The Forest (or Desert) is your Friend!

For many folks of my generation (Gen X and below), the Great Depression seems like a very, very long time ago indeed. I mean, it started in 1929, didn't it? If you were of an age to be aware of what was going on then, (over the age of 10 or thereabouts), you would be 90 years old or more by now and most of us will probably be pushing up daisies by then. Most of the children of Depression Era parents were Baby Boomers and they are approaching (or at) pension age already. Thus, most people of my age and generation are 2 generations removed from The Depression and its effects and consequences.

But Not Me...

My mother was born in 1935, during the depths of the Great Depression. Her parents were both WW1 veterans who met in Belgium during the Great Mop Up. They emigrated to Aussie as Soldier Settlers and were thus cheated out of about everything that they had. They were both from Fringe Ascendancy backgrounds and landed in this country with 200 acres of land that was never meant to produce, twenty cows that were beyond of their best days, a huge mortgage for said (overpriced) land and cows that would never be paid off and (most crushingly of all) no water (until it rained 5 months after they got there!)
This was in 1925, 4 years before the Great Depression began. When the Depression began, my Grandparents were ekeing out a living there and would continue to do so for another ten years. They finally walked off the land in 1939, when my mother was four years old. By this time, they were almost utterly destitute. They had 3 children, no home and although Pop had a job, the pay wasn't much and what he bought home from the pub was even less.

And yet, they survived.
Grandma had a vegetable garden and was a skilled mender. There was no electricity but then only the very rich had electricity.  Pop had an engineering background and was never out of work, even in the middle of the Depression. As soon as the kids were old enough, they were set to work doing jobs to help out. Mum was a skilled fisher from a young age, so she often went down to the beach and came back with a feed for the family. She also chopped wood (so did her brothers) and helped to look after her younger siblings. In all, there were eventually 7 children and they were never truly hungry.

How did they do it?

They just made do. They realised that things don't have to cost money and that often, the things that didn't were better anyway.

My Mum grew up to be a hugely practical lady who knew how to grow veggies and keep chooks and  butcher sheep and work hard and raise kids. She had seven children of her own and I was number seven. She grew up in the middle of the Depression and just had to make do. She was 42 when I was born, which meant that many of the other mums at kindergarten and Primary School were 20 years her junior-she was literally old enough to be their mother! She was the odd one out, but didn't let it bother her. She was who she was. She taught me what it is to survive and be happy in a harsh land. She taught me to be grateful for the rain in a land where it rained every three days or so. We were in a lush place at that time, but she never ever forgot the place where it is dry for seven months of the year, where to go out without a water bottle even for a short walk is folly in the extreme.

And because she survived, and because Grandma and Pop survived, because the Art of Survival has been handed down and cherished, I know that we as a family will be OK. This is more than just prepping, this is, as Benedict Allen said in his book  Through Jaguar Eyes, "The knowledge that the Forest is your Friend".
"The Forest" is the place that speaks to you, the place that your ancestors came from and where their bones are buried. It is the place where you were born and grew up, where you learned how to live and how to be. When you are in Your Forest, you are who you are and it is here that you know how to survive.

Although I grew up in a fertile, high rainfall land, my family possessed the folklore of living in a dry place with low rainfall. Although we lived in a world where pretty much anything was obtainable, my family had the folklore of deprivation and getting by. My parents grew vegetables and clothes were handed down. Some clothes were homemade and others were sourced from op shops or friends with older kids who had grown out of them. There was no "Mum's Taxi". If we wanted to go somewhere, we walked or biked.

We became confident in "Our Forest", our World. We also had a cultural memory of a very different World, a Desert World, and thus was sown the seed of survival here, in the semi-arid Midwest of West Australia.
My mother and I both moved back here at about the same time, and she began to teach me, once again, how to make the Forest into my Friend. She taught me when to plant, when to expect the hot winds that would dry the world to a crisp within a week, transforming green paddocks into barren deserts. She knew what would grow here and what I would struggle with and what was simply not worth the effort. She knew what rivers held water and when, where the fish would likely be and how to catch them. She knew what weeds were edible and what weeds were toxic. She knew what would be likely to afflict my chickens and how to remedy it. She knew, in short, how to live in this "Forest" and had made this Forest her Friend.

I have heard it said a number of times within the Preposphere that if you live in a Desert city, you would be well advised to move. Of course, I cannot comment for everybody, since each individual and household has to make their own decision about this. What I can say though, is that if, like me, you have a vast family network in a Desert city with a multi-generational history of surviving and even prospering from living off the natural resources of your place, through depressions, wars and so on, your desert city may well be the best place for you. Perhaps all that is needed is not a dislocation but an acquaintance or re-acquaintance with the land that you have lived on your whole life, a knowledge that it is your Friend and will look after you. Once you begin this process, you will probably be surprised at what you already know and will find that the land speaks to you and tells you what you need to learn. This is true even if your Place, your Forest, is an Urban Apartment Jungle. You will know the back streets where the best dumpsters are, where the local gossips live and that woman who keeps chickens in her bathroom and sells the eggs!

In short, it is not so important where you live. What is important is your connection to place, family networks, history and knowing how to live and survive in situ. If your family has survived in place through something like the Great Depression, find out how they did it and aim to emulate it. If it worked once, it may very well work again. As you do this, you will come to a deep, unshakeable knowing of the Forest as your Friend and it is this knowledge that will ultimately put you in a frame of mind to not only survive, but prosper.

Well, that is all for today...
Until next time, probably tomorrow,
Be Ready for Whatever May Come.
Ciao Beni!