A Dose of Reality

This weekend was beautiful. However, I blew most of my energy Friday night at the Noti Pub in Noti, Oregon. It was the kind of place you’d expect in a small mountain village – all domestic beers on tap, video lottery + deer hunting simulation games flashing in the corners, CMT blaring out of a big screen TV, a local gal named Tina tending bar – but we fit right in with the regulars (primarily ‘rougher’-looking logging guys) with our carharts and unwashed hair. Tina told me that the name of the village, ‘Noti’, came to be back when an “Indian was supposed to return a soldiers horse, but didn’t tie it up outside the place, and it got away”. Hence, No-Tie. Some things are really just as simple as that I guess!

On Sunday, Rita, Paul and I hiked to Kentucky Falls, near Mapleton, Oregon. I won’t even try to describe it, just look at the pictures!

Today we planted onions for two hours. In the rain. In case ya’ll didn’t know, planting in general requires the constant position of ‘bent-over-at-the- waist’. Right now, hours later, I’m still not able to stand fully upright. 

After lunch we sat down with Bill to discuss an article that came out in the local paper over the weekend. A radical environmental group called the Pitchfork Rebellion (made up of farmers and citizens in the Triangle Lake area – about 5 miles away from the farm) did a pesticide study on a group of Triangle Lake residents. Elevated levels of pesticide residue were found in their urine, probably a result of drift from farms in the area (though there is no evidence of where it came from, as of now). This means that 1. Horton Road’s status of ‘organic’ could be affected 2. We are most likely ingesting these same toxins, due to the farm’s proximity to the findings. My immediate reaction was, ‘get me out of here’, but as we talked through it as a group I realized that my concerns, though valid, are not specific to me, to my situation or location. We are all at risk. No matter where I live, where I run to, I will be exposed to toxic chemicals, pesticides, radiation, etc. Toxic chemicals are all around us (there are even studies revealing that there is dioxin present in every mother’s breast milk). The effects of this exposure are not even known for the most part (except for the ‘coincidence’ that rates of cancer, autism, psychological problems, etc. have risen sharply over the past 20 years).

In regard to this study/article, Bill stated that he was not concerned with his own health, or with the health of his farm. He said that he has not seen any effects of pesticide drift on his crops – something that would be plainly visible. However, Horton Road will have its soil tested. Until then, we were instructed to inform customers at the farmer’s market that as of now; there is no sign of contamination, and to hand out Bill and Deborah’s official response, which goes into more detail (which I would expand upon here if I could remember it all). 

This whole situation makes me furious. It goes to show how our need to grow cheap, fast, commercial quantities of food (which necessarily requires the use of chemicals and pesticides) has direct, lasting effects. When we spray poison on our food, and then ingest it, we are poisoning ourselves! It’s not that hard of a concept to grasp. People who shun or denounce food that is labeled ‘organic’ absolutely shock me. To grow food organically, is only to grow it the way it has always been grown! (Ever since the WWII era when we had a shortage of workers and needed to maintain the same level of food production – pesticides and fertilizers were like a miracle drug. After the war, all of the factories built for ammunition production, etc. needed to stay in business, thus becoming fertilization, pesticide, etc. plants. Bill: “Who was going to want to go back to using a mule after that?”)

Not to say that just because something is labeled ‘organic’ means it is necessarily, ‘greener’, more ‘sustainable’, or healthier than something not labeled ‘organic’. In the overall scheme of things, it is probable that purchasing an ‘organic’ tomato that comes from Mexico is far more detrimental to the environment (and people who live there) than purchasing a non-organic tomato from a local farm. PLUS – food labeled ‘organic’ is not guaranteed to have zero traces of pesticides/fertilizers/etc. By law, there are ‘tolerable’ levels of pesticides, and food with contaminants below this tolerable level are considered ‘organic’. To grow food with zero levels of contaminants at this point in Civilization’s existence, would be close to impossible.

So. What the hell are we to do then, right!? Derrick Jensen inspires me to question where my threshold for damage lies, asking the most important question I can think of, for this specific time in space. He writes in Endgame: 

“What if Nazis or other fascists took over North America, what would we all do?...What if this occupied country called itself a democracy, but most everyone understood elections to be shams...What if the fascists irradiated the countryside, poisoned food supplies, made rivers unfit for swimming (and so filthy you wouldn’t even dream of drinking from them anymore)?...If fascists systematically deforested the continent, would you join an underground army of resistance?...Okay, so maybe your sense of kin, your sense of skin, doesn’t extend to the natural world. Maybe you don’t yet love the land where you live enough that you will fight for it. But what if the fascists toxify not only the landscape but the bodies of those you love?...Would you then fight back? What if the fascists toxify your own body? Would you still cling to the illusion that their edicts carry more weight than that brought to bear by their secret and not –so-secret police? Would you work for this regime? Would you teach others its virtues? Or would you fight back? If you will not fight back when they toxify your own body (and toxify your mind with propaganda leading you to believe their edicts carry moral weight), when, precisely, will you fight back? Give me – and more importantly yourself- a specific threshold at which you will finally take a stand. If you can’t or won’t give that threshold, why not?”

It’s a lot to consider, and for me, a question of personal responsibility, especially when ignoring the growing number of studies like the one at Triangle Lake, just isn’t possible anymore.