ignore the last post, we have a tumblr instead

Aine didn´t quite know what twitter was, so we made a tumblr instead.  Find it at pandapilgrims.tumblr.com.

pilgrimage + modernity = twitter

Áine and I are twittering* on this pilgrimage.  Follow us at PandApilgrims — that's panda pilgrims to you!

* (I know the verb is "tweeting" but I like this more)

tomorrow I start walking

"We learn a place and how to visualize spatial relations as children, on foot and with imagination.  Place and the scale of space must be measured against our bodies and their capabilities.  A 'mile' was originally a roman measure of one thousand paces.  Automobile and airplane travel teaches us little that we can easily translate into a pereption of space.  To know that it takes six months to walk across Turtle Island/North America walking steadily but comfortably all day every day is to get some grasp of the distance.  The Chinese spoke of the 'four dignities'—Standing, Lying, Sitting, and Walking.  They are 'dignities' in that they are ways of being fully ourselves, at home in our bodies, in their fundamental modes.  I think many of us would consider it quite marvelous if we could set out on foot again, with a little in or a clean camp available every ten or so miles and no threat from traffic, to travel across a large landscape—all of China, all of Europe.  That's the way to see the world: in our own bodies."

- G.S., "Blue Mountains Constantly Walking"

an open letter to our wwoofing host

Dear Paola,

Thank you for hosting Áine and I at your garden for the last two and a half weeks. I just wanted to offer a few constructive criticisms regarding our time there. Specifically, I want to talk about your management style, and your tone regarding the language barrier.

I wonder if you're situation is very appropriate for WWOOFers. Your whole property is beautiful, of course, and I loved waking up in our tent on the hill and watching the clouds move through the Dolomites across the valley. The land's steep slope tired out my legs, but it was good training for our upcoming pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. What makes me wonder how well WWOOFers can fit into your garden, though, is how idiosyncratic your gardening methods are. Your garden seemed to me a disorganized, haphazard collection of vegetables and some plants I didn't know. Though it's not big — a quarter acre? — it took me half my time there to find the pond in the middle. The thing is, your garden may have been an intricately inter-cropped ecosystem, each plant quite functional — but since you didn't give me any orientation within the garden, I saw no order and was consistently confused when you asked me to do any task in there. Where were the nasturtium I was supposed to pick? All the carrots I could find for lunch were tiny; was there another patch with full-sized ones?

Outside the garden, on the hillside you had us clearing, your vision was even less clear. Sometimes you were maddeningly vague. "Build a compost toilet," was one job. "Make a gate out of this scrap fencing," was another. You would give desultory instructions and sometimes bring tools or materials, but the fence ended up being built by your husband and son in an entirely different way (for which I'm happy). Other times you were overly finicky about how things were done, but wouldn't explain the specific way you wanted something done until after I'd been at it for an hour. When you discovered my errors you acted as though I had wasted your time; really it was a waste for us both. Miscommunication and error are to be expected in a WWOOFing arrangement, since you're having new workers every week or so. If you're going to be continuously disappointed, maybe WWOOFing isn't for you.

Miscommunication underlay many of the difficulties on the farm, which makes sense because there was a huuuuge language barrier.  You speak only a few words of English (the most memorable of which are, "Ees no good!" every time I did anything...) And Áine and I speak an eensie-weensie bit of Italian. As we noted in our letter to you, we spoke little Italian and were WWOOFing in part to learn some of your language. (Actually, the prospect of gaining the basics of a new language convinced me to WWOOF after years of skepticism).

Now, the language barrier is a doozie. We've been butting up against it the whole time we've been in Italy. Áine has been better than me, tucking words and phrases away to bust out. While we worked in your garden she would listen to Italian langauge lessons on her iPod, booming out Italian phrases into the tomato patch she was weeding. But once we were inside, all the slight, mood-lightening conversation she tried to make only seemed to stress you out. During meals I would stare at my soup to avoid all but the most crucial communication. At its best the language barrier can be an ongoing comedy of errors, kindergarden meets charades. But on your watch it was a constant energy drain. The last days of our time in the garden drove this home: you went on vacation and left the house in care of your sister. With her warmth and understanding, we spoke more in two days with her than we did in two weeks with you, and surprised ourselves at how well we could communicate.

