Boots
May 26, 2012
I put on a new pair of boots today. Letting the old worn-out boots go isn’t easy. Boots worn on a mostly daily base speak something about the wearer’s life. Boots tell a story about the wearer’s physical life, social life, and spiritual life.
My old boots always go through the same process. I cannot quite throw them away in the trash, but I can’t give them away either because they really are falling to pieces. So instead, they find their way to the back of the closet where they will stay until the new boot relationship is formed and some of the old boot stories have faded.
The boots arches tell a scrap of the physical story. Flatter than a pancake, the arches went away in the first months of wearing. Those non-existent arches speak to flat feet that have never understood why anyone would put a lump of leather, plastic, or cloth underneath a foot—a built up arch support is like having a stone in the bottom of the boot—and think that is good thing!
Socially and spiritually, these boots tell stories of walking with friends two winters ago near the farm. A hard freeze had come on the backside of a light snow. Moving through trail-less brush in below freezing weather there was little more sound that crackling grass. While breath fog formed icy eyebrows and glitter on hoods and hats, those old boots moved through snow and kept those old flat feet dry. Worn-out cracked leather tells of countless journeys of moving irrigation line in the hay field. Cracks speak to summers of working with volunteers re-roofing old homes and placing concrete for new homes. Paint speckled leather tells the story of creating the middle-high school band float during after-school hours with youth who are artists in their own right. Then there is the blood. Blood tells a spiritual realization that if one is going to raise animals for food; it is only right, fair, just, and honorable to be with them in death. To be a meat eater and recognize life is given so another might live, it is only just—relationally and spiritually—to stand beside the chicken or goat or steer as they die so I or others who eat meat from the farm might have life. To do so mean a splattering of holy blood is ingrained in the boots leather grain.
As I put on a new pair of boots this morning and set the old ones off to the side, I know there are a hundred stories also shuffled off with them, soon to be forgotten. The upside, I reckon, is new stories begin today as leather begins to bend and mold.
© David B. Bell 2012
May Mother
May 9, 2012
Each October we turn the buck in with the does, which then gives us kids in March. But, every once in a while, a doe doesn’t take the first time around, or the second. Yesterday, two full months after all the other does kidded, the last one had her baby. After two months of watching all the others with kids and being treated as something a little other, it is evident that she thinks different about herself now, as do the other does.
© David B. Bell 2012
Manes and Memories
By Dorris Steeg
April 26, 2012
It might be the era of my childhood, or it might be the rural area I grew up in, or it may be growing up in the west, or it just may be normal in every U.S. school in every era…
I remember my elementary school playground when I look at this Spring Horse photo by Doris Steeg. Girls ran the playground from one end to the other, tossing their hair side to side, sometimes with one arm behind them—as if a tail, and whinnying. These were the wild horses, manes flashing and tails running, of Sulphur Springs playground. Romping around and laughing, they paid little to no attention to us boys. Us boys didn’t pay much attention to them either, but just enough, I guess, to store a memory away to surface again another day. I don’t remember when the girls quit living as wild horses, maybe about the time we boys began paying more attention to their manes. Yet, when I think about all these years of marriage…maybe the wild horse never really went away.
© David B. Bell 2012
Dialect: Life, Community, Landscape
April 24, 2012
Belinda and I will spend much of the day placing irrigation mainline and backfilling trench. That is all of the day except for a few hours this morning.
Not that long ago I read an essay on funerals. The writer compared funeral services he experienced back east to those of the west. He spoke to a belief of eastern funerals having a higher degree of ritual and communal comfort than western funerals. In part, he supported this line of thought saying the ritual of spreading ashes (a western ritual in his estimation) did not provide the community groundedness as, say, occurs when the congregational family comes together and provides food and comfort in the fellowship hall after a burial service. When I finished the essay, I could not help but to think the transplanted eastern writer missed the values and richness of culture—east or west.
Landscapes speak to individuals and communities with their own unique voice. The landscape of forested Arkansas simply speaks a different language than an arid western landscape lying east of the Cascade mountain range. More so, the dialect of the arid eastern rain-shadowed Washington Cascades is different from the twang of the arid eastern rain-shadowed California Sierras.
This morning the twang is apparent. Belinda and I have the afternoon to place irrigation line because there is no My Future after-school today. There is no after-school today because a community member died and school canceled. Instead of school today, the whole community is invited to the school gym for funeral services. For this community, in this landscape, the end of life is so important it is okay, even supported, to close school and businesses so everyone might gather, remember, and grieve together.
