Last Confession: Saying Goodbye with Gratitude

Last Confession

Saying Goodbye with Gratitude

Article and Photos by Terri Smith

Market garden greenhouse vs. permaculture greenhouse experiment. I would never have had such a beautiful and productive greenhouse if I hadn't stopped farming when it was time and allowed myself to become something else.

The adventures of Terri and Oatmeal continue.

When Lisa first approached me in 2012 to ask if I would write for The Green Gazette, I was a market gardener with a literature degree, owner of Road’s End Vegetable Company, and the surrogate mother of a ridiculous little bottle goat named Amadeus, who was the reason she asked me to write for her in the first place.

For ten years now, I have shared my thoughts, farm tales, and love for Amadeus with more people than I probably even realize. Readers have told me that I have made them laugh, and also cry, and I have probably even sometimes made some of you angry. But through this most interesting decade, writing for Lisa and The Green Gazette has always been a labour of love, just like farming.

My farm at Road’s End was where I grew up. I spent ten years in Vancouver after high school, and it was wonderful to be back in the magical, enchanted place of my childhood. I felt so grateful to be there because I was so sure that it was where I truly belonged and that I was doing what I was meant to do.

But seven years and a lot of lessons later, I realized that my path to sustainability was not sustainable for me.

I didn’t think I would ever leave Road’s End. It was my dream, my path, my calling. But it was becoming too hard on my body, and after a time, my heart just wasn’t in it anymore.

When I stopped market gardening and left Road’s End in the spring of 2016, I didn’t know who I was anymore if I wasn’t a farmer. I did move to another farm in the Cariboo, but I had no idea what I was going to do next. My entire identity had become so entangled in my home and occupation that without those things I was free—but I was also lost.

I was so grateful to Lisa for wanting me to continue writing, and to my readers who still wanted to hear from me as I built a new life and tried to find my new path after Road’s End. “After Road’s End” is how I still think of my new life here, and it always makes me smile because where does one go after one reaches the end of the road?

Wherever one wants.

I read something recently about how in our world the definition of success is tied to the concept of forever. As in: if you start a business, run it successfully for a time, and then decide to go do something else, then that business “failed.” Or if you start a relationship and it goes well for a time, but then you grow in different directions and decide to separate, you now have a “failed” relationship. But what if we move beyond that idea? What if we stop tying the idea of success to the idea of forever? All things have their season, and if we can appreciate them while they are happening and then let them go with loving gratitude when it is time, is that not actually a better success story than if we cling to something beyond its season?

I love the new path I am on even more than my original plan. I do not see Road’s End as a failure. It was a successful business, and it was also a seven-year study in biodynamic agriculture. With the knowledge I gained during that time, I have taught so many workshops on how to grow food, helping to empower others to grow sustainably, and I have been able to explore many new ways of growing as I experiment with permaculture design in the garden of my dreams here in my new life. The six years I have been here have been wonderful, and I am so grateful that I had the courage to make a change when it was time.

And now it is also time to say goodbye to The Green Gazette with loving gratitude. Thank you, Lisa and crew, and thank you, dear readers. What a beautiful journey it has been, and what a wonderful success! I look forward to whatever comes next! -GG

Terri Smith still teaches gardening workshops, and she also teaches the magical art of needle felting through her new business: Something Magical. As well as forever identifying as a gardener, Terri is also a purveyor of wool, felting kits and supplies, and other bits of magic and art. She lives with her partner, Mark, and a few sheep and cats on a small farm near Quesnel. She can be found at somethingmagical.ca

In Place: The Practice of ‘Stay’

By Venta Rutkauskas

Photo: Leah Selk

To commit to a place, a community, or a landscape, there comes a time when we are called to stand up and defend it—to act in accordance with our values and reciprocate support. From this place where I write, in Northern Secwepemcúl’ecw, I have recognized a call to learn, to understand what it is to be a responsible visitor to the territory. Part of this action involves social justice and equity movements that advocate for the wellness of our community with a focus on anti-racism study. Deeply supportive and transformational educators recognize that sensory awareness and an intelligence of feeling and knowing housed in our complex tissues and neural pathways provides an anchor for our society’s needed transformation. We’ve really uplifted the mind over our bodies and learned to disengage from the powerful feelings that arise when we harm the environment or each other. Without the body’s wisdom and healing, we will struggle to develop true equity and compassionate societies that support everyone.

