Pre-Harvest Buzz, About the Author, and Nature is Awesome

From 8/12/11

Wine country is about to erupt into hyperactivity.

It is hard to appreciate in this pre-Harvest moment of calm, collected normalcy just how much is about to happen in the next three months, especially after such a mild, gradual summer/growing season.  This will be my second harvest in the Napa Valley and probably really the second harvest I’ve even known was happening as such. I don’t think I really understood the concept of a harvest until I studied abroad in Senegal in college and spent enough time living outside in a village to be transformed by the experience of living in a way connected to nature.

I grew up in a city. We moved to the country when I was nine, but it was horse country. (Phoenix, Maryland.) Nobody was growing much of anything besides the grass on their front lawn, and mowing was the only tending involved. My parents are well educated people and caring and attentive parents who fed me well and raised me to value being healthy and conscientious about things in general, but still somehow I had no idea how my vegetables came to be. I never actually witnessed a growth cycle of anything non-human. I had no appreciation for how things grew or what it was like to spend quality time outside and with nature.

I know that’s why I appreciate it that much more now. It was like discovering a whole new level of being, to exist in connection to the earth rather than apart from it, floating in isolation- a weird, individual black box of a human sharing space and time with everything around me, but existing separately. Nature grows from the deep and from itself. There’s no start point or end point, no delimitation of existence. It’s all interconnected, and when you tap into it, spend time with it and begin to be able to actually feel the connection, to feel the way that you too are in fact a part of everything that’s going on… well, it’s awesome. The true meaning of that word.

So that’s me. Probably more than I’ll share throughout this blog. But in case you ever wonder who is this person behind the author, here’s a sense! Hello!

britt.