There are three main topics here, anarchism, magic and homesteading, which I covered in the previous three posts after the introduction. Healing as a topic is like the overriding focus of this substack page.
I’ve been thinking a lot about healing. I drove to southwest Wisconsin to spend some time with my friends Nick and Kelly at Placke Organic Farm last week.
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Nick and I go way back to our time writing for the Doomstead Diner, 2010-2014, when all of us there saw an opportunity to fix systemic problems, putting banks, corporations, billionaires and government in their proper place. But then we all grew frustrated, realizing the opposite was happening, these institutions grew much more powerful, as meth and opioids raged unchecked across the nation. Then Edward Snowden revealed the NSA had the tech to spy on every American, and was spying without oversight. The great age of blogging came to an end, and most of us at the Diner went our separate ways, as people left and right condemned Snowden as a traitor.
Nick and I toward our end there wrote a prospectus for SUN, Sustaining Universal Needs nonprofit, a business outline for an intentional entrepreneurial community. It was like the swan song for the Diner. The Diner hung on for a few years before the founder RE’s health went bad and he could no longer sustain it.
Nick and Kelly have a beautiful son together, a toddler now all over the farm, and a truly extraordinary organic grass fed dairy. They have about sixty cows. Their calves consistently gain the highest price at auction, they are so lively and rambunctious. Kelly sells soap she makes in part with cow’s milk. They raise and sell organic hogs and a few steer. They grow organic corn and wheat. They are planting a lot of fruit and nut trees, especially elderberry. They keep chickens and there are a lot of cats around. We talked about how much credit Organic Valley deserves, and doesn’t generally get, one of the most significant ideas to manifest from 60’s counterculture. There might not be any organic dairies like Nick and Kelly’s in the Midwest, if not for Organic Valley.
But the farm is riding a very fine economic edge, the wholesale price for commercial milk has doubled, while the price for organic has stayed flat despite inflation. Their infrastructure is long aged and in a constant state of disrepair. They are an organic island in a sea of commercial-industrial agriculture where there is little respect for organic, so they are isolated. They have a new toddler running around. They are having trouble communicating, both of them talking to me separately about their complaints about the other.
See if this sounds familiar: you don’t listen to me; you don’t hear me; you don’t appreciate all that I do; it is your way in all things or no way.
I was struck by how similar were their complaints about each other, and told them as much. Their dreams for the farm too sounded almost identical. But still, this disconnect. It is a testament, amid all this beauty, the stress of these days is wearing people down (it is happening everywhere.) I love them dearly and hope they build the farm they dream of.
I spent the following four days driving slowly through the ridge country, the Drifltless, along the Mississippi River. We stayed two night in Wyalusing State Park in Wisconsin, in site 222 (if you assign a number 1-26, A-Z, my name adds up to 222, so that number has significance for me.) It was a good place to get my bearings, the first time in a long time I was alone (with my dog) with not much to do but read, write, explore, cook over a fire and dance around with my wood swords and my deer horns.
The third night we stayed in Perrot State Park in Wisconsin, Tanka and I walked and ran a trail and then it rained all night into the morning. There were fewer people camping and on the road than I imagined there would be: inflation.
We drove then to Wabasha, MN, and camped in Kruger State Forest Campground. I have spent probably 25 nights there the past decade. There are no showers nor running water, so there has always been a site open when I arrive, and the place is mostly empty during the week.
I wrote for a few hours, we went for supplies, then we hiked up the ridge. There was a three acre patch of black cap raspberries where I have picked up to five gallons of berries a day (to turn one gallon of berries into 30 bottles of homebrew.)
But the berries this year are a week and a half late, they are not very abundant or plump and in many stands the leaves are going yellow while half the berries are still unripe.
Last spring and summer were very hot and dry. I don’t think the normal rains have returned, despite the rain last night. Also, that 3 acre patch is gone, the mid story trees have grown tall, creating a canopy below the white pines, shading out the understory. It has been six years since I picked here.
I call this pine ridge, as there are large stands of white and red or scotch pine.
