Welcome
2018
age 15
Welcome everyone!
My name is Emeline Francis Dickinson, I use she/her pronouns, and I am a recent graduate of Sturgis Charter Public School West on the small island of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
I have an intense fascination and devotion to redamancy (look it up, you won’t regret it), belly laughs (you know, that happy feeling in your stomach?), and this wondrous spinning rock we inhabit.
When I was eleven years old, my mother kindly gave me a choice. I could attend a summer camp in Plymouth, Vermont, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere with no electricity, flushing toilets or electronics, OR I could attend a different summer camp —Circus Smirkus— that teaches the inner and outer workings of a circus (and offers 10-year-old shimmering trapeze artists as opposed to 10-year-old sweaty hiking enthusiasts), with mentors knowledgeable in every field. Now, look at the photo of me above as you ponder these two delectable options; which do you think 11-year-old me chose?
If you internally stated, “She chose the circus, obviously!” you are very much mistaken. My brazenness, conjoined with my unadulterated love of the world, thrusted me to choose the former: a Quaker-based camp called Farm and Wilderness, located in Plymouth, Vermont. This impulsive but instinctual decision led to many summers of connection, adventure, and music… right up until 2020.
Reflecting on the past years, however, during a time when I lived the length and width of my life, this place had given me the opportunity to lay down the kindling needed to build a roaring fire with lasting embers. And, though that initial kindling was weak and burned quickly with no effect on the larger logs, eventually I got the courage to add more. I continued with the dream Farm and Wilderness had instilled within me and discovered the fire I was never able to walk away from. I learned how to love, how to live, and how the family we choose can sometimes be much stronger than the one we’re given. Most importantly, however, I learned to be mindful; mindful of the earth beneath me —and how I can unconsciously take advantage of all that it offers. Mindful of how I need to change if I am to thrive and help others to thrive.
My mission is to better our world, the only one we will ever be lucky enough to receive, through accountability, conversation, and sustainable agriculture around the world. I have entitled this “Seek the Solution: an Agricultural Advent”, for this will be the advent of a notable shift in belief, and I must do everything I can to fulfill this appellation.
Though I have absolutely no intimations of what will come of writing this, I know that this is the only thing that truly speaks to me, the only thing I can connect with because I know that what I do now determines not only the longevity, but the quality, of the remainder of my life.
I will be posting interviews, reviews, agricultural suggestions from myself and knowledgeable workers in this field, diagrams for backyard farming to decrease your carbon footprint, my experiences and setbacks, and just about everything else I think could change minds, turn heads, and make a substantial difference that persists until a new species emerges and takes our place.
Now, until next time, I’d like you to contemplate the following; we were all born from the earth and, eventually, we will all return to the earth. Don’t we have a responsibility to tend to it before we must succumb to it?
EFD