Harvesting Grief

Maud Powell

“Finding meaning in grief does not mean we’re over the loss or okay with the loss; it means we can find a way to honor the love, even in our pain.”

—David Kessler

Streaks of wet dirt mark the floor beneath our circle of chairs—a sure sign of farmers gathering during the Oregon winter. A vegetable grower laments the missing crawdads she once hunted with her father in Lake Washington as a child. A farm intern chokes up about a news story on rainwater no longer safe to drink. An older cattle rancher talks about relationships lost to the politics of climate change. “My nephew doesn’t call anymore,” his voice strains, but he tries to make light. “At least he’s stopped asking for money.”

I sit with these farmers, asking them to share their most personal climate losses. There’s the beloved hydrangea that perished in the heat dome of 2021. The centuries-old Western hemlock, shading generations of family picnics, that finally succumbed to beetle damage. Fireflies in the Midwest are now uncommon, one woman says.

“The most magical part of childhood . . . nearly gone.”

The lake where one rancher brought his kids to fish is now too warm to sustain vertebrates. I talk about leaving our farm, Wolf Gulch. Like waves pounding the shore, the losses are relentless, one after another, lined up beyond the horizon. We sit in collective heartbreak and I wonder if this gathering is helpful, healing. Afterall, my own climate grief feels oppressive at times.

My husband Tom and I first learned to farm in India’s high desert in 1997. Our host family irrigated fields of barley and potatoes from ancient ditches fed by glaciers. We fell in love with agriculture and, soon after, settled in Southern Oregon to start a farm. Our vision: to create a profitable business on marginal land—land on the edge—knowing that property with reliable water and fertile soil was becoming scarce. Humans need to get scrappy, we reasoned, and in our heady idealism, we thought we’d lead the way. We also believed that environmental problems could be traced, at least in part, to the hyper-mobility of our culture. It’s easier to wreck your own backyard if moving is an always an option. We vowed to pick a piece of ground and root down for the long haul.

We bought property in the Siskiyou Mountains, rough with steep slopes, weeds and brush. Wolf Gulch, the land’s water source and namesake, was intermittent, running underground for long stretches of the creek bed. Though the property was not considered farmland, we forged ahead. We dug three large ponds to collect winter rains and designed a gravity-fed irrigation system that required no electricity. Our daughter, Grace, was six months old when we moved there. Four years later, I gave birth to our son, Sam, in the bedroom of our house.

We embraced permaculture and applied its principles to our new farm. Permaculture, a holistic, nature-centered approach to stewarding property, aligned with our practical, ecological worldview. We purchased a subsoil plough and ripped furrows in the fields so the soil could hold more water. We learned to plough along the slope’s contour to encourage moisture to fan along the furrows and keep the soil in place.

That first fall, Tom and I found the property’s largest incense cedar. I craned my neck to see its tippy-top. Elegant branches of lacy needles dappled sunlight hitting the ground. We potted up scores of saplings from under its generous canopy and replanted some on a landslide to restabilize the hillside. Others went in hedgerows between the farm fields, a few into the ground torn by the heavy equipment used to build our ponds. Before long, that single incense cedar’s offspring grew all over the property, providing shade, habitat for songbirds, refuge from the wind, and a toehold for the soil.

Each fall, we seeded cover crops to help the soil hold more water. Thick, viny mats of crimson clover, hairy vetch, milky oats, and annual ryegrass blanketed the ground all winter, then, by late spring, decomposed into mounds of rich humous. Within ten years of production, our fields, once a heavy red clay, boasted a foot of black topsoil. Tom began to refer to the soil as his third child.

“Your favorite?” I teased.

We planted trees between fields to shield crops from the drying north wind. Hedgerows of conifers, fruit trees, and nitrogen-fixing shrubs provided food for us and the birds, as well as glorious summer shade. Permaculturalists call this ‘stacking functions’—one design feature that offers multiple, interconnected functions and benefits, creating a sort of ecological poetry. It’s an approach that is efficient, true and, in the end, beautiful.

