Where love is at work, work is mostly play.

My mind has been churning with ideas of farms again. I try to quell these thoughts because they do me no good when I am bound to another place for the time being. But, I love daydreaming about how my farm is going to look at twilight and how I'll be in charge of my own lumber pile so I can take whatever I damn please instead of having to ask permission. And, how I'll feed my horses again, something I haven't done for years. It's very possible to exhaust my body on this 6,000 square foot lot in city limits. I've done it. I've even battered myself enough to warrant a small break from physical labor (due more to my flab than the actual nature of the work). But, on a larger landscape, there's that possibility of sweat and dirt and blood and sweat and dirt every day. There's enough space, animals, wood, dirt, weeds, fences, manure piles, ponds, and trees to use every muscle in the body, until it's run ragged and ready for flopping in the grass. That's what I miss. Getting up and looking out on a spread of possibilities of how to make the body ache so good that day. I still remember when I was a camper in Camp Blaze at the end of one of our long, hard days. I think we were burning because I remember being soaked with sweat, in my grubby camp shorts and shirt, and, at the end of it all, laying back on the hot pavement and feeling the sun heat seep into my sweaty cotton shirt and my sore, tired back, and thinking that I didn't want to be anywhere else. How else could you ever feel that way unless you spent hours pushing and pulling and heaving and swearing? That's the only way. Granted, kids get injuries less than adults, period. But, I was never "injured" as a kid. You use your body and it gets used to the way you use it. Now, it's all I can do to muster up the energy and physical endurance to get big jobs done. I spend my day hunched at a desk, or perched on a stool, or shuttling boxes and shoes around. It does little for my body, less for my mind. And, I have a good job, by general standards. But, I'd trade it for hard work any day. When I'm working hard my mind is quiet.

This calling, by which physical work can be rendered enjoyable and interested (surely more so than jogging) requires certain characteristics that may be learned, but I believe are mostly inborn. The first is a love of home. People with a true vocation to contrary farming find so much fascination in the near-at-hand that they feel no need to wander the world in search of truth, or beauty, or amusement.... They see the grand canyons and tropical rain forests, the city lights fantastic, the now much-trodden wildernesses, the history of civilization ebbing and flowing, all repeated in their own neighborhoods and villages. If they wish to heighten their awareness of how the outer world is reflected in their lives, they can 'travel' the world by book, or by radio, television, telephone, and computer. They learn that people are the same everywhere and that the way to enjoy humanity (or at least learn to endure its absurdities) is to cultivate the people and places of their own community.... With this sensibility, a farmer avoids the attitude that most often makes farming work burdenson: he knows he is not missing something grand and great down the road someplace.