The WWOOF Pack: Ireland Edition

This is my 5th attempt to write about my wwoofing experience. Hopefully this start will stick. I read countless blogs over the summer about travelling, travelling in your 20s (because it is definitely different), wwoofing, round the word trips, packing, saving money, places to see for beauty and places to visit to party. I read so much about other people’s experiences and as I am sitting here living mine it doesn’t resemble any of the ones I read. I didn’t think it would, but I guess I thought I would be able to deliver my experience in a similar fashion.  To blog about traveling and wwoofing and bottle it into paragraphs that make sense. But every day I spend here becomes not about making sense but just sorta being here. And making bread.

When I first got here, I didn’t have the words but I knew there was a story. Arriving and being greeted by the friendliest woman who immediately made me feel as if I have found a friend. Followed by the breathtaking drive, along windy stone roads to arrive at a house surrounded by nothing but trees and chickens. I was greeted by the kindest Spanish girls with broken English but expressive faces. They took me on a walk to the lake and when we reached the lake’s edge they didn’t stop but kept going, walking straight into the lake. We got about 20 feet in before the water reached the top of our boots. It was a beautiful day with a pink, blue, and purple sunset over the gray lake and I turned to this girl I just met and asked, “Can I give you a hug?” She laughed and threw her arms around me and we swayed side to side, then turned and screamed, hurling our voices against the tree tops and hearing them drift back to us. I felt happy. That effortless, thoughtless sort of easy happiness that you don’t recognize in the moment because the moment is just that beautiful.

I have been here on Ti a Touric farm for about two weeks and I have so many of those stories that are composed of beautiful skies and people and the lovely gray coats of ponies. The indescribable moments that only nature can offer. There are a laundry list of things I’ve done that concretely illustrates what it means to wwoof in Ireland. I have fed ponies, donkeys, ducks, and chickens. I have touched the skin of a dead deer, rubbing ash from the fire into his coat to dry it out for a rug. I rode a tractor today. I have digged into the dirt countless times; weeded gardens, spread fertilizer, attempted to use a strimmer. Baked many delicious goods from scratch, bread, jams, and crust for amazing quiches and delicious pizzas that were cooked in a hand-made clay oven. I have picked vegetables from the poly tunnel and cracked eggs I’ve retrieved from the hens outside for breakfast. There has even been some rooster killings; that is a whole story of its own for another time.

That is a list of my actions, the things that the Canadian I am wwoofing with said I should blog about. But talking about all the activities doesn’t quite reach the root of the matter. Speaking of roots I spent about 6 days weeding the garden outside my host’s home and the irony was definitely not lost on me. I call my blog, my life, a series of displaced roots and I spent the majority of my time here on this farm dealing with roots. Pulling them out, cutting them, throwing them away, and saving a few to re-pot. My metaphorical roots have met literal rich, dark, dirty, and thriving roots. Roots that I am displacing and organizing and throwing away. Is it that through their separation I find my center? Or is it that the roots add to the metaphor, my displacing them mirror the same displacement I find in my life? Or is it just a lesson about the nature of roots? Removing them from the soil wasn’t easy but I think the earth here is fertile enough so that taking root will be. And once these suckers take root, it takes a 22yrs old full body weight with the help of a shovel and 10 minutes to get them out. So maybe that’s the lesson that I somehow circled around to while writing. The literal roots are teaching me about the roots of my life. To be displaced is hard and living in flux isn’t easy, but when I settle I can settle deep, sure and strong. Perhaps they are showing me a future where I’m certain a place is home.

Pieces of Peace

I spent my last undergraduate spring break in Colorado. Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Breckenridge to be exact. I want to say it was so great, that I had so much fun and I did, but what I want those words to truly express is how connected and close those cities allowed me to feel. Countless times I have ranted, in my head and out loud, about what I want and how I feel and what I am looking for and each time I have to say the words it seems I am getting further from actually living the life I spew. But in Colorado the words stopped and the simple state of being began. I could spend forever gushing about Colorado, when I got back everyone asked if I wanted to live there. But for me Colorado just illustrates that those words I rant have the possibility to come into fruition. The mere realization of the idea is what makes my dream worth every struggle.

I did the Manitou Springs Incline, over 2,000 steps and 2,000 feet of elevation, the highest this New Yorker has ever been. When I got to the top, I just felt peace.

A Plea for Disconnection

So we can connect. If I could lead the bright and shining Youths, of the free (and not so free) world I would put in place a mandate to disconnect. It would be called:

The Mandate To Disconnect!