So, this afternoon, when Belinda and I gather to place pipe into the earth, there is a fair chance our groundedness is more than standing waist deep in the ground, but also that we have become entrenched in the deep care of our whole community.
© David B. Bell 2012
Youngster
By Roger Lynn
April 23, 2012
My Future
It is hard to imagine the type of day we had for the first Spring Horse event! Sunny and the slightest of breezes allowed for a day that began with sunrise, ended with sunset, and permitted a wonderful opportunity to experience the valley landscape and a few of its hosts. From driving to hiking folks lived with the valleys hosts up close and at a distance. And where horses were not seen, that land smiled in their place. The day became wonderful way to support My Future: extended-learning art program.
The photo “Youngster” is the first of a few photos to be posted this week!
© David B. Bell 2012
Digging and Horses—Landscape Listening
April 20, 2012
JustLiving Farm
For years we have been using 5” aluminum mainline to supply our irrigation water. Each year for the last three years we work to place a little more of it underground. This year is no different. Having the line underground not only makes life a little easier, but it also saves water, which matters when you consider how much water it takes to grow pasture and hay. I enjoy this work, but I am really looking forward to tomorrow!
Spring Horse begins at 5:30am. This is our first year to offer the opportunity to experience the wild horses of our landscape. Beginning with sunrise, folks from a two state region will head out in hope of seeing, experiencing, and photographing wild horses who make reservation land their home. A full day of wonderful countryside, horses, and many new folk I have never met. And that is just cool. To hang out, introduce folk to the landscape I love and have the opportunity to hear about their home and their landscape. These conversations always help me attain a little more insight to how others experience creation and how it feeds their spirit; that in turn helps me to become more aware of my landscape, my spirit, and my relationship with Creation—amazing stuff!
Until tomorrow though, a little more digging…
By Roger Lynn (One of our Spring Horse Mentors!)
© David B. Bell 2012
Spring Showers Spring Work
April 18, 2012
JustLiving Farm
No matter how prepared I think I am I seldom seem prepared enough. As spring rains dance around sunny days, it seems another chore emerges with each drop of rain. Much of the work is the same work that comes each spring—like spring cleaning spring chores never change. But then there is the work you planed last fall for this spring and then there is the work you didn’t have a clue was going to crop up. Next thing you know you have a great sunny spring day and you’ve settled on the mantra, “one thing at a time.”
No surprise every person I know who farms or ranches—small or large—and also posts on a blog or journal doesn’t post nearly as much once spring settles into their landscape. Looking back over the years, that reality certainly has been my own and I don’t expect that to change. As in the past, spring will probably bring on many more pictures than words.
One of the first chores this spring was to bring a fuel tank up to snuff—a new hose and nozzle and tight connections are important so fuel stays either in the tank or the tractor is a must, having the whole thing look a little better is a nice side benefit.
Now, what was the next thing I needed to get done…?
© David B. Bell 2012
Chirping Toward Voice
April 3, 2012
JustLiving Farm
Morning feeding sometimes lends itself to a moment of consideration. A few days ago we picked up a few chicks whose lot in life is to become this year’s egg-laying hens. These chicks may not be the image that comes to mind when hearing the word chick. This time of year, in our area, the image that does come to mind is all around us. It is nearly impossible to walk into a feed store, a lumberyard, or even a clothing store and not see chicks about the size of tennis balls chirping next to a feeder under a heat lamp. Something about Easter brings out the sellers and buyers of chicks. However, our chicks are not the size of tennis balls.
Our chicks are two months old and at two months, they have lost their fluff and gained their feathers. They are beginning to look like chickens, but have yet to acquire a chicken voice. At two months, chicks continue to chirp as they did when they were tennis ball size, but there is something more to it. The chirp has something of a hoarseness to it, kind of like the in between, breaking, voice I remember all too well from my teenage days. Soon, though, their true chicken voices will kick in and the days of chick will be long-gone.
Finding voice is different for chicks and chickens than it is for teenagers and adults. Speaking—having the ability to speak or chirp, is natural in most of our lives. But finding voice, finding those thoughts which are uniquely your own, is something different, something that takes a bit of time and a lot of reflection. Such voice might be verbal, but it might also be that which is written or formed by clay or painted on canvas or pencil on paper, or by way of camera. Such voice is not chirping nor childish, but mature with a dash of thoughtfulness—however; such voice may rise up out of a child and be lost to an adult.
Voice does not silence the voice of another, but gives another something to ponder and consider. Voice encourages voice.
