All the worlds

All the worlds
A meeting of the Stone Barns apprentices

In the true millenial way, Rich and I have a history of 'worlds' we've been a part of. To start, we were born into the age of ubiquitous internet, which means that our world was larger than our immediate existence. Beyond our tangible community of classmates, family, neighborhood friends, and maybe the kids you would meet in the summer at the swimming pool, there was also the online community: The America Online community, chatrooms, the gaming realm for some of our peers and into our teen and young adult years: the first social media contingent, forums, and the blog space. As it turned out we were the first generation of young guinea pigs exposed to the idea of living in more than one place at a time.

Not to mention that we were the "Oh, the Places You'll Go" kids entitled to pursue our amibitions or whims, no matter how far from our village they took us. Growing up with the internet in our lap and then in our pockets, the world seemed smaller than it is and that much more accessible. In a beautiful way, it exposed us to the wider world, instilling a curiousity and feeding it too. Not to metion that our parent generation is the most affluent to have lived, providing for more possibilities, including the encouragement to their kids to see what's out there. Thus, it's so common to meet a peer of mine who has lived in various places in pursuit of work or relationships or life unknown.

I'm not unique in that way. Each place I've become embedded in for a time could have been a dream if not verified by the characters who experienced it with me. I left the world I had known to move to Hyde Park, New York just after high school graduation. A community of hooligans from all over the country, some from outside of it, sprung up on a campus sitting on the Hudson River for two years of training: a sea of us uniformed in chef whites, navigating the tradeschool life together, catching the Hudson Line down to the Empire City whenever we could justify it to get lost and to feel small and to experience the ultimate city of chased dreams. We relied on each other, some dated each other, and then, we graduated and that world dissolved, only to be put back together best as possible like a puzzle during long distance conversations with the few who stayed in touch.

Then, further down the Hudson River, I discovered a new world when I took a farm apprenticeship at a center for sustainability and agriculture, nestled beside the premier farm-to-table restaurant I'd learned about in school. Farmwork is one of the quickest vehicles to getting to know people. You see life and death, you work physically in the elements and experience wonders of the natural world together. (A memory: The sun setting over a pastured hill, riddled with lambs hopping around their mothers high on the first green growth of spring. Ages-old walls, made up of stones dropped during the last Ice Age skirt the field.) Particularly in this case, there was an unparalelled sense of camaraderie. All of us strangers collected in a place pulsing with the energy of curious minds, youthful antics and ambition, late night philosophical discussions, and a sort of spiritual conviction to the land. And so in the rolling hills of Tarrytown, New York, a place teeming with the spirit of those who walked it before us: the Wecquaesgeek people, the Dutch farmers finding fertile ground, the Headless Horseman in pursuit of Ichabod Crane, a network of good humans providing refuge for those navigating the Underground Railroad, mysterious and prominent historical figures with lore tied to their names; our own world took shape. I would meet Rich and the man who married us there, amongst other friends. But in time, the magic that spun that world round diffused as we disbanded and stepped to our next, respective stones. What's left of it lives within me and those who it touched. In this special case, it's embedded in my life because that was the planet Rich and I were on when we began this trip together.

The next stone we landed on was a town in between the Finger Lakes of New York, just north of Ithaca. We were only foreigners in this new world for a brief time before finding where we fit in and tangling with the characters there. We were educated in more ways than one during our time in that place...a bit of formal education, a bit of informal learning by trial-and-error on our first farm project attempt, and then the best kind of hands-on immersion at Blue Heron Farm where we met a cast of characters to work all day with, to then stay up late with on the farmhouse porch, farm dogs at our feet, the outrageous geography of of that region encompassing us all the while. We very nearly accepted an offer to rent-to-own land in that world, far from either of our origins, but chose to become citizens of yet another.

It was a place familiar to me, but only skin-deep as a summer visitor. Rich and I would surmount that status by becoming residents of the tip of Michigan's thumb for two years. It is a world unlike any other. In fact I believe when you're there, you are on one of the edges of the world...a refuge hosted by Lake Huron. The year-rounders there are sturdy in a way different from the upstate New Yorkers who we had just left behind when we boarded our ship. They're a small band of midwesterners, largely of Polish decent, who ride snow drifts in winter like they're at the spring fair. We were quick to find out that we spoke a common language with the people of this new land: growing your own food. It was quick that we formed relationships of respect and kinship with Terry, the gas station attendant who pickled her own peppers, the cook and owner of the soda shop which I went to as a kid who drooled over the tomatoes we would bring him for his BLT's, the folks in town who ultimately seemed delighted to see a young couple growing veggies for market in a place that the younger generation was leaving in droves. It was the two of us in the little cottage on the lake with our trusty dog Mel, and sooner than later a budding new life within me.

Farming Michigan's Thumb

That is when Rich suggested that we return to a world we knew in anticipation of this little one's arrival and in the hopes of finding land to hunker down on. He proposed getting back to good ol' Dayton, Ohio. My Dayton, Ohio...his inherited. This Dayton was different than the old one, having evolved so much since my time away, almost experiencing a rebirth. We would in acutality be settling in Brookville, a quaint town on the outskirts, with its own culture and people. But if there was anything I knew about joining a community, it was that anywhere where there are people, there is a place for you to make a life for yourself and to become one of a cast of characters who belongs.

And so we have, penned-in in 2018. Here we are for the indefinite future, for forever? Likely, this is a longer-term world we've become integrated into and for that we'll grow relationships rich with connection. Here we will ground ourselves to ride through what's to come, and it'll be those connections which will help to hold our hearts still and keep our heads on our shoulders as we do. And all the while, I smile to think that between all the worlds within this world, there has been a through line of good people from varying walks of life who assure me that humanity is inherently good, that we all come from a place of love.

The journal entries to come are inspired by some of those good people :).


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