The meadow around the house belongs to the Man of Reason – the name in tribute to Elizabeth Von Arnin’s Man of Wrath.  He will, like his mother and the rest of his Arterazi clan, who are more than a little competitive in the garden arena, create Shangri-la, a jaw-dropping, mouth-watering array of perfection.  And I will spend a few minutes each day thinking up praise-filled sentences to bestow on its creator.

But twenty feet below the field on which the house sits, lies my meadow.  It is smaller, only  two acres; two creeks cut through it on a diagonal.  The creeks run wild and frothy in the winter months.  At the back of this meadow stands the alder arch into the forest.  This meadow, in contrast to the sheered flat garden meadow ready for the art of the creator, is jumping with life.  Twenty years ago it was a gravel pit, but when the pit was abandoned, nature roared back.

Nature thrives on disturbance. I bet you didn’t know that.  In contrast to the leaden zeitgeisty belief that land is fragile and the web of life in peril, in fact, put nature in peril and she will surprise you with a mighty push-back.  Life is indestructible, it is culture which is not.

When I’d lie on my couch in New York or London or Toronto my stressed brain and body screaming bloody murder, I’d try that meditation of dreaming yourself into a peaceful place, a far away place where cares dissolve and your true self emerges.  While the palliative nature of the exercise seemed minimal at the time, years later, here is the dreamed meadow, narrow and deep, sunk into the land, water and trees, tall grass and song birds.

In true ecology, not the politicized mess by which we now live, you “take care” of nature by deciding what you want it to do.  Do you want a refuge for bears?  Do you want butterflies and songbirds?  Do you want it to go to rack and ruin?  This last is a trick by the way – the best way for land to go to rack and ruin is to try to preserve it in amber.

Instead of speaking of an “balanced eco-system” as the cynosure of heath, more correct to say healthy for.  Then ask, healthy for what?

In my small meadow, I want nature to be healthy for wildlife and plant life, especially indigenous shrubs like Nootka Rose and Salmonberry.  I want camas and chocolate orchids.  And I want the salmon to over-summer in the deep holes of my salmon pond.  I want it to be the meadow of the Long Peace.