"The Call"

Over the 15 years my husband and I have known each other, we have referred often to "The Call". Sometimes it is just something in the air or the way the light filters through the trees. Whatever the stimulus, the result is the same - it is a powerful, soul-moving urge to do something.

My husband and I both grew up in West Texas. We spent most of our young life outdoors, and found sanctuary in the hills and valleys of the desert mountain foothills. As we grew older, and moved to the eastern part of the state, our love of the outdoors took the form of backpacking for my husband, and gardening for myself. Occasionally, when the lighting is just right, when there's just the perfect combination of the warmth from the sun and the crispness of the wind, we get "The Call". But the older we get, the more it is ignored.

It's not that we mean to cast aside this call to nature, this yearning of our souls back to the land. But we live your typical, average suburban life, full of long days at the office for my husband, and seemingly pointless errands to get out of the house for me. Something is missing for us, and we know it. I think it is meaning.

Today I went to Walmart to buy diapers. I always park on the side of the Garden Center, because no one parks over there and it is a relatively short walk to the door. As I passed through the Garden Center, I saw displays filled with every kind of seed you could imagine. I stopped to look, picked up a few and read the packets, and put them back, walking on towards the diapers. I felt a tug as I walked away, as if my heart was somehow tethered to the jiffy pots and seed starters. After Walmart, I proceed to Lowes to obtain compostable trash bags (which are now required for bagging leaves in my neighborhood, though no one sells them), and as I pass through the rows of plants, "The Call" is upon me. For a long time now, "The Call" has been more than just a need to plant some petunias - it is a call to land - to own it, to cultivate it, to raise livestock, to raise my family. But I swallow it back.

When I got home, I mentioned passively that I got "The Call" today, and I wish I had land to have a farm. But today I wasn't met with a sigh. It was more of a "well, why the hell not?!" So then we discussed, "Can we really do it? I mean, really?" We both feel the growing discontentment with our lives, we have talked about this many times before, we have wanted it, dreamt about it, thrown it away as an impossibility countless times. Can we really do this?

I don't know. But we feel it is something worth trying for.

Through this blog, I hope to chronicle our journey from suburbia back to the land, and all the trials and triumphs along the way. I hope that maybe even one day, this will serve as a guide or even as inspiration to others who are like us, those who get "The Call" to the land, who are seeking meaning in their lives, who yearn for the "simple life" and the satisfaction that hard work brings, for those that feel all these things in their very souls but are overwhelmed by the thought of what following "The Call" really entails and do not know where to begin.

Our journey begins today. Follow us as we return "Back to the Land"!