The dark hours delivered a couple of inches of new snow.
Here, that’s no kind of April Fool’s manifestation; yesterday’s terrible trickster winds better deserve that distinction. Here, the snow is an entirely welcome development, and this was most definitely April snow: heavy, wet, and gone by mid-morning.
At the moment, the skies are leaden gray, clouds hanging low and heavy but producing nothing at elevations lower than the ridgelines. But the earth is the same blend of pale gold and rich green as that in the photo above: a spring earth, fully actualized for this season, if only beginning the process of actualization for its mature form.
On this day after Easter, it feels as though we are putting something behind us, as well — as though we, like the earth, are at last able to turn our attention to the work of warmer ends. By that I don’t mean leaving behind the cold or even the snow; there will be more of that before this month is out, no doubt. Rather, I mean that it feels as though earth and sky, air and water, wind and fire, storm are light are all focused on ensuring that our small world here meets its summer destiny, making possible the work of preparing the earth, of tilling and planting and cultivating, of preparing, months ahead of time, for harvest.
Of an earth doing the work of abundance.
Of course, the earth’s role in this process is only one part of it; we have to fulfill our obligations, and never more so than now, when earth and air and water have all been so badly wounded. In some places, that means decided modern methods and technologies; here, and at our own small scale, it involves older, more time-tested (and timeless) ways of work.
And the real subject of this week’s Monday Photo Meditation, above, has to do with precisely those old ways.
Shortly after we first met, Wings and I discovered that one of the things we had in common was fathers who grew up doing things the old way. That extended to working with and on the land; both knew what it was to don the traces and plough by hand [back when the word was still spelled plough and not the convenient phonetic laziness common now]. We were both spared those particular forms of heavy labor, but we both also learned how to do most things in older ways, even if by then we had access to [relatively] newer amenities and adaptations. It instilled in us both a healthy respect for who and what came before us, for the work of our ancestors that brought our world to this point that has made our own lives so much easier by comparison.
And so, over the years, Wings saved such tools and implements and equipment as he could. He preserved these objects, a stark reminder of what it once took to bring this very plot of land to harvest. In some instances, he still uses them; in others, it’s simply that rustic reminder. The plough above is one of the latter.
Yes, the iron and steel are rusted now; the wood is weathered, brittle and broken in places. Bits of the traces still remain, the leather hardened into something unrecognizeable now. And most significant: The plough still works. Should it be needed, we could press it into service once again.
It’s not needed, of course. We don’t plant on that scale now; retail commerce has made it unnecessary, and in these conditions of twelve-hundred-year drought and climate collapse, the land could not support it anyway. But there’s some small comfort in knowing that, should it be necessary, it would still be possible.
The front end of the plough, when not in use, must be weighted. To accomplish that, Wings keeps it stacked with large rocks — pale, almost ivory, oval-ish, more smooth than rough. In this image, shot as it was by Wings in digital format some seventeen or so years ago, against the backdrop of a spring earth just newly going green?
They remind me of Easter eggs.
And eggs, too, are signs of prosperity. We are fortunate to have our own chickens, layers all. But as they would be the first to remind us, the eggs don’t manifest by magic; they are produced by the chickens’ own work. And as we await the next round of snow, forecast for this evening, the world outside the window reminds us of this lesson, too — an earth doing the work of abundance, but always in need our own labor, as well.
It feels like time for that work now.
~ Aji
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