On Sunday mornings, I take time for meditation and reflection. The spaciousness that follows fuels my thinking and lets me return to the present. I began the day with a lengthy early-morning sit, followed by walking the gravel paths on my small desert land. I bought this land 2 years ago and am pleased with the Xero-scape. A landscape of sagebrush, a few chamisa bushes that will blaze golden in the fall, a couple of baby Pinon pine trees growing in sandy loam form the backdrop for my walking meditation. Gravel paths are visible as winter snow melts. It’s mud season and I welcome the crunching of gravel. It’s better than walking on a muddy loam and collecting a layer of mud underfoot. The sagebrush waves its brown seed heads from last year. I inspect them and see tiny seeds still present. Food for the bushtits that live in the bushes. After three months of snow, their food supply is scarce. The Christian world observes Lent and encourages fasting. I have joined the birds in their late winter fast by giving up sweets until Easter. Though not Christian, I embrace the season's natural patterns and want to shed my winter fat during pre-spring. My hand grazes the bushes, my ears pick up on the absolute silence. Early Sunday morning, this little town is asleep. No sounds of traffic to disturb the pristine cool air that comes down from the snowy mountains in the distance.
As I make my figure-eight rounds, I consider my caring for this piece of land. I recall something my then 10-year-old son said on a winter-holiday evening as we were cleaning up after the festivities. Washing dishes, he said with his childlike clarity: “Mom, I think we are the stewards of the earth, that’s why we’re here”. I didn't know what triggered that thought for him, certainly not the dishwater.
Nearly 40 years later, he is stewarding a 2-acre property of forest and grassland. While spending his days fighting cyber hackers and making sure cybersecurity is what it needs to be for the worldwide company he works for, he hasn’t forgotten his childhood thoughts. He cares for the trees, transplanting, and thinning where needed. A lush garden feeds him and his family. He provides lights and warmth for the orange, avocado, and lemon trees his little boy has started from seed. They watch the plant world grow and thrive. The apple trees my grandson started outside from seed are now 4 feet high. What will they do when the citrus trees outgrow the den? Build an arboretum? My children's caring nature for the earth fills my heart with gratitude. I walk another round and hear a Mountain Chickadee break the silence with the whistle of its call. What is it telling me? Is it announcing the change of season? Is it calling to a mate? Is it hungry, cold?
The thought of the Gulag penal colony where Alexei Navalny lived rises in my mind. A life's end, a protest season, a man's sacrifice for political beliefs. For 13 years, I worked in a youth correctional facility as a mental health provider. I know about solitary confinement, I know about unsympathetic guards, about sickness that spreads like wildfire through a closed facility, about gang activities that hurt the ones who don’t obey the gang rules. An American youth correctional facility is a resort setting compared to a Gulag prison. I imagine cold, hunger, hard work, isolation, and a bleak future. How does a man keep his conviction? In all my years in the youth prison, I only met one youth who said he was innocent and refused treatment. He became an adult in the facility because he entered at age 14 and couldn't be discharged without undergoing treatment. He had conviction and offered his youth to an inflexible administrative system. Others falsely accused yielded to pressure, conforming to authorities' expectations. Navalny never caved. What makes someone a patriot of his country?
I left my country of birth. I loved my native country and still do, but would I go back to fight if a repressive regime changed the freedoms I grew up with? Would I die for my country? I love this little piece of land that I’ve been granted to take care of. Caring for land is natural to me. I’m uncertain if I would sacrifice my life to challenge a regime that kills free thinkers. We live in changing times. Ordinary people feel powerless under a system that pushes them around for profit or for power. In his 1978 commencement address at Harvard, Solzhenitsyn, expelled by the Soviet Government for his unreserved opposition to cruel and arbitrary government, said: “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.” (“Solzhenitsyn’s Warning” by Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic, February 20 2024). As an outsider in this country, I've noticed that people readily follow a voice calling for change, without critically assessing what is workable. I listen to the call of a bird, others listen to the call in a Maga crowd, but Russians won’t hear the call of their opposition leader no more. I grieve for Navalny’s family. Alexei’s voice is in my heart. It says, stand up for your convictions, be a steward of the earth, care for your people.
Beautifully written piece that covers so much. I have sometimes wondered about whether or not I would fight for my country, and currently I wonder if I can take it if the "wrong" presidential nominee wins. At the same time, there is so much that needs to be mended and leaving would not be working for the good.
This is a wonderful piece. My wife and I gasped at the news of Navalny's death. We are still gasping. And your words and insight here are quite powerful. Thank you for this.