Dispatch No. 6: Desert Musings.

It’s hot here, but I knew that already. If you take your finger to a globe and find Tucson, and then follow the 32nd northern latitude east, you will cross the Atlantic Ocean and end up in North Africa. Continue following the line and you will eventually find your finger pointing to the desert countries of the Middle East. 

This is Desert Country—hot, arid, deadly. The weather will kill you just as quick as any animal—poisonous or otherwise—could drain your existence from your veins. 

Driving here yesterday from Santa Fe, I felt like I was in fact in the Middle East. I’ve never been but I’ve followed along on my friends’ and contemporaries’ wanderings and the tales that followed (and CNN’s, too), and yesterday as I looked out my window at the land rushing past, I couldn’t help but to think that minus a few cowboy boots and cowboy hats—and maybe a few pickup trucks sporting Trump stickers and American flags—this might be any number of lonely Middle Eastern ribbons of tarmac snaking their way over the bare and desolate landscape. 

Desert Country. The High Desert. The Low Desert. Canyon Country. Outlaw Country. No Man’s Land. A place reserved for wayward people escaping religious persecution, or bandits hiding from the law, or tribes who knew what it meant to live in this place from centuries of toil—call this place home. 

Or in the case of the latter, called this place home. Now they have been relegated to marginal lands that posses little to no economic value to interest groups of the likes of oil, gas and other fossil fuels. In many cases these people have been reduced to those whose past (and future, too) have been surgically dismantled and tucked away in the pockets of the white man—their societies plucked from ancestral lands so that the chief economic gain of the era could be sought. Their cultures were cast into the wind and their pillaged sacred artifacts cherrypicked to adorn museums’ halls around the country. But I digress.

In the last three years, I’ve spent my summers in the deserts of southwestern U.S.A., chiefly in Utah. As Ed Abbey calls it, “Canyon Country.” It’s a land of red rocks, sage, creosote bush, big skies, and land that stretches to the end of the earth. It’s a barren place when you look at it with unchristened eyes—one that seems inhospitable to any type of life. And to many species at one time or another—humans included—it has been. 

——

Water is at the root of everything here. People have spent their lives looking for it. Societies have built empires around it, worshiping it as a giver and taker of life. One man—a writer among many other things, too—named Craig Childs, spent years stalking illusive desert water in all of its forms. He chronicled his saga with desert water in a book titled, “The Secret Knowledge of Water.” It’s potently beautiful, and almost lyrical in its prose. I’ve gathered from his writing that water is the end-all-be-all here in the desert. Life and death—its presence and its absence the beginning and the end of all things.

In Utah, and in many parts of the southwest, there is a saying surrounding the regional rivers and the larger ones, too—they are “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.” Water holds everything in its palm here. There are small towns, now just dots on a map you could easily miss, scattered throughout the Great Basin in Utah that have come and gone and come again—their lives running parallel to water’s. When it is around, life flourishes. When it leaves, life withers. 

Today things are a little more stable in many areas of the desert—if not only temporarily and synthetically so. Humans have done a fine job at drilling and diverting water and piping it across desolate stretches of cracked, baked earth into their fabricated, air conditioned, golf course ladened oases. Golf courses have never made sense to me, but in the desert where water is the most precious of resources, their presence seems to predicate an underlying societal delusion: all things are infinite. 

In some places, groundwater has been so exploited for human consumption (people also still have front lawns in Phoenix suburbs), water tables have fallen to the tune of over 650 feet. In my recent reading of Craig Childs, I learned that a disruption of just a mere few feet is enough to wipe out massive swaths of underbrush in riparian ecosystems. Though these areas might have little to no surface water, they rely heavily on intact water tables below the surface. A loss of three feet or more in the depth of the water table, and nothing can survive except the larger trees like the cottonwood. With the above numbers in mind, it’s easy to envision the cascading ecological destruction that can befell a riparian zone when humans dig their hands into the dirt. 

But water always has the last laugh. 

June in the desert is called an “ecological bumper.” If you are a plant or an animal and you make it through the sixth month of the year, you’ve punched your golden ticket. Though July registers higher mercurial marks on the thermometer, June is often the driest month of the year, and therefore the most treacherous. When July comes, it brings with it the sweet relief of the monsoon. 

Rain. 

Monsoons are fantastic and chaotic to behold. Violent and often short storms that dump torrential rains in isolated pockets pop up—sometimes daily—all throughout the desert. The skies open up and unleash fury on the parched and desperate land below. Because so much of this county is relatively dense and impenetrable on the surface, and because so much rain falls so quickly, the ground does not absorb the water. Rather it hurls it crushing downwards, following gravity and the path of least resistance. Canyons churn with the foamy red soup the consistency of whole chocolate milk. If the precipitation is great enough in volume, the canyons, washes and gullies flash flood. Boulders the size of small school buses are unseated and sent hurling down canyons. Entire trees, roots and all, are ripped from the ground and sent on a ride atop a wave of water, sediment and rock until they become lodged in a crevice far from the banks where they sprouted from seedling. There’s no reasoning with water when it takes this form—it is creator and destroyer in a blind rage like some animal caged, desperate to break free from it’s bindings. 

There is a phenomenon, called virga, that happens in the desert sometimes when it rains. I’ve most often witnessed it during monsoon season when water falls from low hanging rain clouds but evaporates before it hits the ground. The color of overripe blueberries, the clouds and the rain seem to become one like the wispy fringe of a gown dragging across the sagebrush below. 

The desert likes to put on a show during monsoon season. I used to spend a few nights a week at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for work. After my duties were done for the day, I would grab my headlamp and make my way through the dark along a narrow, paved path to a place called Bright Angel Point on the rim of the canyon. It was a cathartic way to end a day of work—a stroll to the edge of one of the greatest marvels water and earth have ever created. 

