In three months interns only taste a piece of Lost Valley, a glimpse of farming, a peak into their process. This short season we share is about a lot more than lectures, seminars, or field trips. It's much more than growing our own food.
I realize every season that passes as I leaf through the canceled files, that gardening for me is not about leaning how to produce food, gardening is about our relationship to food. And this internship program is more and more about relationship. Growing in relationship to each other, to ourselves, and to plants. Gardens are a medium in which we begin to express these relationships.
Every season my approach to gardening changes, as I gain a deeper and deeper trust in life. As I learn to let go, and let things happen, I release more and more control and allow observation and perception to guide me. I realize that although apprentices learn how to propagate and how to identify common weeds, the greater lessons are in their personal process.
For most interns, it all begins at 6:30 am when we circle and begin the day. People who have never been up before 9 begin to feel the earth's pulse in the early moments before sunrise. They begin to create a rhythm of sunrise and sunset in their body that mimics the earth. They begin to feel the opening and closing as a plant in relationship to the sun. Plants become our teachers, our tools of understanding.
One of the first places the students learn this lesson is in the greenhouse. It's here where I begin to see in their eyes the first signs of wonder.
I remember one student this last season, continually uncertain of what he was going to learn in this non-university setting. He consistently asked for more and more his first week. No time off, more readings, more handouts, more scheduled events--something he could compare with his college experience.
I remember working with him and being pretty low-key about initiating any perception exercises in the garden. Then, one day we were in the greenhouse. He was watering while I was taking inventory. When I got over to the seed trays, I noticed he had stopped watering, and was brushing his hands over the flats as I often did when greeting the little seedlings. When I asked him if anything was wrong, he proceeded to lift up a flat he had seeded weeks before, and pointed to a flat I had seeded last week.
"Amani, these seedlings are pale and weak."
He pointed to the flat in his hand.
"I was so frustrated and angry the day I seeded them, they were clearly affected by my negativity."
Years ago, I would have comforted him by explaining all the variables at work on those seed trays. But at that moment, I knew there was no need for consolation. He had already received the lesson, the important piece was already said. His eyes were wider, his heart was opened, and I knew without any further questioning that the plants had done their work.
I'm continually amazed at the transition people make during a season. Many students come to Lost Valley frustrated and burned out from our school system. They're cautious, and reluctant--uncertain of any seemingly-structured program. So many of the younger apprentices come to the program with a lot of issues around teachers and school, and it takes them awhile to know what it is they really want to get out of this program. It takes them time to know what they're willing to put in.
I remember one student getting angry when I answered her question with a question. "Do you want me to pull this dandelion out of my bed?" she asked.
I responded with "Do you want to pull that dandelion out?"
She was so upset by our interaction that she yanked it out. I said nothing.
I remember weeks later her plants were struggling along, for lots of reasons. She called me over, I was assuming, to discuss the health of her plants.
"I shouldn't have pulled that dandelion," was all she said.
She wanted to know what to do to "make up for it." I could only respond with a hug. The words had already been said.
Soon after that incident I felt her shift. No longer was she a hard, tough, stand-offish woman. The plants had softened her. They reached in and knocked through the walls that she had been hiding behind for years. She became our prized scarlet runner bean, soaking up the love and support of the group, swelling up with confidence. She became grounded in who she is. Soon, her artistic, creative side burst forth, and she blossomed in our presence.
This is what the garden is all about, the forces of life. It's not about weed control or pest control. When we become aware of life forces, and the interrelatedness of these forces, we begin to experience gardening far beyond the mechanics.
Teaching people how to garden is not sharing a collection of recipes or tricks. It is about observing the balance between plants, soil, people, and nature. It is about processes of growth and decay, the plants as well as ourselves. Gardens are a meditation and we are the product of its forces, strong, grounded, enlightened spirits.
These gardens we create are a safety zone in a sometimes-crazy world; a place to slow down and begin to feel how we are influenced by life, and how we influence life. This winter as I walk through the blackened muddy garden, I hear all the voices of the summer. I see all the faces of those who have worked the soil over the seasons. Every plant skeleton I see reminds me of a face, a memory, a spirit. I hear the questions that were asked, the songs that were sung.
I walk aisle by aisle, remembering the joy, the sorrow, the pain, the laughter, and I imagine the plants as they die back into the ground, remembering each of us and our stories.
Amani Carroccio co-facilitated Lost Valley's Agroecology Apprenticeship Program for three seasons between 1993 and 1996. Before leaving to pursue her massage practice in Eugene, OR and now in Taos, NM (where she also co-manages The Abominable Snowmansion Youth Hostel), she contributed this article to The Lost Valley Book of Ecological Cooking and Living. Her legacy lives on here in the Lost Valley gardens and in the many lives she's touched.
©1998 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 1998
Volume 8, Number 1
Education for an Ecological Society