Somatic practices have been a part of learning in all cultures. They centre lived experience and self-regulation skills, resources that help us manage our behaviours. But many of us have been living in highly developed technological and consumer cultures that discount the wisdom of nature, sensation, or satiety. With that in mind, maybe a concerted effort is required to re-orient and strengthen the ability to work with sensations, especially those which bring forth discomfort. Somatic practices encourage what the Eastern philosophies describe as non-attachment, neither grasping nor repelling the experiences we have. We learn to stay with it. The social justice movements using somatic practices view them as crucial and foundational work required to address the issues that are so connected to the body, like our internal biases and instinctual reactions.

‘Stay’ asks us to build a capacity in the bodymind, in the nervous system, an ability to regulate and endure because we know there are going to be tough times. So, let’s build an awareness and then orient that knowing toward the need for systems change and compassionate action. In my heart, I believe this is the beauty way, a fully embodied presence ready and willing to uplift.

It can be very uncomfortable for many of us white-bodied settlers to hear that we benefit from a system of organized supremacy. I also believe that racialized bodies are deeply uncomfortable existing in the systems that have organized around supremacy. Imagine, too, the felt sense of an Indigenous community member, when resource-extraction-driven governments and corporations maintain an agenda to break down and dispossess them of their traditional ecosystems, which are intrinsically bound to their emotional and spiritual culture and practices. Be with any imagery, any sensations differentiating themselves around your body as you read this. Stay. Feel your emotions and feel your feet on the ground. Breathe. Can you discover a pathway that allows you to be ‘in place’, that a heart-centred response may create a personal action toward a compassionate society?

My work has been influenced by mentors and teachers in racialized bodies. Sometimes I encounter folks who worry or counter that we are spending too much time separating ourselves into tribal identity politics, stoking division over unity or causing the loss of children’s innocence. I hear it and I feel it, too. The struggle to do the right thing wades through all the voices in the conversation, locally, nationally, and globally. Often, I don’t know the next best step or what to do.

When I give myself the time to practice, my body offers a message, through gut, through chest and eyes: I want to listen and believe and act on the words of those who are not experiencing equity.

As this movement gains momentum, so, too, do the resources for learning and experiencing with mindful and wise guides. Resmaa Menakem’s acclaimed work grounds somatic practices as a healing pathway to racial equity (see My Grandmother’s Hands at resmaa.com). Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee (decolonizeeverything.org), Selam Debs (selamdebs.com/about), Rachel Ricketts (rachelricketts.com/online-courses), and authors and activists all over the globe provide frameworks for whole-self practices that awaken full awareness in context to social justice work. I have been fortunate to find a group willing to instill somatic anti-racism into our local advocacy. Thank you to the committed members of Cariboo Chilcotin Collaborative for Anti-racism and Reconciliation Engagement (CC CARE) for holding that space.

Maybe you, too, will be curious about somatic practice and approaches to social justice work. If you are a racialized body, this could be the pathway to releasing from all you’ve had to carry; if you are a white body, somatic abolition assists the endurance and willingness to stay with the deeply troubling truths about systems that benefit us and harm others, then act to change them. There are barriers to bringing equity to society, some of which live inside of our very selves. Let us not forget the beauty way. -GG

Venta Rutkauskas is an arts organizer, integrative energy healing practitioner, and writer living on unceded Secwepemc Territory near T’exelc. To learn more about local advocacy in anti-racism and Cariboo Chilcotin CARE, find this group on Facebook.

What Does the Future Hold?

A BEST-CASE SCENARIO ABOUT RURAL BRITISH COLUMBIA IN THE YEAR 2052

By Jim Cooperman

Illustration by Otto Pfannschmidt

The most common narrative about the future is dystopian, one that is feared and that most people avoid thinking about. This is because, despite continued warnings by world scientists, some politicians, and environmental activists like David Suzuki and Greta Thunberg, greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, forests continue to be devastated, farming practices continue to add to the problems, and feedback mechanisms are spewing out exponentially more carbon and methane.

A more promising approach would be to imagine a best-case scenario future, one where the planet is continuing to warm up but where society has learned to both cope and thrive. In order to achieve a more promising future than what the cards are currently dealing, three prerequisites need to be met that would lay the foundation for a better future.

Key to our ability to thrive in the future will be pre-emptively adopting climate change adaptation measures that will minimize the impacts from fires, heat, drought, storms, and other emergencies. The second prerequisite is overall societal and economic stability from the world level down to the regional level. The third would be achieving equitability, with cooperation replacing competition, the wealthy paying their true fair share, and poverty eliminated.

One value of considering what a better

future might look like is that it enables back-casting to identify what policies and programs are needed to reach to future desired state. By imagining an ideal future condition, one can better understand what is needed to get there. If we want our grandchildren to experience the best possible future, there is no better time than the present to help make that happen.

