Let's Sift Through the Sludge and Find the Gold

There are many areas where that title applies. 

One would be Thanksgiving. Remember how the pilgrims survived their first winter in the new land, raised their crops and with a bountiful harvest shared a feast? They needed a feast, the poor people were half starving. And so the story goes, they gave thanks, and invited their neighbors. Some of their neighbors happened to be the native peoples who lived on the land before they arrived. The Natives brought wild turkeys and corn, and thus introduced a tradition.

Few of us need a feast, but we do need to give thanks.

And now with Christmas coming up I want to find the gold, not follow a grumbling scenario:  “Oh yeah I need to cook for eight hours, eat for fifteen minutes, and clean up for seven days.”

I’m not doing it.

I want to find the gold.

The gold is to celebrate the great high holidays in a spirit of joy, gratitude, and glad tidings.  

The winter celebration goes back Pre-Christian. The Winter Yule, the Solstice, marked the shortest day, longest night. Trees that stayed green all year held in high regard, and so people took evergreen branches into the house to remind them that life would spring again.

The peoples of Germany introduced the Tannerbnaum, that was they brought an entire evergreen tree into the house. Before that peoples built wooden pyramidal shaped frames and decorated it with branches. Martin Luther, inspired by the twinkling stars, is credited with placing candles on the Christmas frame.

Imagine the delight of a Christmas tree beaming with candles? I can feel the awe in my bones.

Stockings hung by the chimney with care.  So the story goes, a poor widower had three daughters. Because he could not afford a dowry, he believed his daughters would never marry and thus never be taken care of, but he would not accept charity. Saint Nickolas heard of his plight, and on Christmas Eve he slid down the chimney, and seeing the girl's stockings hanging by the chimney to dry, he filled them with gold coins.

Imagine Christmas morning.

The winter celebration has a long tradition, embellished often, and special to the peoples around the world.  When Jesus was introduced into it, it brought new meaning to the faithful. A child is born. The angels sing. And what did they sing? “Good Tidings to all, and Goodwill to all men.”

"Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the British and Germans met and shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, and exchanged souvenirs, and shook hands. Yes, all day Christmas day, and as I write. Marvelous, isn't it?“

(Future nature writer Henry Williamson, then a nineteen-year-old private in the London Rifle Brigade, wrote to his mother, 1914)

Captain Robert Patrick Miles, King's Shropshire Light Infantry, recalled in an edited letter that was published in both the Daily Mail and the Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News in January 1915:

We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in front. Of the Germans he wrote: "They are distinctly bored with the war...In fact one of them wanted to know what on earth we were doing here fighting them." )

One Christmas Eve night, a man riding home in his sleigh, emblazoned the story of Saint Nickolas aka Santa Claus, into our minds and hearts. This father wanted something to give his six children, so he scratched out the poem, ”A Visit from Saint Nickolas.” That was Clement Moore, and his poem has become known as “Twas The Night Before Christmas.”

In Moore’s poem, St. Nicholas was a “Right jolly old elf.” “He was dressed all in furs from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.”

“He went right to his work and filled the stockings, and laying a finger beside his nose and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.“

And what did he call out as his sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer sailed off into the night sky?

 “A Happy Christmas to all and to all a Good Night.”

The Miracle of the Dog and the Babe:

This was a homeless dog dumpster digging when he found a human infant with its umbilical cord still attached. The dog carried the baby about 100 feet and gave it to a human who rushed it to the hospital. The baby was not injured by the dog, and it survived.

Let’s Go For a Ride in The Gater

A Gater is a small green utility vehicle. It has a driver’s seat, a passenger seat, and small dump-truck bed behind the seats.  “Necessary for a farm,” said the previous owner, and he left it for us. 

I had wanted a Gater since touring 60 acres in one. An Oregon Real Estate Agent and I sat in a Gater's dump bed leaning against a hay bale while husband dear sat beside the property's owner, the driver. The agent said she was scared out of her wits when the driver took off like a bat out of you know where, but I thought it was almost as much fun as a Disneyland ride.

I will be careful with you though, don’t worry. I won’t try to brush you off, as my husband appears to do as he careens through the pineapple fields while I am dodging volunteer trees that have sprung up between the pineapple rows. 

Our ride today in the Gater will be easier than walking to the area I want to show you, for we would likely be huffing and puffing in this sultry heat. 

You’re willing? Okay. Let’s go.

The sun isn't up yet as we climb into our seats, but birds are trying to pull it from its slumber. We will not see the sunrise, for the trees stand in the way of it, but the sun gradually brightens the sky, and enlivens the expanse of emerald green around the house as though the morning goddess, sleepy eyed, is turning up her rheostat.  

We putt through the row of eucalyptus trees that separate the house area from the orchard. We pass a MACK dump truck the size of a small house that is tied to the ground with vines the way Gulliver was tied by the Lilliputians.

