The Harvest: Potatoes & Words

Posted: August 14, 2026 | Author: David | Filed under: Art & Healing, consciousness |1 Comment

In August, the summer vacation season peaks.  Somewhere around 20.5 million people stop work in France, 18 million in Italy, approximately 3 million come to Maine, to vacation at the peak of summer.  This has been a scorching hot summer both in Europe and across the United States.  What better moment than this to pause and relax at the ocean?

Almost no one goes to the operating room, but I, thinking differently, seized the moment.  

My summer plans most certainly did not include surgery, but one day in May the pain in my left hip was too much and so I called the orthopedic surgeon.  Like a nuclear reaction, a chain of events was set in motion.  

This was my second total hip replacement.  The first was done during COVID, and that surgeon has since retired.  I needed to choose someone new.  That is one strange a la carte menu.  

A friend mentioned that he had been diagnosed and cured – twice – of heavy metal poisoning, metallosis is the official term, resulting from metal-on-metal, an old school hip replacement.  I confirmed that my first replacement involved a ceramic cup with titanium shaft, so there was no possible metal-on-metal in my body.  The surgeon who helped my friend was, ultimately, a fine choice for me as well. 

I had a meet and greet with that Doctor, and so, based upon five minutes’ conversation, made my choice.  

I was given a date in mid-September, which seemed odd because I had been certain I would have the surgery in August.  But then, the next day there was a cancellation, and I was offered the very much earlier date of 10 August.  

At first I panicked, that felt far too soon, but within a few hours everything settled out, and it became clear that it was better to move full speed ahead, than to wait, endlessly until early autumn.  

Like cogs in the modern medical machine, the surgeon’s team leaped into motion.  I met with nurses, had bloodwork done, cancelled dental work and requested clearance from other doctors, began daily exercises, and signed, with Notary and Witness, my Last Will & Testament and Advanced Healthcare Directive. I rallied the home team – my children – to finish chores around the house and yard.  

We harvested all of the potatoes.  

There is no way I will be on hands and knees in late August and September, and so we pulled them all now: Reba, buff skin with white flesh; Red Norland, the classic “new potato;” and Russian Banana Fingerlings, that heirloom, crescent-shaped tuber we grow every year.  

“All hands on deck!” I ordered, as my manicured-nail daughter grabbed the potato hoe and shovel and hopped to it.  

The sun blazed hot and I reminded her, “This is your Irish heritage.”  

I skipped the lecture on autochthony, from the Ancient Greek word αὐτός (autos) “self”, and χθών (chthōn) “soil.”  Locavore chefs speak of terroir as the specific taste resulting from soil, climate and geography but they only get it half right.  Given the human animal’s nature, the Greeks went further, asserting that the self is of that soil; place as the essence of identity.  

The Irish lineage seemed concrete enough for my daughter to get the point.  Perhaps I will chat about that while we grill and then eat those luscious tubers.  

In the mornings we toiled in the garden, but in the afternoon I scoured the public library to assemble a reading list for the next six weeks of recovery.  Of no surprise, the list is rather broad, encompassing philosophy, Indigenous authors, magical realism, and the seething anger of a deep ecologist, who was influenced by Jacob Needleman.  

Letters to a Spiritual Seeker, Henry David Thoreau

Money and the Meaning of Life, Jacob Needleman

A Sense of the Cosmos, Jacob Needleman

To Hell with Culture, Herbert Read

The Way to Rainy Mountain, M. Scott Momaday

Wisdom Sits in Places, Keith H. Basso

Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work, Marc Ellison

Rust Belt Boy, Paul Hertneky

Blood Orchid: an unnatural history of America, Charles Bowden

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Common Sense for the Healing Arts: Essays by Robert M. Duggan

The harvest gathered – potatoes and words – I began to enter the silence.  

A friend, an elder, sent me this advice, which I found deeply centering:

Give your body a heads up that it is happening. Do some visualization to it and travel around the inner scape with your love and gratitude. Thank the left hip for its years of service and amazing performance. Have a conversation between the left and right hip. Travel through the body with color and joy and appreciation. If there’s a way to take an hour to tune in uninterrupted, take it. Let the anatomy be informed. Cast a love circle around the medical team. Enter the theatre with awe, wonder, curiosity, grace and welcome. Love to you is coming from many. Ride the ride, brother. …

As I learned from my Mother, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  

This week’s events brought that concept into a simple clarity.  It allowed me to prepare both to go under the knife, and to return through the light.  On the other side of surgery, now I surrender to this healing, which is a gift.

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