City Girl in Recovery

Entertainment on the farm: how many
brothers can fit on a single bike?

In all our talk of starting a community on a farm, I've always had a nagging uneasiness towards the idea of leaving the city to live in the country.  Two cons have always seemed so daunting: that I couldn't easily walk or bike to the grocery store, friends houses, the church service, etc, and that we wouldn't have such easy access to neighbors with children to play with my children and adults for me to talk with.  But, there are pros and cons to everything, and until now, I've only heard of and theorized about the pros of country living.  Now we are experiencing them!  For example, Moisés' boundaries are huge here.  He's allowed to wander, on our side of the street, as far as he can still hear us call "coo-eee!" when it's time to come home.  Another pro: it's beautiful.  And another: life is slower and less demanding.

Entertainment on the farm: Hervé reads Quand Papi
avait mon âge in the sunshine to a rapt audience

I realize that's a funny thing to say... how can a farm be less demanding?  In addition to a bakery and a mill to run, the Ark has gardens and cows and chickens and sometimes horses to tend (none of which we really bear the burden of here as temporary community members), not to mention all the usual life requirements - we still have to eat three times a day and launder our clothes and dump the the composting toilets and clean the house.

I think the difference is found in free time options.  In the city we often have to choose between staying in or attending some wonderful-sounding event on any given evening or weekend.  Though I deeply miss the people I can't see and the events I can't attend while in France, I have found that there's something surprisingly life-giving about having less busyness and less options.  It has been interesting to taste what it's like to live in the country, having only committed for a year, and knowing that I will soon return to my comfort zones.  I can now make a more informed decision about moving out of town if and when the time comes.

On the other hand, I don't want to give the impression we're Ma and Pa on the coastal French prarie, seeing no other human life for weeks on end.  We have, in fact, made friends outside the community here!  And they invite us on exciting adventures!  On our first adventure, we joined Yohan and Amélie and their two kids, Octave (7) and Auguste (5), introduced in the Sheep Shearing post, to Penmarc'h - a Breton town name pronounced pah-MARH in French.  The tide shifts the water line some 20 feet against the barrier wall of the costal town.  When the tide goes out, edible wildlife stays behind, hiding among the rock crags of the rough, exposed ocean floor.  With a bucket you can collect mussels, clams, oysters, and if you're really lucky, a lobster.  But I didn't know any of this when we were invited.

One week toward the end of February, when his kids where on school vacation, Yohan stopped by Guenvez to check on his flock of sheep grazing the fields around our house.  As the four boys between us bounced around, Yohan invited our family to join his and some other friends on a "fishing by foot" expedition.  I gladly accepted an opportunity for Moisés to get some more time playing with other children his age and Yohan said he could pick us up at 9am the following Friday.

Now, "Friday" inherently means "no Nicolas" since it's a baking day, so I would have to go out and brave the French world by myself.  Keep in mind that this was towards the beginning of our stay when my confidence to communicate was very low.  I had no idea what "fishing by foot" could mean, but between Yohan's basic English and my poor French, I gathered that it wasn't like fly-fishing; we wouldn't be actually walking into the ocean.

Friday, February 10th rolled around it was rainy and windy and cold (surprise, surprise).  I had no desire to get any closer to the ocean than we were at Guenvez, eight and a half miles away, but I gave myself a pep talk.  "I am a human, and this is something humans can do! I can be cold and wet for one morning of my life, it's just not a big deal!  Besides this is a great adventure and experence for the boys!  I will not let my thirst for comfort keep my children from having friends and memories in France!"

I snugly dressed the boys in their waterproof overalls, rainboots, and rain coats, and tried not to overpack a bag of "just-in-cases".  Nine o'clock came and went.  So did ten.  We weren't able to communicate easily with Yohan and Amélie because we didn't have a cell phone and the community's phone is nearly never answered.  Convinced they had cancelled due to weather, at 10:45am we removed all the layers and transitioned to circle time - songs and poems to begin the school day - in the comfy comfort zone of my comfortable cozy house.

