When I was young, I was going to save the world.
Animals, in particular. Whales, to be exact.
I devoured animal facts books, watched every episode of Kratt’s Creatures, wrote poems about extinction and deforestation.
It has been a standing joke in my family that I would one day end up on the Sea Shepherd.
I wish I was that brave.
Is it brave though? Not that it doesn't not require bravery, no doubt, but rather, is that what I lack? A simple bucket of courage that fills only three quarters?
Perhaps it is direction that I envy.
A single, dedicated, steadfast, determination.
A means to an end.
A tunnel of focus.
I have moved through my life with all manner of goals, from Greenpeace Warrior to Business Owner.
First it was a shared dietary-friendly bakery with my sisters, a clear response to our many allergies at a young age and the 90s that delivered cardboard bread in reply.
Most of my life contained the background (or at times, foreground) determination that I’d be a writer. There was a short spurt with novels and short stories, and lasting love with poetry. Children’s books have forever held my heart. As I grew and business and reason and communication with others entered my mind I began to imagine writing for magazines or papers, capturing minds with spun words of the outdoors and nature. At times I momentarily let myself flirt with the idea of having the dedication to write a philosophical rumination on waterfalls, a real live book, before hurriedly stuffing that thought back in the bottom drawer, don’t be absurd.
Then there was my high school life, where I was sure I'd attend art school, be an art teacher or graphic designer. Perhaps write and illustrate books like Shim Shimmel or Robert Bateman, inspiring the world to action with my work.
A flicker of time when I decided to open my own clothing shop, quickly turning to opening my own cafe. Growing my own ingredients and being an example of an environmentally and socially responsible business.
Somehow in this, I went to university for philosophy. Because of course, the only direction I could choose was the study of something with no direction, decisions, or tunnel vision.
A study of fences and the joys of sitting on them, appreciating every single bit of matter one could see (and even the ones we could not).
I inevitably added Environmental Studies in as a second major, because one field was hardly enough with the whole wide world of passions out there, and soon too, a business minor, to convince the world I had some sense after all.
And then I fell hard, discovered ethnobotany, the study of plants and people, grew my first peas, signed up for working on organic farms across the world, and never felt more connected to life itself.
Food, our terrible agriculture systems, community and connection through plants - this was the answer to our world’s problems.
I would become a farmer.
And I have.
A philosophical, environmentally-educated, business-background, art-weilding, writing, dreaming, farmer.
And I have loved every minute of it.
And then this.
it has come over me recently, this slow lurking in the back of my mind.
It arose completely unaided, maybe a week and a half ago, like the steadied glide of a cat’s tail, wagging back and forth, back and forth.
One knows better than to ignore that particular swish of a cat’s tail.
Easily unnoticed, yet filled with meaning.
This sudden fear has overcome me, a gnawing at my heart that, my friend,
- what about the whales?
