A Trip to Bountiful

You don't have to tell me: I know the title belongs to a wonderful movie made from the play by Horton Foote. But the phrase is on my mind as I reflect on our recent annual pilgrimage to the Common Ground Fair. It strikes me as quite ironic that while the nation is in one of its worst financial crises, I am once again feeling like the recipient of the world's abundance. Nowhere is the bounty of the harvest more evident than at this fair.

This year we got to share the experience with our closest friends, D and J. It was their maiden voyage. I think they had a good time, based on the fact that D got to order those Quoddy Mocs he's been wanting for years, and J sought to recapture bygone days by attempting to keep a hula hoop in motion. She was actually pretty good!

J and I made a stop at the Trillium Soap booth, and made off with a bagful each of assorted aromatic bars. The soap, combined with the fresh bunches of sweet annie, filled the car with great scents for the ride home. I also found some baskets made in Vietnam that made a perfect home for the wool roving I recently purchased. Somehow the soap bars and the wool called to each other, so last night I felted 7 bars.


As if the fair wasn't enough bounty, J and D treated us to dinner at Maine's finest restaurant, Primo. My scallop entree was filled with a variety of the best local wild mushrooms, including hen-of-the-woods, and chanterelles. (And you know how I am about mushrooms!)

I don't mean to bore you here with the tedious details of my personal adventure. My point in all this is that a bountiful feeling is within reach of all of us, but sometimes we don't know where to look.

To be able to appreciate the abundance around you, you need to:

• live in a sufficiently simple way to see it when it comes.
• be in the moment so your channels are clear to witness the fortune you possess.
• share what you have to increase the flow of abundance in the life of others as well as yourself.

I'm no financial/economic wiz (Aren't you glad I'm not running for office?), but I do understand that the current economic crisis is the result of greed. When greed motivates us, we are unable to see the natural flow of abundance that can result from the three practices above.

The current presidential election is very important. This blog is not a platform for politics, but rather a voice for sanity. For the sake of sanity, I ask you to consider the following.

• Which candidate is asking you to live more generously, with more care and concern for those around you?
  
• Which candidate is calling upon you to be a better person, versus circling the wagons and selfishly keeping others from sharing the abundance that is ours?

copyright 2008 starfishdoc

Waiting for Black Trumpets

About 20 of us sat under a tent that beautiful September morning. The scene was the Common Ground Fair, Maine's most popular annual event celebrating organic farming. We were there to learn about foraging for mushrooms.

The teacher passed around samples of the ten most desirable edible mushrooms native to this area. There was one he could not show us because it had eluded him for ten years. It was the black trumpet. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm for hunting wild mushrooms was so contagious that I began my career as a forager the very next day.

The woods were loaded with mushrooms of every size and shape. Being new at this, I took my time and followed all the directions for accurate identification. I couldn't have imagined that on my very first day foraging, I would stumble on a sizable patch of black trumpets.

Every year since, I return to the same spot, hoping the black trumpets will appear. Last year, they arrived in mid-June. This year, I have been out looking for them at least once a week since Memorial Day. I had just about give up hope. But yesterday, there they were, covering a patch of ground about ten feet square. The earth once more yielding her abundance.

Whether the crop is wild or planted, there is something besides abundance to learn from a harvest. And that is patience. Nature evolves in its own time, not on our schedule. And what applies to mushrooms or potatoes, also applies to people. We tend to want the people in our lives to change in the direction and at the speed we dictate. But the harder we try to make that happen, the less it is likely to occur.

All things in nature, people especially, grow at their own pace and in their own direction. The black trumpets, looking like ribbons of dark chocolate, arrived splendidly, not according to my expectations but by their own clock.

Copyright 2007 starfishdoc