From Bright Angel Point, the lodge was under a mile away and still readily visible. During monsoon season, my coworkers and I would climb up some boulders to a perch at the very edge of the canyon, and we would watch the storms roll over the south rim a few miles away. Streaks of lightning would illuminate the heavens, and then the canyon would echo the answering cracks of thunder up to us, delivering the rumbling, reverberating waves to the deepest chambers of our souls. We couldn’t find any truer form of confirmation of our smallness, our humanness, our place amongst and within it all like we found within those monsoon storms. Those purple clouds that were like Thor himself stalking across the sky unleashing beautiful terror as he and they went. Sometimes the sky directly above us would be clear and speckled with stars while the horizon to the south raged. We would huddle together and pull each other close, bodies holding onto bodies in the face of naked, raw power and fury. 

——

When the rains come, the desert opens. Plants reach out, begging for the water, making a wager of all that they are for it. Give me this water and I will grow, withhold it and I will perish. 

After a summer rain, stroll through a patch of previously parched landscape where life seems sparse, and it will be transformed completely—like walking in a botanical garden enveloped completely in the  deep, rich scent of life. There are two distinct smells that are quintessential desert for me: sagebrush and creosote bush. Both of which are especially fragrant after a rain. 

There’s a stretch of road tucked into a river valley on U.S. Highway 89 just south of Bryce Canyon and Highway 12, and before the junction further south with U.S. Highway 9. The Sevier River is responsible for this depression in the earth. If you are ever lucky enough to drive this slice of heaven in the Great Basin after a rainstorm when the clouds hang around a bit before parting to reveal rays of the sun, you will be met with the overwhelming scent of sage. It sits on the air, delicately, and wanders gently on the breeze. If your car windows are down it will fill the tiny space to the brim. But no matter if they are down or not, the scent will find its way through the vents and into your nostrils as if it has one purpose and only one purpose; cleansing your mind. Bathing away the thin layer of salt that covers the body when one walks in the desert. A reset of sorts. A reboot to a baseline of tranquility. 

That’s what sage in the desert does after the rain. 

——

One of my favorite days to wake up to in the desert is a day of rain. I’ve always loved rainy days no matter where I am. Maybe it’s the excuse built into the day to be a bit of a sloth. But in the desert, especially in the summer, a day of rain, one that hangs around like the steady and gentle flow of a clear mountain stream, well they are rare like gemstones in granite. When most days bring brilliant and devastating rays of sun that deliver unrelenting, dry waves of sometimes oppressive heat that can hit like those that escape from the innards of a 450 degree oven when you open the door to check the food inside, a day of rain is a welcome relief. 

In Zion Canyon in early spring or in the shoulder season when summer is leaving— and with it, the monsoons—and fall is just settling in, days of quiet rain fall over the canyon like a blessing. Waking up on these days is special, like being a kid again and waking up to the news that school was canceled because of snow. Right away they feel different. The life in the canyon is at ease. Today will not be a fight to survive in the desert sun, but rather a refuge of recovery under the soft clouds of rain. Their wisps of water molecules congealed together drift in and out of the Navajo Sandstone peaks obscuring some from view while framing others in a hazy fixture. The rock faces that would otherwise brilliantly burn red and orange when the sun shines retreat into a deep crimson that trots towards almost purple in hue. A moodiness descends on the canyon that begs the curious to investigate the hidden mysteries kept tucked away into the far cracks and crevices sculpted over millennia by the Virgin River. In this place called Mukuntaweep, secrets are kept in narrow side canyons, squirreled away under rock piles resting in situ from some ancient slide. Whispers that sometimes escape and echo out, bouncing from stone to stone, can be faintly heard on these days of slow, steady, gentle rain. 

They say, “come.” 

The Paiute who used to call this place home tell the story of Sinawava, the coyote-trickster-demigod, who would sit in the eastern most part of the main canyon, the narrowest part of the 3,000 feet deep hole in the earth—now aptly called The Narrows—and lure young men into the labyrinth of red rock cliffs that tower above the Virgin River and twist and turn becoming just mere feet across the further upstream one ventured. Wandering deeper and deeper, walking up river, the men would never be seen again the legend goes. 

“Come.”  

Days when it rains, maybe it’s Sinawava we hear. 

——

I am always careful when I tell a story that doesn’t belong to me. That story of Sinawava is no different. It is not mine, nor is it my people’s. It belongs to a people whose place in this land far proceeds my ancestors’. 

I’ve told that legend of Sinawava many times now, but I do not make it my own. Not completely. I can’t. I try as best I can to honor it, to not shape it too much to fit my own ends. But that’s not to to say that I don’t search for meaning within it that I can apply to my own life and experience. 

I think we can find value without appropriating, desecrating or fetishizing the myths, legends and creation stories that came from a history not our own. I think it affords us a better understanding of a place and a people and their relationship with the present. And I think if we approach stories not our own in this way, it can guide us to a future of repair and understanding rather than one of further marginalization and ultimately complete destruction. 

Zion Canyon was called Mukuntaweep for many years before white men found themselves in the cathedral-like valley. Mukuntaweep roughly translates to “straight-up land” or “straight-up canyon.” It wasn’t until the area became a national park in 1919 that the name was changed to Zion, stemming from what pioneers belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints called the canyon when they “discovered” it. 

Even when it was protected by the U.S. government as a national monument, it was known as Mukuntaweep. Only after it became a national park was it decided that the name for the place was too hard to say and therefore should be changed. And with the disappearance of Mukuntaweep, so too went the names of many other peaks, side canyons, and bodies of water in the canyon. The Paiute names were replaced with anglicized nomenclature, most of which were theological in nature. Names that were once both elegant and precise were replaced with titles of abstraction. The Virgin River, the river that formed the entirety of the canyon, was so named to replace the title of “Pa’rus” which means “Bubbling Water.” Now if you try and track down the origins of how the river came to be called “Virgin,” you will be met with multiple theories each contradicting the other. But at least they each come from a cannon of whiteness. 

To me, the place is called Mukuntaweep. 

——

I am laying underneath a silky blanket of stars tucked into my sleeping bag with nothing above me to obscure my view of the burning diamonds innumerable in the sky. 

This is cowboy camping—my favorite way to pass a night in the desert. No tent. Just a sleeping bag and a sleeping pad. The sky is my tent. 

I’ve only woken up once to a winged critter in my sleeping bag, and he was cordial enough to quietly depart when coaxed from his perch on my shin. I do not worry about snakes, spiders or scorpions. If they should find their way under or into my sleeping bag, I just hope they will conduct themselves as politely as the unknown beast who kept me company in that one and only encounter I had. 

