Unplugging at Spirit Hill Farm

A year ago, I didn’t know I’d be living at Spirit Hill Farm. I was visiting from Boston because Carolyn had invited me to fly out and stay in the guest house for a week so I could finally see her beloved property after hearing about it for years. A week away from Boston winter weather? Yes, please! I packed my suitcase and flew west (remember when we could fly like it was no big deal?!)

Last week I bought new winter boots and sneakers, a few pairs of jeans, some shirts, some sweaters, and a coat. Some socks. Some underwear.

It looks like I’m here for real. When Carolyn offered the position of farmer-in-training, writer-in-residence at the beginning of 2020, neither of us had a clue what was about to happen to the world. Months later, the bubble that is Spirit Hill Farm became a real bubble. It was a place I left to buy groceries, plants, and dirt. It was a bubble guests stepped into as an escape from city life or the confines of suburbia. It was a clean bubble. The cleaning service was paid twice as much as usual in order to keep the house COVID clean. I kept my distance, here in the guest house to help from 6 feet away.

It has been wonderful. Bubble life has been good to me.

And yet I woke up every morning tired and a little sad.

Did I mention that I scroll through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and email obsessively? As a writer, I’ve worked to build up a following, and I take this job seriously. I am present online, as in, you write to me, and my response will often be nearly immediate. I am connected.

It’s like every person who I’m aware of online has a tiny sucker attached to my body, and I leak energy all day long. To pay attention implies attention is something that that is given in a form of exchange. What I get for paying attention to what goes on online is a sense of being connected to others, a sense of purpose: I am keeping up with people I’ve never met in person! I get to not pay attention to what is right in front of me and to the anxiety that often comes with being a person in a body.

I recently started using a new Planner, and every day I am asked to write down three things I’m excited about for the coming day. This was a wake-up for me.

I was rarely excited. I was busy. I was distracted: Do a task, or half a task, pull out my phone, scroll, scroll, scroll, repeat.

I watch what happens to guests when they arrive at Spirit Hill. They get out of their cars, look around, smile, drop their shoulders, and sigh.

They all look excited to see what will happen next.

Spirit Hill invites you to be present because it is so here. It has a heartbeat. The plants, the animals, the house that was built by a couple that crossed the country in a wagon all those years ago. Spirit Hill says, be here with me.

Last week, I unplugged. I announced I was taking a three-month hiatus from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and then I removed the apps from my phone.

Yesterday I picked up my phone during the afternoon and stared at it. I was desperate for…for…for something. I clicked on the weather. Sixty-three degrees. I put my phone down and went outside to clean the chicken coop. The sun was out and the chickens were fluffed up sitting in sunny spots. I picked up the rake and got to work. “Hi, Chickens,” I said. The rake was cold in my hands and so I went and got my gloves.

The sky was blue. The leaves of the olive trees moved in the soft breeze. It was winter and yet the pansies were in full bloom. My New England self thrilled at the audacity of having a garden that flourished in December.

I thought of all the people I no longer had to keep track of—all the information I wasn’t absorbing: who was eating what, who thought what, who went where.

I was inexplicably happy.

I estimated I had lost 68,000 pounds.

Spirit Hill has been trying to tell me all year that it’s enough, that I don’t need to escape into distraction, that this land will bloom even more wildly if I pay it my full attention. That I, also, will bloom more wildly in return.

I am excited to wake up each morning and to see what happens when I step out into this bright world that is full of bird song and gophers steadily making their way underground, looking for something delicious to eat.