Imagining a future 30 years from now that is better than the one we are heading for now requires a major “Don’t Look Up” event that would cause a paradigm shift and result in a significant reversal in the current trends of ever-increasing income inequality, climate change disasters, and corporate control of the political agenda. That event could come sooner than expected, as scientists are sounding the alarm about the impending collapse of the Thwaites glacier, which is the size of Great Britain, in Antarctica.

The aptly nicknamed 80 miles wide “doomsday glacier” is held back by a rapidly destabilizing floating ice shelf that has cracks crisscrossing its surface. When it breaks apart, the glacier could slide into the ocean causing sea levels to rise upwards of 65 cm (two feet), which would then flood coastlines throughout the world. Although this event would be devastating, it would be exactly what is needed to move the climate crisis to the forefront for everyone, including those who deny climate change and those who continue to profit off the continued use of carbon fuels.

Once countries are faced with resettling millions of people, all other concerns will likely fade away as people unite to make the changes needed for both human survival and to tackle the climate crisis. All aspects of the economy and society will need to shift, as people realize that only by working co-operatively will the shift to decarbonization, greater income equality, and true sustainability become possible.

Provincial and federal governments will have their hands full coping with the coastal flooding crisis, thus local communities will need to take on greater responsibilities. There will be a major shift to a circular economic system, where money circulates more within each community. The result will be more food and goods are produced and sold locally and, gradually, more of what we need to live will come from our own region. Co-operation will outpace competition, as communities, companies, and neighbours work together to provide more of what is needed for all citizens to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

If and when the world finally decarbonizes, the structure of the economy will need to change, resulting in less reliance on world trade and greater self-sufficiency. One way to achieve this goal could be to tax goods according to how far they are shipped, to give an advantage to local production.

Given the massive amounts of CO2 that are pumped directly into the atmosphere by the airline industry, the tourism sector will also need to change. Flying to distant countries is a form of entertainment that will no longer be socially acceptable when millions of people are desperately trying to survive after their homes and businesses are underwater.

Most importantly, the crisis will alter most people’s obsession with consumerism. The world is drowning in far too many manufactured items, from clothes to plastics to vehicles, while most of it ends up as waste. The crisis made evident by a sudden rise in sea levels should shock most people enough that they should accept a future where they do not have the freedom to purchase anything they want and as much as they want, whenever they want. Austerity helped win the Second World War and it would be needed again to battle climate change.

A critical factor that will be essential for survival as the planet heats up is innovation. The best minds will need to focus on developing new technologies, better batteries, more efficient heating and cooling systems, less expensive and more resilient housing, and more sustainable and productive farming techniques.

Ideally, in 2052, crown land is managed sustainably to absorb carbon and store water. The loss of lives and homes to wildfires has prompted intensive forest management near communities, and that includes development of fire-resistant stands and conversion of coniferous forests to ones mixed with deciduous trees. While electric powered machinery does much of the work, the Canada’s Earth Corps, staffed by young people as part of their education and public service, handle most of the physical work.

Leading up to that point, while the number of fires continued to increase, the damage to property decreased as fire control became a high priority. Wildfires are now extinguished quickly thanks to high-tech satellite detection, locally stationed aircraft, drones, and Earth Corps firefighters.

Key to this success is contributions from improved water management. Nearly every creek in the region has a series of run-of-the-river reservoirs that capture the spring run-off, which varies greatly due to climate instability. In addition to fire control, the stored water is used for human consumption, agriculture, and aquaculture.

Adaptation efforts include intensive field-based inventory work, as well as regular monitoring of forest conditions. Forest steward professionals follow comprehensive ecosystem-based standards to protect and restore ecological integrity and live in the communities close to the forests they manage. Extra attention is given to watershed management to meet community water needs and to help prevent flooding and landslides. Silviculture practices ensure that burned areas are protected from damage by salvage logging and replanted as soon as possible with native trees suited to the higher temperatures and long droughts caused by the climate crisis.

The overall goal for land management in 2052 is to conserve, restore, and protect biodiversity, water, soil, and healthy natural forests, all in an effort to promote resilience. As well, efforts are increasing to better understand the rapid changes that are unfolding as the planet continues to heat up. With extreme weather events now the norm, there is an urgency to develop new ways to assist forests to adapt, and new ways to develop technologies and systems to prepare for and cope with what is expected to be a far more intense and life-threatening future climate.

This is an abridged version of the future vision. To read the full story, which covers farming, housing, education, social life, and infrastructure, visit shuswappassion.ca. -GG

Jim Cooperman, author of Everything Shuswap, is a longtime environmental activist and bioregionalist. He and his wife, Kathi, live in a log home they built on 40 acres above Shuswap Lake.