Recently a President of an enormous corporation based in South Korea joined the Esalen Farm and Garden morning harvest as a volunteer. As I set him up to harvest kale, he said, “I know this is simple work but I imagine there must be more to it. How do you do this? How do you connect with this land and these plants?”
I picked up a handful of the garden soil and encouraged him to do the same. I gave him my rap: “After winter rain, our soil appears in high contrast between black humus resulting from forty years of tender stewardship, and glimmering shards of abalone, remnants of the native Essalen people who dwelled here up to 5,000 years ago. The Esalen land has a powerful ancestry, and farming is appropriately ancient work. We Farmers and Gardeners feel a deep sense of honor continuing this sacred practice of cultivating soil, plants and spirit.”
As a businessman in Seoul with a 4-hour daily commute, he could not remember having touched soil in decades. “This is very special for me,” he said, eyes twinkling.
I love facilitating a visitor’s reconnection of body, mind and spirit to the earth through this work. In our modern societies and cultures, we are “richer” and longer living than ever before — yet a feeling of emptiness or disconnection persists en masse. We meet our basic needs through the purchase of goods or services, curating rather than creating the material of our existence. Is it possible that the self-sufficient acts of our ancestors — growing food; weaving clothes; concocting soap; building houses — were fundamentally creative, expressive aspects of humanity, which we unknowingly ache and long for now?
As Brother David Steindl-Rast reminded me recently, “humus”, the dark decomposed material in soil, reveals its sacred power through its etymologic connection to “human”, “humor” and “humility”. This supports my belief that growing beautiful food humbly expresses my creativity, connects me to my body, the universe and the present moment, and reforms my conditioned conception of “richness”. My mentor and Farm and Garden Manager Shirley Ward regularly rejoices “We’re rich!” as hearty beets or neon pink chard emerge gloriously in the morning hours.
We plant the seeds of our wild ideas now, and as former Farm and Garden Manager Steve Beck once wrote, “look forward with the hope that arrives every spring” to see what germinates in the coming years.
Noël Vietor serves as Coordinator of the Esalen Farm and Garden – Esalen is an educational retreat center in Big Sur California
