In the height of my mania to find a house to buy – a process
that took me ten years for a variety of unpleasant reasons – my friend Trudy
read my soul outloud: “It’s a Polish
thing.” I beg your pardon? She continued with utter conviction, “The
Polish people are tied to land. You have
to have it; it’s in your veins to put down roots. You have a connection with the earth.” I couldn’t disagree. (Not that anyone disagreed with Trudy and
could say they were right. LOL.)
I never thought of it that way – that I am tied to
earth. And I think I always presumed all
people are like me; but then I look at the folks who just are content to live
in apartments forever, or rent what someone else owns and I see the
difference. I need dirt that I can dig
into. Real dirt. When I bought my first real shovel I studied
handles for a while to make sure that my new “best friend” would feel right,
that we could work together to make things great. I wasn’t buying a tool. I was investing in a Collaborator of sorts.
Sometimes in the spring when I come across someone who is
stressed, I want to tell them to just go outside and play in the dirt. Digging, planting, waiting, delighting. It’s all part of weaving the tapestry of the
landscape around you. I get high just
paging through the bulb and plant catalogs starting in February. It gives me hope to survive the depths of the
coldest winter.
Then I realized it:
all these catalogs are advertising the same exact plants. It was the cartoon picture of the stupid
dinosaur next to an old tree that gave it away.
I thought to myself, “wait a minute.
I saw this exact picture last week in the other magazine.” I dug it out of the recycle bin and compared
it in utter disgust: exact same picture. In fact, the pictures of the purple perfection
hedge rose and the rose of Sharon hedges were exactly the same in all catalogs
as well. (They cartooned the picture of the hedges, I think, because in real
life, they don’t grow-in as well and tightly as you’d like them to do. So the catalog people draw what they think
YOU WANT the hedges to look like in the Ideal World … where none of us
lives. My rose of Sharon hedges look
like sticks right now.) I started
comparing mailing address labels.
Apparently there is a warehouse-greenhouse combo somewhere that they
ship all these out of. Close your eyes
and think about that for a minute. Not for
too long – don’t fall asleep! But
imagine all of these long greenhouses growing all of these plants and sorting
all of these orders and then shipping them out to all corners of the States to
people just like me- people hoping for beauty and color to augment the
soundtrack of life.
These catalog companies have tapped into the truism that we
are all rooted in earth. I did not
invent this idea; it is as old as the book of Genesis. The name of the first man, “Adam” means
“earth.” So that line from the Hebrew Scriptures
that is utilized at gravesites everywhere is actually a play on words: “You are dust and to dust you shall
return.” “You are Adam and to adam you
shall return.” Kind of cool.
My love for the land is varied – farmlands, forests, a warm
beach on a sunny summer day – it’s all good to me. Different kinds of land; one love. I have the joy of driving through farmlands
every morning on the way to work. I’ve
been driving the same three alternating routes for about five years now. Not much seemed to change until the other
week. Let me explain.
My brain, for five years, was giving me very basic words as
I passed by the sights for five mornings out of the work week: Empty barn.
Empty barn with roof collapsing.
Old farmhouse. Garage. More empty pole barns. That was the north side of the road. I kept wondering what was keeping them from
either repairing or demolishing the barn with the roof collapsing. I know for years my Uncle kept the family
barn up, despite his sisters pleading (or nagging, depending on how you hear
it) with him to tear it down. I get
it. There were memories there for
him. Pieces of his childhood that he
could contemplate at his leisure, just by looking into the back yard. Was this old barn of Central NY also holding
some farmer’s heart captive as it bowed its roof piece by piece, plank by
plank, to its dirt and concrete floor?
On the south side of the street were a series of old
farmhouses. Then something
happened. Someone spray painted numbers
on them. Just one digit in a
series. All of a sudden instead of
seeing the farmhouses as individuals, I saw them as a collection. I realized they were all part of one
story. Both sides of the street were
connected because of the land and the vocation of the people who had lived on
it. These three forest green colored
houses were part of a group.
White shutters were taken down and laid beside the front of
the houses. Debris of life like broken
swingsets were moved. Doors were torn
off. And then across the street the
bulldozer came and brought the great bowing barn to its proverbial knees. This one piece was somehow the emotional
center of all this community. They just
crashed it and trucked it away load by load to be burned by someone who had no
connection to its original purpose I imagine.
Another building that was behind it also was demolished. I was glad to see the junk go in a way, but
in another way I can feel the three green houses across the street standing
like bewildered sisters watching the land appear again where the mighty
structures once loomed.
The barns were a symbol of life and vitality. They housed the moans of momma cows in labor,
and probably the gasps of elderly cows surrendering their spirits. Kittens must have prowled their hay lofts and
a young farm girl was kissed by her boyfriend in the stall where she groomed
her horse. There echoes the sound of a
farmer throwing his wrench in frustration at the dirt when the tractor wouldn’t
start and he needed to begin plowing to plant the corn. A woman in a pink dress and white apron
walked across the street with a thermos of hot coffee cooked on the gas stove
and handed it to him. He winked at her.
This was their life.
They built it together.
Surrounded by family – aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. They are the ghosts of Deep Valley Springs. And the houses alone stand as witness as the
land is returned to its original state.
The spray painted numbers on them remind me that they are part of
someone’s plan now. Next year at this
time, perhaps new families will come to put new houses up and make new
memories. I wonder if, when they shut
off the filters from their in-ground pools and turn down their loud music, they will hear the lowing of the spirits
of the cows who lived in the barn? The
cows always remind people that we are Adam, and to adam we shall return.
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