Gratitude on the side of a mountain

We found the house before June only a week and a half after we started our journey in the car. We found the homestead 980.3 miles after we left home. We panned out what we wanted. We wrote it down & wondered if it could – how much of it could – come to fruition. Surely not all of our desires could come true – could they? Yet last night as we shared in heart council, we realized how uncannily each of our panned out goals have found a place to nest.

How we wondered if we could find 2 acres or more could be found for $10,000 and in a land of 1.5 acres for $150,000, we have found 195 acres of land, 20 of which are able to be cultivated & homesteaded on. Could it be true? I keep asking myself. I truly feel amazed & blessed and this leads to humility. The question, how could I be worthy to steward this? Pops up again and again. Yet is is a question of being worthy inherently? I don’t think so. I think it has more to do with choosing & being called. I feel called to the land. In a sea of environmental forgetfulness and overlooking resulting in devastation, I feel called to tend; to care; to protect as much as I can; to learn the best ways to live in harmony. And to be humble, literally of the humus. Made of the earth & the stars. I am made of the same stuff of which you are made, of which every human is made. In this way I am not different or special. Nothing warrants me deserving this opportunity more than anyone else, except for this: I have set all of my energy on this one thing, making it more important than anything else. Placing my undivided attention on it, this very special and oft forgotten jewel. And it has come to me.

I can’t believe it is here, this jewel. That everyone in the world isn’t clamoring for it. Why aren’t they? The jewel of clean mountain spring water, clean air, soil to tend, forests to bathe in. I am so surprised that there isn’t a line at least 10 people deep waiting for this opportunity. In this way I feel like the luckiest girl on the face of the planet, that I get to share in the stewarding of a remaining piece of undevastated, cared-for piece of earth. For this I feel a lot of humility & gratitude. Humility and gratitude for such a great privilege and responsibility such as this feels like a gift. It is in line with the magic of the earth. In line with what is elementally simple, yet holds profound & infinite possibility. I have never before seen such beautiful, never-planted-in soil before. We tear the grass from the earth & find rich, if a little clay-y, soil. We find Pat, the amazing woman who has homesteaded this land for 26 years, so open & generous with allowing us to be here, dreaming & implemented & sharing & cocreating. Nurturing our shared leanings, she calls it. It’s important for us to be together to nurture our shared leanings. I couldn’t put it better myself. I feel a mass of humility & gratitude of having possibilities before me that are a part of my deepest dreamings.

We are going to experiment here for this year and then speak together to see if we want to continue our relationships with each other and the land. We have already planted a bed of tulsi (the sacred, incomparable, so amazing holy basil) for medicinal tea, tincturing, etc … Dug and planted a bed of amaranth today. The hillsides are akin to land in Peru we were just witnessing and so we envision papas (potatoes), carrots, squash, oil seeds like sunflower & camelina sativa (wild flax) & poppy. The fresh mountain water, unfiltered, unprocessed seems sweeter every day. Big shifts are happening, within and without. I will keep writing more as it unfolds… All my relations! Aho~