rolling away from the tree

I fell close to the tree, a chip off the old granite pile.  I fell close to the tree, but everything I want is downhill from it.

I’m not a fan of the metaphorical old orchard.  I have been rolling away from it for a long time now, even rolling through some more recent orchards at the expense of all the good times under the canopies.  At some point I will end up in an entirely different orchard under entirely different species of trees – maybe under hickories and I am an apple or maybe under pears and I am a paw paw.   Or maybe there are no trees at all, anywhere, and I am rolling around among thyme blossoms in full sight of the various stars of a southeastern summer.

All orchards have a lot of contrast, like grass growing between the yellow lines of a rural road.  Similarly, our agrarian places at night have no comparison to our agrarian places during the day.  At night, moist tree frogs attach themselves to any available surface, calling into the dark and into the ear membranes of potential mates, barely puncturing the drone of the various crickets scattered through the grasses.   It isn’t quiet, but it is still.  This is a contrast to the blur of a peaking sun, the quick clanking movements of hand tools among unloved rocks.  Sweat seeps off what looks and feels like a crying body; full and uninterrupted shade is a distant wish.

We move through it all, knowing that any craving for a cold-front is counterproductive to the goals of growing plants for consumption.  So we sweat and we grit teeth and we get headaches and we keep moving.  If we stop we realize how hot we are, how soaked our clothes have become, how miserable we must look.  Compare this to how we look in the blackness and dampness of rural summer; the clay stained knees and greasy hair hide among the sleeping cardinals in the privet clumps.

But what do we really care anyway?  If you are self conscious about being dirty and looking dirty, don’t work with the soil.  Just remember:  Dirt Don’t Hurt.

What would we do otherwise? We can’t go back to any previous life.  To what? To old cities or hometowns, old beer haunts and pool tables, grave markers and faded Christmas trees?  Nah, there is nothing romantic among the ruins and elders.

I have to think about my elders, how I can’t offer them the respect they think they deserve just because they are “elder”.  I used to have a bookcase full of political books with a “Respect Certain Elders” sticker on it.  In this young agrarian movement we are all elders, and we should fully appreciate when others begin to roll away from us and into their own orchards.