Tell me…
What is Your Dream?
© Robin Easton – All Rights Reserved
Podcast show ~ by Mary Lewis
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Interviewing
Robin Easton
Last week Mary Lewis, a homesteader and podcast show-host interviewed me about my life in the wild, my return to society, as well as my new project of turning my own one acre budding homestead into a pollinator conservancy. (PLAY PODCAST BELOW.) We also briefly touched on the state of the world and the importance of taking a positive and active part in our own lives…and the lives of those around us, including other species.
Mary’s Podcast Show HERE. I love listening to Mary and her incredible guests. She interviews people from all walks of life about their passion for doing old fashioned things in newfangled ways. Mary is a very remarkable woman, honest, wise, creative, gutsy, and highly intelligent. A talk with Mary is a whole Experience in itself. I cannot recommend her podcasts enough. She and her family grow herbs, vegetables, and flowers to sell through their CSA farm share, at their farm-stand on their property, and at local farmer’s markets. They also sell their chicken eggs, homemade soap, candles, wax melts, lip balm, body balm, essential oil blends, and homemade baked goods and canned goods.
This interview came at a great time for me. At age seventy-one my latest, long-term project and dream is to turn the small acre—that I am currently buying and have been renting for the last five years—into a pollinator conservancy for bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and other pollinating insects.
At the moment, there is only one abundantly bearing purple plum tree, an ‘occasionally-bearing’ Bing cherry tree, a mini grape vineyard, two established herb beds, a few struggling ornamental shrubs, and a huge, old cottonwood tree. The rest of the property is divided by my small house, with green lawn on one side of the house, and barren packed dirt driveway and parking area on the other side of the house.
I plan to return the land to all of the beings who need to live here with me. I want to create a sanctuary for all of us, not just myself. I will plant more fruit trees, create and grow raised garden beds of veggies for my own food. Next, I will plant native grasses and flowers, for bees, moths, butterflies, seed eating birds, ground nesting birds, various reptiles, and let’s not forget the night pollinators….bats.
Previously, when I ‘owned’ land, the acreage was vastly larger than my current home. The smallest plots of land were just over six acres, and the largest plot was just under 200 acres (my farm in Australia). All of these parcels of land were fully forested and often had small creeks running through them. The land was mostly untouched, thick with established native growth, and a rich diversity of native wildlife.
As I was looking for land and a home where I could settle, I considered properties in some of the remotest parts of New Mexico. Some had beautiful huge log homes on them, that were unbelievably cheap due to their remote location. Some of the properties had delightful off grid cabins with barely enough room for one person, and standing-room-only for guests….IF the guests were game to drive five hours from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and IF they had a 4 x 4 drive vehicle, and IF they only visited in the summer months…as winter-roads are often impassable with snow in remote areas. *Note: Most of my close local-friends live in Santa Fe.
I’ve lived many years off grid, with a hand-crank washing machine, wood stove or pit fires or homemade solar cooker, and no phones, TVs, radios, computers, no mail, electricity, refrigerator or running tap water, and I grew or gathered almost all of my own food. I’ve lived out of tents, camper trucks, the back of an old 4 x 4 Toyota truck, under tarps, and in partially built homes. I have designed and built my own homes. I’ve used whacker packers, chain saws, poured concrete, run electrical wiring, done interior and exterior plumbing, laid tile, built stone hearths, cut and chopped firewood, and more. I never minded any of it. In fact, I thrived on it. I felt wild, free, and strong, very connected my own body and the Living Earth. Plus, I love adventure.
During those years I was fitter than I had ever been before. That very way of life, lugging water and rocks and wood, gathering food, digging, planting, building, and so on…naturally kept me fit.
My past. Back in the day. Looking south towards Cairns, Queensland, Australia. Miles of endless beach, not a soul in sight.
So, why am I choosing to live about thirty minutes north of Santa Fe, instead of four to five hours away in one of the remotest places in New Mexico? And, why am I choosing to live with electricity, well water that comes out of my faucet, and live with a computer, (still no TV…never), and a flush toilet (although…I plan to install a composting toilet in my garage when I remodel it (myself) into a small gathering center, and also solar panels or a wood stove for home backup heat. We can lose power here, sometimes for hours or days, which happened this winter for many people in the area.
I can honestly say, it has been a very tough and even at times torturous decision. I do not fear living in a remote part of New Mexico covered with huge ponderosa pines, pinons, and juniper trees, and living off grid, or even being stranded through the winter months due to snow-blocked roads. However, one day I realized that this new stage of my life was not about all the things that I have already lived for decades, the solitude and isolation, the disappearance from the world to experience and remember who I am…before I died, and so forth.
When I slid off the map and quietly slipped into the wild at age twenty-five, I had a precancerous cyst and was riddled with severe infections my doctors could not control. I was dying. However, I knew in my heart and deepest soul that the only way I would heal was to sink myself into something so deep, primordial, and quiet. What better place than Earth’s oldest rainforest. I needed somewhere to heal, somewhere I could totally lose myself…and remember who I am. I needed somewhere I could shed my social and familial conditioning, and in the silence finally hear my own true heart. I needed somewhere I could listen to The Great Mystery.
I did that, and more than I ever imagined.
No regrets.
The last two years, as I felt into my place here in this little New Mexican, historical area of old homesteads, small farms run by the same families for many years and now subdivided into tiny homesteads, the more attached to the people I became. I fell in love with the woman (Carmen), my dear sister-friend who is selling her home to me. She is one of the most loving people I have met in my entire life. I often imagine what my life would have been like if I had known people like her while I was growing up. Carmen teaches me more about generosity and love than anyone has ever taught me, and she teaches solely through her own grace and living-love example.
