoked the spirit of Cole, whom she was aching to be reunited with after a long week apart. 

While it's wonderful traveling to other time zones and getting paid to do work one loves, it's also precious to come home, being as open as possible to the images and markers encountered along the Great Blue Heron Highway.

I'll Be Home for Christmas; Just Not in My Own Bed

Home is one of those elephant words, whose meaning at any given time depends upon which part you’re touching. As I’ve promised Ma’ikwe that I’d unpack some of those meanings in a blog series, this seems as propitious time as any to begin…

Essentially, I experience home as the familiar yet precious elements of our lives. Home is where we feel seen and connected. It is where we touch our roots and the place from where we fruit. It is at once a paradoxical touchstone that is both now and hopelessly distorted by a past that we can never really return to nor ever truly free ourselves from.

Here’s the outline of my series:

—home as family

—home as place

—home as culture

—home as routine

—home as work

In this first entry, I’ll focus on Home as Family.

Home for the Holidays
Christmas is coming! Whether or not the goose is getting fat or I place a penny in an old man’s hat, I’m going to be with family—which is something I look forward to with relish (often made with cranberry at this time of year). I’m typing this in the partly sunny skies of northern Arizona as Ma’ikwe, Jibran, and I zoom west along I-40, inbound for a rendezvous with my son Ceilee, his wife Tosca, and his daughter (my granddaughter) Taivyn for the long Christmas weekend. Ceilee’s mother (and my ex-partner and dear friend) Annie flew in from Virginia yesterday, and my daughter (Ceilee’s sister) will join us Christmas Day. Ma’ikwe’s got Paul Simon’s 1991 Concert in the Park cranked up on the tape player, and we’ll be there by dinner. Life is good.

When I was growing up, I did Christmas with my parents. By my late 20's, after having a kid of my own, Annie and I started Celebratign Christmas at Sandhill. Now the wheel has turned again, and we parents are traveling to our son's. It's both different, and exactly the same.

While it's important to me to protect time with my kids as much as possible, I especially cherish being with them at holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, where it is possible to suspend one’s everyday routines to be with loved ones for days at a time. Thus, today I’m driving home to family. Even though Sandhill, where my mail comes, is 1000 miles in the rear view mirror, in the sense of the word I’m exploring today home is wherever my family is. Thus, if we‘re all together in one spot, then that location is assuredly home.

This year the timing is nearly perfect. We'll arrive within minutes of when Ceilee is expected to get off work Wed afternoon, and we'll depart Monday morning, just as he's due to head back in.

Home for the Holidaze
As it happens, Ceilee and Tosca live in Las Vegas (the glitzy one in Nevada; not the sleepy one in New Mexico), which is perhaps as great a testament to consumption and excess as one can find. The lights of Ceilee’s Christmas tree will be backlit by the never-extinguished twinkle of The Strip, just a few miles to the northeast. (Given Las Vegas’ tireless efforts to promote itself as a major sports venue, you might think of it as the Magi meets Mammon in the best two of three falls.)

While Ma’ikwe, Annie, and I have consciously chosen lives of inconspicuous consumption (at least by first world standards), my son has not and it’s a measure of our love of family that we’re not going to let a little materialism get in the way of a good time. We all like giving one another presents, and no one will be cheated out of the unwrapping ritual Friday morning.

The greater danger, when it comes to the Holidaze, is not so much getting caught up in a billboard driven urge to see Carrot Top live at the Luxor, as it is to not over-indulge in holiday spirits. In the end, no one is proof against libations with too much proof.

Home for the Hollandaise
There are a number of ways in which I bond and celebrate with my kids, including game playing (the internecine Siedler competition is downright fierce), butchering (we did that at Thanksgiving), eating and drinking (hence my cautionary note above), and even wilderness canoeing (we’re hoping to get up to the Northwest Territories next summer). But for all of that, there is perhaps nothing we enjoy doing together more than cooking. While everyone in the family enjoys dining out, we’re accomplished enough in the kitchen (and sufficiently vain about it) to begrudge a meal out when we can often prepare the same thing as well or better ourselves, and at a fraction of the cost.

Ma’ikwe and I have brought with us new crop piñons from the Land of Enchantment, so that we can prepare a dessert featuring vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, and toasted pine nuts. And we couldn’t resist scooping up two-thirds of the fresh brussels sprouts last night at La Montañita (Albuquerque's local food co-op), knowing how terrific they’ll taste after having been kissed by a frost. We’ll steam them until barely tender and then smother them in home-made Hollandaise. Yum!

