Who'd've thunk this would've happened?
One year ago exactly I was living and breathing in the Sonoran sun, washing spinach and harvesting lettuce and floating about without a care in the world. While completely out of my character, I (for the first time ... ever) did not think to the future all that much. I lived day to day, harvest to harvest. I loved my company and what I was doing and where I was doing it. WWOOF life was good.
At the time, at least. In reality I know that my brain was covering up its own frustrations with that nomadic lifestyle: the isolation, the idyllic surroundings, the ignorance of social ills and disparities. It was food life with blinders on -- something I sort of hate.
Since then I have been trying (with sporadic bursts of whole-hearted effort) to change that trend, to understand and experience and immerse in "food life" that is more aware of its surroundings, its communities. Attempt one at this was grad school; it took one semester (honestly, about two weeks) to realize the shortcomings of this technique. Learning is learning, and I'm trying to be grateful for that, but learning in Somerville was not the right way. WWOOFing may have been hiding from reality behind a pasture of lambs, but grad school was hiding behind a pile of books.
All of this rambling is to say that I have started what I hope is a new and more successful chapter in my efforts to understand this need that drives nations to wars, people to hunger, and environments to degradation. I have just completed day three of a brand-new apprenticeship program -- one I hope does a better job of connecting food production to communities, which it aims to do. Already I have (along with my fellow apprentices) pruned dozens of blueberry bushes, done a few practice runs on a Gator, and met an impressive amount of impressively driven folks in a far more realistic setting than collegiate Boston or bourgeois northern Tucson.
Take Monday night, for instance: one of my coordinators invited us apprentices to a meeting with Cabria, a "sunior" at the local high school who is single-handedly taking on the county to campaign for healthier school lunches. She was prepping for her meeting with the county school lunch director, and wow! was I taken aback. Cabria is 17 and taking such a thoughtful, genuine concern in her corner of the food system that it astounds me. Her awareness of forces around her and the humility with which she addresses them is refreshing -- what's even better, though, is that meeting her was not unreachable. While her drive is rare, what she's doing is not, and where she lives is not extra-special. She's just a kid in just another town who is engaging in this conversation that has nothing to do with politics or finances on her end -- she just likes salad and wants to see it at school. It's as simple as that. We also met Cabria's teachers and their kids, and everything was so ... normal. There was no glitz, no spotlight, no nothing. It was a small but genuine effort, and I am still stunned. This is part of what I've been missing and searching for for so long. This ability to make changes by Average Joe and for Average Joe is not what you find at a private university, nor is it what you discuss at the parties with your fellow bourgeois foodies. I hope that night was just an indicator of what the next few months hold in store.
It's a bit like a musical composition, I suppose. Some parts (WWOOFing, grad school) have been full of crescendos and swellings of music and ups and downs and dramas and twists and suspense. Now, however, comes the interlude -- the part where your heartbeat regains a steady rhythm, your blood pressure ceases to spike, you're lulled into a state of unintentional but fruitful contemplation. I suspect this latest experience will be a rather solitary and quiet portion of my mid-20s (yikes), but so be it. This is the humility I've been striving for -- not humility to food (although that's good too), or humility to natural beauty (although I am infinitely grateful for learning how to appreciate that). It's humility to others, to society, to finally popping out of the collegiate bubble that leaves you feeling entitled to the world. I don't think that kind of grounding can happen without being hard, so I'm as open to the hardship as one can be. It's time.
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