2002 Summer

Since Talking Leaves' inception in 1989, hundreds of small-scale alternative periodicals have come and gone. With the exception of a three-year period of sporadic publication in the mid-1990s, Talking Leaves has stuck to a regular publishing schedule and weathered all the financial challenges that have faced small publishers and driven the majority of them out of business. Because we fill a unique niche, and because we've made it this far, we are determined to keep publishing.

However, what form we will keep publishing in is uncertain. In the first four months of 2002, our income came in at approximately half the rate we need to continue printing a bound newsstand-ready magazine. Given our current financial situation, we need to attract substantially more subscribers and supporters to continue in our current format. TL is determined to continue. But without a substantial boost in income, our next issue will have to be a special subscribers-only edition, still with the same inspiring contents and same high-quality paper, but in the form of 8-1/2" x 11" sheets hand-stapled by the editor and other volunteers.

When I first met her, about a year ago, Carrie dressed in a style that reminded me that I didn't really know much about what young people were thinking in this modern age. She often wore drab colored, low-hung, and loose-fitting pants with the little top that didn't quite cover her belly or the tattoo on her back. Her heavy work shoes seemed to go with the outfit--a fashion statement of the sort I didn't know how to interpret. Her eyes were at times downcast, and I couldn't quite decipher her facial expression; I often wondered if it was safe or wise to approach. Did she dislike me? Or was she just uncomfortable with herself or unhappy with the world?

And yet sometimes, even in those first weeks, she would break into a fresh and beatific smile, mysterious and glowing. Sometimes there appeared a flash of fire in her eyes that let me know that she was in her power and ready to do battle with dragons of her own making or those set in front of her on her chosen path. It was clear to me, even then, that Carrie was not a simple woman, easy to understand, nor was she ready to simply be put into a box or dehumanized by a label that was supposed to describe who she was and how she ought to act.

Rain is falling tonight in western Oregon, tapping out a light but steady rhythm on the roof of my yurt. This rain will water the plants in the garden, and, in the short term, it will also make the garden beds more difficult to work. How much rain falls tonight will largely determine what I do tomorrow. And it's affecting what I do now. I light a fire from last year's dry firewood, carefully kept out of the rain for several seasons. These sections of wood were once parts of trees, the products of the magical convergence of sunlight, air, water, minerals, and genetic information. These pieces of wood were themselves once parts of biological water pumps, depending on water for their very existence and operation. Without the fire now raging in my woodstove, the result of those trees' success at growing for many years (they were probably older than I am), my fingers would be too cold to type. Without the sun falling on my photovoltaic panels today (and yesterday, and for many past days), my batteries would not have enough power to run my laptop computer. Without the rain which fell last month, the greens I ate for dinner would not exist, and my meal and my energy would be coming from elsewhere. Without a place to live where I can work in the garden, listen to the rain falling on my roof, explore the woods, sit in the sun, and stay out of a motor vehicle for days or even weeks on end if I so choose, it is quite likely I would also not be editing this particular magazine--or possibly any magazine at all.

I live in a place which has attracted groups of people for many centuries, even millennia. The native Kalapuya gathered camas bulbs, hunted, and camped here--we still find artifacts as we dig our garden beds--and more recently, a group of Christian seekers made this 87 acres their home. Lost Valley is merely the latest group of people drawn to this land; and over the last 13 years, many residents, visitors, and guests--both short- and long-term--have felt its power. Did we "decide" to come here, and did we choose who we'd be once we arrived? Or are we perhaps expressions of the land we have arrived on? Are we purely the autonomous individuals we sometimes think of ourselves as, or are we actually the fortunate results of rainfall, sunlight, soil, and air, with a good dose of genetic information and who knows what else thrown in? Tonight, I wonder, where do I stop, and the rainfall begin? And what is the boundary between me, and the path through the new forest that I run nearly every morning? Without me, that path would be different, less distinct, and perhaps less loved; and without that path, I too would be different, less distinct, and also less connected to the world around me. Without the forest, there would be no path; without the rain, there would be no forest; and where this leaves me is anybody's guess, except I know that my well-being and my self are inseparable from everything I've mentioned above and much that I haven't even started to mention.

It was my fifth gunshot wound to the head in that year.

Not mine, personally, though such trauma-related ambulance calls certainly took their toll on me. In my career of twelve years as a paramedic, through three states, I had handled perhaps one each year. 1979 was a whole lot different. Not only had I handled five that year, but each and every one of the people involved not only lived long enough to make it to the hospital, but went on living for at least a month each. I can't deny a certain amount of pride in the fact that by the time this call came about, I was damn good at "saving" them, yet, I carried a huge nagging question in my heart of "What have I done?" Knowing damn well at the time that there was no chance of their survival, it was still my duty to do everything I could to keep them alive. The result was producing a series of what we called in the trade, "bookends."

"If you were me, what would you do with this seed?"

Luna was holding a large mango seed, having just finished snacking on a mango on her way out to the garden.

"I might try planting it," I suggested on impulse. I knew no one who'd ever planted a mango seed or grown a mango, but I suppose it was an inspired moment, because I couldn't think of why not to try putting the seed in a pot in a warm place to see what would happen. Mangoes were tropical trees, far out of their region here in the Pacific Northwest, but perhaps with some coddling a plant could be grown, even if it never bore fruit.