Before we bought the property, Tom noticed a red fir growing in a gully. Red fir typically grow at higher elevations, above 4,000 feet, so it seemed out of place—a break in the forest’s pattern. I loved imagining how the fir came to live near our valley floor. I told Sam and Grace this story:

 

Perhaps a hundred years ago, a young woodrat lived on neighboring Red Mountain. One summer, a forest fire burned through her home as she was eating the seeds of a red fir cone. She fled the mountain with the cone in her mouth and found refuge on the slopes of the Little Applegate River. Once she saw the abundance of madrone berries, she dropped the fir cone. A seed from that cone grew into our beautiful tree.

 

Then came our first brush with drought. In 2001, the valley received a third of the average winter rainfall. Our ponds dried and cracked, rendering them useless as sieves. We invested in plastic pond-liners, an expensive but foolproof solution to the cracks. We transitioned to irrigating with drip tape, which uses about 30% of overhead irrigation. The pond liners worked, and we were back in business.

In those early years, I spent hours walking the landscape. I longed for intimacy with place. In 2003, Grace and I discovered western columbine growing under the incense cedar. Sam was not talking yet, likely asleep in a backpack or stroller. It was the only native columbine I’d seen growing on the property, so I made a habit of walking there each spring when it was in bloom, usually a week after lupine appeared along the ditch trail.

For the twenty-five years we lived at Wolf Gulch, we grew organic food for thousands of people and trained dozens of new farmers. We raised our children and created vast networks of human, animal, soil, and plant communities. In the winters, I directed community theater and organized neighborhood musical events in our little valley. Some winters brought less than average rainfall, but we’d made our farm resilient. Or so we believed.

Then several winters of low rainfall and months of record-breaking temperatures ensued and the creek dried up completely. Tom kept the crops irrigated by shortening watering intervals and harvesting early. We transitioned from growing vegetables for a Community Supported Agriculture program to growing vegetable and flower seeds, both of which need less irrigation in late summer. We chose the seed varieties labeled drought-tolerant. We adapted. We made do.

The next few winters passed without much rain. April, notoriously damp and cool, teemed with brilliant, sun-drenched days above eighty degrees. While acquaintances marveled at the dreamy weather, a pit lodged in my stomach. One night that month, lying in bed, Tom told me that some of the trees in our forest were stressed. Drought and beetles.

“The incense cedar and red fir are both dead,” he said, voice flat.

I had stopped visiting those trees once the kids grew into teens, preferring instead to hike up on the ditch trails. But they held such fond memories and were fixtures in Sam and Grace’s early childhoods. It was like the news of losing close relatives.

We began to notice scores of Douglas firs dying in the woodlot. I prayed for a wetter May. One blustery Wednesday afternoon, we received a tenth of an inch of rain. June 2021 marched in with the ponds lower than ever and alarming forecasts. An unprecedented heatwave arrived. Medford hit 117°. Atmospheric conditions created huge areas of sweltering heat trapped under a high-pressure “dome”. For twenty-five days straight, the high temperature did not fall below 95.

Tom moved into triage mode, stretching the last of our water to keep plants alive. We took unheard-of measures—using a domestic well to irrigate commercial crops and buying water from town. Trucks rumbled up our half-mile driveway to deliver a few meager inches to the ponds. Farming is notoriously hard. We always knew that. Add drought and relentless heat, and the work becomes demoralizing and untenable.

In July, Tom leaned against the kitchen counter. It was after dark. He looked depleted.

“It’s too hard,” he said. “I think we need to move if we want to keep farming.”

I’d thought the hardest parts of our work were over—raising kids and building a business. We’d invested everything into our family, farm and land. Now what?