I’m not sure why the chirping of two-month-old chicks has me thinking of voice today. I imagine it has something to do with the darkness of Holy Week. A time that calls for attention, consideration, and awareness of the deep and abiding hurt that has far too much presence in our communities. Perhaps it is the riding of a colt and Travon Martin and Mathew Shepard; perhaps it is the selling of doves and John T. Williams; perhaps it is a few days before Passover, some nard and Rosa Parks, Dorothy Day, and Fannie Lou Hamer; perhaps it is Judas and I; perhaps it is a meal in a guest room and Oakland and Oikos University; perhaps it is the casting of lots, sour wine, a torn curtain and us.
Voice does not just happen. Like so much of life, chirping comes first, then listening, then consideration, and then with the help of friends, neighbors, and elders…voice becomes. Perhaps, today, I just begin chirping and live with the hope of voice and resurrection.
© David B. Bell 2012
1033 New Holland Stackliner
March 18, 2012
JustLiving Farm
Finding the right equipment is a process that takes years, sometimes. One such case is finding a bale wagon. For ten years we loaded hay out of the field by hand. Finally, we got ourselves a bale wagon which made a world of difference! It wasn’t the best, it wasn’t just what we wanted, but it reduced a lot of the physical work…and that matters when it comes to hand loading a few thousand bales out of the field and then unloading and stacking everyone of them again! However, with a little more time—and the sale of a few of those bales, we went a bought another bale wagon. It may not be just the right piece of equipment, but then this is a process that takes years, sometimes. This is all to say, a new wagon means we must sell our first wagon…and as our first wagon headed down the road yesterday, it was good to remember just how much it changed our lives. The video below is from last summer’s hay season.
© David B. Bell 2012
Spring Horse
Photographer David Biddle
March 17, 2012
My Future
Yakama Mission
JustLiving Farm
SPRING HORSE—Yakama Reservation April 21, 2012
Spring Horse is a day for anyone who wants to experience the wild as few have the opportunity. From sunrise to sunset, you have the chance to spend a partial or full day with photographers who will help you frame a photo of wild beauty. BUT, you do not have to be a photographer to enjoy the day! If you are simply interested in experiencing the wild horses of the Yakama Reservation, join us! Bring your binoculars, spotting scopes, compact cameras, DSLR cameras, whatever fits your needs.
There is no fee for the day, but donations are encouraged. All donations go to MY FUTURE, the art-based after-school program of the Yakama Mission.
We are lucky to have five great photographers whose photo’s call for pause: David Biddle, Roger Lynn, Jeff Kent, Rebecca and Andy Lee.
Save the date of April 21 for Spring Horse and send an email to dave@justlivingfarm.org to receive further info as it becomes available and reserve a spot for the day!
Spring Horse is a collaborative opportunity provided by the Yakama Mission and JustLiving Farm—Good Spirit, Good Land, Good Food.
© David B. Bell 2012
Farm Kid Day!
March 12, 2012
JustLiving Farm
She moved around slowly. Very slowly. Every doe in the herd except her had kidded. I had thought she would kid two days earlier and I think she thought the same, but so far, nothing. When I arrived at the barn she moved up to the gate. The gate led to the area where we bring mothers for a few hours after birthing. While there, kids get a shot of selenium, iodine on their umbilical cord, and an ear tag. I think she came to the gate because she thought if she could get in, that would induce her babies. I opened the gate, and she slowly walked in.
It took a full day, but by the next morning the slow moving doe finally had twins, one doeling and one buckling. Life seemed better! After a week of birthing, every doe had a kid on the ground, and no deaths! Which means…
FARM KID DAY! Yep, the time has arrived for our annual workday with kids and their mothers. This is the day when we trim mother’s hooves, give them a good brush down, and cleaned them up. At the same time kids get tetanus shots, dehorned, and banded. A very busy two to four hours. Normally, we have this day on Saturday, but this year we have a Saturday workshop presentation. So, instead, we are going with a Sunday afternoon. If you would like to come and help (your kids and grandkids are welcome!), you are welcomed!
COME join us and other folk who support small farms! Come and help work with the mothers and kids, walk around and learn about the farm, and sit down with us, new friends, and have homemade chili and sourdough bread! Please call or email and let us know your coming!
FARM KID DAY
March 18, 2012: 1:00pm
Join JustLiving Farm for a day of…
Care for Does and newborn Kids.
and
Supper of Chili & Sourdough Bread.
RSVP (509) 969-2093 or
dave@justlivingfarm.org
© David B. Bell 2012
Just Kidding
March 4, 2012
JustLiving Farm
The birth of this season’s first two kids reminds me, creation keeps on keeping on and the slower living winter gifts us with is on its last legs. As each kid emerges into an existence we all too often take for granted, we are called to gear up another notch. Though there is plenty of winter to come, this is an exciting time after months of gray frozen fields, snow, and frost ringing window edges.
