Here we go...
The root of all the world's problems are one of the following and sometimes both:
A) One parent (assuming there are two) needs to stay home with children. Being with your children is good for them, good for you, and makes for whole people somewhere down the road in adulthood. This presupposes that home is safe and nurturing, obviously. I know that this will piss someone off. Maybe lots of people. I am committed to it, but not discussing it further. Can of worms, slippery slope, rock that needs no turning, etc.
B) Disconnection from the land. This is the big one, and it' is likely that #1 would not be an issue of we paid more attention to this.
These two theories are literally my answers to everything, and though I am sure they are going to be ideas unpopular with a huge segment of the world, I am sticking to them. Any problem, be it of a personal, economic, political, social, or spiritual nature can be remedied (or is caused by) either A or B. I quietly (in my head) test them, offer them as solutions, try them out for their ability to hold water, and generally put them through my mental ringer every day. As mentioned, problem/solution A will not be discussed, but here is my explanation for B.....
I will begin with mushrooms, which use a good deal of my mental energy at this time of year. I'm still thinking about morels, but recently have added honey mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and coral mushrooms to my mental soup. Mike and I spent a lot of time, as I mentioned in an earlier post, reading the mushrooms boards prior to going out on our own hunt. We noticed that for the most part (I'm going to estimate this at about 95% of what we read) the people posting, sharing information, discussing a find, etc., were from more rural areas--that is to say they most often resided downstate and never in the counties bordering Chicago. The language they used in discussing their mushrooms was colloquial--there were dog peckers, tulips, and pheasant backs, to name a few. No latin names. No descriptions using botany or scientific language. I love this. I love that I don't know what a dog pecker is, but people (or at least some of them) in Putnam County do.
The people doing the morel hunting and then leaving these online fungal messages for the rest of us got up early,took time off work, braved the ticks and raspberries, the rain and wind, took their children, followed old people, took new charges with them, and yet, had a ball in the woods. They appeared to look forward to the morel season each year and it seemed, based on what I read, that mushroom hunting is not the only outdoor ritual in which they participate. They are gardeners, hunters, fishermen, campers, hikers, plantsmen, and generally speaking, wanderers. They have not lost their connection to the woods but have done everything they can to hold onto it, and I would bet a great deal of what they know came from their own people before them, who never thought about their land connection--primarily because it was such a part of them they didn't even know it was there. But why bother with all of this when morels can be gotten from a grocery store?
Eating locally is very big right now, at least among the people I know. And whether or not the locavores want to admit it, their endeavor is a completely primeval one. This is one of the reasons I love it. One of my favorite moments in life is the one where I can see the thread between two worlds....the modern behavior which can only be rooted in genetic memory. Such as when Mike comes home from a week of hunting virtually oozing testosterone, possessing a strut and confidence that I find unnerving. Or when the 3rd and 4th grade girls in my class spend their entire recess gathering up seed pods and fallen berries, or when the boys make mock war with each other, wielding any stick they can find. Or the propensity of any child to find the best hiding spot outdoors--the one he can see out of but no one can see into. Or the pure joy children find in eating out of a garden, off of a shrub or tree, or bettter yet, in the asking to eat something found outside that does not resemble any food they are familiar with. I don't believe these are just games children like to play because they are fun, nor do I believe Mike is simply looking for attention from me after a week of being away. In the case of children, I think (and hope) that these behaviors are the remnants of days when our play eventually became our work. And as far as Mike returning home as the sanguine, swaggering hunter..... this is no more than a man proud to provide food for his family and one full of the rush and energy of the hunt. No matter that he is presenting me with harmless pheasant and quail and not a saber-toothed cat.
I could be wrong about all of this but I hope not. This desire to eat locally is lodged in our DNA, I think, and I hope it is more than a fad. If not a hard-wired part of us, then why else would there be so many people growing vegetables and fruit in home gardens, cultivating herbs in the winter, and leaving their dandelions in the lawn to toss into a salad? Sure, gardening is enjoyable, but it's also hard work. There are a lot of people doing their damndest to keep some of their food intake local in this way--I just wish it would move to the next level; getting out into the woods and fields to find the less obvious edibles. But before that happens, before the world leaves its quarter-acre of homegrown tomatoes and cukes to find wild garlic and Sumac for lemonade, the land connection issue is going to have to be addressed. We can't find it if we don't know where it grows, and we cannot ever know where it grows by simply reading about it. What we need are more wanderers, more explorers, more aimless surveyors of the woods. And maybe that day is coming, although probably not in my lifetime. And if it were to happen, there would be a whole new set of problems....public land availability and having the power to forage on it being the first one which comes to mind. But it's a thought to play with and hope for.
In the meantime, while we wait for our tribal tendencies to fully reassert themselves and the tribes to embrace them, here's to dog peckers.
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