Unable to find any place to rent and with my departure date coming up, I wondered if I could move my things into the farm, and with the thought that I could also help Jesse, I began cleaning. When Jesse's twenty-one-year-old son finally appeared, we agreed that I needed to make a call to his father. His first reaction was shock, but he turned amenable when I asked in the name of Meher Baba and I heard the answer I had hoped for.
Now I brought my things out. The field with the horses was un-mowed since Jesse had left mid-summer, but I delightedly plowed through grass up to my knees, stopping for cactus that climbed even higher, with one of each of two pale-green and prickly mitts narrowly attached to its brother underneath. Tall, thin stems erupting in tiny, white flowers became part of my search for plant names in the wildflower book.
“Returning from India to the farm each year, I loved my small bedroom with its west-facing window taking up half the wall ... where in the morning I propped up pillows to look out at the roughly mowed yard and the trees, where birds and animals moved and leaves were shifting. ...This was the first time I'd lived in seclusion among abundant grasses. ... I looked out and met my new family—scrambling, squabbling birds at the feeder I hung, wheeling hawks, grazing deer and wild turkey, a passing fox partially visible, and a steadily crawling, long-term resident gopher tortoise on its routes."*
* All quotes in this post can be found in Prema Jasmine Camp's A Flower for God: A Memoir (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021).