Land, Holt!

Weird things occasionally come to mind when I’m on my morning walks.  Once, I imagined an animal family living in an unoccupied house on M Street, right down to an elderly squirrel reading the paper by lamp. Another time, I saw Christmas ornaments covering a bare tree.  And more than once, I’ve imagined the razor-thin outline of a new moon as God’s toenail clipping.  

Yeah, I know.

On a recent Sunday morning, under a noisy sky of freezing rain, I started to think of my body as a microhabitat and me as its land manager.  And it kind of made sense.

Think about it.  Our guts are home to trillions of microorganisms, harboring 500 species of flora, and that’s before I sit down with a skunky German beer.  While it’s not always fun living with all those microorganisms, it is thrilling to imagine the wild west atmosphere down there--tiny gunfights and feuds, sultry affairs and children born out of wedlock, and all of it happening just behind my belly button! 

This time of year, despite my better senses, I invariably ponder the need for a new sheriff in my town.  Someone who is more disciplined, a person less prone than me to sugar-coated cereals with plastic prizes crammed halfway down their cardboard maws. 

My land, after all, has expanded a bit, while my eyes aren’t as sharp as they once were.  And, despite notching 56 years on this earth, I don’t think I’ve become even slightly more discerning than I was when I was a 13-year-old kid obsessed with Space Food Sticks.

What do I do, then, with this land of mine?  Where do I put up fences to slow the erosive power of wayward winds?  How do I encourage the wetlands to take hold once again?  

As a land manager, I’m constantly pressured to find a balance between doctor-ordered pesticides and my more organic tracts, to say nothing of outside pressure to expand ecotourism opportunities.  I know, for instance, that I should clear the underbrush from my overgrown trails, but it’s so cold outside and I’m not good working hunched over for long periods of time.  Just typing this makes me verklempt. 

I’ve got all those microorganisms to consider, though.  They depend upon me to seek balance, to set aside and till in the proper proportions.  They need me to embrace diversity while keeping a wary eye on introduced species.

It is a massive job, managing one’s land.  And I’ll do it best only if I learn to love it completely--a hard task for a not-quite post-modern woman. 

So here’s to a new year of tending to me.  To embracing my biomes--from tundra to taiga, temperate forest to desert lands.  To loving my neighbors inside and outside my gut and learning, along the way, how to better tend to this greater world, as well.