Camlyn’s Land Origin Story

Camlyn’s Land Origin Story

My grandpa Hosea was born in Panola, Alabama. He purposefully fled to live in the city of Chicago. To my memory he never talked about those rural Alabama days and I heard it was never successful trying to bring it up. 

My grandma Jessie was born in Tennessee. After splitting from my grandpa, she became a single mother of three and took her kids all the way to California where she got a job as a nurse. Though it was a suburb and not the country, she still loved her backyard and citrus trees well.

Both my grandparents died in the cities they had to flee to. 

… Grandma Jessie also told me of a farmer not too far back in her line who was a sharecropper. He had a relationship with the aging land owner who promised that after 7 years, he would transfer ownership of the land to him. So my Black ancestor worked for years, but the land owner suddenly died and the son did not honor the agreement. The son said, “You worked for my father, but you didn’t work for me. I’m the owner now.”

I don’t know if the 7 year clock restarted or if the land was never transferred at all. All I know is that it was the only time my family members saw this Black farmer cry. 

If farm work is so hard, why not leave it behind?

It’s a stirring question. And many did leave it.

But under what conditions? With what regrets and hesitation and losses?  

If life is financially unstable, why not leave to where it is more affordable?

If the political climate is so oppressive, why stay? 

Why do we stay? Why do we leave? What is our last straw? 

The responses would be as grains of sand: unique, collective, and weathered.

the journey

My intentional journey back to a relationship with land is only a couple of years old. I came with a broken heart. I came burnt out and tired. I had a dysregulated nervous system and I wanted to reconnect to my body. I wanted to ground. I wanted space from battle. The systems I relied on were conditional, fair-weather supports. I wanted to trust something greater. 

I wanted to trust something greater and I wanted to restore trust in myself. Above all, I wanted to fill myself up and over with love. 

I don’t know why I decided to include farming as part of my self-medication. It was probably an ancestral nudge, even though generational trauma complicates my relationship with farming. There are mixed emotions from repeatedly being torn from a generationally-invested partnership with a familiar landscape and being forced to work under life-extinguishing conditions; work that is meant to be sacred, fun, therapeutic and connective.

The nudge also could have come due to my increasing exposure to Indigenous teachers and their invitations to return to a reverent and ceremonial relationship to land, our non-human siblings, spirit, and the Creator. 

When I think of myself and others in my Black community, I feel like many of us seek rest, relief, and retreat, more than we seek labor and being exposed to the elements. We’ve been struggling so I don’t think we’re trying to add “the struggle of farming” to our schedule. Sure, I could go break a sweat or I could snuggle up in a blanket for half the day. Either choice can be healing. I guess it was just time for me to include a new choice–and still snuggle up in a blanket at the end of the day.

Sometimes I lament that I wasn’t raised by farmers, but I can be raised by farmers starting now. I began researching farm education programs and really didn’t find much out there for me in the state of Utah. I wasn’t trying to go back to a university classroom. I was trying to start on the land, supporting a farmer in their work. I started looking out of state, preparing to move when a stranger I met at a potluck mentioned the queer-femme Mobile Moon Co-operative right here in West Valley. I couldn’t believe it. I went to the medicinal farm and kept coming back. 

At one of the cooperative’s many social events, I met Soni from the Green Urban Lunchbox and heard about the one-of-a-kind training program they had developed. So I enrolled. Immersing myself with the Mobile Moon, the Green Urban Lunchbox, Indigenous teachings, and nature’s processes is doing greater regenerative work in me than I thought possible. 

As I read Farming While Black by Leah Penniman, I was reminded that an intimate, sentient relationship to Earth was familiar to my body. Reading about the dialogue and communion held between African growers and earth had a nostalgic effect on me. Deifying farmers or the elements of nature felt normal. I started to recognize how my heartbeat lowered when I stepped onto soil. Or how my breath deepened when I entered the quiet activity nature greets me with. My response to the ocean became the child-like excitement of seeing a relative whose arms I ran to with the mutual squeal, “I’ve missed you!” 

I started shadowing local farmers and enjoyed the stories we exchanged as we planted. What I initially thought would feel like hard labor, felt similar to a craft or art project I would do in other community settings. I just got to use my whole body.

Okay, digging holes for potatoes felt like labor. But it wasn’t hard. And pulling up thistles (with the right gloves) satisfies my pent up frustration so I don’t count that relief as hard labor either. This land is my partner. We have a reciprocal relationship of loving, gifting, and emotional processing. 

So what do I intend to do in this career field? Above all, I am committing to the partnership (a word I prefer to stewardship.) I want to allow the universe to surprise me with the natural evolution that a loving practice brings. 

I’d like to be a student of Life for life.

I’d like to hold space for relationships to unfold their magic. 

I’d like to practice growing with a multiethnic community.

I’d like to practice growing with different generations. 

I’d like to disrupt the current demographics of land “ownership.” To me, the key to helping our environment and planet is to return land to those who love it well, think generations ahead, and bring their whole heart, spirit, culture, and ceremonies to it. I am convinced that this is not just my opinion, but what Earth yearns for and thrives in. All of our cultures have this kind of origin. But because our teachers and models have been killed, erased, and stripped of resources, we have lost our way. 

planting with our young ones

I’ve been an educator for many years. Some subjects I have wide experience and expertise in. In other subjects I’ve taught, I was a little bit more familiar with the subject matter than the students, but for the most part, we were asking questions and discovering together. I would love to do that with nature play and growing food with our young ones. I’d love to let little ones spend time playing and connecting in nature while also skillfully caring for land as they connect to ancestral heritage. As adults, we can deepen our practice as we learn alongside the young ones. 

My dream is for such a space to be led by BIPOC facilitators, more than just myself. If you are interested in earning some income as a land-based mentor, please reach out to me. 

Until we bump into each other or connect in person, thank you for listening and holding space for me. I’ll return the favor. Come share your story anytime. 

Camlyn’s land origin story continues in her next post exploring Yoruba land-based mythology and Ifa practices