T-Roy and I are on our regular summer vacation living like dirt bags in the backcountry of Wyoming. Every summer I bring with me a few books to read since we have no cell service and no connection to the modern world. This past week my book pick was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I found it sitting in a box of discarded books in a classroom of a school where I teach. The book is about dust bowl people migrating to California only to find a harder life there as migrant workers. It’s a tragic story based on real American history. After finishing the book, I felt so spoiled and so far removed from real struggle. I now find myself deep in thought about the agrarian society our country was founded on and how fast that changed through the use of tractors and food industrialization in the 1930s. I have never gone hungry or come close to starving yet so many of Americans did just a century ago and many still do today. If I take one thing from The Grapes of Wrath I think it would be the importance of relationship with the land. In my travels I have a deep awe and respect of the sights I see and the cultures I observe, however, there’s a deeper connection I have with my own garden and the yard and the place that provides for my family. We are not 100% food sovereign and I don’t think that’s our goal. But something about the relationship to the land you cultivate drives deep. My thoughts are that working with it and seeing it as a living thing rather than a machine creates a healing both in the person as well as with the land. Hope you all are having a wonderful summer. We are missing our Louisiana but enjoying our time in the West.