Making Place During a Cellular Outage
Yesterday some local folk, likely looking for copper to sell, damaged a cell tower. My Verizon service limped into oblivion throughout the morning and was non-responsive by lunch time. After driving to a different town to get a few calls out and check email, I came home and drifted into the quiet.
My partner and I steward five acres next to a bay on the Olympic Peninsula on ancient Chimakum land in what the settlers call the state of Washington. We’re fortunate that a cellphone/internet outage translates into welcome time to listen to the more-than-human beings with whom we share this life. I am aware that it is a privilege made possible by the hard work of my dark-skinned mother who was thwarted many times by anti-black racism, so I don’t take it lightly and relish it as proper honor to her dedication to the generations. All she ever wanted was for us to be happy and respected.
So after the cellular frustration died back, I sat down on my sofa and started reading a book a friend had recently loaned me. It had Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s name on it, so I readily chose it from the pile. Soon I was being held by the words of Barbara Smith on the origin story of the Combahee River Collective, which was balm for the soul.
Soon enough, George popped in to announce that his experimental seed sowing had unexpectedly begun to yield sprouts. Untethered from the screen on my desk, it felt like a natural flow to go out for a show-n-tell of all the seed sowing trials. Experiencing the success of my efforts to turn clay dirt into soil via five days of goat mowing, as well as the acquisition of compost, sawdust, straw, and hog fuel combined with his plant knowledge which was finally generating life. Well, that was more food for the soul.
The remainder of the daylight hours were a meander through walks and the land, slow meal prep using ingredients from local PGM producers, outdoor dining, and lots of conversations in various locations and settings around the land. No surprise that souls were knitted a bit closer and new understandings became known. Twenty four hours later, there’s a little more rootedness, not a big revelatory shift, just a quiet expansion of depth. Making place.