Earl Duque of Delicious Earth Farm rooted us in the approaching evening of the Arid Land event with a poem by the late farmer-writer Wendell Berry.

I was born in a drought year. That summer
my mother waited in the house, enclosed
in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,
for the men to come back in the evenings,
bringing water from a distant spring.
veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.
And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemy’s soul.

Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.
I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

Then, Violet Mitchell-Enos of the Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe and Marion Johnston (Cherokee) started the evening of talks on the importance of food as medicine and its cultural significance. They spoke of how their ancestors were much more aware of where their food came from, how to grow, forage, and hunt for it, and of food’s medicinal properties than current generations are. The community garden, started by Marion and Violet, has become a place to rekindle the relationship between food and youth, as well as between youth and their elders. It is a place of storytelling, of working with and touching the soil of their ancestors, and a haven to disconnect from the modern business and technology of the world: a place of stillness.