Real land partnership

Remnant of last summer's fire.

A GRUB field.

The way back to the fields.

Thistle.

Ye old tractor.

There are times when we feel completely alone. That’s how I feel tonight. This Chico General Plan thing is pulling our land partnership to pieces. I don’t understand my land partners and they don’t understand me. What has happened to me happened many years ago. Even before Orien was born, 28 years ago, well before this land partnership, I felt my roots grow down here and I made some sort of inner connection to hold my ground here like the First Americans tried to do.
While we were on the road I really didn’t want to come back after awhile. I think part of me knew this was coming. I had a bad feeling. The pressures of growth on an urban edge are intense and my land partners do not share the commitment I feel in the visceral way I do. It’s like symbiosis. At first it’s about stewarding the land but after awhile it’s like the land owns you. I am its servant and its lover. It may be backwards but I belong to the land and the human partnership seems a distant second.
The idea of putting High Density Residential on this farm land and destroying this riparian-farm interface feels like having my child wrenched from my arms. It causes me just incredible psychic pain and what makes it worse is that I feel so alone.
Michael is a man of the wild country and the mountains. This flat and rather predictable land is not where he even wants to be. He would rather stay ahead of the bulldozers and live out his days in what is left of wilderness … I’m more about it being my home.
I’d rather leave it forever than see it destroyed but I’ll fight for it while I still can. There is still hope, maybe 50/50, on the zoning vote… It’s on November 17th.