A social distanced visit to the tree farm.

This is Basha, writing what I hope will be the first of many blog posts written by any Tree Farm community member who has something to share with the community. I am writing this days after returning home from our family's first Tree Farm visit of the summer, with our almost two year old toddler Ruth.

We are living in unprecedented times: the US is four months into a global pandemic requiring us to commit to various levels of quarantine and shelter in place; the police continue to murder black people and the voice of dissent is finally being amplified with overdue allied voices; and we are living through the second economic recession that people of my millennial generation have lived through since graduating from high school. To be overwhelmed or afraid right now is to be human, to be rational even.

The summer I first came to the tree farm as Hunter's guest and then-girlfriend, about five years ago, I also attended my first Tree Farm Quaker Meeting. We sat under the trees, whose years outnumbered mine. These are the same trees that my Hunter's great grandparents had looked at, probably during the quiet pauses of their own similar meetings, while holding the same songbooks. After a moment, someone spoke, and one of the things she said was that this place is healing.

Five years later, my toddler does not understand what is going on in the world, but she sees that her parents are anxious. She she is no longer allowed in any stores, any houses but ours, she cannot go to the library, or the playground. When her loved ones come over, she has to stay on the porch, with the gate closed, while our guests inhospitably sit in a folding chair 6 feet away. As she bursts with energy and curiosity about the things around her, her world is constricting. I feel it getting smaller. But last week we took her to the Tree Farm, and I watched with such joy and relief as she explored the world around, her with complete inhibitions. She held a frog, she pet a turtle, she picked poppies from Jimmy's garden, she ran naked in the yard. But most of all she could wander freely, and just be. The tree farm opened her world back up a crack, and as promised, it was healing.

Quarantine means that many members of the Tree Farm Community cannot make it to Spruce Creek this year. I hope those of you far away are comforted that the Tree Farm is alive with not only the sounds of cicadas, or the trees creaking in the wind, but also of my almost-two-year-old exploring the same woods that her great, great grandparents explored.

And for anyone wondering how Jimmy's garden is looking while he is away for the first summer in longer than I've known him: I hope you enjoy these photographs.