I'm sorry if this letter is a bit harsh. You don't read English, of course, and I'm not going to tell you about it, so it's more for me to let go of a mediocre three weeks than to actually have you change anything about your situation for future WWOOFers.

I was not a very good worker on your farm.  When it seems impossible to please the person you're working for, when it's clear they don't trust you, you're not moved to do good work. I cut corners when I could, taking extra trips to the house, long snack breaks, moving slow. I'm not proud of the work I did, and can only hope that your next WWOOFers can perform their tasks to your satisfaction and, perhaps, break the cycle of mistrust that existed between us.

sincerely,
Paolo

regarding handtools

journal entry, July 23, 2011:

I am conflicted about the scythe.  I see it as the opposite of the weed-whacker, that foul, noisy machine that wrecks my body, emits noxious gas, and makes me feel like a soldier.  With a handtool I feel like just one part of the ecosystem.  Instead of the capital being in a machine, I gain human capital by learning a technique.  I exercise a pit.  The handtool requires less infrastructure, just a whetstone, while the machine requires gas, oil, and a mechanic.  The scythe may be less efficient, but the equation looks different when you consider how long one spends fixing the weed-whacker.  Scything, I want to someday clear land as efficiently as a weedwhacker, but come out calmer at the end of the task than I would with the machine.

This "someday" musing has been a big part of WWOOFing.  Getting exposed to many tools, techniques, and farms is a good way of seeing what works and what doesn't.  And it gets me thinking about whether I'd want to be a full-time farmer someday.  (Is a piece of good land within walking or biking distance of climbing too much to ask?)

So, would I use a scythe on my own field?  When I'm WWOOFing, opting for the scythe over the weed-whacker is an obvious choice because I'm doing a set number of hours of work.  But if I'm trying to clear land for myself, would I just get a weed-whacker?  I've used well-designed and powerful ones, back-wrecking slow ones, and one that was so chintzy it was almost disposable.  The most solid scythe is less expensive than the crappiest weed-whacker.  Could I rely on the rhythm and "flow" that's possible (but far from inherent) in the handtool?  Or is it best just to beast it out with a weed-wacher?  I feel so alienated by the machine.

There are other considerations, of course, like how much land I'm clearing and how often I have to do it. And the scythe is plenty hard on my body, too.  The steep land at Paola's farm is killer on my back, which ached all morning.  When I finally rested it at siesta it seized up.  Painful!  Doesn't seem sustainable.  Scything, like so many things that give me "flow," can either be beautifully focussed, or injurious.

Plus there's the question of whether electing to use handtools is a bit precious, a bit for the hoity-toity farmer.  Or it could be a way of keeping overhead low and not going into debt.  If it's part of a mindfully-run system, I wonder if it could work, leaving everyone calmer and happier that using a machine.

one evening

From Friday, July 22, 2011:

I never used a scythe until today. Evening saw Áine and me on the slope just outside the garden fence, mowing the tall grass with these curved blades. The thrush, thrush, thrush of falling stalks, a pause for breath or to wipe sweat from a brow. Áine worked on the slope below me, haloed by the late light as the song of us, thrush, thrush, moved cross the hill. Sun sank, playing in the clouds heaped in the mountains across the valley. The field at my feet was a miniature rain forest, worlds of insects hopping in a hundred direction with every swing of the blade. Thrush, thrush, thrush. "Doing this, you see how destruction can be satisfying," Áine said. Thrush, thrush. Our host farmer, Paola, had snapped off the head of each stalk, gathering the season's grain. The bare stalks now fell before us, until her son Andrea came up yelling, "Dinner ees ready!"

Later, with the mowing was done and my belly full of pasta, I went out to get my sleeping sack off the clothesline. Above the steep slope of the garden, a cloud mountain glowed white. Sun long since down, it was star time, a time no white should still be. White as if lit by moonlight. Then it pulsed. Lightning lit the cloud from inside like a heartbeat. Internal relief of billows and curves. No thunder I could hear, just rustling corn. The cloud beat with silent light, a self-contained world of — "electric storm"? I didn't even know the name for what I watched so long, laundry forgotten in hand. After a long time I apprehended that it was expanding. With slow force, like plate tectonics, like breathing, it built itself. I climbed further up into the garden to look at the mountains. Dark clouds blocked them, but in the valley there were human lights. Turned once more the the silent brilliant storm and, in gratitude, came in.