© David B. Bell 2012
Wound a Bit Tightly
February 28, 2012
JustLiving Farm
This morning I am reminded of building temporary electric fencing around the hay fields last fall. The fencing would allow animals to graze, during the winter months, any field growth occurring after our last cutting of hay. What I remember best is tying the insulators to the corner posts. The tying brought me back to a childhood moment when I learned that even if you build a fence that no one will ever see, your work is your work and it tells something about who you are. Few if any folk will ever notice the tie around the insulator is wrapped tight, but I have an idea a few of those men who watched and commented on my childhood work and are long gone, will.
© David B. Bell 2012
Expecting
February 23, 2012
JustLiving Farm
Yesterday, with the help of a few friends, we reshaped, remodeled, and temporarily organized the barn into a kidding area. This came the same day I received notice a friend of mine is pregnant. As a guy I really don’t have a clue what it means to be an expectant mother, but as a parent I do know what it means to be expectant.
I know it drives folks—it did me at one time, a little nuts when folks compare the human condition of pregnancy or raising children to that of animals, but I know few folk who are parents and work with animals that don’t make the comparison on a regular basis. For instance, today, four out of twelve does have bagged up—that telltale sign of goat utters filling and teats enlarging. This stage of pregnancy says soon: soon birth, soon mamas making the sound only mamas make with newly birthed babies, soon baby kids finding they have legs, soon the first taste of milk, soon babies learning the mystery of life with sky and wind and straw. This sooness has the demeanor of the four does quite different from that of the other eight and not all that different from other mothers, four legged or two legged, living this stage of life.
When the demeanor, the expectation, of these mamas become what it is, then we are compelled toward the barn to ready stalls and a loafing area in anticipation of birth. In only a few hours the barn was readied for the first birth of the year. Now we wait.
It is nice to be ready, to have shelter and warmth in the time of expectation. And I reckon that is my hope for all expectant parents, to have a warm place for new life to enter which allows their youngsters to live and learn and love the mystery of life with sky and wind.
© David B. Bell 2012
Sunflower Snow
January 23, 2012
JustLiving Farm
I walk by them every day. Each spring we plant more sunflowers than we will ever harvest. This isn’t so hard, a sunflower or two will produce all the seeds we’re going to eat for a year. We plant the rest for birds to partake during late spring and early winter. By now, they have figured out 
how to get the last seed out of the flower head. So, I walk by those stems and flower heads that were so green and yellow last summer, each day, without thinking much about them. Then the sun came out. With sunlight touching the snow buildup on each head the sunflowers presented a beauty that comes after life has slipped away.
© David B. Bell 2012
A Handsaw Winter Sky
January 14, 2012
JustLiving Farm
I can’t get over winter days when I watch the sun rise, Mount Pahto shimmers to the west as if showing off a new coat bought at the last snowfall sale, full moon blessing mountain above its northern shoulder, and winter blue sky unfolding. Such days awaken cold and frozen, but as the day yawns and picks itself up, the thermometer moves above freezing and the day is perfect to get done a few of those chores best left to ungloved hands.
Last spring I didn’t quite get the haystack bulkhead done before we started loading hay against it. Over the holidays, we sold the last bit of the haystack in the uncompleted area. So, for the first time in six months I could finally get back to it!
The nice aspect to this chore is the haystack is a long way from electricity. Well, not so nice when the bulk of the work was going on, but great for this season. For such distance means a handsaw. Sure, I could get the generator out or I could go buy one of those fancy cordless circular saws, but sometimes it is just nice to grab a saw by the handle and enjoy the feel of steel against wood.
Perhaps what I like best about sawing wood on a sunny blue-sky day is remembrance and reflection. I can’t help but think that daddy and his daddy before him each picked up a handsaw, much like the one I am using—hand saws haven’t changed much in a lot of generations, and sawed wood. Daddy was a carpenter in addition to everything else. He crafted the wood toolbox that now sits in the shed out back. This toolbox didn’t sit in the shop, but traveled from one jobsite to the next. What amazed me, growing up, was the toolbox had a tray that slid out from the back holding five handsaws, each for a specific job. As I got some age on me, what then amazed me was the realization some of those saws had been sharpened so many times their blade width got smaller as it moved away from the handle toward the tip.
