Barefoot truth

Tak­ing off my shoes re­ally helps. I slow down. The dawn path to the pony cor­ral to feed La Pe­tita be­comes an ex­er­cise in ground­ing. It is never pain-free, but that is fleet­ing. I feel, see, ap­pre­ci­ate – switch on to – so much more.

The vil­lage church bell chimes. The car­pen­ter bees, the enor­mous iri­des­cent blue-black crea­tures that bum­ble loudly past my nose, are like some­thing out of Gotham City. At first sight they can ap­pear ter­ri­fy­ing, threat­en­ing, but they are nei­ther. They are won­drous. How they view me is an­other mat­ter. Stop­ping to ap­pre­ci­ate one (and, sub­se­quently, the tu­mult of pol­li­na­tors work­ing the hon­ey­suckle) my focus length­ens through the olives to the two-sec­ond pinch of yel­low as an ori­ole speeds on the wing. I move on and stop al­most im­me­di­ately again at a river of tire­less ants that has washed a course through the straw-dry grass.

Re­al­ity is deeply com­plex and yet, bizarrely, the things most im­me­di­ate, mat­ters that we can touch, see and feel, are shunted from con­science and un­der­stand­ing by the tan­gle of the in­tan­gi­ble.

With so much on all our minds right now, the what ifs, the per­ils, the pos­si­bil­i­ties for our State, our world, I find it is es­sen­tial to seek this bal­ance.

I don’t know about you, but the daily flurry of grim or wor­ry­ing news, con­jec­ture half the time, in­creas­ingly a bare-faced lie, is like being punched. I bruise. It is im­por­tant to have causes, mat­ters we be­lieve in. But I need for­ti­tude. My mind, the organ with an often-un­healthy dom­i­nance over the rhythm of my days and my mood, is be­com­ing ad­dicted to anx­i­ety and non­sense and knows where it feed it, through so­cial media, radio and news chan­nels I think I trust. There is no limit to the num­ber of things to grow this ad­dic­tion, but there is a limit to what I can take.

The for­ti­fy­ing bal­ance I am talk­ing about is na­ture, pro­foundly yes, and peo­ple too. I am work­ing re­ally hard right now to be mind­ful of them all.

Wine­maker Agusti has just been to check on our vines. By the time you are read­ing this the lanes of the Pri­o­rat will be purring, not with car­pen­ter bees but trac­tors, cart­ing grapes to co­op­er­a­tives and cellers: The age­less, steady rhythm of com­mu­nity and hearts, of fruit­ing and har­vest. Hon­est toil, touch­ing the earth, shar­ing and work­ing to­gether in bal­ance. Sus­te­nance.

We have been mem­bers of our co­op­er­a­tive for 11 years. 2017 marks its 100th an­niver­sary. At the birth­day cel­e­bra­tion wise words were writ­ten large upon a wall, sum­ming up what it means to be right here, part of what is im­por­tant and real. Such se­cu­rity and pur­pose seems such a rich priv­i­lege, yet it is right here and free and sud­denly ob­vi­ous, like the car­pen­ter bees and ants. Sim­ple truths for­tify be­yond mea­sure, what­ever hap­pens in the days and years ahead. We need con­text.

“This is our place in the world.”