This night in particular is one that is seared into my mind so clearly that when I wish to recall it, it’s as if I took a picture of it. One that I can now hold in my hands whenever I wish to remember. 

It’s September, early in the month, and I am in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument doing research for a hiking trip that I will be guiding the following year. I spent the day driving my rental car up here from St. George. I came up Interstate 15 through Cedar City onto Highway 14 which took me up through the mountains winding through fragrant, piny sub-alpine forests past Cedar Breaks National Monument. It’s one of my favorite drives in this country. 

It’s lonely, though, especially on this outing. I was nearing the end of my second season as a guide, and I already had almost a full summer under my belt of leading trips in Utah and Ireland. I had only seen my partner once this summer and had not been home to see my family since April. I was embarking off into a country that was ground zero in the public lands battle unfolding in courtrooms across the country—an issue so vast, so convoluted, nuanced, spun beyond fact, and that had devolved into nothing more than identity politics masquerading as “in the best interest for the locals while guaranteeing energy independence for the nation”—whole sale selloff of pristine and sacred lands to the highest international extractive bidder. A really big problem for the locals, a big payout for a few select folks, and a symptomatic-piece of the bigger problem all of us face: our fossil fuel addiction and the changing climate it is driving. 

I was worn out and worn down—a feeling that the desert amplifies. Lonesomeness can stretch out to beyond the horizon—enveloping everything and all that is— when you are in a place like this. 

But there in my sleeping bag, zipped into warmth, safety and security, I felt like I had front row seats to the best show on earth. 

Earlier in the evening, I had made a small fire in the sand out of some dead sagebrush that had been uprooted in the last flood to come through here, and was thinking about Ed Abbey and how he was adamant that one never take living desert wood to build a fire, especially that of the Juniper since it can take hundreds of years to mature. I came to the conclusion my dead sagebrush kindling would be ok with Abbey. 

After my soup for dinner, and when I finished my last glass of wine as I watched the embers wane in their tired light, I slipped into my Marmot 50/50 synthetic/down bag to get some sleep. 

The sky in this part of the country is known for being prime for stargazing. It’s so remote, so isolated from the synthetic glow of the human enclaves scattered throughout the southwest, that there is almost no light pollution, no obstruction of the stars in the sky. 

It’s a rarity in today’s illuminated and enlightened world to see the night sky like that, so much so that cities like Tucson have ordinances in place to protect their skies once the sun has set. National parks like Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef are designated “dark sky” parks. It’s a concept I can’t quite wrap my head around—the fact our night skies need protection. Sure I understand the noble aim of the protections (and yes, we absolutely need them), it’s the root of the necessity that darkly amuses and confuses me.  Us humans are so diligent in separating ourselves from the natural world. We are so adamant that the uninterrupted procession onward of the advancing march of technology take us out of the dark, that we have forgotten what it is like to look up and see the stars.  

So I felt lucky to be where I was on that night. 

I didn’t sleep much, but rather drifted in and out of consciousness only to jolt awake to behold the brilliance above me. There was no moon, but every light in the world might as well have been illuminated—the stars were that bright. 

I finally dosed off for a longer episode of sleep but shot awake for no reason in particular. Until I rolled over to witness a blazing streak of balled-green-fire tumbling across the sky, its tale of sparks drifted like dust and followed along behind it, settling gently amongst the stars. It lasted maybe a few seconds in total, but those ticks of the clock could have been a lifetime. I was transfixed. That ball of gas int he sky and my human flesh became one. I was a part of it and it was all of me. 

Something jolted me awake to see that meteor. Some unseen hand shook me into compliance, to witness, as if to say, “Look. Behold this and feel alive.”


Dispatch No. 5: Something Different; A Rant on Meat, Farming and Why You Should Not Eat Meat Substitutes.

Let me preface this entire piece with this: I do not want to belittle or devalue anyone’s choice to not eat meat. Whatever your motivations are for choosing to keep it from your diet, kudos. By writing this, I only wish to illuminate some info that I’ve found, read fairly extensively upon, generally agree with, and have found to be helpful in my own life. With that said, I might read something tomorrow that completely changes my point of view rendering what I’ve written here useless. But probably not.

Ok. Here we go.

So you want to change your diet because you’ve read that it is a way little old you can help out with this whole environmental destruction/catastrophe/apocalypse thing, otherwise (more benignly ) called “climate change.” Well let’s talk about how swapping your Whopper for an Impossible Burger might not be the best way to go about it.

1. Meat substitutes are often derivatives of industrially farmed soy or other legumes or cereal grains.

The key here is ***"industrially"***. It took a really long time and a lot of money to develop the Impossible Burger. And to make that affordable for you to purchase, it has to now be produced in an economy of scale and fall in line with our already established structure of not paying the true value of food (a phenomenon that is as old as capitalism itself and is one of the cornerstones that undergirds modern, global capitalism...if you want more info on that, read the highly entertaining and enlightening A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things). 

Industrially produced anything—food being one of them—by today's standards (usually), is not great for any of us, let along our supposedly beloved planet, for a few reasons. Wendell Berry likens modern industrial farming to mining. He explains that farming has basically evolved (or devolved, I might add) into an extractive industry. Comically colossal amounts of fossil fuels are necessary to power machines to breakthrough what little remains of the irreparably compacted top soil to plant genetically identical mono crops which are then bathed in pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer (fertilizer runoff is one cause of those pesky algae blooms we get in the Gulf of Mexico and small ponds near big farm fields). Yum. 

Then lets talk about the massive expenditure of water for this mutant crop (water that has been poisoned by the application of the aforementioned chemicals). Healthy soil acts like a sponge, unhealthy soil does not (and our soils are NOT healthy because of modern farming practice—mono-cropping chiefly to blame), so more and more of our crops need increasingly massive amounts of water (often irrigated from far off sources via damning which dries up precious, down-river water tables necessary for maintaining local ecology at their sources, an issue that will only get worse as the climate continues to get hotter causing longer and longer droughts further depleting already taxed water tables) to reap the yields necessary to maintain the volume to satisfy the economy of scale that will keep the commoditized grain affordable to turn into fake meat.  