Any longer, the art of sharpening a handsaw is a lost art. I remember driving to town with daddy to drop off dull saws or pick up sharpened saws. The building was across the road from the train depot and restaurant—there wasn’t a whole lot more to town than that. You had to walk up a set of wooden stairs to a loading platform and then go into the saw shop through a wooden door that slid off to the right. Daddy was a quiet man, best I remember, but I remember having a lot of time looking around the saw shop while he and the man who sharpened saws talked. We would walk out of the shop with sharpened handsaws and saw blades for the old 77 Skill saw. Today there aren’t many folks who sharpen blades of any kind. Few people use handsaws and most circular blades are carbide tipped; when the owner is done with a blade they toss it away and head to town to buy another—our throwaway societal structure doesn’t do much to support the saw blade sharpening industry.
I don’t often take daddy’s handsaws out and use them. I choose to use my own and leave his alone, I guess because they are more of a tool to pull youthful memories to the present rather than to saw wood. And that seems to work well for me, because when I take my own handsaws down off the wall and head out to saw wood where there isn’t electricity, I feel a little more tied to those men who went before me, and a little more tied to the relationship they had with the land, the mountain, the wind, and family.
© David B. Bell 2012
Epiphany
January 8, 2012
JustLiving Farm
Yakama Mission
Epiphany. There are no other days like the days of epiphany. The Christian church holds today a bit more special than others—Jesus’ Baptism. There are many others. Hopefully each of us experiences epiphany, sooner or later, time and again.
One who speaks to epiphany well is Wendell Berry. Below is a poem I had the good fortune to recently be turned on to is Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front found at In Context.
The photo is a mosaic of the “Baptism of Christ,” created in the mid-12th century. Found at the Cappella Palatina di PalermoI in Palermo, Italy.
Is possible exists between a modern writer and an artist of the 12th century?
Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Life and Supper: Paying Attention Tastes Better
December 28, 2011
JustLiving Farm
Dawn of the fourth day of Christmas brought cloud cover and warm weather to the valley. The warmth got me thinking about the second day of Christmas.
I had been putting off a job I find somewhat unpleasant for the last two months. By 9am Monday the temperature outside was 38 degrees and very warm compared to any day for the last two weeks, which made it seem now was as good as any time for the job.
Having laying hens wandering freely about the barn and pasture and providing us (and others) with fresh eggs is wonderful. What isn’t so wonderful is when they move beyond their productive egg laying years. Many people sell their hens off at this time for they do not want to engage in what naturally comes next—chicken dinner. We do not sell our hens for a couple of reasons. First, it seems unfair to raise a hen, have her provide years of eggs for my wellbeing, and then when it comes time to die, be carted off to a place that has never been home. Now folks can say what they want concerning chicken brains and their not having a clue to what is going on, but that has never seemed the case around the farm. Hens have outsmarted more than one person on the farm over the years! It is only right, therefore, if we are to benefit from a chickens life and its death, if we are going to have a feed and water in return for eggs relationship, we all should be present at death. Second, butchering chickens means we get to have chicken dinner with the ease of mind that comes from knowing where the chicken lived, how it was treated, what it ate, and maybe most importantly, how it died. I imagine I don’t have to say more than this, all anyone needs to do is go online (or watch Food Inc.) to learn about the life and death of most every bird one might buy in their local grocery store.
However, there is a problem. I really, really don’t like killing. I know the importance of it, in fact more than once I have said all folk who eat meat should go through the killing process at least once. Maybe not literally kill an animal himself or herself, but be in the same place at the same time when the animal they are going to eat dies. It is important to know life as sacrament. It is important to know that no one—vegetarians and vegans included—on this earth is going to eat without causing death. This is why I, who would do most anything to get out of killing an animal, have come to value one who butchers well. And we have been lucky when it comes to our large animals. The Dutch gentleman who arrives at the farm and butchers our large animals has a way about him that the animals act as if they know him and are comfortable in his presence. One can’t ask for more than that. However, when it comes to chickens we are on our own and that is why I put the job off for two months.
So, on the second day of Christmas, with warm weather and blue sky, friends and family came together and spent the better part of the day with chickens. The day is never as bad as I imagine it. However, it always leaves me with an ache. An ache for life that is no more, an ache arising from the reverence that comes from sacramental knowledge of one giving its life for another, and an ache that wishes all life given for supper tables might be so revered. I think it is an ache to embrace, for at the end of the day, with friends and family sitting around the supper table, we say grace and know more fully the sacrament before us, and that, yes that, makes for a supper that tastes wonderful.