That is strange, as this ridge country is hardwood country - oak, maple, cherry, hickory. These pine were planted and tended. This is a State Forest and these trees will likely be clear cut before long, and then the berries will be abundant again.
A dead end trail leads to this view, of the Zumbro river valley.
Here is vervain (the purple flower), one of the most sacred plants in the tradition.
Tanka likes the view (she is named after a style of Japanese poetry)
Dog, we walk these trails
You for the first time, running
Much more than I do
You are young, my memories
and ripe berries slow my pace
One can get into a rhythm - 5,7,5,7,7 - on the road when one has time to roam.
But on this journey too, came word that a person very dear to me has had his non-Hodgkins lymphoma return, after a more than ten year remission.
Snake told me once, as a 17 year old he went on a pilgrimage to Norway, looking for his great grandfather’s cabin, with nothing but a black and white photo. After three weeks showing the photo to random people, he found it. On an ancient rock wall behind the house was a weathered, hand carved snake. He has gone by that name since.
More than 15 years ago now, I was in the low nadir of my life. I found an organization online called the Mankind Project, and signed up for their initiation weekend. I had no idea what I was getting into. It was the most grueling psychological work I had ever done, at the end of which I was called onto the “carpet”. I found myself in a “coffin” made of a blanket held down by many hands, letting go of an old regret, and then I was raging at a black man how had dreads and was much bigger than I was, who had the courage and the strength to stand in as my father. I said every angry thing I had wanted to say to my father but never could, and then I tried to bloody his face, as ten men held me back.
Afterward I felt more fresh and alive than I could remember feeling, so cathartic that was. And now I have a very good relationship with my father that I cherish.
Snake led me through that process. I had never met him. No one had ever done such a thing for me. I had no idea there were men capable of such.
I have not been a good friend to Snake since, too much of a downer, always wanting to talk about what is wrong with society, not much fun to be around. Despite that, Snake and his wife Alexis agreed to be on my board at Food Forest, Farm and Restaurant nonprofit. Then Covid happened.
It is distressing to me that on hearing about Snake, I immediately went to a place of, was he boosted? Did the jabs shut down his immune system in such a way as to allow his cancer to return? There is some evidence that is a thing. This is the third time now I have thought such, about people I care about, a cardiac related death in someone who otherwise seemed robust, and a young healthy woman who had a miscarriage. I know things happen, it can’t all be blamed on the jabs. And yet I cannot say anything to them about it, it would only compound their grief, and of course I have no evidence.
If you would like to contribute to Snake’s treatment, here is a link to his gofundme page.
Whatever the case about these friends, between Covid, Covid policy, the jabs, rampant drug addiction, economic despair, the state of the land and water, the fact that it is mid July and I have not seen a monarch butterfly - America is in need of healing. We have been at war nearly all of our history as a nation. Stand down. Please?
I hear so much fear, so much anger, so much desire for revenge, we are well into a society-wide information war. The most important thing right now seems to me, we cannot let our government get us into some intractable war against Russia/China/Iran, and we cannot let the situation in America devolve into a truly violent, open un-civil war.
I know that life is much about grief. It is also just as much about beauty and wonder. It is calm here in camp as I write this, the bugs aren’t bad, birds are calling throughout the forest, especially the wood thrush. The late sun is revealed on the west side of the tall pines, and I am struck again by my love for this campsite and this earth. If we are to find healing in this great country, we could do no better than to renew our relation to and understanding of nature. To recover something of the mystery, to rejoice again in what we have lost, to find courage to take back what has been taken, to come again to our origins.
If I sound earnest, I mean too. Earnest is often naive, but I feel it strongly and if I feel it it is true, yes? I won’t make a habit of it. I’ll go a little gonzo like I used to at the Diner, next post. Thank you for reading.
It's good to know Organic Valley isn't just a bullshit marketing scheme, as their milk is in my fridge right now lol.
Don't throw the SUN prospectus into the trash just yet, I have a feeling it'll need to be dusted off, costs updated, and a line of people ready to join.