Foundations

I feel like a gardener, hard at work all winter, packing fertile soil onto my barren landscape in fistfuls gathered from the nearby forest floor. Each time I explore a new trail from my doorstep I bring back one handful more, and slowly the mound grows, spreads out a thick patch of potential. Months ago there was finally enough to begin tenderly pushing seeds into the finger holes I made in the soft bed of churned soil. The dirt under my fingernails greeted me each night under the lamplight while my calloused palms cradled the edges of books. The words, the “how-to’s” spilled into my morning tea as I watched the dawning mist cling and lift from the jagged ridges of nearby mountains, the names of which I knew not. I began to consult experts about growing seeds in this type of climate—it’s an unusual year they told me, an unusual place, and so I have prepared for what may come by taking my expectations gingerly by the hand, leading them deep into the woods in the darkness of a cloud-blown night so that they would never find their way back to me; although I can still hear them calling if I scan the horizon for the trace.

I have been a novice gardener living here, for what will be six months this Tuesday, and still in spite of my inexperience the rows have slowly formed. I have not been afraid to ask for help, and this has sped the process greatly. It seems that the tools are shouting from my email inbox, the tips and tricks from professionals pouring in. I am a new teacher, a new gardener starting to work the land in a place I am only just beginning to know. I am growing my garden here with conversation, with names, with phone calls to ask for what I need. My garden feeds itself with dialogue; discussion between my own thoughts, between the rain and the sun, between the mountains and rivers I take solace in standing beside, between my own voice and the voices of the people I have met in this community which add to the voices of the people I have met during my brief professional life as a teacher. The seeds which will feed and sustain the rest of my time here are sprouting and in their small tender shoots I see that the base of a life has been built, a solid foundation has been layered and established, and, although it is still vulnerable to a downpour, I feel that I know where to go for help. On Tuesday I will have built up the dirt in my garden with 182 tiny fistfuls, and each new day I will keep adding one more.