Things I'm Thinking About
Something Told the Wild Geese
by Rachel Field
Something told the wild geese
It was time to go,
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, “snow.”
Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned, “frost.”
All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.
I step up the stairs, pay my fair, take a seat or find a place to hang on before the driver pulls away from the curb with a lurch, and I’m there, on the bus. Sometimes it’s full, sometimes empty, sometimes I see people I know, sometimes I’m anonymous, sometimes I chat with the person next to me, and sometimes I avoid eye contact.The bus stops and starts, dropping off and picking up passengers, and eventually I push the stop-request button, stand up, and get off at my destination.
Some would rather drive their own car to avoid the restrictions of a set schedule and routes, and the irritation of smelly seat mates or talkative strangers asking personal questions. Some don’t mind the odd people and the uncomfortable experiences, and consider the bus to be freedom, transportation unhindered by traffic or parking meters. Some have lost faith because too many times, the bus was late or didn’t come at all, or passed them by, too full to pick up any more riders. I am somewhere in between. I have a car, but I like to ride the bus.
Driving gives me control. I can come and go on my timeline, and add in an errand or side trip on a whim. I can take the dog with me and load up the back with groceries. Driving is about me. The frequent interactions with other drivers, pedestrians and bikes, though, makes taking to the road a challenge. Rude drivers cut in and honk and waggle judgmental fingers, distracted pedestrians step out into crosswalks without looking up, and bikes fly into the intersection, seemingly without concern for anyone’s safety. Angry fists, mouthed insults and a mighty frustration are common.
The bus is not about me. It’s relinquishing some responsibilities, taking on others–bus schedules, bus fares, bus routes. The bus doesn’t wait, doesn’t let you on without payment, and doesn’t change it’s route when you’re going the wrong way. It’s reliable, but not certain–often, it’s late or early or doesn’t come at all. Real time tracking on smart phones has taken the mystery out of it, but catching the bus is still not an exact science.
My earliest bus memory is as a small child with my grandmother. My grandparents lived in Grand Rapids, and my grandmother never learned to drive. My grandfather took their car to work each day, so household errands were done on the city bus. We boarded at the corner about a block from their house and went downtown for her to shop and get her hair done.
Later, in Southern California, my friend and I took the bus to the mall once in a while. It was a long ride through parts of town that seemed scary, and I always worried that we would end up somewhere and not be able to get home. Getting there and home again was an accomplishment; it was a brush with danger, a little excitement in our suburban existence.
I have been to cities with amazing transportation networks, like Paris, Washington DC and Berlin, and I have lived in cities with such limited service that I never considered using the bus. Here, I love having bus stops close to my house. Out the back door, through the back gate, up the neighbors driveway and it’s a short half-block to our stop.
It’s not the actual bus ride that I like, it’s the idea of the bus. Taking the bus is a life skill. It’s an exercise in fitting in instead of controlling. It’s slowing down and letting go of the need to be captain of my own destination. It’s breathing room. It is connection to the larger community as you step into the crush of the bus and take your place in the crowd.
I joined Full Belly Farm sometime mid-winter. A box of whatever fruits and vegetables are being harvested at the farm in the Capay Valley, north-east of here, would be waiting for me at the community pick-up site near my house. I knew not to expect tomatoes and cucumbers, but I was a little puzzled by some of the contents of my first box.
The carrots were familiar, but the rutabaga, parsnips, celery root and bunches of leafy greens were vegetables I had only seen in passing at the grocery store. I turned to clean, unused pages of my cookbooks, and in some cases, to what felt like remote corners of the internet, to find how to prepare these strange vegetables.
Gingerly, I served the new dishes, appealing to the family’s sense of adventure. They went along with it, spearing the unfamiliar root chunks and spooning out globs of wilty greens. They liked some things, tolerated others, disliked a few, but overall, joined me in the plunge into this new way of eating.
It was not only new vegetables, it was a large quantity of these new vegetables. With another box coming in just a week, I had to serve two vegetables a meal to get through the contents without throwing any of our precious, lovingly-grown produce away. The contents of the boxes changed as the weeks went by.
The leeks, celery root and greens made way for lettuces, new potatoes and asparagus. Green beans, melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant followed, and then on to cabbage, beets and winter squash, and eventually back to root vegetables and greens. The produce seemed to change just about the time we were ready for some new tastes and textures, and we began to look forward to favorites we knew were coming back around soon.
The first strawberries and peaches in spring and summer were occasions for celebrations, as were the winter squash and even the greens when their time came again. My weekly menus began to take their shape from the rotating contents of the boxes. Seasons, the broad categories of winter, spring, summer and fall, gained new dimension as they began to be flavored by the crops we had come to expect with each one.
