My grandmother has lived on the same property for 80 years. Her son tells me of a spring he would drink from in the hot summers of his childhood in the woods behind her house, but it dried up decades ago. The woods are still there, but they’re shrinking.
I used to explore them, finding thrill and delight in the wildlife that perched high in the trees, hid in the shadows of the shrubs, and hopped around on the tropical terrain of her “backyard.”
We were country folk, and though we didn’t have much money, we had the wealth of nature around us. For those who have never lived off land, the value of nature may not be easily understood; let me explain.
The southern family my Caribbean mother and I were adopted into comes from a history of economic challenge. I remember driving my grandmother around the local “historic downtown” on the other side of our town a couple years ago. This quaint lakeside district is colorful and clean, and though it’s now welcome to all, my grandmother remarked from the car: “I used to work all around these parts to make a day’s pay, but colored people weren’t allowed in any of these stores.”
In discussing the changing of the area with her son, my uncle, he tells me what he noticed of integration.
“There was a street, all black-owned businesses. There was another street, all white-owned. Integration happened, and within a year all the black-owned businesses were gone, and replaced.”
Financial development didn’t come easily to my family; in fact, it was taken out of their reach, time and time again, more times that I can relay into this piece. Although greater access to financial wealth would have changed the trajectory of their lives and lineage to come, my family managed to do without it and maintain vibrant health at the same time. They had land to steward and wild places to hunt, and always found a way to put something nutritious on the table.
I enjoyed our backcountry meals, but I learned to keep our menus to myself at school. Apparently, it wasn’t normal to eat turtles, possums, and raccoons, even if they provided sustenance and maintained all their wild nutrition. There was a spiritual element to our food preparation that my grocery-shopping counterparts didn’t seem to have. Hunting does not need to be meaningless and cruel, and for us, it wasn’t. Hunting meant observing the land to know the mating patterns of animals, how they migrated, and what we could hunt without provoking ecological imbalance. It connected us to the land, and taught us to respect our place in it. My uncles taught me to ceremoniously prepare game the way they had been taught, the rituals passed down from their native heritage. I learned everything, every part of the animal, had a purpose, and there was no waste produced in our process.
I was among the very last of the community to live like this; the last generation to learn “the old ways.” The land began to change as I grew up, and our lifestyle was no longer something we could rely on. Loss of land meant loss of wildlife, and the increase of herbicides, weed killers, and industrial byproducts poisoned the plants and animals that remained. Hunting was no longer ecologically viable or safe.
Now the area is nearly unrecognizable, and I grieve to see the beauty of my home replaced by copy-and-paste quick-to-construct architecture in the name of “economic progress.” Dollar stores, storage units, and warehouses replace acres of the foliage that gave my small country town its charm and its wealth.
As the land disappeared and my community became more reliant on stores instead of land, I noticed an alarming trend that continues today. People are literally dropping dead all the time. The community is shrinking as heart attacks, strokes, chronic illness, and cancer become conditions we’ve come to talk about casually.
It’s one thing for my home to disappear because the town of my childhood has been torn down and replaced; it’s another for those who remember how it was to rapidly disappear, taking their memories of the area with them.
Are there any bears left in the area? What’s happening to the wildlife as cement seeps into their stomping grounds? Where are the cats that lived around my grandmother’s house just a few months ago? I wonder these things as I drive around the area.
My recent homecoming was difficult, as my 95-year-old grandmother’s health is in question. Meanwhile, the buyers of the land in front of the property she has lived on for 80 years are deciding if they’ll turn the trees that hide her house from the busy road into a strip mall or storage units.
The visit has tested me in more ways than one, and I’ve had to pull from my toolbox to maintain my well-being, particularly my mental and spiritual health. I admit it’s not without effort and frustration, but I find peace in thinking about what I’ve learned from my experience and how I can use it to better the future. This tool is my Choice Dichotomy of Choice and Experience.
Every choice I make yields an experience that affects myself, my community, and my environment. Watching the transformation of my hometown, built on choices that have not helped the community or environment, reminds me to be conscious of the greater impacts of my choices so I can contribute to a brighter future. I was inspired to write this piece in hopes this tale does not only enrich my understanding of choice and experience, but yours as well.
Let’s think of the world we want to live in as we make the choices that yield our experience. Let’s communicate and align ourselves in our vision of the future, and my hope is your vision will prioritize wellness in individuals, community, and environment so we can all grow together.
Thank you for writing this, it holds some of the grief I still feel for a lost home and lost ways of being in my rural Romanian childhood. Lighting a candle for your grief and wishing you every gentleness.