I push in the throttle, and the Gater gallops up a gentle incline—or slithers, whatever Gater’s do. We bump past the pineapple field, and past the few scruffy orange and lemon trees that while small in size, produce delicious fruit.

To our left are macadamia nut trees. Ahead is the best lime tree in the world. Its limes are the size of lemons, and so fragrant they can call me from bed when daughter dear is making French toast dusted with powdered sugar, slaughtered with butter, and loaded with fresh lime juice.

 A Star Fruit tree grows beside the lime tree, and while the fruit of the enormous beautiful Star Fruit tree that grows close to the house tastes horrible, this tree’s fruit is delicious. I don’t know why. 

There are more eucalyptus trees along the side fence separating this property from the ten acres next to us. Ahead and to the right is jungle.

Along the back fence grows two exquisite plants, so hidden in the brush I didn’t know they existed until the day I found them flowering by the fence, shining like beacons. One is a Macaw plant, its flower a brilliant red, that looks as though folded by an origami specialist. Next to it grows a hanging Lobster Claw. Both have waxy petals and together they look like bird’s beaks and lobster claws, as their names describe.

Macaw flower

I pull back the throttle, and we roll to a silent stop. I wanted to show you the largest most beautiful tree in the area. It is the reason I brought you here.

It is a Signature tree.

We hop out of the vehicle and walk up to the tree.  It is evergreen with leaves thick as a succulent’s. The amazing thing about this tree is that if you scratch a message in a leaf that leaf and message will last for years. Looking up into the immense green foliage, we begin our search. I know the vicinity, and there we find them—notes from the two little girls who lived on this land before us, little notes, sad notes, notes that said, “Goodbye Farm.”

A few days ago my family wrote their names on the leaves, and now you and I could sign our names as well, and for a while far away in the vast Pacific on a tropical island we would be made illustrious for a time. 

In Praise of Goats

Orville and Wilbur with a rider, Oregon

Little Boy Darling with Do and Re, Hawaii

If you have never met a goat you might not imagine how sweet they can be.

The subject of goats came up for me when my daughter told me about the #Weston Price Conference she attended last week in Los Angeles.

It was a food conference, and you might wonder how the subject of goats came into the conversation. No, don’t eat them.  Use them. One of the presenters was a farmer. And he said we need more animals on our properties.

I began thinking about Orville and Wilbur our free-range goats, who came running from the forest every morning to dive into the horse’s hay. They talked to us, followed us, came when called, and hiked with us. They kept the brush cleared around the house, and they never damaged anything. Well, they would have eaten all ornamental plants and flowers, but everything not wild was behind a deck railing.  The house was fenced in the goats were fenced out.

One thing the farmer said about goats is that they are problem solvers, and they use that ability to get out of fences. They use that ability, too, to climb on anything fun, but we didn’t have that problem with Orville and Wilbur, as all temptation was out of reach, and we lived in the forest. They were perfect.

When we moved to Hawaii we bought two little nannies, Do and Re, still on bottles when we got them, and the only time they were penned was in the dog kennel when we were away from the house over night. The rest of the time they were free-range, as sweet as kittens, and kept the property trimmed as though we had hired a ground crew. They came when called and hiked along the “green trail of bliss” with us.

There was a star fruit tree close by the house whose fruit tasted terrible (another tree in the orchard tasted great, I don’t know why the difference), but the one by the house dropped fruit on the ground leaving a mess—not after we got the goats, they erased all evidence of ground fruit. And you don’t have to worry about goat poop, it’s like a deer’s, pelleted, and when dropped into the grass it disappears.

A downside was that we had to enclose anything that could be climbed upon, the boxes in the storage shed, the Prius, and the tree in the front yard. So I suggest penning in the house and leaving the goats free. They will stay close, they like people.

That’s our story.

The conference speaker said that people are desert makers. If ground is scraped bare in a dry arid climate, like Africa, the ground can heat up to 140 degrees where no plant can survive.  With animals and grass and grazing, the soil will be about 70 degrees, perfect. The grazing animals will nibble the grass encouraging it to grow. One must not allow them to over-graze however, but rotate them to different pastures. And goats, being browsers, will keep the brush cleared. In Oregon they can clear out blackberry bushes that left to their own devices will  over run an entire acre—or more.

The farmer showed two pictures with the caption, “Which picture had the rain?”

 Neither.

The green land had animals, the dry one didn’t.

Up to Chapter 10 on oneyearontheisland.com

What Happens Next?

“A young couple are driving down a beautiful country road.  In the back seat are their two kids. They stop for a moment to drink in the view… what happens next?”

This was a test for our thought processes and how we are being programmed. Many people would say “A car comes barreling down the road and bashes into them.”

Who’s in control of our thoughts?

For a reprieve, drink in the joy of an innocent. Only a camera is pointed in her direction.

“Have you ever seen a deer frolicking in the surf?”

“Well I did.”

click on

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