That's before it gets to the production facility. So let's get that basically synthetic grain from field-to-silo-to-maybe another holding facility-to-production. Lots of trucks, trains, maybe a barge or two, and then to the facility! This should read: a metric fuck load of fuel expended which equals another couple metric fuck loads of carbon into the atmosphere; the key word here being CARBON, which we all know is the major buzzword in contemporary environmentalism. Yeah it's bad, but it is only one piece of the fucked up puzzle. Anywho, I digress. Back to fake meat. 

Ok so now we are in production. The soy and other cereal grains come together with some pretty unsavory characters (Water, Soy Protein Concentrate, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Potato Protein, Methylcellulose, Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin, Salt, Soy Protein Isolate, Mixed Tocopherols (Vitamin E), Zinc Gluconate, Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Sodium Ascorbate (Vitamin C), Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12).

All that comes together to form your “burger.”

I don’t even know what half of that shit is. As Michael Pollan says in An Eater’s Manifesto, “Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable or more than five in number.”

It’s bad for you and it’s bad for the earth (so it’s bad for you TWICE). 

Point: Don’t replace one destructive big business with another. 

2. Ok so you're not sold on eating meat, but you sure as hell don't want to eat that shit that I just described.

Great. 

You can be vegetarian (probably vegan, too...I've just never gone that far) and have a balanced, healthy diet, and even enjoy eating, too! The point is to not substitute your old behavior and habits with quick fixes. Avoid the Ctrl+h (find and replace) method of diet based (or any type of) “environmentalism.” To make a meaningful change, it takes a change in behavior. 

Substitutes like tofu or seitan can be an ok alternative, but check the ingredients list. That little parcel of soy goop wrapped in plastic probably has some funny looking additives from places like we talked about earlier that have been molded in a similar manner to our Impossible Burger into the form that you now hold in your hand. In my experience, you have to do your homework when sourcing tofu and seitan just like you would any type of meat.

Seek out whole foods that are as local as you can afford. Unfortunately, we live in a supposedly enlightened, developed, and modern society where food deserts are a reality. Rural areas, inner cities, mainly geographically manifesting in communities with significant populations of color or low-income individuals (poor whites), fall prey to these deserts, so what I am talking about pretty much doesn't work in those cases because of literally zero means to access and little to no means to purchase whole foods. This is a tangental issue that could and should be its own independent post. I don’t mean to just blow this off.

You might find that you live in one of these deserts where whole, local food is not a reality for even part of the year. 

But at least try. Strive for it if nothing else. Whole, nutrient rich food is sacred and is a right.

Which brings me to my next point.

There is a misconception that eating well is a privileged act. In some cases it can be (like in food deserts), but history shows us time and again the story of the poor sustenance farmer who eats well. That is a glorified and grandiose example that some might argue requires application of rose-colored glasses to look nostalgically back to a past that never existed (another post needed here, too, about the reality of the history of sustenance farming), sure, but my point is that eating well—eating with an environmental conscious— is attainable. As Michael Pollan says, “Pay more, eat less." Re-focus your values and allot more of your income (as in redistribute your personal wealth) to eating well. It’s a powerful gesture, one that will pay off for you and for all of us. 

It sounds counter intuitive, but paying more for whole food makes sense when you break it down. Less food with higher nutrient value will do the body good, better than more food with fewer nutrients. And less food in general (if you come from a place of relative privilege, not from a place of poverty) can lead to a healthier life overall. And it keeps money in local pockets. 

Change your behavior. Learn to cook what’s locally available depending on the season. It keeps life interesting and it will connect you to your home. 

3. You’re going to keep eating meat. 

Cool. So am I. 

This is something I have struggled with and go back and fourth on frequently. There’s been many a dinner at my sister’s farm where she has cooked a beautiful piece of meat butchered from my brother-in-law’s own cow, and I would protest eating it even despite the fact that it was about as local as you can get. I based my dissent on the the grounds that eating meat, no matter it’s origin, perpetuates the overall demand for meat. Whether you are purchasing dumpster-ground-chuck from Walmart or a NY strip butchered from a cow you met this morning, you are still participating in the market for meat which, I think in theory, drives a macro demand for red meat that comes from cows. WHICH=bad for the earth. Maybe. This is a hard one to pin down still. It is inarguable that industrially farming grains to feed industrially raised livestock has measurable, detrimental impact on our earth (and in turn our health). That much is true. But does that mean we completely eliminate any type of animal husbandry, specifically the bovine kind? That’s a tricky question. 

More and more, we are discovering the benefits of regenerative agriculture and raising of livestock. That means raising plants and animals for human consumption in a manner that more closely aligns with the natural rhythm of the wild world. Rather than shaping an ecosystem to fit our needs, we shape our needs to fit in within the already existing ecosystem. This is nothing new to generations of farmers all over the world, but has been all but lost (and is under attack currently as industrial farming continues to expand globally) in contemporary times. 

Raising animals and plants suited for a specific environment in a way that acknowledges the already existing ecosystem there has been proven to not only enrich that ecosystem, but also aid in repairing it. So no industrially farmed cereal grains meant for livestock feed to be fed to large-scale, industrial herds, but instead local grass and forests grazed upon in a revolving manner by small, “human scale” herds that maintain the integrity and health of the ecosystem. 

That’s pretty counter to the dominant way of doing things currently. Right now, we shape the ecosystem to meet our needs—removing, restructuring and often destroying what already exists. We don’t raise cows suited for the environment in which they are currently “grown” (sounds gross, but that’s pretty much how we get industrially raised beef). Black Angus, which originates in Scotland, probably shouldn’t be raised in the largely desert southwest. 

Integral to this paradigm shift from current agricultural conventions to regenerative practice is a draw down in the demand for red meat. We have to eat less red meat overall, and completely stop purchasing and producing any type of red meat in an industrial manner (stop buying your meat at Walmart). Congruent to that, small (or even small-ish) local farms that raise their cattle in a regenerative manner cannot and should not be expected to meet the current demand for cheap meat that exists because of industrial production.

We need to eat less meat (I think I said that earlier, I’ll probably say it again later).