© David B. Bell 2011
A Solstice Story
December 22, 2011
JustLiving Farm
He was moving right along when I caught up with him. When he trundled by earlier, the night sky was giving it up and the last star fading. I hurried to get my britches on, but when I’m in a hurry the simplest of things go wrong. Day in and day out I but britches on and never have a problem, but the day I’m in a hurry I shove my foot into the pant leg, forget to point my foot, and next thing I know, I’m stuck halfway down the leg. Then I’m on my butt, pulling my leg out, shoving it back in and finally, finally! am able to stand up and pull my britches up. The whole process doesn’t take a lot of time, but I’m red faced and feel as if it took forever
Now running to catch up, the faded morning color said it was but a moment before sunrise. Sure enough, sunlight grazed the ridge top just as I turned at the red oak. Up ahead I saw him out in the wheatgrass.
Mornings have their own frame of time. The final minutes of dark on a cold winter morning last forever, but once the sun rises it seems in such a hurry. Now it appeared as if the sun jumped higher with every step I took. As the sun went higher, its light flowed down the ridge—faster than I could walk to catch up with him. Then, it was just weird…I was maybe thirty feet from him when sunlight hit and then flashed across the valley floor. The grasses, still encased in ice from yesterdays fog grabbed sunlight, multiplied it, and threw it across the valley. For a moment I became sparkle blind. As I came closer, he looked back and walked on. Maybe it was because I was breathless, maybe because of sparkle embedded in my eyes, but in that moment it looked as if he walked on light.
He didn’t say a thing. Arnie seldom does.
Armadillo’s are known for their slow moving being. For the most part they aren’t a chatty bunch. But they are conversive when life matters. This morning there was no talking as he turned and continued.
I didn’t know where he was heading, but Arnie is ancient and I figured something might be up. No one knows how long Arnie’s been around. This is probably because no one knows when he came. For as far back as anyone remembers, even the old folk, Arnie’s been here. You’d think such age would set him aside from others. You know, a respect that moves folk aside when he walks by. But that has never been the case. His name says it all. No title, no last name, just Arnie. Just the same, there has always been something about Arnie. You see, things happen when Arnie is around.
I tried to stay awake last night. The old stories tell about ancients walking about on Solstice morning. They are up and about other mornings, but the morning of the shortest day tweaks creation in such a way, they are easier to see. The stories say when the ancients walk, the trees talk and the fish dance. But it is also said, you must see the ancients before you encounter trees talking and fish dancing. So, I made it my lot in life—yesterday—to stay up and see the ancients today! Problem was, last night, being the second to longest night of the year; well, it went on and on. Sometime, I’m not sure when, but sometime after the big dipper entered the northeastern sky, I fell asleep.
I remember dreaming of springtime. Sun filled blue sky and a hint of warmth. I sat next to a stream watching the ice break up. One Ice chunk after another floated by. When they ran into each other there was a scrapping crunching sound. Rhythm rose up—scrap, scrap; crunch, crunch; scrap, crunch, scrap. Then a large chunk of ice ran into the others, crunch, cruNCH, CRUNCH! I woke up and Arnie walked by—feet crunching frozen grass below. Now following Arnie, I can see the frozen grass laying flat to the ground with each footstep.
I looked down and watched my own feet laying footsteps in the frozen grass and I could kick myself. Dreaming of floating ice and missing the walk of the ancients! Why couldn’t I just stay awake a little longer! Now here I am following Arnie to who knows where? And then, it hits me, there are no armadillo footsteps in front of my own! Dadgumit, I lost Arnie!
I looked around. The place is familiar. The creek, a stone’s throw, is where we picnic Sunday summer afternoons when a respite from the heat allows for a lazy afternoon. Aspens dot the land, some in bunches, others standoffish. I turned round and round again. Sure enough, no Arnie. I walked up to the creek, looked upstream then downstream, and all there was was the dam the beaver has been working on since last spring. Dangit! I turned around, went over to the closest tree and sat down.
Why didn’t I pay attention? First I went to sleep last night, gave up any chance of seeing the ancients, and then followed Arnie to see something different, and I lose him! One would think they could keep up with an old armadillo!
As I sat, the sun crested the tall grasses and settled in around the base of the tree. I closed my eyes, partially from the suns glare, partially from little sleep. With eyes closed, the air warming around me, I settled down.
The water flowing in and through the beaver’s dam raised a tumbling sound into the air. At first it was one sound, but slowly it blossomed. The soprano of the reeds at dam edge folded with the baritone rising from dam center. In their caressing they welcomed the tenor of water playing with stones at the dam’s foot. Soon the melting frost from tree leaves above fell to dammed water bringing an alto to the chorus. The choir played on, the melody flowed, the alto’s slowed and then departed. I’m not sure how long the song played, but when I opened my eyes, the frost, like the alto’s, had left and the Aspen leaves were dry.
