When you’re with yourself every step of the way, it’s difficult to gauge how far you’ve come.  Sometimes it takes some outside perspective to highlight the trail you’ve bushwacked to get to where you are.  Sometimes, it takes a student tour to put it into perspective.

I’ve never turned down a farm tour and perhaps, this is why.  We can tend to forget how ignorant we were when we jumped into this whole farming thing (some of you have been with us since then and can attest to this!), and how much we have learned since then.  I remember looking at pictures of the farm from circa 2012 on my mother’s laptop and being horrified.  “We’ve got to update those!” I cried, “it looks so much better now!” 

Looks aren’t everything, to be sure.  And we are still not a weed-free farm.  But we’ve learned to manage weeds at critical times and let them go at less important times when our labor is better spent elsewhere.  In fact, we’ve learned to manage. 

And so, as I’m walking around talking to the App-State Ecological pest management class, I find myself not only explaining our current pest management techniques, but our evolution—our learning process in developing those techniques, and suddenly it’s like I’m standing outside myself looking at the path we’ve bushwhacked to get to where we are. It’s a rare treat to look at your own path like this—a little injection of pride that you survived your own ignorance and used lessons learned to improve. 

We’re still on that path.  Still making mistakes and learning from them.  And looking forward, we’ve got a long way to go (I know, there is no end to the path of learning, no actual destination).  But sometimes, it’s encouraging to look back at the past, cringe, and be proud that you made it this far.  Sometimes, it’s good to host a student tour.

Did you know that you can perceive genuine joy in a photograph?  I’ve only recently discovered this delightful fact.  I first noticed it while perusing my old college friend’s vacation photos.  And then, more recently, in perusing my sister and brother-in-law’s Colorado vacation photos.  My brother-in-law is someone who works way too hard—is never truly “off duty”.  I know you know what I’m talking about.  The one who’s cell phone rings at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve and he answers it; the one who brings his laptop to the Easter vacation because…clients.   I’m not judging him, I’m just saying his work follows him around all hours of the day including holidays, nights and weekends.  And I’m here to tell you from experience that even if you love your work, it’s still work.  And some amount of a life outside of the work turns out to be beneficial, I think.

And my brother-in-law, judging from pictures, finally managed to create some separation from his work in their trip to Colorado.  I’m not saying he’s a grumpy guy: he has fun, enjoys his family and his hobbies, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen such joy portrayed on his face as I did in those vacation pictures. 

I think this is why I love the rivers so much.  I mean, the reason I fell in love with Appalachia in the first place was its rivers, and creeks, and mountains old enough to impart wisdom we could never understand.  It’s hard for work to follow you there.  It’s out there, immersed in the beauty of the natural world, with no cell phones or laptops (because technology and water don’t mix, right?!) to pull you back to that other reality called work, with nothing else to do but be in the moment, that joy is abundant.

This is true even of rivers that run through towns.  Where you float beneath highways.  Even there, the noise of the traffic fades into a background, buffered by trees and water and wildlife and the beauty below the pavement.  Even there, the rivers are a refuge.

And so even when we’re plum exhausted from a wild week of running wide open in our work lives, when our minds tell us lies like” just chill out at home and watch a movie or two (if we stay home, we’ll find work to do), we try to defy that instinct and get on a river—even if it’s “just the Yadkin”.  Because even if we think we’re too exhausted to do much more than lazily float, that brief separation from work provides access to the joy that sustains us for another week of running wide open.

“My wife has finally realized that she has a tendency to over book” my brother says to me and the concept doesn’t quite register with me.  He says he understands that they only get so much time with their kids and don’t want to miss out on any opportunities, but…And my head is slowly nodding although I’m still not sure where I draw the line in this struggle.

Because in theory, I recognize that there is some importance to idle time and rest.  But it’s sometimes difficult to recognize the value of idleness on my infinite path of joy.  I’m always looking to fill our one day off with fun, fulfilling, challenging, socially-connected, quality activities.  It is not, after all, called “Sunday Funday” for nothing!  And I learned in “happy class” (did you know you can take an on-line Yale course on increasing happiness? You can and it’s free and I recommend it), that all those things lead to a more joyful, happy, fulfilling life.

But sometimes, the path of infinite joy is quite exhausting.  It’s difficult to fit all that fun into one day a week (I know, I know, it will all balance out in the winter, but we’re talking about the here and now at this moment—winter seems a long way away), and sometimes, you just need to do the stuff that gets done on Sunday like mowing, and cleaning, and giving the dog her really bad summer haircut.  Oh, and resting.  That gets done on Sundays too.

So I don’t know if I’m going to lay off the cramming of the fun, fulfilling, challenging, socially-connected, quality activities on Sunday Funday, but perhaps I might be slightly less inclined to freak out when those plans fall through and I’m suddenly staring at an empty Sunday calendar.  After all, there’s always a list-in-waiting of things that get done on Sundays that I put off in the name of fun.  It will always be there for me in case of idleness.