If it’s suddenly mandated that I can no longer eat meat, ok, so be it. But right now, I am going to keep doing it, partly as a form of protest. I will pay a lot more to eat meat once in a while to drive the demand for meat that was at no point a part of an industrial complex. 

So if you feel me on this, keep eating meat, but keep it local and “human scale” (not industrially produced). Know where it comes from. If a forest had to come down for the herd you’re eating from to exist, don’t eat it.

Meet the farmer. Hell, meet your cow that you’re going to eat. That shit might change your mind all together—if everyone had a meet and greet between their t-bone and themselves, we probably would have a lot fewer meat eaters in general. 

Be wary of “grass fed.” Know what that means. A lot of times, grass fed does not mean grass fed. For instance, Whole Foods has a policy in sourcing their meat that only requires cattle to be grass fed for 2/3 of their life. They might start on grass, end on grass, but in between guess what—grain! 

Dig deep to know where you are getting your bovine protein. 

Eat it just once and a while, and find other forms of whole, plant-based protein. We eat WAAAAAY too much red meat (I’ve mentioned this before I think), just one of many symptoms of the “need for cheapness.” I like to think of Yvonne Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, when I eat meat. In an interview once, in talking about eating meat, Chouinard said he eats a little bit at a time when he does eat it; “I don’t need a 16 oz porterhouse.” Let’s all be like Yvonne. 

4. Most of this can be applied to any type of animal protein in any form; chicken, chicken eggs, cow milk, cow cheese, goats, goat milk, goat cheese, hogs, lambs and fish (but really…fish is a whole other topic.) 

Know what you’re eating. Don’t fall prey to corporations’ marketing schemes selling you quick-fix-meat-substitutes. This will only replace one problem with another. 

At this point, environmentally speaking, we’ve all got blood on our hands (if you are living in our western, consumer society, you’re culpable in climate destruction), but there is a possibility of forging ahead honestly and ethically. Be mindful, patient, and fervently inquisitive at every step of the way, and slowly maybe things will change.

Dispatch No. 4: The Trees.

Part 1:

Lately I have been looking up at the trees. I have always done this—looking up to see if the tops were visible—if they were blowing in the wind or just standing there, waiting. 

Trees have always been a friend to me. I grew up around them. Under them. On them. They protected me. As a child I would run off into the woods that surrounded my home and I would disappear for hours under the canopy of the forest. I felt safe in the clutches of the branches. I could freely sprawl out across their roots as my imagination churned, an adventure unfolding in my head as some story of why I was there took shape. 

They watched over me as I played. And they took me to other worlds. 

But they kept me grounded here in the present on this earth in my own human body. And as I grew, my relationship with them grew. My awareness of the trees changed and matured.

Now that I am older, I have begun to work with the flesh of the tree, shaping it’s fibrous body into whatever I desire. There is something deeply intimate, sacred if you will, about stripping away flecks of wood to reveal a hidden beauty. It is both wonderful and horrible at the same time. A troubling duality: to maim a thing that is already beautiful enough in its own right; a true natural beauty. To manipulate it in a way that appeases my desires as if to say, “Tree, you beautiful, wonderful, natural thing, you exist for me, and for me alone,” is horrible, really. It certainly maintains the notion that humans belong at the center of it all. 

But I can at least reconcile and validate my obsession by strictly using only wood that would otherwise go to waste or rot. Which I guess helps me sleep at night. Even still, the wood that goes to rot serves a purpose within the forest where it fell. I clearly recognize my hypocrisy here. I own it, don’t worry. 

—

Part 2:

The smell of trees, no matter the season, is one that moves me to other times. Back to those days of naive youth when I would escape to the dense, deciduous Illinois forests to play and dream. In the woods, the smells perpetually change with the passing of time like some passive, ethereal clock tower whose hands slowly move onward with no end in site, and our only glimpse of this keeper of time is through our noses.  

And so it goes on, and each season brings with it a different aroma—no two alike. 

In autumn it is the sweet smell of musky rot. Rich with the decaying sugars from the saturated leaves — the air is thick with it. The long days of summer are just a memory now, buried deep under the fallen leaves and blown away on the winds of the changing season. In their place is the promise of decay. But it is not all melancholic—no—this decay catalyzes new life if we only wait long enough and look for it when it comes, and nurture it when it does. 

Decay can be that way sometimes. As things fall away, little symphonies of externalities flourish in the holes left behind. But sometimes we must wait. 

And so as we wait, winter descends upon the forest, and it is bitter. It can be unrelenting if we let it, and the absence of smell is almost overpowering. It is the absence of life. The trees have withdrawn into themselves, rationing their stores for spring. In the absence there is room left for you to leave your own scent under the trees. Your own bit of life as you wait for life to return. In the woods in winter, I leave only the smell of my breath as it passes through a scarf wrapped around my neck. 

And then spring breaks through the frozen ground fresh and new, melting away the ice of winter, shaking of the last bits of snow. Creation breathes again into the waking forest. The lungs of the earth sigh deeply for the first time after waking from their long winter’s nap. Everywhere life is opening up again, unfurling along the ground, budding from the branches, slowly but steadily descending upon the wood. The soil pulses with tiny universes too small for the eye to see. But I know they are there. I can feel them when I dig my hands deep into the soil, trapping it under my fingernails. The universes are there. 

Then finally summer. The climax. The crescendo of life in the woods. The heated air melds the smells of the forest together. Trees, and all that they foster and nourish, harmoniously together like a warm pond of water lapping at it’s edges in constant, uneven waves, delicately suspend the smell of summer just above all that is in the forest. The scented waves slowly ripple across the leaves, always moving outward. Always moving onward. Always beginning again. 

—

Part 3: 

The trees are the sentinels of the forest. They keep watch over the woods, and all that inhabit it. 

Lately I have been looking up at the trees. But where there was once a childhood-naive-joy, there is now a cavernous sorrow that has welled up from deep within. I don’t know when it started. Maybe when my curiosity drove me out of the dark and into the light of understanding. Understanding that we are slowly killing everything that the trees watch over. Including ourselves and the trees, too.

Death has always been a part of the cycle. But what we are doing now is not normal. It is not natural. 

