Staying Present, Planting the Future
How working the land has made me more human.
“The Bible's aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body?”
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace
“When everything else has gone from my brain…what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that.”
— Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
STAYING PRESENT
One of the habits that I’m trying to forge in my fifties is the habit of being present to the present. By personality, I’m future-oriented. I love imagining the next project and I get excited about the process of bringing it to pass, and the present frequently tries my patience.
With projects this works great. With relationships it’s usually disastrous. Just ask my wife.
If my wife Phaedra experiences some kind of frustration, my first instinct is to try to fix it. But she doesn’t want me to fix things. She wants me to be with her. She wants me to remain in the moment, to feel things with her, here and now, not then and there.
It turns out that my children want the same thing.
With our twenty-one acres of land east of Austin, Texas, we’re looking at a lifetime of work. Some of the trees that we’ve planted, for instance, won’t reach maturity until I’m in my seventies.
Re-wilding this tract of land turns out to be a futurist’s labor. And it’s tempting to keep churning forward so that I can “make the most of my time” in order to be maximally effective.
But realizing that my children won’t be in the house forever also pains my heart, and it motivates me to change my ways. I want to be more present to them, and our land offers me plenty of opportunities to do so.
A number of months ago I spent eighteen hours over the course of a weekend on a skid steer. It ain’t cheap to rent these things, but it sure beat the shovel and wheelbarrow approach. I needed to be as productive as possible in order to make the most of the expense, but equally much I wanted to make a memory with my son, Sebastian.
I invited him into the cab and he motored around with me as we built berms and levees along the driveway. It was hot like the dickens and we sweated our faces off. But we had a blast doing it. We smoothed garden areas. We moved mounds of earth. We drank our Diet Dr. Peppers. We did it together.
It filled my heart with such joy, that God gave me this beautiful boy with whom to share such experiences.
PLANTING THE FUTURE
Having built our house on land that was farmed for decades, with crops that rotated between corn, millet and cotton, we have no trees. We've no shelter from the sun, nowhere for birds to roost, and it’ll take a decade at least to get a tree sturdy enough on which to hang a tire swing.
Birthdays and Christmases, Phaedra and I will only be buying each other trees going forward. This past fall on the Feast of Saint Francis, we bought ourselves a gorgeous Red Oak tree, along with a Carolina Jessamine, Blackfoot Daisies, Purple Cone flowers, Purple Salvia, Mexican Sage Bush, a Candlestick tree and Yellow Esperanza.
There’s something deeply satisfying, I’ve found, about planting the trees ourselves. We could possibly pay somebody else to do it, but we would be robbing ourselves of a chance to become more sensitized to the rhythms and demands of creation. Some days I’ll spend five to six hours digging and planting. Other days it’ll just be an hour or so.
The going is slow and the work is spread out over months, which can feel discouraging at times, but we both derive great joy from working with our hands, sometimes with gloves, sometimes without, and working together in order to “dress” and to “keep” this plot of land that God has entrusted to us.
While I’m working with my hands, I’m not solving intellectual problems. I’m not writing book chapters in my head. I’m not imagining future projects. I’m not brainstorming sermon illustrations. I’ve actually tried to do each of things, whether while mowing or digging, but I can’t. The necessities of the task at hand demand my utter concentration.
I simply have present to the present, to do the thing that my body requires, which is so good for my personality type.
I like to sweat. I like to feel my muscles ache. I like to dig out clumps of dirt with my hands. I like to take the lead from my gardener wife.
I love imagining what it will look like 25 years from now, when many of our trees will have reached their maturity and when I reach my elder years.
I like the idea that I cannot magically rush it into fruition. I like the obdurate personality of the ground, which asks me always to respect it. All of it makes me feel more human, and for that I am deeply grateful.
AN ARBOREAL BIRTHDAY
It’s been a couple of months now since my birthday in April, but I wanted to share here some of the fun things that we received. Out of the kindness of family and friends, I was able to buy thirteen trees and bushes.
We acquired a handful of Vitex Lilac trees, a couple of Pineapple Guava and Wax Myrtles, a trio of Salvia Greggis, a Carolina Sapphire Cypress (that sadly died on us), and a couple more live oak trees.
We also bought a packet of thunder turf, which is a blend of three short-grass prairie species (Buffalograss, Blue Grama, and Curly Mesquite) that thrives in arid and semi-arid regions. It’s extremely drought resistant and it’s perfect for the front area of our house.
Why is it called Thunder Turf? Here’s how the Native American Seed company answers the question:
“When six million buffalo stampeded, the sound of their hooves blended into the rolling thunder. Rain was sure to follow. When the rains did come, it brought green grass and life.”
I recently measured the red oak trees that we planted a year ago, and they are now twice as tall. The holly trees are doing well, the Bur Oak’s hanging in there, the bamboo is thriving, and the Crape Myrtles and Texas Mountain Laurels have blossomed really nicely.
The fact that we’ve received an extraordinary amount of rain in June has only helped to secure the roots of all these things we’ve planted over the past year and a half. We’ve got vines growing up the fence and sunflower plants sprouting up all across the property.
Goldenrod’s running riot. Toads are making a nightly visit. The barn swallows have returned for their mid-summer breeding ritual. And while the native grasses aren’t yet outnumbering non-natives, they’re certainly giving them a run for their money.
My itty-bitty lawnmower can only manage to carve out a two lane path around the circumference of the property, but it’s enough to make it feel like a happy English walkabout. If I get rich, I’ll buy myself a tractor.
Phaedra and I are so deeply grateful for this land. And although it is a heck of a lot of work to till and to tend, including plenty of cross-country fit exercise, it’s worth the while and we’re excited to see how it will unfold over the years.
