Our farm exists in a rare microclimate or micro ecosystem called the Cedar Glades. It’s a little pocket of the earth where special things bloom. When we first moved here I was moved and somewhat confused by its unruliness. Bucolic countryside has a beauty standard all of its own that the Cedar Glades don’t quite fit with their gravelly limestone washouts and scraggly, scratchy juniper underbrush.

The Cedar Glades are simultaneously fierce with spiky yucca, prickly pear cactus, and thorny brush and lush with a rainbow of wildflowers that only bloom here and blankets of moss.

The beauty of this place is curated, but not by human hands. It is not the beauty of the manicured lawn or the rose garden. It is an overflowing of wild intentionality. 

So many times we view our body and our beingness as a wild thing to be tamed, fixed, or mastered. We groom, we sculpt, we refine, all in the face of a cultural standards that exclude 99.99% of us by design. This is a direct reflection of how our culture interacts with Earth.

Weeds to be extracted, yards to be groomed, bushes to be trimmed, forests to be clear cut. So much of the land on this planet has been tamed and treated. 

Frequently, I feel the pressure to do the same to my own wild body, my own natural tendencies. I know I'm not alone in this.

Humans and nature are full of beauty, desire, and personality that does not conform to a homogenous mold.

Sitting in the glades earlier this month, a little poem, these thoughts, trickled into my mind. I can only think of them as is a love letter to you from this place:

Your body is a gorgeous and rare microclimate.

Your beauty is the wildflowers. 

An expression of experiences composted, seeds planted.

A rainbow of blooms, framed by fierceness that can only flourish in the microclimate of you.

Happy Pride Y'all!

xo,

Eileen