I wanted to persevere as we always had. In August, I lay awake wondering how we could store more water. Maybe we could collect rain from our roofs during the winter . . . but the tanks only hold 2,000 gallons each. What if we pumped rainwater from the tanks into our ponds all winter long, every time they fill? I shook Tom awake, eager to talk. He was confused and groggy until I explained my idea.

“It’s a good idea,” he said. “But I already do that.”

Our neighbors rallied around us, offering leases, leads on property, and boundless empathy. Still, I remained terrified. All the work we’d done to protect and steward Wolf Gulch, the lengths we’d gone to store water—none of it could shield us from climate collapse. We were left with the difficult question of where to call home.

Meanwhile, in India, the farmers who mentored us were no better off. They faced the disappearance of glaciers that fed their ditches. Our grief, shared with farmers around the world, means less food security everywhere, and the unraveling of once-vibrant agricultural communities.

The mental health impacts of climate change on the general population are well-documented, but with little attention on rural, agricultural populations1. Also, farmers are less inclined to seek out support and mental health services than the general population2. Yet we are perhaps the most vulnerable to climate anxiety and grief—our attention is fixated on the weather. We spend our days interacting with plants and animals and notice even subtle changes in the environment. We also suffer from excessive heat, more extreme weather events, and wildfire smoke.

Grief most commonly involves the loss of a loved one. In complicated deaths like murder, accidents, and suicide, grievers often experience anger, powerlessness, and regret. Why did this happen? What could I have done to prevent it? Ecological losses are similarly complicated. One moment we rage at politicians and oil companies, the next feel guilt for personal choices, and the next: abject horror in the face of scientists’ predictions. Parents and grandparents agonize over the losses to come.

Tom and I grappled with our future while the heat dome held fast. We had to face it: The forest was dying. The creek would not return. We needed to leave. I learned that British Petroleum knew and intentionally covered up the severity of climate change for thirty years. Rage. Then, guilt: Wolf Gulch was on hospice, and we were abandoning it to face its end alone. Only heartless cowards leave a person on their deathbed. I could barely keep track of my internal landscape—the cascade of emotional states shifted by the hour.

Some griefs are more acknowledged than others. All cultures have rituals for the death of a family member. Of course, this doesn’t make the loss of a loved one easy, but the social support provides a space and tools for the griever. Other losses are not as communally acknowledged, do not have avenues for expression or even a shared vocabulary. This is known as disenfranchised grief. Climate grief is considered a disenfranchised grief because in most cases, social and cultural supports for processing it does not exist. We are in new territory.

My dear friend Zoe, a mental health counselor and staffing manager for a climate foundation, offered to lead a ceremony at Wolf Gulch before we moved. Twenty close friends and neighbors gathered at our house and hiked to the dead incense cedar in silence. We took turns sharing memories about our time on the farm. Zoe led me through a ritual of shattering a ceramic bowl with four hammer blows, each blow a specific loss— the loss of my children’s home, the loss of land that fed us, the loss of trees, and the loss of the creek. I kept the shards, and next year, I will reassemble them using gold glue in the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi. Kintsugi represents non-attachment, acceptance of change, and taking the pieces of our grief and reassembling them with care and beauty.

Climate grief is overwhelming in part because it is ongoing. Losses are cumulative. We have already lost so much, we hardly dare fathom what’s to come. Climate therapists encourage grievers to break through the numbness by articulating one specific loss. Focusing on a single grief—giving space to acknowledge both the gratitude and grief for a place, plant or animal, is a way to catch the tail of the massive climate grief beast. From there, we can begin to feel more, connect with others, and act.

During the ceremony, we honored the red fir and the incense cedar. Those trees helped me find my bearings in a sea of Doug fir and ponderosa pine. They’d sparked my imagination and my children’s. The cedar has become a snag, home to millions of insects and dozens of birds. Grace, now a biologist managing piñon pine forests in northern New Mexico for climate adaption, cored the cedar and told us its life story in rings, precipitation, and heat units. The fir is now a nurse log. In the coming years, plants will sprout along the decomposing bark of its flank. My friends and neighbors thanked us for the chance to acknowledge climate loss in community. I was heartened by the honest expressions, deep sense of solidarity, and ritual.

