Today I biked 20 miles to town in the dark to spend an entire week’s pay on canned fish. I also saw a scorpion.
With this I’m settling into life on the farm. In the first three days my car’s head gasket blew, my bike tire popped, and mice at my leather boots. It seems the writers of this horror flick doesn’t intend me to leave soon. Though I’m not worried, I found 50lbs of dried lentils in a box under the sink. I can make it a few months here if necessary.
Lentils aside, I also found 50lbs of dried beans. And we planted some 1500 vegetable seedlings this past fortnight so the season will be off to a quick start. Besides seedling planting and transplanting, I’ve weeded strawberries, weeded tomatoes, weeded squash, weeded peas, and split 10,000lbs of firewood. We’ve threshed tulsi, winnowed seeds, sanitized greenhouse implements, and fertilized soil. It’s surprising how much must happen to begin a simple season of vegetable growing.
I’m graciously set up here in a canvas tent with a miniature wood stove for the next eight months. And coming basically straight from The Belly of the Beast (Washington DC) I’m practically in heaven. We’ll see how long 10,000lbs of dried Douglas Fir lasts with these cold, Californian mountain nights.
Biking home today was surreal. Being far out enough from the civilizated world that everyone in the zip code has signed up for Starlink allows for a truly sublime nightly view of the stars. I stopped and stared into the sky. The light from my headlamp pointed to the sky, the guide keeping my bike from whizzing off 2,000ft cliffs while careening around corners with 20lbs of fish strapped on back. With it off, the night is glorious in it’s profundity. A sky of velvet, purple, blue, and stars crisp in their cool, scintillating, unfeigned indifference to humanity. Moments like this can only come when one is alone. When the act is dropped and only the smoke of last night’s forest service burns drifts between you and the revenant. Seek them out or you’ll pass your life by without ever having looked in the mirror.
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