Day 178-224: Cascabel finale

I have been struggling to figure out how to write about our time in Cascabel, and in the end, I have decided to keep it simple.

There is so much I could talk about. There is the community history, things like Jim and Pat Corbett’s work in the 80’s that began the Sanctuary Movement. There is the commitment of the Saguaro-Juniper covenant to conduct human activity in partnership with everything else that lives here. There are projects to restore native grasslands. There is the hermitage program which supports solitary retreat in desert wildlands. There is the community center built by volunteers from recovered materials, and the community garden with its cadre of fun-loving gardeners. There is the eclectic mix of people who live lives that are both highly independent and closely associated. Amongst those people, there is enough creativity, advanced education, and international experience to start a small college. And most important, there is the land itself that grounds everything else—the San Pedro River Valley, a rare, vital, relatively-intact, desert river ecosystem, whose miles of willow-cottonwood forest and mesquite bosques provide food and shelter for a staggering number of local animals as well as being an essential migratory corridor for many of the birds who summer in the Pacific Northwest.

Like I said, there’s a lot. But whenever I try to focus on any one of these things I find myself caught in generalizations or comparisons, or tangled in some kind of “educational” language that does not do justice to my actual experience.

So in the end it comes down to this: that both Tom and I came away from the last seven weeks with a deep affection for this place—the people and the land—that is like the bonds we feel with our family and friends. This affection comes from something greater than the accomplishments of the people or the beauty of the plants or the variety of the birds. It comes from the spiritual soul of this place—the wholeness of it, the spaciousness, the vast wild network of creatures connected to the vitality of the community.

   If I am still—

   if I let my hands rest, my heart broaden

   to the width of the valley, to the height of the mountains,

   then on to the next range beyond,

   to the cities, the rivers, the sea,

   then I too may find my place here,

   if I can stop grasping long enough

   to remember how to be vast.

   Of all the places I could be

   how did I end up here, in this moment?

   I mean in this very moment—

   at sunset, the cusp of night reaching out over the wide valley;

   the white cliffs at my back and the rangy peaks of the Galiuro Mountains

   pushed up in the distance; the whole wide green body

   of the valley laid out in-between in low rolling hills

   of creosote and saguaros; the little houses of people I know

   folded into them like nuts spotting a batter;

   and below, the cottonwoods assembled along the river

   like cows trailing loosely toward fresh pastures.

   The sky is about to reveal its stars.

   The moon is a ghost disk in the periwinkle wash.

   The barest threads of clouds mottle the air from east to west,

   and here I am—

   here I am with nothing but the wind

   and all this space

   to speak with.