Deep Wild

When I was younger, wild meant jumping into fountains or singing loudly with my girlfriends as the wind battered through the car’s rolled-down windows. It wasn’t deep so much as performative.

But as with so many things as I grow older, my sense of wild has changed. Saint John the Baptist—who recognized Jesus as God and dutifully performed the ritual of baptism—embodies aspects of my sense of wild. We see Saint John out there in the wilderness, believing in the holiness of water, free enough to recognize God when he sees Him. One day I went to college, and when I came back I told my Italian Catholic mother and aunt who was visiting from Italy that I no longer believed in God. My aunt didn’t even address me. She looked at my mother, “Non crede in Dio?” My mom rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t listen to her.” 😂

That was me being surface wild. A wild that doesn’t really cost much and gives us a bubblegum type of bravery. In fact, I now see the spiritual people I know as the wild ones. Those who can stand in the madness of this world and still find a center of divinity—those people are wild. Those people are free. They are not buying into the anxiety. They are not putting on those chains. They feel something greater at work in their lives, and their conviction in that mystery gives them a peace the rest of us simply scramble for.

The homesteaders and Season 2 guests I’ve been lucky enough to form friendships with—Shaye Elliott of The Elliott Homestead, Angela Reed of Parisienne Farmgirl, Annabell Alsup of House of Tocumen, Angela Ferraro-Fanning of Axe & Root Homestead—they have stayed wild. When you push against a society that tells you you don’t have time to sit and eat with your family, you don’t have time to grow your own food, you don’t need to see the life cycle of an animal you’re going to eat, you don’t need nature to feel well, you don’t need beauty to feel whole, you are the wild one.

So here’s to them, and to all of you, here with me, wild enough to think your ancestors matter, the dead are not absent, your heritage doesn’t belong to the past, beauty is necessity, slowing down is strength, even if it makes you look crazy. I see you, my friends.

Stay wild. ✌