The success of the Internet has been wonderful, unfathomable, and it defines the phrase “life altering.” It has transformed human beings and human interaction to a level unprecedented and has forever changed what it means to exist here on planet Earth. Existence used to be a moving pictures that came in a wooden box with a screen, with commercials that told you to eat out of cans. It used to be calling on a phone with a cord which meant that you could only hide so much from your parents. It used to mean going out to eat and having to nothing else to preoccupy your space except the people physically near you. It used to mean snapping a picture and waiting a week or so to see what it looked it. Existence used to mean minimal documentation. You could walk in and out of schools, towns, or countries, with a light thread; your experience there would be isolated to that place. Existence used to be private.

Now lives are performed in display cases. With filters and extensions to promote flair and friends; friends who know the flair but not so much the person.

If I could rule the world, I would make a plea for Global Unplugging. Everyone would wake up  one day, every lets say 230,952 minutes, and pull out plugs behind flat screens, Apple screens, whatever screens they want. And venture outside, where they will find huge buses waiting to drive them to the country, parts, hiking, apple picking, farms. Any open field of greens or large cabins that have fireplaces and chimneys.

Just to take a moment to replant something that has been forgotten.

Inspired by the Daily Prompt.

The 42nd Floor

While looking for a job I have been temping. So far I have worked in two places. This upscale costume jewelry company in SOHO where I toiled away in the dungeon shipping hundreds of plastic bracelets worth thousands of dollars. It was thrilling.

Just this week I had my first go at being a receptionist. I was on the 42nd floor of a skyscraper right in Bryant Park. While my supervisor showed me how to set out bottles of water for meetings, she mentioned that you need 10 million dollars to even walk through the front door. Then stressed the importance of setting out a variety of sodas.

Slightly interested and underwhelmed I took the the desk with a phone with many flashing red buttons  waiting for my fingers to fly. Two hours later the phone sits silent and I have discovered I don’t even have access to my mail account. I take to googling everything on the Internet. Everything to me is mostly jobs and TasteSpotting, which thankfully wasn’t blocked.

However after eight hours even food loses its draw; so I being to draw, and doodle, making large ink images. As my pen moves and I stare out at the Manhattan skyline on a floor that many people dream about working. I deeply see how much that dream isn’t mine. I don’t want luxury, I don’t need to be monetarily rich, I don’t need anything that leads to me to an environment this sterile. A place where my biggest achievement was setting out lunch. I need to be creative, I  need to live where squares aren’t the shape of choice.  I read once that people who are extremely wealthy tend to be less human. Like the freedom of their money made them forget the struggles of humanity. That may be true for some and not for others, like all things.

Either way I want to live with humans, animals, maybe even some aliens if they are so inclined. I’m just looking for a place where trees scrape the sky, and peoples’ feet are on the ground and their thoughts are with the clouds.

 

 

Now What?

 

I’m reading The Alchemist right now, I understand the hype but I can also see why my friend labeled it as overrated before she handed it over. Anyway I’m enjoying it for what it is. There is this line early on that reads, “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting…” I found it striking as it describes pretty accurately my present state. It is not only the dream being actualized but the steps you take to get there. When you realize that it could  happen and suddenly everything is colored differently.

This all started I guess two years ago when I went to Strasbourg, France for a semester abroad which turned into a year abroad when I decided to go to Manchester, England for my second semester. I think that is when I really started seeing everything in my life differently, I realized how capable I was of actively searching for whatever I wanted rather than living in some prescribed role. There was no drastic moment, no light bulbs shattered. Honestly, it was slow and unnoticeable. You do change while you travel, but while you’re travelling you’re really just adapting. I just liked what I was adapting to. OK so somewhere along the way I also got really interested in sustainability. I’ve always loved the outdoors and hiking even though I’m from Brooklyn where the wild things are the rats on the subway. But still somehow my only camp experience was a three week camping trip through Canada when I was 13.

But I started thinking about nature and food production in a really serious way and I just love hearing and learning about it. So my last semester in school I did an independent study about Literature & Sustainability which really took on a life of its own and really became about how people derive pleasure and how our societal constructs have taken us away from many forms of pleasure… which is a whole other tangent.

Throughout the course my professor, who was fantastic, really guided me to consider going to grad school for this, science communication or whatever the title may be. I really wanted to go back to Europe and WWOOF and then also looking at grad schools seem to be the perfect pairing. I suppose it still is. But the more time passes it is becoming apparent that having the script in my head come to life is just a little more challenging than anticipated. But perhaps it is just allowing myself to take more time, it is mine after all.