The shaped habits of having to adapt and the well worn actions that we turn to in times without - there are roots of resiliency here that grow deeper.
We have a surplus of water from the well and no water in the camper at the same time. After two and a half years, we finally have a working well with a solar pump and two 300 gallon cisterns full of reserved water. We’ve had a year of water deliveries and running water in the camper, and a year before that of catching only rain water, no water in the camper, showering outside, washing each other’s hair, and doing dishes in the sun, hand washing clothes, and sometimes freezing, or sometimes sweating, a week of no dishes when everything froze, and it all started with catching water in buckets we found discarded on the property. We’ve come a long way. Slowly.
I find myself back to doing dishes outside just as the seasons are starting to turn and not for the same reasons I used to. I find joy in this familiar habit. Comfort even, in exercising the muscle again that used to carry us through. The dishes must be carted outside and then back in again, placed gingerly down on the gravel to be washed, knee pads to protect my skin, dish towels and drying racks on a table savoring the sun, the moment’s pause, becoming intimate with the air, and the rhythm of a task that’s in full appreciation of the rain. Even when that rain comes and washes away our town, and even when a year later, we’re still rebuilding it.
I think about these roots of resilience. The ability to find a way without water, to find new ways to it. To preserve it, hold it close, savor each drop, and offer it back up, especially when it surges and storms. We’ve already alerted our neighbors of our new watering source, a place to get water when the power fails us, or when the springs run dry. A local watering hole that needs only the sun with a backup system for the days when only clouds dance in the sky. I would never have arrived here without this different and alternative life.
This alternative life in a poorly insulated camper. The adapted ability to withstand greater heat and greater cold. The getting warm together with hot drinks and spices, bundling up in wool and each other. Or late summer dips in the creek, in the shade, knowing intimately where the sun falls at each hour of the day, and feeling the way that plant patches offer respite. In a time of growing extremes in the climate and in the country, maybe the roots of resiliency here can be an anchor, a branch that extends out and connects us in ways that we really need. To the things that need more of our attention.
I think about the roots of resilience around me - neighbors to watch chickens when we’re away, period pantries on Main Street in our small town for those who sometimes have to think twice about period products, the wave from a friend across the street, doing laps with another neighbor to give my body the movement it craves, seeing the creek beds restore themselves, new buildings and old buildings, repairs and painting, and people always here to help. I think about the couple that works at the health food store - how they remember the things we talk about, the way they follow up with us on our projects, the way they worry for us when we’re away and near a hurricane. How we shop there often, and how frequency and consistency are sometimes the two things you need to grow a friendship.
Resiliency isn’t just in the choices we’ve made. In building a raw piece of land, growing food, raising animals, it’s in writing and bearing our souls, in speaking out against injustice, it’s also in the hands we hold and the stories we tell ourselves, and the ways we put those stories back on the shelf, or the way we grow less timid with time, or how we say something honestly and how we each pick up and put down the pieces.
I’m coming to see resiliency as the reward for overcoming challenge, adversity. As something we can lean on when hard times inevitably come again. I’m happy to be rooting into resiliency. Something perhaps inherent to being here, as a flower, or a butterfly, or a tree, or a human being. As a raised flag for the before and the after times, in what comes ahead and what got us here in the first place. The thing that reminds you to take the next step, that you can take the next step, and to continue doing the things that call to you, even when it asks a lot of you, that it doesn’t only take but gives too.
Living life in your own way can build unintended reserves of resilience. Root into resilience, and resilience will root into you. Let the roots grow. Let them take in and touch the things that spark. A resilient reserve.