Few leaves remained on the trees. Frosty mornings and strong fall winds had bedded the ground with them long ago. But even on winter’s morning there were those who held tight and golden in the sunlight. Lightened from frost, they move as the lightest of breeze travels down creek. They turn, flip, sway, and waddle about. First one, then the next, and again another until leaves from branch scraping creek to top of tree waltz. Every now and again the breeze would spin a leaf and let go—leaf swooping, looping, plunging, floating, light on their stem moving from heaven to earth.
Water, breeze, and leaves filled space and time emptied.
Short days are short days, certainly in a ridged valley. As quick as the sun had entered the valley, it left. Color entered evening sky. The morning’s journey now ancient. I arose from the tree. Walking away, I noticed grass without its ice blanket had risen. Morning footsteps had long disappeared and only a meadow of short and tall grasses communing remained.
As I walked I thought about the stories of the ancients. One day, maybe, I would see the ancients and hear the trees talk and watch fish dance. But until then, a day of water singing and leaves dancing ain’t all that bad.
As I reached the meadows end and turned toward home, I looked back to the tree of song and dance and noticed a shape in the limbs that looked oddly armadilloish. Must be a bunch of mistletoe, I thought as I left the meadow, after all armadillo’s don’t climb trees.
© David B. Bell 2011
Fog Listening
December 13, 2011
JustLiving Farm
One good thing about frozen fog mornings in December is the sound. The sound of quite frozen fog mornings is unlike anything else. Unlike mornings of snow-covered landscape that encases movement and sound, frozen air allows the wheatgrass to move with the slightest of breeze. 
The grasses dampened rustle plays with the conversation of two chirping birds which mingles with crunching frozen grass below each boot step. Frozen fog, a natural symphony of sorts.
© David B. Bell 2011
Working Toward Vocation OR Is It Playing?
December 9, 2011
If cold fog encased mornings aren’t good for anything else, they lend themselves to getting a little I keep putting this off writing done. If you are receiving this, it means you are subscribed to either JustLiving In This Landscape, the blog of the JustLiving Farm or Ridged Valley Reflections, the Journal of the Yakama Christian Mission. As of today, the tales, stories, reflections, joys, or just the every day complaining of the Mission and the Farm will be posted at Ridged Valley Reflections (http://wp.me/POlE). If you are subscribed to JustLiving In This Landscape and would like to continue receiving posts please go to http://wp.me/POlE and re-subscribe. If you are receiving Ridged Valley Reflections you don’t need to do a thing.
I imagine you might ask why put the two together? Well, there isn’t a lot of difference between the two. Organizations, whether Farm or Mission, are nothing more than a few buildings, an IRS document, and a few incorporation papers. In other words, they really are nothing. What make them something are the people who use their structures to make a difference in the world. Hopefully a difference that does not hurt creation, enhances joy and love, and embodies peace. In other words, it is people living their lives as they were created which make organizations meaningful. It is in that light the two blogs become one.
People can do nothing more than live life. At best, it is the life they were created to live. Therefore, while much of society has done its best to compartmentalize people lives into the likes of work and play, the reality is one simply lives their life, sometimes working and other times playing.
Having two blogs, one for the Farm and one for the Mission, in essence buys into a construct that life can be and should be compartmentalized—there is the mission, the farm and they have nothing to do with one another. It’s kind of like a pastor having a child and never talking about them because they want to separate their home life from their professional life…it might sound good, it might sound feasible, but vocation is lost in favor of being a professional. Combining the blogs is to not only say this is not true, but also impossible, for family life will always inform work life and work life will always inform family life. In time, this blog should make a fair case for this idea. In time, I expect, you will find the soil of the Farm informs the art of the Mission’s after-school program My Future. In similar fashion, you will find the Mission’s commitment to justice clearly informs the artful practices of the Farm.
Much more could be said, but instead, stay connected and see what comes.
© David B. Bell 2011
Home: Land of Paleo-Indians, Charles Goodnight, Quanah Parker, and Dairy Queen
November 30, 2011
Yakama Mission
Native American Heritage Month
Claude, Texas is home. Well, maybe better said, there is a piece of farmland about twenty miles south of Claude that has been home to my folk for a few generations. No one lives on the farm any longer. After uncle Howard died, no family member figured it possible to raise a family on this windswept dry-land farm in the Texas panhandle. Once there was a section of land in the Palo Duro. It may have made modern-day farming feasible, but that was too far from the main farm and was let go years ago. The farm, like many family farms and ranches exists more in memory today than actuality. It was where children and animals and plants were raised. It was where children and animals and plants died. The kids in the family attended school about five miles from the farm until they reached high school, then they were driven into Claude. That was the case until a number of decades ago when school consolidation took place and the district found it was cheaper to have school bus routes than teachers and school buildings spread across the countryside—then, from day one through graduation, schooling took place in Claude. Claude has the distinction of being the county seat of Armstrong County, once home of the JA Ranch whom Charles Goodnight was co-owner, and where a few of Paul Newman’s movies, The Sundowners and Hud, were filmed.