Today, most of the old farms are divided into smaller lots, and still owned by the children and grandchildren of the original homesteaders. My neighbors are still homesteaders with anywhere from one acre to five or six acres (as Mary Lewis says, “A Tiny Homestead.”) Many of them grow gardens, and can, pickle and dry their own food. Many of them grow fruit trees and share their fruit with their neighbors, and they raise chickens, ducks, and so forth.
As I hemmed and hawed about where and how I wanted to live, two things kept coming back to me. One: this is a time to gather, to connect, to help others, and to learn to let others help me. That is something I have never done…let others help me. Yes, I am very good at being independent, a real warrior, a true survivalist, a barefoot hiker, a woman who lies naked in the dirt and rolls around in the mud and the squishy bread dough of life, a woman who charges headlong into her fear.
BUT….I recently started to experience something I never felt in my life, a sense of community, something akin to what I imagine the old pioneers might have felt. The people living around me are so selflessly kind, so caring, and even loving, and I am only just getting to know them. Yet, they already reach out with love, kindness, and support. I know that if I ever need help, the neighbors will turn up to assist in any way they can. That moves me to tears. I’ve never really had that in my life.
Walking down behind my home to wade across the Santa Cruz River, and hike out into endless rolling desert and mesas.
Santa Cruz River. Growing up in Maine with all her lakes, streams, and rivers, I have always been madly in love with water. Here in the desert water is so precious. Many land owners have to haul water miles in huge tanks to their homes. I am blessed to have water all around me, a clean full well, and access to two acequias, one on the upper boundary that I can gravity feed from, and another running across the acre that I can pump from. So much beautiful water will make an abundant sanctuary.
The best of both worlds, close enough to others so we can ‘gather’ and experience community, and close enough to acres of endless desert to explore and feel the solitude my soul craves.
The more I looked at this tiny little plot of Earth, the softer my heart became. Something in me wanted to tenderly care for the land, protect it, and listen to what it needed, and to more closely listen to the species who desperately need to live here. I found myself asking, “Who can I share one small acre with? What lives, what other intelligent species desperately need shelter, homes, food, water, and safety, a happy place to carry out their daily lives?”
All of a sudden, I was filled with an intense desire to give something back. I already have been given so much from the Living Earth. I have been blessed to live in (and with) some of the wildest, remotest places on Earth, places that didn’t ask anything of me, places that birthed ME.
Now suddenly, this tiny piece of Living Earth is calling for me to help it.…in some ways, for ME to birth IT. Lately, I feel that I already hear the millions of voices of all the species wanting to come home to wildflowers, native grasses, water, a flourishing ecosystem, as if they already know of my dream. “Please, please, do this for us, Robin. So many of us are dying. Make a happy home for us, a place to flourish.”
Can I do this? I don’t yet know. But I do know that I cannot resist the call of so many loving voices. So, come spring I will dig, and plant, and compost, and lug, and water, and throw seed. I will learn and make mistakes and start over, again and again if needs be. And, all the while my heart will pray as hope blooms on this one tiny patch of Living Earth.
I will never ‘own’ this delicate patch of Earth…it is only in my care….for a time.
Over thirty years ago, Carmen planted four tiny twigs of grape-vine-cuttings next to a long fence. Now, thirty years later, I harvest more grapes that I can eat, freeze, can, and give away. I invite my neighbors to come and pick, or I pick for them. This same dear woman planted a tiny plumb tree that now produces thousands of plums. Little did she know that thirty years down the road, I would come along and reap the mouthwatering abundance of her labors.
Her actions make me very aware of the vital importance of doing things that outlive us, actions that leave a lasting and healing impact upon the Earth, in the world, and on those who follow in our footsteps. No positive, caring, giving, bold action is too small. My plum tree bears so much fruit that all the neighbors gather under that one small tree and pick and eat plums, and laugh, and catch up on the events of their lives. Just think; one small tree, a little Mother Plum Tree lovingly, selflessly draws so many lives to-gather: humans, birds, bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, and more. All of us gather to nourish our lives from this one loving, little Plum Tree.
Hundreds and hundreds of plums were already picked when I took this photo, and the tree still drooped with at least two thousand more juicy sweet plums. I am in love with this little Mother Plum Tree. So utterly precious.
After dozens of people have picked her juicy plums, and after I have literally picked hundreds upon hundreds of plums and canned them, frozen them, juiced them, jammed them, and more….once autumn’s cold drops all her leaves….you can see how many unpicked plums still cling to her branches. This is a good thing for the winter birds, squirrels, and other hungry lives. Even I occasionally nibble a frozen plum. :)
This is why I did not buy the large log home on twenty acres of remote wilderness, five hours from Santa Fe. There was no challenge in it. Infinite beauty, peace, and love? Yes, of course. But no challenge, no obvious need from the land, no way to give back to the Earth that healed me all those years ago, Earth that always loves me.
Now, is a time for me and so many of us to Give Back.
Just as important, at this stage of my life, I want to ‘Gather,’ learn more, teach more, share more, write more, create more, and grow more. I want to give back even a tiny portion of all I’ve so generously been given.
I humbly take on this huge and seemingly impossible dream, this one tiny acre, and create sanctuary for all the species that once lived here. I will foster life, one step at a time. I never would have guessed that the smallest plot of land in my care would hold the biggest challenge. How wonderful. I know the Earth and all her Beings will continue to teach and guide me…just as they always do. I might fall down, but I will listen. I will learn.
*What dream makes your heart leap to life?
*What dream might seem all but impossible, yet you still desire to live it?
*What dream keeps you alive?
All my love to you,
Roby
PS: Eventually, I hope to share photos of my home and the progress that’s made to create a living legacy, a pollinator conservancy for all the life that needs to live here.…not just me.