The month before we moved, my childhood best friend Jess asked me to send her a Ziploc of Wolf Gulch soil. Jess teaches ceramics for a living in a small town in Vermont. A few weeks later, she mailed me back a vase made from the soil. The vase’s outside is rough, simple, and scored, the inside beautifully glazed with swirling green and blue. It sits in the windowsill of our new farmhouse.

Back in our circle, the farm intern wipes his face and looks around. His eyes say it all— “This is so much. Too much, maybe.”

A natural human response to unresolved loss is “numbing out” and paralysis. Let’s face it—climate change is terrifying. So the impulse is understandable. But researchers tell us that people who speak openly about their climate distress are more resilient, more likely to act, and benefit from connecting to others. We need to find ways to talk about it. Especially farmers.

I switch gears.

“We’re all resilient,” I say. “Or we wouldn’t be here in this room. We wouldn’t still be farming.”

The flower grower says she lobbies her county politicians. “Local is where we can make a difference.”

The vegetable grower uses breathing techniques to regulate her nervous system. One man plants native trees to feel better.

“I go to the gym,” a beekeeper quips.

An urban farmer engages in guerilla wildflower planting—throwing handfuls of seed into empty lots and waiting to see what emerges in spring.

“It gives me hope for unexpected outcomes,” they say.

Another woman tells us a story—she had been farming with a group of friends in California in 2016 when a catastrophic wildfire scattered them to different places. Whenever she smells smoke and her lungs ache, she texts her friends from the California days. It’s her cue to stay in touch. The rancher admits that he sometimes hugs his cows for solace.

We are in this together, and we’re more resilient when we speak openly about how climate change is affecting us.

In 2020, David Kessler, a colleague and collaborator of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, added a sixth stage to the lexicon of grief: meaning-making. Kessler argues that finding meaning beyond the stages of grief most of us are familiar with—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—can transform grief into a more peaceful and hopeful experience.

Holding climate grief conversations with other farmers has given me a chance to transform my loss into something vital. The response has been overwhelmingly positive—any reluctance to talk quickly melts into connection and empathy. After the gatherings, farmers exchange numbers and ask when we can meet again. By sharing the specificity of our love—for fireflies, crawdads, hydrangea, an ancient incense cedar—and by witnessing each other’s loss and resilience, we find greater meaning in our grief and harvest the energy we’ll need to keep farming.

Tom reminds me that Wolf Gulch was never ours, that we took on the exquisite burden of stewarding it for twenty-five years, but of course it will carry on without us. The land will be here long after we are gone. We leased farm property from friends down the road, moved closer to town, and plan to sell Wolf Gulch next spring. We are still farming.

Now it’s Grace who tells me a story, a new narrative about how the forest is not dying but changing. The red fir and incense cedar may have died, but others will come to replace them in time. Animals, like the woodrat from Red Mountain, and the wind, will carry the seeds and acorns of piñon pine, manzanita and black oak—trees that are better suited to heat and drought. They will take root and build lives at Wolf Gulch. The forest is adapting. There is a new generation leading the way.

 

Sources

1. Howard, M., Ahmed, S., Lachapelle, P., & Schure, M. B. (2020). Farmer and rancher perceptions of climate change and their relationships with mental health. Journal of Rural Mental Health, 44(2), 87—95. https://doi.org/10.1037/rmh0000131.

2. Hagen, B. N. M. et al. “Farmers Aren’t into the Emotions and Things, Right?”: A Qualitative Exploration of Motivations and Barriers for Mental Health Help-Seeking among Canadian Farmers. JOURNAL OF AGROMEDICINE, [s. l.], 2021. DOI 10.1080/1059924X.2021.1893884.