Like every other landscape in America an ancient people resided in the area before my folks. Paleo-Indians were the landscape’s first created people (Some folk—mostly White folk from my observation—say no American Tribal People are originally from the American landscape, but rather they traveled to these lands from Siberia and other non-American lands. Seems few American Indian spiritual leaders agree, but then their arguments require a consideration that our public school textbooks have flawed information (at least a bit) and the interpretation of science is flowing rather than absolute. Isn’t it interesting people discount the ancient voice of the landscape in which they reside because it does not fit their western education, but then turns around and buys into a chosen people story arising in a landscape on which most of their ancestors never resided? Well, well, that is a conversation for another day.). The flat, canyoned, windswept landscape raised up the Apache people and culture who understood and lived with the land for thousands of years. Then Comanche moved south into the landscape in the late 1600’s warring with Apaches and forcing most out of the Paleo land by the early 1700’s. The1874 Red River War between the U.S. Army and the Comanche forced the relocation of the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho to reservations in Indian Territory. Two battles, Adobe Wells led by Comanche chief Quanah Parker and Palo Duro, define the Red River War. Adobe Wells reflected the reality the Comanche were “out gunned.” Palo Duro revealed food supplies and horses were limited for the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne, as opposed to the U.S. Army’s continuous supply line. The Red River War ended in June of 1875 when Quanah Parker surrendered at Fort Sill (Oklahoma). With the landscape’s ancient people moved to reservations and Indian Territory, White farmers and ranchers settled the Texas panhandle (The word settled is problematic in that it implies the land and its ancient people were somehow immature, imperfect, or unfinished…again, a story for another day).
What I remember most about Claude, as a child, is the Dairy Queen. More times than not, when we were in Claude, we would stop at the Dairy Queen and have something to eat. Mamma told stories of the men playing checkers in front of the county courthouse, the women at the assessor’s office, and piano lessons at the jail. The Dairy Queen mattered enough to me that as an adult and parent, whenever we visited the farm we stopped in Claude, sat in the same Dairy Queen of my youth and told our girls the same stories (the best I could remember).
Today the landscape is the same and different from ancient times. Embedded in the land are ancient peoples stories…yet lingering in the top soil are new ones. Like the ancient, new stories talk of days of hurt and happiness. Like the ancient, these speak of hope and joy, love and peace, and family. There is a difference though between the ancient and new. The ancient stories—the ancient people—know what and who they are in light of the new. They have watched and felt new footsteps and new names upon the landscape. Unlike the ancient, the new have yet to know what and who they are in light of the ancient. Wholeness comes with conversing with old, old campfires, wind that caressed ancient faces, and feet tough as leather.
Today is the last day of Native American Heritage Month for 2011. I hope you had many a chance this month to hear stories, sing songs, and walk the path of the ancients in your landscape. If not, well, there is tomorrow, for the stories and the songs are not confined to a month or a time, but rather reside in the ground beneath your feet and the wind of your breath.
© David B. Bell 2011
BARBARA’S LAND—MAY, 1974
Driving across your people’s homeland
I pull into Claude, Texas
2 o’clock in the afternoon
Hottern the hinges of hell
as they say here.
Dry panhandle wind
sifts through the red land
Buffalo clouds in the distance
herd up in the afternoon heat.
A chocolate milkshake at the tastee-freeze:
—Are there Comanche people here anymore?
—Huh? Naw, Naw.
The taste-freeze lady’s eyes
describe a suspicion
as if to say:
Another one of them damned
Indian trouble-makers.
The wind shifts the heat
around in circles and
dust-devils dance along the interstate.
The historical marker
on the outskirts of town
said something about Comanches
in the year 1874
Adobe Wells Quanah Parker Palo Duro
Well, Barbara,
I celebrate the Comanche centennial
with the milkshake
(a piss-pore substitute)
and think of those days
of buffalo,
of winter camps, blood, plains,
horses, wind, raids, scalps, and hardships.
This land is your bones.
You are stronger than concrete.
You are stronger than steel.
Geary Hobson
