One giant leap

If I have not yet made you aware of it, I am now enrolled in not four, but six plant/agriculture/ecology-related classes for this fall:

Arboriculture
Plant Disease
Soil Management
Permaculture
Intro to Creek/Watershed Restoration
Wildlife and Watershed Restoration Gardening

And I feel nothing but good about it. I have been reading my John McPhee. And The Lorax. And I picked up a bit of John Muir at the book store with my dad last week. Light stuff, all in all, even the Cadillac Desert still floating about in my mind, but I am loving it. I want more and more. I am hungry.

Now when I see girls in fancy jeans at work, it occurs to me that I am giving that up - that lifestyle. The fancy jeans and new looking sweaters. The owning of a Prius. The financial whimsy. But then I saw a reflection of myself in the window as I waited to fill my waterbottle in my old Levis, a teeshirt my parents got when the Olympics came to Los Angeles in 1984, and a stained sweater I must have bought in high school, and I realized I was never living that dream anyway. I do have my cowboy boots, but I was never going to own designer jeans.

I'd rather grow my own. I love the idea of taking classes that will get me dirty. I like volunteering my Saturday mornings to shovel wood chips and repot shrubs. It's hard work, but it's real work. I can see it and feel proud of it. I can feel good about dirtying my hands with honest, organic soil instead of taking a paycheck to sit in my chair and scrape a little off the top of a lot of small guys. I just don't have the constitution for business and profit. I never have.

So, here's to change.