I think I feel shame when I look at them now. 

The trees know what we have done, what we are doing, what we will continue to do. They have always known. The follies of progress are nothing new to the stoic watchers of the wood. 

If only they could speak. Would they cry out to us? Would they condemn us? Offer us forgiveness? Guidance? Understanding? I cannot say. 

If I were a tree I would ask to be left alone. Too long has the hand of humanity greedily reached into the forest to take what does not belong to us. Too long have we felt entitled to shape the world we inhabit. To rape, pillage, plunder, burn, turn, desecrate, dismantle what has existed long before we ever walked this earth. In the name of civilization, society, church or state we have taken what has so graciously existed for eons before us. A gift—the natural world—bequeathed to us and all the living and nonliving inhabits of this earth— that we have tarnished so deeply. Because we think it is ours and ours alone. Meant for us. We are at the center of it.

 I am not sure if it has always been this way—humanity’s needless reach for more. Depending on what you ask of whom, and which pundit you dig up from the sludge of contemporary science, politics, or economics, you will probably find that to some degree it has been. Or you might find the opposite to be true— that it has not always been this way. That it is contemporary human thought that has driven us to the wasteland of existence we now call modern life—modern, western society. 

The trap of progress has gotten us here. Humans have always sought to leave the darkness of where they currently reside. But somewhere along the way we sacrificed a part of ourselves to this quest for better light. Somewhere along the way the script was rewritten and we consented to a new way of doing things. One that encourages—even glorifies— complexity over simplicity because complexity takes science, research-and-development, innovation, creativity, cunningness. It takes schools of thought and schools of higher education. It takes rules, regulations, and folks to enforce them. It takes authority and uniforms to exercise it. Whether the uniform is a suit and tie; robes and cross; or fatigues and rifle, the end game is the same: fall in line and do not get in the way of the forward march of progress. The smokey, smog-ridden, murky water-filled, barren-land-ridden path of progress. Of salvation.

Somewhere along the way, we turned our backs on nature. And on ourselves. We have since neglected our place within the wild world. We have erected a barrier between nature and the society we have built. Our animal-selves that belong amongst the natural cycles we are so keen to disrupt and redistribute for our own amassing of material wealth have been lost along this road of progress. And I think some of us feel it. Maybe we all do, at some level, feel the loss of ourselves. But maybe that’s what medicine is for, after all. 

Now I am not a Romantic—I do not wish to return to where we have been. I acknowledge and understand the necessity for humans to move forward. But I also don’t romanticize about the future either. There is nothing grand waiting for us with the path we are taking. The Old Ways have their use, I think. They have their importance. It seems that often we concentrate so heavily on reinventing the wheel that we neglect to acknowledge that simple ways of doing things are sometimes best. 

There is sacrifice, yes. Embracing the ways of long-forgotten skills and ways of life seems to take nothing but sacrifice. But I can think of no more worthy sacrifice than a bit of comfort for the preservation of a natural system free (or as free as it can be) from the toxic coal-black hand of humanity. 

Lately I find myself empathetic to the notion of thoughtful objection to unchecked growth, advancement and innovation specifically within the realms of technological systems, economic systems and parallel; societal systems. I can almost hear the cacophony of jeers chanting, “Luddite!” But if you sit back and really take a look at things, I mean really look, can you sit there and tell me that where we have gotten to is really worth the desecration we have caused? The ecocide we continue to bring down upon this miracle of a planet we have been lucky enough to call home? 

For me the answer is a harsh “NO!” Obviously it’s a complex problem. With manifestations of conflict beyond the oversimplified stream of consciousness that I have just spewed forth supplying only my limited and narrow view on the way things are and how they got to be such. But still, I thoughtfully and peacefully object. 

I don’t really know where this line of thinking will take me, hopefully back to the woods where I grew up. Hopefully to a nice spot beneath an old White Oak where I can just sit and look up at the trees. 

Dispatch No. 3: The Pond.

There is a pond nestled back in the woods in east central Illinois that is one of the most beautiful places on earth. It’s not very big, maybe an acre or so, but it’s quiet. Rimmed with old growth forest that reach all the way to the water’s edge, it sits in a bit of a horseshoe shaped valley. To the north, a small drainage wash from the higher ridge-line above feeds the reservoir when it rains enough. At the southern end of the water, and the open end of the horseshoe, there is a treeless damn that holds the water in and breaks up the forest. To the south of the damn, the land falls away into a steep ravine with a small creek a the bottom of it that feeds into Whet Stone, the prominent creek in the immediate watershed on this plot of 137 acres. From there, the water drains into the Embarrass River to the west.

On all sides of the pond but the southern end, the tree-covered land slopes upwards, and when you float to the middle of the water and look up to the sky from your back, the trunks seem to stretch all the way to the clouds. 

The pond was dug by my family. And it was truly a family undertaking. Everyone worked on it. My mother fondly remembers toiling away with my grandfather (her father-in-law) during the digging. They would work until midday and then stop for a Pepsi. Always a Pepsi. Never a Coke. 

My uncle almost lost his leg to that pond. One day while running a chainsaw to clear away trees so that ground could be broken and the hole could be dug, my uncle’s thigh and the teeth of the saw blade became one. He remembers riding in the passenger seat of my grandfather’s truck (his father) on the way to the hospital 30 minutes away, turning talcum-powder-white and trying to keep his lunch in his stomach while my grandfather employed him to not bleed on the seat. 

The pond is a marvel. A man made marvel. Beautiful and horrible all at once. It’s a scar on the landscape, one that will remain for sometime, but  the damn on the south end of the pond that holds the water in will eventually give way to the natural rhythms of water and time—erosion. 

And the whole thing will be for naught. The old-growth white and red oaks—organisms that had been on this earth much longer than my family had known of this land’s existence— that came crashing down for the puddle that would provide water to my grandfather’s home— they will have fallen in vain. 

I have spent hours upon hours at that pond. It’s where I learned to swim and how to catch a fish. And how to eat a fish I’ve caught, too. I fell in love—more than once— on late summer afternoons under the gentle sway of the towering oaks moved by the velvet warmth of a midwestern summer breeze. I’ve picked wild blackberries from the south slope of the damn and let the warm, rich juice run over my hand and down my arm before stuffing them in my mouth. I’ve swam naked at midnight under the stars of a new moon sky, and then dried out by a fire on the bank. 

