Built to Survive
May and I made the drive down I-75 to deliver the week's retail orders this morning. I made this same commute in reverse daily when I was pregnant with her five years ago, managing a non-profit farm north of town. Then was the first time I remember shifting into the defensive driver gear. I'm not sure if that could be attributed to the production of mama bear hormone in my body or not, but my senses were heightened with a more fragile being cruising in the car with me, assuming the risk of the road. The particular section of 75 that winds through downtown is notoriously hazardous. Just as the many vessels converge and disperse from the heart, there are a myriad of throughways bringing goods and people in or out of our city, or allowing passage through to the next. Perhaps the frenzy of activity and the change of momentum of merging byways are responsible for the many accidents that kept me from getting home in a timely manner way back when. I remember wondering...If I continue to make this drive twice daily during rush hour, what are the chances that I am involved in one of those crashes? The curiousity was enough for me to shift my time at the farm an hour earlier to get ahead of the rush.
This Saturday we channeled through Dayton during mid-morning, a fairly low-key hour to head to town. As we wound around a bend, catching a view of the Dayton Art Institute, a pick up towing a trailer spontaneously swerved into our lane and then over-corrected, crashing into the median barrier to come to a fortuitous halt off of the road. In the meantime our hearts could have been heard pounding out of our chests...and likely those of the people traveling behind us. The gent driving the truck and his co-pilot were shaken up, but last we saw were collecting themselves on the side of the road, hazards on.
We found our way off of the highway and snaked through quiet back roads. Of course, both of us had to loosen the tensity of our experience aloud together and discussed the engineering of these steel boxes we entrust our bodies to regularly...and seat belts and the best laid plans to stay safe on the road. Vehicles are quite requisite to our modern lives (although my calves would be rather dreamy if I carted our deliveries by bike down the bike path and into Dayton...:)). I despise the various implications of all of this time in the car, but prize the fact that I spend it only twice a week now. AND I am doing it encased in a little box built to survive, on a roadway reinforced with walls to bounce off of, rather than overpasses to lanch from. The perils of those things out of our control have been anticipated and planned for.
On down the rise-and-shining streets of Oakwood. I dropped May off at her playdate and moved on to the quiet lot where I await customers who come to pick up their Foxhole orders. This is a chunk of sacred time for me when I am alone with my thoughts and away from the many things left 'to do' in between pleasant conversations. I couldn't help but sit back, mull over, and admire the design of our transportation. This system and the vehicles that utilize it are built to withstand inevitable and unforeseen hazards and to roll with the punches. This is such a parallel to the best of survivors in the natural world! I'm convinced the best designs mirror those natural ones which have stood the test of time and evolved along with it.
On that note, May has been so keen on anatomy this winter that I've been involuntarily (but happily) enrolled in a sort of at-home continued education course as her interest piques and we spend time with our noses in her encyclopedia. We've reviewed all of the tender, important organs and complex systems housed inside of their calcium fortress. WE humans are endowed with bodies built to weather storms and laden with safeguards put in place for protection as well as regeneration...very similar to that pick up truck. It's quite incredible how we can batter these vessels and still see them thrive. Just today, our very physical little Jack nearly poked his eye out but instead the corner of a table caught his cheekbone, the zygomatic which among many functions shields his precious optic. Just like the good old car, these bodies of ours age and benefit from routine maintenance and preventative care.
And so whatever is under my watch, these bodies sheltered in this wooden-framed fortress of a farmhouse, and our living: the farm, I really want to manage them for longevity. Most especially I am eager to write resiliency into the code of this free-form business of ours, of which we are the sole designers. It is within our abilities to build it to stand the test of these times. To me, the proof is in the pudding with our hens good health and vibrancy and egg-laying, averting the avian flu crisis that has rocked the industrial egg world...and our business still in operation as we slowly grow it thanks to a dependable, diversified market of wholesale and retail stalwarts who demand and consume what we are able to grow and bake. Now about keeping those bodies ship shape to keep growing and baking ;).
Thanks to the generous folks who paid to subscribe to our Foxhole Journal last year, we were able to fund this site for years to come. More importantly, you all encouraged me to expand on my writing, something which I have now learned to make time for and which I love to do. Going forward, we are making all publications available for free. No more pay wall! If you'd like to contribute still, you can fund my writing by 'buy(ing) me a coffee' any time you'd like. The button you see below will be at the end of each publication going forward. Thank you for reading :).