The process of learning to eat local, fresh foods has not just been a change of diet; it’s getting in step with the rhythms of the natural world around us. The changes in the weather, the light, and our schedules are complemented by the changes in our food. It’s the comfort of predictability, the hope of newness just around the corner. It’s like eating delicious pizza with toe-tapping jazz–it just feels like there’s more life in it.
From the beginning, I knew we were going to eat differently. I was willing. I thought I was ready. When we moved to Berkeley, I realized this wasn’t just a change of food, it was a change of lifestyle. There were none of the usual fast food or chain restaurants on the way in my daily travels.
The local places, serving food from cultures and ingredients that we were unfamiliar with, were an adventure in taste as we journeyed farther from our culinary comfort zone. Even the pizza place near me was different, serving vegetarian slices with toppings like potatoes and arugula pesto, in a tiny space crammed with eaters and a live jazz ensemble.
I felt comfortable with Mexican food, Chinese food and American standard offerings. But Thai, Indian, Ethiopian, Greek, French, Southern, Vegan and Raw cuisines–to name a few–were mostly outside my experience. The Bay Area has a great diversity of cultures and people, and the food reflects the vast, varied world they come from. We began trying new places and discovering new favorites.
There were places we could go for comfort when we felt unsettled in this new food culture. There is a McDonalds not too far away. We had been a regular Happy-Meal-and-french-fries family before the move, and the parking lot was soothing to my parking-jangled nerves.
Leaving a park one day, I told the boys we would go to McDonalds for a treat. Another little boy, no older than my 2nd grader, overheard us talking and soberly informed us that McDonalds was bad for us, maybe would kill us. At the time, I was offended by the judgement, knowing it came from his parents. I realize now that this belief in slow food is such a universally accepted fact here that it wasn’t judgement, it was just an honest statement of fact.
Berkeley has great food, but it comes with a way of thinking about food–one that feels almost like a religion in its followers’ convictions and zeal. It starts with a relationship between the producer of the food and the consumer. The ideal is local, fresh and in-season produce, humanely raised livestock, and food made locally using environmentally sustainable methods.
That points directly to the farm. From there, becoming a member of a Community Supported Agriculture farm was a natural step.
Moving here felt like moving to a different country. I think it took a year to feel comfortable–to know where to find parking, where to shop, how to get around–to master the details of daily life.
Such narrow streets. So many pedestrians. Crazy, horn-blowing, illegal U-turning drivers. Where were all the usual chain stores and restaurants I knew and loved? Even Safeway felt foreign, with a security guard watching me as I roamed it’s small, crowed aisles. Every day, it felt like an accomplishment to come home and park–two wheels up on the curb so emergency vehicles can get by–safely in front of my house after a foray downtown.
The community, though, is warmer and friendlier than I thought it would be. I was prepared for cool detachment, people too busy with city life to have relationships. I was wrong. People have deep roots, and many have grown up here, some in the same house for generations. The small shops and unique restaurants, the streets lined with shady trees and old, quaint homes felt solid, anchored. I did not expect that. I thought I would find isolated people, superficial relationships, a cold and hard place.
The city feels like a small town. It’s the rootedness, the focus on local businesses. It feels connected also because the school district actively integrates the schools, by busing students and by having only one large high school. Your neighborhood includes much more of the city when your school is all the way across town. Without these sometimes-controversial policies (the district has been sued for reverse discrimination), there would quickly become “good” schools in the more expensive neighborhoods and “bad” schools in the less pricey areas. The Hills and The Flats.
These policies became real for us when our kids were not assigned to the the lovely elementary school two blocks away from our house; they were bused to a school downtown, while others from down the hill come up to our neighborhood.
My first thoughts were not joy at this tangible example of justice and equality. They were more along the lines of feeling wronged, judged by my race and zip-code. It’s not fair that I should have to suffer, that my kids should ride the bus for an hour each way to attend a school with lower academic performance. I started thinking about how to protest, force the issue, get what I wanted for my children.
Another thought came tumbling in, though: an awareness of my privilege, my power, and a sense of how flexing those muscles runs counter to the ideals I said I wanted my children to discover and own. I agree with the purpose of the bussing. I love that Berkeley cares about every child receiving a good education. Can I then say I don’t want my kids to participate?
Here’s the reality: My kids have everything they need. They have supportive, involved parents. They are never cold, hungry, or alone. They will go to college if they want to. They lack nothing, really. I don’t have to go scraping and scratching to snatch up the best of everything.
Now, all have moved through elementary and middle school, and looking back, I’m satisfied with their experience at their school in The Flats. It was an involved, caring community. They made good friends, and met back up with some of them in high school after going to different middle schools. It was a broadening experience for all of us. Not what I would have chosen. Better than that.
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