Stationary in Moab

I'm slacking in the blog universe.  It's been harder to sit down at a computer and write when it's been so beautiful out.

Last time I blogged I was at my parents' house in Colorado.  My 82-year-old dad's pneumonia cleared up pretty quickly.  He's strong as an ox.  Pic'd at left are the sweetest couple in the world: my mom (Laurel) and dad (Richard) and the cutest dog ever, Molly.
 

I want to see my parents as often as I can in this fleeting life.  It turns out my uncle Bob (my mom's older brother) just died.  She and one older brother are left out of 7 siblings.

Carolyn brought me back to Moab on her way back from Boulder, Colorado.  She's been devoting tons of her time to Sol Food Farms and our community of friends.  She has caught the infection.  She and I have talked a lot about this miracle of community we're feeling.  The farm is working from a volunteer spirit.

It's strange to think how few can make a living growing basic, nutritious food in our skewed system.  What is most important is devalued the most, and visa-versa.  If/when our economy crumbles, maybe priorities, simple common sense, will return.  

Yeah, I guess this wilderness/urban hunter-gatherer is going agricultural, for now - more because of the community I'm feeling than a need for food for myself.  From reading this blog, you can glean that I feel the hunter-gatherer model is the most balanced.  But we also have to deal with easing into harmony between modern society and nature.  A perma-culture model seems the best for doing this, though Sol Food is not really permaculture yet. 

Basically, deep down, I'm still on this idea that balance can't truly happen until we take on the model of nature, where one reaps what one does not sow.  Yes, one sows, another reaps.  In other words, pay it forward.  For example, when I eat a mulberry from a random feral tree, I reap what I didn't sow.  And some bacterium eats my waste, reaping what it didn't sow.  This idea of giving up the fruit (reward) of our actions is a prime theme of all religious traditions, most clearly stated in both the Bhagavad Gita and the Gospels.  I've been brainstorming about this for some time - how civilization's banking, commerce, and agriculture are all based upon grasping after the fruit of our own labors, rather than the pay-it-forward economy of nature.  I'm still working on a treatise about the law of compounding interest, in both nature and in commercial banking, and how the appeal to nature's model is at the core of the world's religious traditions.   But it's just too beautiful, springy to summery, outside, with friends I love so much--not too conducive to study & writing.  Oh well, summer is for outward growth, winter for inward, mostly.  Everything is beautiful in its season.



A young couple, Garlan and Erin, came to work on the farm for a couple weeks.  They fit right in and we fell in love with them, too.  That's Garlan, Erin, me, Chris, and Carolyn pic left (L to R).

It's been a season of music.  We had a grand jam party in a culvert under a road a couple weeks ago that turned out absolutely divine.  I kid you not.  We've also had a couple jam times at Rotary park and at our friend Conrad's house that almost rivaled it.  Rotary park has a bunch of "freenotes", xylophones and drums for public use, all tuned in a pentatonic scale so anybody can harmonize on them.  This Moabite, Richard Cook, created them for the park years ago.  Unfortunately, neighbors complain and we have to go silent after 9pm.  That's Chris, me, Pete, and Brer (L-R) tootin' and bangin' on the xylophones.


Our friend Amanda has been keeping life exciting and interesting for us, too.  She and her friend Chelsea took Carolyn (pic right) and me rock climbing a few weeks ago.  Then she's been instigating getting folks together to play Ninja tag every few nights on the monkey bars in the park.  It feels like being a kid again. 

I'm glad I decided to not wander and stay in Moab this summer.