I have done a lot of living at that pond. 

One summer, my best friend and I decided to build a dock on the water. For years, a pontoon boat that belonged to my uncle had slipped into disrepair as the seasons passed and took their tole on the sad vessel tethered to the bank. We were seniors in high school and had grand notions of the perfect place to bring our friends to drink cheap, contraband beer. So we started to dismantle the boat as it floated there on the water. 

We stripped it down to the pontoons and aluminum deck beams. We loaded the carcass of what we had dismantled into the back of my dad’s pickup and drove it into town where we disposed of it in a number of dumpsters down back alleys. A real shady deal. 

Next we went to the lumber yard and purchased sheets of plywood and some rugged exterior paint. In a day’s work, we had a floating dock that we could maneuver with the help of an oar (and for a brief time an ancient trolling motor wired to a car battery) to any place on the water. 

For two seventeen year old boys, it was an engineering miracle, and one we were not shy to show off to our peers. 

The completion of our floating party barge stoked the fire in our minds. Next we would build a rope swing. This would be a bit bigger of an endeavor. One that required diesel-powered machines to aid in moving a telephone pole about 800 meters down to the water’s edge. We made it as far as digging the hole and getting the pole next to the hole. 

The abandoned infrastructure project still sits where we left it, littering the woods next to the water. 

—

When my father and his brothers decided to sell the land, and the pond with it, a piece inside of me broke free and floated out into the middle of that cool water of my youth. That was two years ago now. In the time since then, I went out into the world and lived my life, traveling the western and eastern United States and Ireland. But a piece of me still floated out in that pond, lapping up and down on the water stirred by a western wind. I would think about it often when I would scroll through photos on my phone and come across a snapshot of a largemouth I’d caught from underneath a low-hanging branch near the bank. I felt the hole that had formed within me, the piece of me that had already left and floated out into the murky water. I guess that’s why when the sale of the land was finalized a few weeks ago, I didn’t fall under the wave of grief I saw swelling on the horizon. The one that swept my mother and sister away. It had already come and gone and taken a piece of me with it. 

I went back this spring to visit before the closing of the sale. My father and mother where going back out to my childhood home to gather any last minute possessions that had been forgotten — collecting years of dust in the time since either of them had lived there. We spent about a week driving the 8 miles between town and the land. And at the end of each day when we had finished working, I would walk up to the pond and fish. On one of those days, I had the best outing I’d ever had on that water. I couldn’t keep the fish off the end of my line.

And that’s how I’ll remember that pond. The fish are still there. The water is still there. Maybe I’ll go back to visit again someday. It was never mine anyway—it was never any of ours. The oaks, maybe. But no one else’s.

I just got to spend some time there and watch the seasons change and the earth spin on — which is fine with me. 



Dispatch No. 2: The Brook.

A brook in August. Eleven o’clock sun bathes the woods and our tired bodies in washed out rays. The grit of salt and sand layered on our tanned, bug-bitten skin from days on the bike and nights in the woods sheds away into cascading waters. 

Rhythms of time echo across the rocks in this little valley that’s been carved by the brook. A constant drumming of a symphony of which we are only a lucky audience. Slight asides are uncommon, but they do come eventually, and one must sit for a while (at least) to hear them. 

Time is always old where waters flow. The smoother the rocks, the more has passed over them. Time mainly, but water too. Water pulling Earth with it. Earth and stone. 

If one wants to feel the Earth, hold a rock. Or stand on one. There are stories that rocks tell if you put your ear close and listen. And then there are the ones they will never tell—the guarded memories deep within them that by the grace of the universe will hold fast. 

When I am among rocks, and especially where water flows over them, I feel as if I am a child sitting cross legged on the floor listening to a story being told to me. And here today in this brook in Vermont it is no different. 

—

The water is cold when we slide down the rocks and step into it. Count to three, hold your breath and go under. It’s piercing absoluteness purifies. 

Someone has built a swimming hole here (or for us a bathtub) by piling some of the stones together to create a little damn. Behind it, the water is maybe three feet deep. Deep enough to bathe. So we do. 

It’s been a long morning. Rain the night before has left us perpetually saturated. We rode hard yesterday. Or she did anyway. I cracked open pretty early at the top of Lincoln Gap. And from there it was over for me.  At one point a 23% grade—it’s coined “the steepest paved mile in America.” 

I know why now. 

But this morning in this water, yesterday and every hard day before it, really, seem to dissolve away. Carried downstream and out to the oceans. The dirt falls clean. 

We give our bodies the love they need: eco friendly, natural soaps lathered on gently and then rinsed in the brook. We baptize ourselves anew. Anointed with goats milk and tea tree oil, we are blank canvases to be painted upon by the glittering, fine sand that was once hardened granite and now lies waiting, silent and still, across the roads we’ve yet to ride. 

Sufficiently cleansed, we sun ourselves for a while and listen to what the water has to say. And then we leave it as we found it, retrace our steps back up the bank, climb in the car and depart. 

And the brook and the sunlight will soon forget we were there at all. 

Dispatch No. 1 : A brief history of how I got here.

This is a story I’ve told many times now, yet each time I tell it, I feel that I can never get it quite right. There’s so much to recount. So many little pieces that are all equally as important but equally easy to forget. I always struggle with where to begin. Folks usually tell me that the beginning is as good of place as any, especially when telling a story. But to do that, I would probably have to first return to my father’s childhood rather than my own. And then I would need to tell you the story of his wild ride of a life. That’s a book all unto itself. Not enough time for that here. 

So I guess I’ll just give you the brief (ish) version. The one I would use (and probably did use) on a college entrance essay. But with more “color.” Or something like that. 

This is a bit about the way my sister and I grew up and a bit about my parents. And then a bit about where it’s left me as of late—in a place of confusion and frustration with the world around me.

— 

So to put it simply, our up-bringing was unconventional when compared to the standard two-car-garage-suburban-dwelling-nuclear-family which seemed to be at it’s peak in the mid 90’s when I was born (maybe it hasn’t peaked at all yet?).

