My whole body feels as if in training. How long can I sit on the rocking stool, isometrically holding the perfect cutting position for our greens crops? How finely tuned has my eye become, to hone in on lurking weeds? At what angle do I have to walk to support the five gallon chicken waterer between spigot and coop? To what extent can my hands withstand the frigid washing station water (delight in which is improving as summer finally arrives in the mountains)? How long can I remain bent over at the waist doing any number of tasks?
The life of the garden pulls focus earthward, the crops, water lines, weeds, bugs and more keeping my awareness in nearsighted lenses. Sometimes we remind each other to take the long view, out across the meadow of spent camas blossoms and up the lupine splotched hills to the remaining bits of snow on Peak One (the rather un-poetically named first peak in the Soldier Mountains series). Better yet, at the end of a day passed in tending our eager vegetable community, we get out of the intimate garden space and into the majestic mountainscape.
This is not easy to do, and fatigue is the least of deterrants. Ideas, projects, problems, any number of things call to one who gardens and farms the day away. Yet stepping away, completely, in mind and body, is essential for some restful essence of this lifestyle. Striding into the hills finds my imaginings elsewhere entirely, perhaps taking distant viewing pleasure in the abundant wildlife, or the distant pleasure of memories.
And despite the abbreviated growing season, despite the brevity of frantic harvest and market schedules, such end of day moments are to be cultivated where possible with as much care as the hot-house basil. Big and small views, balancing our interactions with this land bring our overall focus into a more perfect vision, combining the ecosystems around us with our little private food ecology patch.
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