It is no secret that fall is my favorite season, nor that October is my favorite month. This is, generally speaking, the time when the air is clearest and the leaves most colorful . . . and when the Indian corn is ready for harvest.
It’s one of a cluster of sensations and memories that I associate with home: the scent and feel of the crisp air; the hint of chill without having to bid a full farewell to the warmth; apples falling from the orchard trees, pumpkins in the garden and on the porch; and the harvest of Indian corn in too many shades and variations to count.
This year, thanks to an extended period of unseasonably cold and wet weather in late spring and early summer, coupled with severe curtailment of our time thanks to the construction of the house, we didn’t get a real garden planted this year. For me, it has meant a big void in our days. I have grown to love my hours with the seeds and, later, among the plants. I don’t wear gloves for anything but weeding, and then only because thistles put in a periodic appearance. To me, planting is a form of medicine, and I always feel as though the plants’ well-being, and my own, depend upon a literal hands-on approach, without barriers.
This year, we have one errant cornstalk by the chicken coop, one that somehow planted itself; it reached a decent height before the freezing temperatures of night sent it to sleep. We have a few small rows of sturdy autumn wildflowers that are still growing, hoping to reach maturity before the snow flies . . . and a few small clusters of pumpkin and Indian corn, struggling against all odds to make it. It’s highly unlikely, of course; they’re too small and thus too fragile. But they insist, persist, and so I persist in trying to help them along for as long as possible, covering them every night against the cold, uncovering them every morning to drink in the sun. For now, they remain mostly bright green, stretching happily toward the warmth.
As I approach another threshold of my own in a couple of days, perhaps this is a lesson for me, too: Despite knowing what lies at the end, it’s always worth it to embrace what is now, to live as though there is no end.
In all likelihood, we will have neither pumpkins nor new corn at season’s end. We won’t have other squash or beans, for that matter. But last year’s small crop of Indian corn was outstanding: a big bucket’s worth of full, beautiful ears in the colors of my childhood — and in color combinations I’ve never seen before. They look like jewels, and in fact, they are: To our peoples, corn is more valuable than diamonds or rubies. It is, after all, the First Sister, the plant that has fed us and nurtured us and saved us since the time before time.
Corn is as indigenous as it gets, Native and native simultaneously— a part of our foodways, our lifeways, our music and dance and feast traditions, our cultures and ceremonies and medicine and spiritual traditions. It has survived drought, famine, invasion, occupation, genocide, every sort of destructive force, and still it lives and thrives and feeds the people.
The corn lives as though there is no end, and it would seem that it is right.
We are the corn, and the corn is us.
~ Aji
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