The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food by Ray Janisse

Author:Ray, Janisse [Ray, Janisse]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2012-07-08T21:00:00+00:00

— 15 —

pilgrimage to mecca

I WAS IN TROUBLE.

Over twenty years had passed since I heard of the Seed Savers Exchange and now I wanted to go to the annual campout at their headquarters. The trouble was, because of the climate crisis, I had quit flying. I live in Georgia; the Seed Savers Exchange is in Iowa.

My last flight was in April of 2008, from Chicago, where I was stuck by some weather incident or another, to Oxford, Mississippi, for a lecture at the University of Mississippi to herald a new sustainability major there. I am not saying that I will never fly again. If there’s a crisis with someone I love and I need to arrive quickly someplace, I will fly. For now, I let the record speak for itself. I quit flying more than four years ago and have not stepped on a plane since.

I studied wistfully the invitation to the campout. I found Decorah on a map. It was far away. So far, however, nothing had stopped me from traveling, since there are plenty of other conveyances besides planes, including feet. I plotted my journey.

I packed a backpack, kissed my husband goodbye—a long kiss—and drove four hours to Atlanta. Somewhere near the fall line the pickup’s odometer reached the numerologically powerful 234,235. In a free parking garage at a Marta station I parked the truck, exchanged money for tokens, and boarded the subway, where I sat next to a woman carrying a huge bouquet of carnations and in front of a man who planned to start his yoga practice the following weekend. The subway delivered me to the bus station.

The architecturally artless station was of an era, its floor concrete, its ceiling too low, and its lights too bright. The terminal was packed with poor students sitting on baggage reading Foucault and Faulkner, migrant workers, and other wayfarers, some with children, headed toward new dreams of happiness. A woman at the ticket counter told me that seats were first-come, first-served, unless I wanted to pay an extra five dollars to get a window seat. Determined to get one free, I queued up at the Chicago gate although the bus wouldn’t leave for a couple of hours.

When we pulled out of Atlanta, the driver—Miz Off-the-Chain, as she called herself—let us know to turn off cell phones and not bother our neighbors by talking loudly. Keep the bathroom clean, don’t get up and walk around, she said. If the bus stops, don’t get off unless it is a designated rest stop. At the designated rest stops, if you aren’t back at the bus in the time allotted, she would, by golly, leave you. Test her.

The bus crawled north out of Atlanta. It was an older-model Greyhound, with its seats too close together and uncomfortable, upholstered in royal blue velour printed with light-blue greyhounds. THERE’S A REASON WE’RE NOT NAMED AFTER A SLOTH, read a small placard. My seatmate, Brian, was a trucker trying to get home for a wedding. We talked awhile, then I stared out my window.

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