VIII. Returning

     When I left the farm, I felt connected to myself and those around me in a way I hadn’t felt in years. I hadn’t been aware of how distant I felt from my own spirit until I had the chance to reconnect with it in a space with so few obligations, such simple and fulfilling routines. But the time I spent moving with purpose left me standing a little taller.

 

     I spent the spring being rootless, basking in my newfound spontaneity and saying yes to everything I could — embarking on a 36-mile backpacking trip with a friend on a whim, convincing my roommate to join me as I drove my car across 12 states from California to Michigan. With a new sense of self-efficacy, I felt like I could do anything — I’d broken free from my habit of making decisions passively and started taking my life into my own hands. 

 

     I was terrified, of course, that my experiences on the farm would remain in a vacuum, the peace I felt tied to that plot of land. So when I finally returned to Ann Arbor at the end of May, ready to give this place another chance to be my home, I knew I had to make a conscious effort to continue my search for love. 

 

     I started with what felt most familiar: applying to work at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market. I quickly got a job working for a kind farmer helping sell fruit and pastries he transported from Brighton, Michigan dutifully each week. Every Saturday, from 7-3, I fell back into the rhythm of chatting with customers, standing until I felt like my legs would collapse. Over the weeks, I learned the differences between each variety of peach, tasted the sweetest and tartest cherries, and understood the fleeting beauty of strawberry season. But while I did my best to keep up with customers’ questions, but I couldn’t help feeling like an impostor as I stumbled over questions I had easily answered when I was selling products I had a direct role in. What kind of spray did we use? When would freestone peaches come in? How were the trees holding up after last week’s rain? I smiled my way through the questions, realizing the difference between a salesperson and a producer. I still loved the bustle of market, the energy of people enthusiastic about good food, but there was a new distance between myself and the product that made me feel more distant from customers as well. 

 

     A few weeks later, a job offer at Argus Farm Stop, a self-described 7-day-a-week farmer’s market that sold goods exclusively from local producers on consignment, provided a new way to join the local food community. At Argus, I started thinking about food on a new scale. Working on the farm had been something of a mindfulness exercise, where I was tuned in to the work I was doing on an individual basis. At Argus, I began interacting with farmers with a range of products, getting to know their different growing processes, the nuances of organic certification. Arranging each farmer’s items in displays, talking to customers, learning from my coworkers, all with niche knowledge about farming and sustainability, continued to develop my interest in local food. Here, my desire to find community in food took a new form.

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     With the end of summer came the end of my time at the farmer’s market, and though my shifts at Argus continued into the fall, my schedule became crowded once more with academic obligations. My life began moving at its old clip, speeded even more dramatically by the return of in-person classes, and my weeks began to blur into one another again, a slideshow of game days and work shifts in between midterms and deadlines. The excitement was simultaneously a welcome change from the dull emptiness of lockdown and a disappointing interruption of my more mindful existence. 

 

     But even as I’m tempted by the desire to achieve, surrounded by imperatives to push myself to my limits and compare myself to my peers, I do my best to maintain the ethic of love I developed over the most important winter of my life. Physically, I’m in the same place, but I’m sure of my values. The muscles I developed help me stand still while the world rushes by, to remain steadfast against all the arms pulling me toward goals that no longer interest me. 

 

     Of course, I haven’t entirely let go of my desires for control. I still budget compulsively, and though my food choices are now guided largely by considerations of seasonality rather than restrictive impulses, each decision is thoughtfully calculated. At times, fear persists, manifesting in the desire for power. But the love I cultivated was not as temporary as my time on the farm. 

 

     bell hooks writes: "commitment to a love ethic transforms our lives by offering us a different set of values to live by. We do this by choosing to work with individuals we admire and respect; by embracing a global vision wherein we see our lives and our fate as intimately connected to those of everyone else on the planet." Day to day, I strive to continue to enact these goals as I navigate the chaos of my senior year of college. I choose to trust the ethic of love to guide my actions.

 

     If you ask me about my plans next year, I can tell you only: “to choose against lovelessness—to choose love.”