I am more anxious than usual the night before an anticipated trip to an open mine in one of our local Sky Island mountain ranges.
The next day’s drive proves to be anticlimactic. Though the road is severely rutted, and the falloff steep and menacing, our tippy side-by-side is in very capable hands. The mine is a wonder, a labyrinth of digging, all stopes and drifts. I decline an opportunity to take a rope assisted scramble down an incline shaft.
Old mines are a freeze point in time. They were still being worked on the day that the decision was made to end operations. Things that could easily be removed and that had salvage value—ore carts, muck sheets, straight rails, and the like—were recovered. Drill holes, ready to receive a charge that never came, were left.
On my way to exit the mine, I spy an old drill bit stuck in the side of the shaft. The mountain has a grip on it as sure as the stone that held Excalibur. I give it a tug. I am no King Arthur, so it does not budge.
Later in the same week, I am watching a drill bit of another type. My neighbor has scored a load of over a thousand sangiovese vines from western Washington and they need to get into the ground quickly. I have been involved with spring planting once before. It was all pine-handled shovel and stiff heel work. Today, though, my more mechanized neighbor is using the PTO, or power take-off, on his diesel tractor to drive an auger a foot and a half into the soil. My job is to use a T-post to push the irrigation tube and the thin wires that the vines will cling to out of the way so that the auger might be centered between the drip ports on the tubing. It’s a couple of hours’ worth of isometric exercise.
I am doing some real work and even though it is not for cash I will happily accept the fine bottles of reds and whites that this vineyard produces.
There is a deeper purpose though. Before retiring here, I used to half-joke that I wanted to help support the nascent wine industry of southeast Arizona in ways other than just being a steady consumer. I want to see the vineyards here succeed.
If my friends and neighbors succeed, I am better off. If my neighbor’s kids succeed, my kids are better off. If my neighbor’s grandkids succeed, my grandkids are better off. I think that this is called enlightened self-interest and isn’t this what we should all be pulling for?
Consider the phylloxera, a tiny aphid-like insect native to North America that feeds on the roots and leaves of grapevines. In the 1860s phylloxerae were inadvertently introduced to Europe, most likely through imported American vines. The pest decimated the French vineyards. Farmers tried a variety of methods to combat it, including flooding the vineyards, using chemicals, and even burying toads in the soil.
What finally worked was the grafting of the part of the French vines that produced the fruit onto American roots that were phylloxera-resistant because the roots had coevolved alongside the aphid.
Can our American dream be grafted onto new roots that recognize a brotherhood of man/woman/whatever? What if we finally recognized that our tribe actually extends beyond the boundaries of our property lines? I have met all sorts of people from all walks of life. The divisions of race and religion begin to fall away when you can observe two things: we all want a good future for our families, and we all bleed when cut.
Is there still time to drill down deep enough to discover some shared core values and recover our quickly eroding sense of community? It may be a rough road but going over the edge is not an option.