After a few songs, we heard a knock at the door and saw Auguste's eyes peering over the bottom of the waist-high window.  There had been some setbacks, but the adventure was still on!  I mentally gave myself another similar pep talk and bustled the boys around to the potty and back into their layers of warmth and water resistance.  And we were off!

Auguste, Moisés, and Octave at low tide at Penmar'h

When the car came to a stop on the very edge of France, we stepped out into the wind and descended a set of concrete steps built into the nearby barrier wall, following Amélie and Yohan to the sandy, rocky bed below.  The tide was way out.  Eight kids scrambled around, jumping and exploring more than hunting edibles, while five parents wandered more slowly together, talking and stooping every now and then to pick up a live shellfish and drop it in a bucket.  It was pretty chilly, quite windy, and from time to time a cloud would sprinkle on us for a number of minutes.  I looked around... the children were so free of responsibility they made no notice of any weather conditions.  The adults, I was convinced, were used to this and unphased by it.  I was determined to stretch myself into this non-life-threatening physical discomfort, knowing it would help me grow in some way, so I followed along and tried to pick out what I could of the light French conversation.

No more than 25 minutes after arriving, all the parents began hollering to their kids and walking toward the concrete stairs in the sea wall.  I caught up to Amélie, who speaks fluent English, to clarify what was going on.  "Oh, it's too cold and rainy," she said.  Then, gesturing toward the road, she continued, "We're going to that restaurant up there to get everyone a hot chocolate."

Waiting for our hot chocolates in the seaside restaurant, Nautilus.

Well if that isn't a helpful transition for a city girl in recovery, I don't know what is!  Thirteen soggy people crowded around a single table and we warmed our insides with hot drinks before parting ways for lunch.

Since Nico and I began to experiment with petro-electricity-free living, but more so since sharing life at the Ark, I've had to confront my constant awareness and protection of bodily comfort.  Mostly this boils down to fighting two of my greatest, most uncomfortable enemies: "wet" and "cold".  During the winter and spring, "wet" seemed to be all the time here, either in actual rain and mud or in looming, threatening clouds.  But "cold" wasn't nearly as bad as somewhere like Harrisonburg, Virginia, for example.  This past winter was frosty but the temperatures only fell below freezing for three days or so.

As I shared in "First Impressions", neither "wet" nor "cold" are helpful for drying laundry.  I had a revelation while I hung laundry in the chilly barn one winter day: "Hey, my skin is working! What a gift! I can feel if I'm hot or cold or just right. How helpful! I'm so cold! This is wonderful!"  This is the moment when I realized I was a city girl in recovery.  From that time on I began to practice being ok with coldness.  For some reason, being hot in the summertime is easy for me, but I have found that winter days are suffersome without a sufficient fire constantly burning.

In college, I felt like I'd reached an enlightenment once: "Air conditioning? We're not conditioning the air as much as we're conditioning ourselves to think we need it! It should be called human conditioning! Why can't we just allow our bodies to be hot in the summer??"  And now I can humbly also add, "...and cold in the winter!"

At the Ark, even moreso than our house in Harrisonburg, we live outside as much as inside.  Need to shower?  Or to use the toilet?  Walk to 'em.  The laundry machine is across the street.  The barn where most market garden and bakery work is concentrated is just a regular barn... it has walls and a roof, but you're still basically at the mercy of whatever the weather is like at the present moment.  The communal kitchen's outside and around the corner, and when there's no meal there, a fridge of leftovers and the market garden seconds are in the barn down the path.  We join the community's morning prayers Monday through Friday, where we sit on a covered porch for 20 minutes, no matter the weather.  Just by participating in life, I am given constant opportunities to be connected to what's happening in nature right now.

Though it is still very hard for me to be happy, or even really move at all, when I'm cold, it has felt good to not be consumed by the need to maintain a constantly comfortable body temperature, and instead live into being a human on the planet earth.