Dear Will:
A couple of weeks ago Dana and I were in Logan, Utah, seated in a well-appointed lecture hall on the campus of Utah State University, there to hear Bryn defend her Master’s thesis: “Once Our Land Is Gone, It’s Gone”: Farmer Perspectives on Growth, Embeddedness, and the Future of Food in the Great Salt Lake Basin. Scattered about the room were the folks I had expected: fellow students, advisers, various other members of the academic community—even a couple of the farmers who had been featured in her research.
Dana and I were brought to tears as we heard Bryn’s persuasive narrative about the plight of the local growers who are too often scapegoated for the desiccation of the Great Salt Lake. As Bryn’s research demonstrated, they are passionate men and women whose love of the land and of their craft cannot be doubted, people who—in spite of the forces working against them (climate change, urban sprawl, misplaced political priorities)—continue to find ways to bring food to our tables year after year after year. Had you heard Bryn’s presentation or read her thesis, you too would have come away convinced that the farmers of the Basin deserve our respect and admiration rather than the underappreciation and even vilification that dominates the discourse around Utah’s growing water crisis.
Our emotions that day ran high—and not merely due to Bryn’s moving account. There were others in the hall that day who also moved us to tears. There in the center, about halfway back, was an unexpected quartet, three aunts and an uncle, members of an extensive (and growing) Bryn Fan Club who had driven a couple of hours each way to be there to witness Bryn’s big moment. On the Zoom link were additional members of the BFC, including another aunt, a former teacher, and one of our dearest friends whose avuncular charm has made him one of Bryn’s dear friends now as well. As we watched them watch her, we felt a great outpouring of affection for each of them. None of them are farmers, nor do they have a longstanding interest in the agriculture of the Great Salt Lake Basin. Yet there they were because they love Bryn—and Dana and I felt it deep down. That day we were reminded of something we have noted over and over throughout the years as others have taken interest in our children: We love those who love those we love.
The week prior, in a totally different place for a totally different reason, we felt similar pangs of tenderness and appreciation. We had gathered in a local park to celebrate our granddaughter’s second birthday. But for a couple of other toddlers, the only other non-grandparents at the party were friends of my son Luke and his wife: delightful, irresistible thirty-somethings who had gathered outside a small zoo on a Saturday afternoon to show love and support to three of the people we love most in the universe. Our granddaughter will remember nothing from that day, but the image of Luke’s friends, doting on my favorite little two-year-old, fills me with wonder and gratitude I cannot fully express.
These emotions were swirling in my breast this past week as I hiked one of our local trails. Along my trek I passed a man who kept calling out: “Kylie girl! Who’s a good girl? Kylie!” He explained that some friends had lost their dog in the area and that he was spending his Saturday trying to reunite them. Immediately I found myself loving both the man and the dog and hoping that by some means I might find Kylie myself.
That’s how this stuff works: Love is infectious in all the right ways. Aunts love nieces; parents love aunts; friends love friends and their dogs, and somehow strangers end up loving them too. So when your daughter loves farmers, there’s only one thing to do: You cut your hike short and give in to her longstanding admonition to support the local farmers’ market. The berries, avocados, carrots, and cucumbers you purchase there will almost be beside the point. You go there to bear witness and give thanks. To acknowledge labor and craft and caring, to honor and respect. And in your own small way to express your love for those she loves as well.
PW
P.S. They found Kylie. Don’t you just love that?
Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash
Letters to Will 