When I have a terrible need ...

The wind and rain blow through the prairie, leaving us blown through. "Things are generally on track," wrote Satori adding, "On track does not mean pie in the sky or ideal." The second sentence  watercolors the message, muting the definition of things. I consider the journey we live making adjustments to the environment we live in now with the internal environment -- the values and beliefs --we carry. Do those values sustain us over time intact and unaltered, or have we culled most and reinvented ourselves with time?

"When I have a terrible need for -- shall I say the word -- religion,
 then I go and paint the stars." - Vincent Van Goph

Yesterday was a full-stay day on the Prairie Front. The heavy rains keep at it leaving steady streams across the entry at the gate. Once again, gratitude for red rubber boots is my morning prayer, right after giving thanks for being able to walk in them.

We have the company of hens again. A rotating gaggle of friends, Tilth members, come to check on the three girls to see they have food and water, and are rewarded with eggs. Pete and I are the invisible caretakers who open and close the coop door when we walk to the gate in the morning and evening. Unexpected things crop up on the way to the gate and coop detour: sparrows get themselves caught in the cage after a day of foraging on the hens' grain(we need to offer escape hatches); a handful of worms roused from the ground by the deluges add to the daily diet; deep holes at the wire fence require collateral damage control (rocks in place).

Between squalls Pete has been laying down sod to cover Earth where the hundred plus feet of filled-in trench carries a conduit of electricity to our vardo.  The physical and ceremonial work of settling in here on the Prairie Front has tapped our resources. The physical stamina to do the work at sixty eight challenges Pete, a man who has the many skills and experiences as a wizard spider or octopus. He is a man who can multi-task with a mind for what needs to be done seemingly without thinking. His instrument is not the guitar or his voice. But to see his hands and legs like string beans in action? Orchestral!

I've been absent from the keys while life refuels me with experience. 'Getting better' after the flu the pace of recovery and adapting to our latest transitions takes patience. The trench work and prayers of permission and guidance are part of the long term journey to learn to live as caretakers on/with the  Whidbey Tilth community. It's a first-time experience having people live full-time on this land, and a next chapter in our journey of sharing space. Negotiating the process and the changes that arise reminds me of the story of The Borrowers. 

"Beneath the kitchen floor is the world of the Borrowers -- Pod and Homily Clock and their daughter, Arrietty. In their tiny home, matchboxes double as roomy dressers and postage stamps hang on the walls like paintings. Whatever the Clocks need they simply "borrow" from the "human beans" who live above them. "

Our life is not so much lived 'beneath the kitchen floor" but it is a life lived between the world of settled home ownership and that of the morphing definitions of homelessness. We shared the community kitchen, using it almost exclusively for the past six months. Turning the usually unused space into a place of adapted comfort. We built a spiders' web to shelter from the winter elements, use hot water and burn the electricity for cooking under the large roof of the open-sided Pavilion. Comfortable enough for us. Different by many standards.

Now that the season changes, and the Farmers' Market begins at the end of April, what we installed to warm up the kitchen through the winter, is cleared except for the copper wire web. People will be coming onto the Tilth campus and into the kitchen to prepare for the summer and fall activities. Pete and I will shift our activities with an amended version of cooking and sharing the space.

"We're resourceful," Pete said the other night as we gathered ourselves into the comfort of ninety square feet of vardo space.

"Thing is," I pondered, "how do you know to be resourceful if you don't know what a 'resource' is?"

Late in the afternoon, well before dark, while Pete neared the end of his day of sodding he told me that one of our friends and pea patch gardeners had her green house toppled by the gusts of wind Friday evening (around this time). I was surprised. "Where were we when that happened?" We each tried to account for our time on Friday. We must have been there. How could we not have noticed when we see everything out this front window?

As I considered this event: a toppled greenhouse in the pea patches, I was also tending a pot of chicken simmering in cumin seasoned tomato sauce with lots of diced yellow peppers, sliced mushrooms, diced garlic, onions and plenty of Italian seasoning. The pavilion sheltered me as I lifted the glass-topped lid to check dinner. Smelled wonderful. Looking out toward the pea patches I could see our friend working in her garden. The green house upright from my perspective.

Resourceful in community?

I found a small bowl and poured a mound of roasted and lightly sea salted cashews into the bowl. At the last minute I sliced up the remaining English cucumber and laid the lively crisp veg along side the cashews.

"Hi!" I called out as I neared the gardens.

Our friend was outside the fenced garden patches. I handed her the bowl.

"Is that for me?"

"Well it's the least we could do. Where were we? Pete told me about your greenhouse." The greenhouse was at this point upright and tethered.

"You must have been holed up!" She offered.

While she nibbled at the snack we talked of things. We talked about what mattered, what matters to each of us. The rain held off, and the winds were calmed for a time. We talked. We spoke of what it is like to garden on this land (soil is bad, filled with rocks), this prairie front. I spoke of what it's like to live here. We exchanged sensibilities for what is, this environment. I had an opportunity to extend small and considerate comfort. Cashews and cucumbers, a taste I would enjoy, I shared with someone I would like to know a little better. Conversation between squalls.

On Saturday this weekend we climbed into our Subaru and headed south. Our destination? The Puyallup Reservation. We headed for 'Aha Mele, a gathering of many Hawaiians (and Pacific Islanders) sharing Hawaiian music and dance, Hawaiian food, and the things that I miss more than words can say.

For two hours, I left America to be in the company of people who could give me language without words with the lift of an eyebrow and a subtle recognition with the head. "Where you from?" the greeter at the door asked me as Pete and I waited to get our wrist bands in place. "Kuliouou," I said. "Oh ... yeh," the familiar banter back and forth as if we were still on the home islands as easy as that. As easy as planning to drive in down pouring squalls without fear, and instead the call of soul to be where the resources could be filled.

We ate haupia and butter mochi, mingled for one hundred and twenty minutes in the gymnasium of the Chief Leschi Schools, seated on wooden bleachers, and engaged in aloha without boarding an airplane. This was a first time event for me, to be with hundreds of people at an indoors venue. The risk of exposures was outweighed by the need to be with my people.

While we had our Saturday field trip, the community kitchen on the Prairie Front was being used by others doing Tilth things. "We're cleared out most of the kitchen," I emailed, "and prepared it for you to use." I asked our friends to leave the door open to air out the kitchen from propane use so I could use the room later that evening.

Sharing space and being resourceful go together in the best of examples. Borrowing values, reinventing them if needed, the potential for watercolor as a working medium of reciprocity is doable. Paint the stars!

xo Moki and Pete