Folk ways and the return of rain
I’ve just brewed myself a cup of dandelion infusion and sat at the kitchen table, facing the large window that overlooks the landscape pictured below. Although today there isn’t a single cloud on the sky, September has been nothing short of misty mornings, unexpected thunderstorms and showers.
September is beloved for many reasons. Not only because it usually (but not always) marks the first days of rain after the long Summer months, and the cooler temperatures offer relief, but also because it is the month of a small local celebration we hold close to our hearts. Not exactly for the celebration itself, a small religious procession through the rolling hills to a tiny chapel among cork oaks, where the religious figure the participants have been carrying on their shoulders is laid, but because there is a special someone who comes here every year to take part in the celebration: N, the Elder who grew up in our house.
I believe I must have mentioned N before. How she and her family of 7 dwelled in this small stone house, handbuilt by her grandfather maybe a hundred years ago. How, before she and her family lived here, the generation before hers did - that’s 9 people in this small house, which is about 24 st mt. Divisions inside were made of weaved brushes. The kitchen was in one of the corners, the smoke from the fire escaping the house through raised roof tiles. Most of the daily life, however, was lived outside. That is why most houses were so small, to our standards - they were built for sleeping, and cooking during Winter, and not for spending the day inside. There was much work to do outside - they had vast vegetable gardens and fruit trees, a pig and a donkey, nuts and greens to be foraged, and much watering to do by hand, from the spring on the Land.
N comes every September to set up a small table with drinks and cookies for the participants in the procession, which passes a short walk from our home. A table for them to lay the figure while they eat is covered with flowers, and flowers carpet the road, too. And, the day before the procession, she visits us with her family, children and grandchildren filling the valley with chatter.
She is always delighted to see how we’ve rebuilt the place she once called home, what we’ve added and changed, always valuing the beauty and uniqueness of this handmade house where so many people have been raised and dwelled in. It’s beautiful to keep that going, and I’m pretty sure N senses that too, for she hugs us tear-eyed every time. If we had a fairy godmother, N would be it.
And of course, home is not just the house, but the landscape too. And that’s where things get bittersweet, for so much has changed. Wildfires, climate change and demographic desertification have transformed what was once a hill with flocks, fruits trees and large gardens, communal bread ovens, singing and dancing upon large boulders as ways of communicating between friends, and flowing water from the soil into a drying landscape where so-called invasive species such as eucalyptus and wattle root down freely, fruit trees dry and creeks and springs barely make it through early Summer. Walking with N through the Land is heartbreaking at times, even though we have never known this place any different (except, perhaps, when we first set foot here, and everything was a tangled mess of wattle and bushes, barely allowing us to look or walk past). She points and recalls: there was a big fig tree here, and my job was a little one was to sit next to the tree to scare off the the birds. So, so many fruit trees existed here! And the water mine, which flowed until the very end of summer, became a creek in winter, and they dug a little pond in said creek for washing clothes. And the vegetable gardens… I can only imagine. Patches of wild violets made their home near the water mine. I wish I could see this place through her eyes, back then.
But with the bittersweetness of realizing what decades of abandonment and a warming climate can do, comes also inspiration for action. If we cut down the large eucalyptus that grow above the water mine and are thriving on the water from the groundwater table, maybe the water mine will flow once again. Her grown-up children and partners give us counsel, too: over here, you could make a wonderful potato bed. If you cut down these trees, you’d have more sun on the vegetable garden and plants would be more productive. You could add more chickens to your flock to be more self-reliable. They 100% approve our decision of having sheep soon (if only we finished that damned fence!). I don’t enjoy unasked for advice, but from them? I’ll take it without second thought. They know the place like no other, and they know the soil and interspecies relationships that take place here. They know what it’s like to be sustained by the Land, too, in a way I do not. Being together with them is a very humbling experience.
And you see, none of this is about a longing for a time past. Life was hard, so hard, here in the rural interior, just until last generation. This is why folks moved away from the rural interior toward big cities. And that is why, here in Western Iberia, the movement to “go back” to inhabit rural spaces is slow when compared to some other countries in the global north. Moving away was seen as the right thing to do, and folks were lucky if their parents could afford for them to go to the city to study and start a family and get a good job. My own grandparents couldn't read or write (my grandfather did finish primary school as an adult). Electricity arrived to this area only in the 70s, if I’m right. And, 30 years ago, there was only a single car in the while region - but most people had donkey carts, and many roads over here still reflect this. There is an immense privilege in being able to chose to live here, by will and not by lack of options. And I want to learn as much I can from those who’ve been here before me, among these hills and valleys, who bathed in the same creek I do and climbed the same boulders.
Friends, I leave you for now. This turned out as a longer musing than I had expected and I didn’t even get to the preserves I’m making this season! But the sun is still shining and there are tasks ahead of me. I’m also getting ready for a shop update on the Equinox, tomorrow, when I plan to fill the shop with knitted fingerless mittens. It’s been so long since I’ve placed offerings in the shop! I’m slowly moving away from herbal goods and settling for knitted pieces for the near future. It feels good for time being.
Happy September, dear ones. May you always be inspired by those who walked on the soil you thread before you.