Rather than falling in line, my family marched to the beat of our own drum. A way of living I seem not able to break from. My partner swears the only person who possesses more disdain for the rules—and is more stubborn than me—is my own father. She might be right. 

In today’s world (at least pieces of it), our lifestyle back then might not be so uncommon, hell it might even be considered fashionable to some, or at least romantic. Think #vanlife or #wanderlust or whatever trendy, faux attempt at authenticity and realness is being exploited this month by big brands and corporations. Think of all those carefully curated photos garnished with #folk and #maker in some perfectly staged studio in Brooklyn or cabin in the woods. But then make it actually real, and without the sole purpose of garnering engagements and likes on Instagram. And then you might be getting close to what my childhood was like. And what my parents were doing to make a living before the bullshit Instagram era of falsehoods and bullshit. I think I said bullshit twice. 

Back then, my mother and father occupied the fringe of society, especially in our rural midwestern town. And it was by necessity rather than trendiness.  

—

I grew up in the woods of East Central Illinois. My mother, father, sister, grandfather, step-grandmother and I called a 137 acre piece of old-growth forest our home. My father is one of six brothers, and it was his idea to purchase the piece of land. He rallied two of his brothers and my grandfather together under the banner of getting back to the land and self-reliance (a notion popular amongst my father’s generation.) The four of them came up with the funds, the lion share coming from one of my uncles, and purchased the pristine piece of woodland. 

My father and grandfather were the only ones who decided to live on the property full-time, while my uncles opted to have weekend cabins on the property. When they all first embarked on the home-steading journey, they wielded chainsaws and machetes, carving their way through the dense woods of their new home. They were starting from scratch—all the way down to cutting the only road in and out of the woods. 

My grandfather built his home towards the “top” of the property. His house sat as a sentinel to greet anyone who entered the property. Anyone coming or going on the only road in or out had to pass by his home. 

The road itself could have it’s own chapter of that book I talked about earlier. It was a marvel. My father originally cut this road by hand and then later improved it with his trusty blue Ford tractor. He spent many days each summer maintaining it, laying rock and grading it. Those days were always something I looked forward to because he used to let me ride with him to the rock quarry in his old dump truck to get the rock for the “driveway” as my mother and he called it. 

To get an idea of the magnitude of the original task of cutting the road and the monumental job of up-keeping it, here’s an anecdote. When visiting our home, one of my mother’s friends said that it reminded her of the moonshine roads of her Kentucky home. The rolling, winding gravel lane that snaked through the woods surely had to have some glorious destination at the end of it. And sure enough it did—a mile back into the woods from where the road started sat our two cabins that my father built. 

— 

When my father first moved to the property, he lived out of an old Shasta trailer while he slowly built his first cabin out of salvaged materials. He was and is a very industrious human. A renaissance man is probably the best way I can describe him. A carpenter, truck driver, finisher of concrete, electrician, botanist (by necessity), gardener, farmer, artist. What he didn’t know he would teach himself (he still does today). He never graduated from college and I think he saw little value in stuffy classrooms and stuffier professors telling him the way things were. He had his own idea of the way things were. 

And then my mother moved into his little cabin with him. The way she tells it, when she got there he still hadn’t installed windows and doors but instead had the holes covered up with visqueen. 

She is an artist. She’s done other things like working for two different universities, running youth ministries at our local Methodist church, marketing, modeling, living on a boat in California—things like that. But above all that, at her core she is an artist. 

When my mom moved down to the property from Chicago, my father was growing hardshell gourds. The way I understand it, he wasn’t doing much with them at the time. They were just one of the many crops he was cultivating (he also grew corn, beans, squash, melons, brussels sprouts, kale, tomatoes, onions, apples and potatoes). My mother had the idea to paint them. So they did, and thus Goods from the Woods was started. 

For twenty-ish years they sold their gourd artwork all over the country at art shows, and galleries, shops and individuals would buy their work. They had wholesale accounts all over the US, and achieved a minor amount of fame in their little circle of artists and patrons. For a long time my mom was known as “The Gourd Lady.” I think she liked it. 

We traveled as a family around in an old blue school bus (from the 50’s I think) that my dad converted to a camper. “The Big Blue Bus That Rocks” was how it was known. That bus crisscrossed the country multiple times, and we drew quite a crowd wherever we went from what I’m told.  

—

At the homestead, our lifestyle was one of self-reliance and low impact. We tried to live as close to the earth as we could. Though we still depended on fossil fuels and the machines they powered, it was my mother and father’s goal to do no unnecessary harm to the land around us. 

Our home was powered completely by solar and had no conventional running water. Instead we hauled the water we needed when we needed it and stored excess in a large tank outside our house. For many years most of our food came from our garden. My parents helped to start a co-op in our little town, but that eventually went by the wayside in the advent of the Walmart-proliferation era in which we now find ourselves. 

Eventually my mother and him split up (they are best friends today despite not being married). My mother, sister and I moved to town and my father stayed at the property continuing on his off-grid dream.

As of late my father has had to cash in his chips. His life of manual labor eventually caught up to him and his body could no longer take it. Now he lives with my sister on her own little farm in Indiana. 

—

I am not sure where I am going with all of this, and there is much more to the story than I have told here. I have found myself today in a world that does not make sense to me. Living close to the land is ingrained in my spirit. It’s my foundation and my baseline, not some new idea that’s “in” this season. It’s fundamental for me, and I think that is why I have such a hard time going about my day to day today in the world around me. I have strayed so far from that beautiful piece of land in East Central Illinois, and the life my parents built there. But I believe that living small and living with as low of an impact as possible is possible. And is paramount now more than ever if we hope to have any type of hope for the future of our species on this planet. 

So in these dispatches I plan to tell stories from my own life, my families’ lives and the lives of folks I meet on the road. My current line of work allows me to travel (which opens up a whole other set of internal conflicts for me that I will reserve for another time), and I am afforded the rare privilege of meeting people from all corners of the globe, seeing places that many only dream of, and experiencing things that many will never be able to. And I hope to do so with as little impact as possible. I don’t want to leave anything behind when I go except some words and pictures maybe. At least that’s the goal.