Taking It Slow

Thirty years ago the organization I worked for started a program to preserve hardy and thrifty farm animals that were fast becoming extinct. I hired a self-described Michigan farm boy named Hans Peter Jorgensen to run the program. HP is a man a many talents - wood worker, artist, sculptor, and the only person I know who as a boy could play the piano holding an orange in each hand.

The Pasture, ca. 1986, With My Daughter Julia

One chilly rainy day soon after being hired, HP stopped by my office and asked if I could join him outside for a moment. Muffled in our rain gear, we stood at the edge of our biggest pasture. "Just look at that," HP said. I looked, and saw absolutely nothing, just an empty field and a few scrubby bushes. Ever optimistic, he went on, "Yes, as you can see, we have a real problem with drainage here."

Peter went on to describe hoof rot and other maladies that befall livestock standing  in water all day. I asked what we could do about it, and Peter said not to worry, he could do most of the work himself although there'd be a budget impact if he had to hire a guy with a big tractor to make a swale. When I asked how long it would take, he said nine months to a year. I was astonished - a year to dig a few ditches? No, he told me, a year to look at the pasture, and decide what to do.

I had cut my teeth running programs in war zones around the world for the Quakers. I had achieved success in no small part because of my ability or willingness to make momentous decisions very fast - often immediately after receiving a message from my field staff. As a person who took pride in express lane decision-making, I was astonished that this guy was telling me he needed a year to decide about digging some water channels.

I went back to my office, first to look up the word "swale," and then to think about how such an obviously smart and talented person could be so inconceivably slow. Peter had told me he was new to that land and that climate. He needed to learn how the weather and plants and soil and animals all worked over time, so he'd make the right decision about how to address the drainage. He needed to learn how parts of the environment interacted, before he acted.

That morning in the pasture is a pivotal memory for me, one I think about often here on the salt marsh. One lesson of course is that while rapid decision-making is a useful skill - as every person with a driver's license knows - it's more important to learn how to match the pace of the decision-making to the demands of the decision.

But what sticks with me every day as I look out over the green, brown, tan and silver marsh, is Peter's lesson about seeing the same piece of land over time. The salt marsh along the Dyer River changes literally minute by minute during the day. But it also changes over the months, the seasons, and even the centuries. I've learned to see where the two bridges - one over the Dyer, one over the Sheepscot - have altered the marsh, and how chemical run-off over a long period of time can kill the tiny snails that are central to the food web and the formation of the peat that supports it. And ultimately, how the marsh wasn't always here and some day won't be.

Dusty D and HP Jorgensen

The final moral from my pasture moment with Peter is I now know that while swift decision making has been an important tool in my life, the choices I've made that I value most - choices of love, commitment, and community - are the result of  careful reflection, completed without haste. It's HP's gift to me from long ago, one that I enjoy every day as the tide on the marsh ebbs and flows.