Contour Lines

This week at the ranch, we dug 1500 feet of swales and berms, and planted some 596 trees.

Redbud, river birch, false indigo, American chestnut, black locust. That last one was a little nod to the land’s history. On the deed of 1877, when this land passed into the hands of a freedman, it was known as Locust Hill.

We did the planting with friends and family. Kids running wild through the woods, gathering treasures: lichen, mushrooms, little wonders they tucked into their pockets for their parents to discover later. Folks took turns on the excavator. Proud dads sat with their children in their laps. Tiny hands scattered clover seed across the mounds. Mother and teenage son partnered to dig and place the infant trees. Work and joy.

The contour lines themselves are things of beauty, sweeping across the land in long, sinuous arcs, revealing the land's rise and fall. Even the mapping of them held a kind of primitive delight.

Two eight-foot poles.
A length of clear tubing, water filled almost to the top.
Stand the poles side by side. Mark the point where the water rests evenly in both.
Then one person stays put, while the other walks ten feet ahead, stepping left or right, until the water levels match again.
Stop.
Plant a flag.
Go on.

The results are never what you predict. The land is subtle. A little deceitful, even. More than once we were flummoxed. Surely the water runs this way? No. To the contrary, the contour lay at a perpendicular we never would have guessed or chosen.

But we're not here to choose. Not here to impose our preferences upon it. We're here to listen, to watch, to map what we find and build in partnership. Control wants straight lines. Reality rarely offers them. So we learn to walk the curve instead. The results are more beautiful and surprising then anything we'd have cooked up.

A client friend told me last night, over a glass of orange wine, that if she had mapped her career in advance, she would have missed most of what mattered. All the many turns she never would have chosen had led to the best parts of her journey.

And yet, looking back, there was a line running through it. You could see it. Lovely in a way no plan could have produced.

Perhaps the same is true for you? We're all just walking contour.