Of course, that’s just a taste. In five days there’s sure to be time for such family traditions as plum pudding, a roasted turkey, egg nog, baked garlic, and ribbon sandwiches, not necessarily in that order.

I can hardly wait to find out what we’ll cook up. Just like a little kid, I can hardly wait to be home for the holidays.

The Perfect Farm Holiday

It's late in the year, late in November, and late in the day. A weak sun made a cameo appearance this morning before ducking behind the rolling banks of grey and leaden clouds that have been brooding over Missouri most of the month. Temperatures are in the 40s and should slide below freezing tonight. Most days it drizzles a little; some days it actually rains; tonight snow flurries are predicted. It's been a hard season for deer hunters. Yet for all that, it's one of my most anticipated times of the year and nothing can dampen my spirits: it's Thanksgiving week.

The larder is full, we have wood enough stockpiled to heat ourselves into 2011, and both of my children are coming home for the first time in three years. The agricultural year is over and the gardens have been put to bed. It's time to gather, cook, relax, drink, laugh, eat, and tell stories with loved ones. If you live on a farm, Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday to have others come to you. What better place to celebrate the harvest than where the harvest happens?

Late Monday night I got home from a week in Virginia. After a cup of coffee and some trip accounting Tuesday morning, Emily and I got to work butchering poultry—eight older chickens culled from the flock, as well as the featured guest for Thursday's dinner: our biggest tom turkey. We spent most of the day on this ritual, carefully taking the life of each one, plucking, dissecting, and canning all the chickens. The tom, of course, was left whole (sans viscera), ready for the oven first thing tomorrow morning.

Thursday we'll be celebrating with a joint meal at the neighbors, Dancing Rabbit. I'll go over early to help my wife, Mai'kwe, make tamales, one of her specialties gleaned from five years of living in Albuquerque. My daughter Jo & her partner Peter will be timing their drive in from Toledo to arrive just as we sit down at 2 pm. After a blow-out meal, we'll repair to Sandhill for the remainder of the day, which translates to more laughter, game playing, and drinking, roughly in that order.

Sometime after dark, Trish, Joe, and their one-and-a-half year old son Emory will arrive from St Louis for the start of a five-day visit. We've been courting each other for most of the year, and Sandhill is hoping they'll move up as early as February, when the Earth quickens for the new growing season. Their last visit was Labor Day Weekend (a quarter turn of the calendar back, at the advent of harvest), and I'm pleased to welcome them into the circle on this occasion of wood heat and camaraderie; the days of toasting and being toasty.

Friday, my son Ceilee arrives with his wife Tosca and my granddaughter Taivyn—now a curious and highly mobile 19 months old, and a match for Emory. As Friday will be the only evening my family is all together (Ceilee has a flight back to Nevada Sunday morning to be on the job Monday), I asked to be assigned to cook that day. Cooking and eating together is one of my family's favorite recreational cum spiritual activities, and orchestrating an opportunity to do that during Thanksgiving weekend renders Friday something akin to a high holy day.

Both of my kids grew up at Sandhill, so their coming this weekend is more than seeing Dad. It's coming home.

Cutting Up in the Kitchen
The last time both Jo & Ceilee were at Sandhill was three years ago, also at Thanksgiving. It was right before Ceilee moved from Columbia MO to Las Vegas NV, and he was happy to spend most of the pre-Thanksgiving rifle season on the farm hunting deer. Jo had spent the summer of '06 at Sandhill while she sorted out what she wanted to do after culinary school. Among other responsibilities she shouldered that summer, she raised two pigs, with an eye toward butchering them at the same time as we tackled Ceilee's deer.

All of this came together in the days before Thanksgiving, when the three of us spent three solid days butchering two pigs and eight deer. There are many choices to be made in how meat can be used and we love the art of catering to people's culinary preferences while making the fullest use possible of all that the animals have provided us. It is simultaneously joyous work and sacred work, as we have a bond with our food to honor it, just as it nourishes us.

This year, though the poultry butchering necessarily took pace before my kids arrived, there are still six deer hanging in our walk-in cooler and it's probable that part of the precious time I'll have together with my kids will be spent in the kitchen with meat and knives—where we'll be strengthening familial ties even as cut up roasts and grind sausage.

On the farm, my children learned about the rhythms of seasonal cycles, about finding pleasure in work well done, and about taking time to savor fresh food, the smell of wood smoke, and the campanionship of others. In the coming hours we'll have together, we'll retouch all of these themes, weaving an ever-finer tapestry of connection and contribution—all of which is why I've found Thanksgiving to be the perfect farm holiday.