Human Nature

         During my travels, and I have been traveling for but a short time, I have noticed that there are essentially two sorts of people. One is the producer; he is the psychologist, the lawyer, the CEO and the teacher. They operate on a confined and set book of rules by which they must live their life. They eke out their existence by exploiting those around them; by running a business “ethically”, by prosecuting the “guilty”, by curing the “disorders” of the brain, and by indoctrinating the impressionable. I only add teachers to the list of producers with the heaviest of hearts, as a few rare instructors do actively try to expand the minds of their pupils and pass on the wisdom that they possess to the next generation; but too many “teachers” only exist to fill a student’s mind with pointless meaningless facts so that they can become the new CEO, lawyer and psychologist. The other, of course, is the craftsmen. He is the farmer, the artist, the writer and the salesman.  Through his life he seeks to create; the artist and writer create a masterpiece, the salesman creates a well-crafted lie, and the farmer (who is by far the truest craftsman) creates life. Not life in the traditional sense, but life for him and those around him.

During my stays in the Dakotas I was told by a council chief that the greatest man that the Lakota could produce was the powerful farmer, a man who possesses swaths of land, thousands of livestock and more workers than he could manage. I humbly disagreed with the chief as I had stayed on the reservation for some time and was wholly convinced that the greatest man the Lakota could produce, nay the world could produce was the sustenance farmer. He is a craftsman who is markedly uninterested with the bustling chaotic world that extends past the border of his ranch; the sustenance farmer’s only worry is for the food he brings in to be enough to feed him and his kin. He need not worry to rotate the crops lest they destroy the land, as he barely pollutes the land to begin with. I tried my hand at being a sustenance farmer; indeed I had bought a tract of land up in the barren badlands and tried my hand at it. I found that through the acts of tilling the land, planting my seed, and harvesting my gains to be a wholly redemptive line of thinking. No more was I corrupting my world with frivolous needs and unsavory desires; I was merely making an existence in the wild. The property I had acquired, for I needed one while tending my crops, was a modest trailer. It had two rooms, one for cooking and one for sleeping. I did my bathing in the White River which ran across my property and my bowel movements whenever the need took me. I had initially planned to spend my nights outdoors, same as my days, but the locals soon warned me that the rattlesnakes made their way outside in the dark and it was just too dangerous to continue sleeping in the wild; I would have to be content working in it. Never once during my stay in the badlands did I take a life, although I was tempted at times, I made a vow to myself to live wholly with nature and to operate on in peaceful unison with my surroundings; and because of this the wild was always good to me. The wild does not lie to you, it operates only in pure unadulterated truth; the purest truth that can be found in the world, as the wild will has no exterior interests while conversing with you, it will only tell you of life and death, rain and sun, sun and moon. For that I am grateful, for there is no such thing as truth outside of nature, as civilization is built on well constructed lies.

When the growing season was over and I had gathered my harvests, and indeed the fruitful knowledge that the land imparted to me free-of-charge I left my small trailer in my tract of land in the badlands and returned to civilization. For I knew that the winters there were harsh and that only a man with a greater constitution than mind could stomach them. In truth I had cheated the wild, for I left with two presents and had given none. However the wild is a loving mistress who can stand to be cheated from time to time and for that I was glad. No man can forever hold out to the calling of the wild, and eventually we will submit and give the wild the gift it so desperately wants. When it is my day to return to the wild, I hope I go with dignity and poise, so at the very least the ground I am placed in will be fertile and helpful to the next true craftsman who imbues that land with his spirit and hard work. For the simplicity of the life of the sustenance farmer, often yields the greatest rewards.