“I am not a cancer survivor,” she says. “I’m just a person on a journey that includes cancer.”

I understand all of what she says because I’ve been there. I was a vegetarian for 16 years, took supplements, did yoga and walked my own “righteous” path. But my clean living was not enough to protect me from getting lymphoma at age 30. I felt for a long time as if I must have done something wrong, that perhaps I just hadn’t been “good enough” to avoid cancer. That’s sad, isn’t it? At a certain point, though, I stopped asking “why” because it’s such a waste of time. I had cancer, and that was just part of my journey.

While I was in treatment, I lost my hair, much of my weight, and my conception of myself as a healthy young woman. I felt like so much of what I had identified with as being me was being stripped away with each passing chemo session. I spent a lot of time feeling as though what was left was a toxic shell of a human being with poison coursing through my veins. As my son had been born just two months before my diagnosis, this became part of my view of myself as a new mother. Let’s just say I had some fears, and many of those fears stayed with me.

To work through some of this, I recently embarked upon a meditation. I went back to that time and felt myself as that dried-out, skinny, hairless, almost alien being. I felt sick. I felt tired. I sunk down into the  lowest point of my experience—a time mid-way through treatment when I was hospitalized for a week due to a perforated ulcer (the drugs had literally bored a hole through my stomach) and kept away from my son and contact with most other human beings because of my severely depressed immune system. I let myself feel it: I had been very close to death. I let go. At this point, I realized there was a light—not external, like the stereotypical tunnel of light that we hear so much about—but a light that was emanating from and intrinsic to me—a new sort of fire in the belly that transmuted the toxins and seeped into every pore and every cell and every vein. This light came from me but was also part of everything else in the universe. I saw myself, still hairless, still rail thin, but now completely ablaze. I realized that all that had happened during cancer treatment was the elimination of—the burning through—all those trappings that I had confused with my essence. The light was my essence. I was light.

I still am.

Then I saw myself in this beautiful state holding my son and nursing him with his bottle, but it was really the light that was his sustenance. While I didn’t have breastmilk for him, it was besides the point. I had the real manna.

So I leave you with this: I eat well, but I am not a vegetarian. I do yoga, but I am not a yogini. I had cancer, but I am not a cancer survivor. I parent contientiously, but I am not a “good mother.” I am light. We all are.

As a writer and a mother struggling to give my son direct experience of the natural world in a culture over-saturated with electronic media, branding and advertising, I can’t tell you how much this saddens me.

Don’t get me wrong: I love my computer. I own a TV. I am grateful for the convenience that my cell phone has brought to my life. But I also believe that more important than all this technology is a fundamental connection to the wild (or at least semi-wild) spaces of our landscapes. Today I don’t see children as having freedom to explore—or in some cases, even access to—such places, which I found to be essential to the development of my subjectivity; senses; and spiritual understanding that I am a living being who is part of something fierce, beautiful and so much bigger than myself.

Thus, I find the loss of such language from this preeminent dictionary as a sign of a much larger extinction.

Our front yard: Its days may be numbered.

I am plotting a murder: I want to kill my lawn.

I’ve been turning the idea around in my head for a couple years, and I think—with drought conditions worsening here in California and another long, hot summer on the horizon—the time has come.

I know that it is the right thing to do for so many reasons. We will conserve water, which will be great for our parched state, as well as our water bill. We will be able to plant vegetables in part of the yard, turning the land to productive use and possibly saving money on food. We will be able to do away with the polluting lawnmower.

But still, I feel a little sad.

Part of it is just the idea of killing something so established—it seems kind of wrong. And part of it is my resistance to change, which is particularly strong right now because we have neither a definite plan for what we will plant in place of our grass nor much money for new landscaping. But I also think that killing the lawn is a bit like letting go of a certain version of the American Dream, so linked they have become in our consciousness. This feels to me a little like jumping off a cliff, an uncertain thing in already uncertain times.

But that grass just ain’t green, and so it must go. What will come next is still unclear.

Red daikon radish from my CSA box

I am obsessed with food. Not in an unhealthy way (at least I don’t think so). I am obsessed with where my food is grown. How it’s grown. What is in it. What is not in it. How fresh it is. How much it costs. Lately, that last detail has been driving me absolutely crazy.

I returned home today, having gone to two grocery stores to scout out deals. One, a local food cooperative. The other, a chain. I tried to get everything on my list at the highest quality and for the lowest price. Going to the chain store first, I gambled that it would have the lowest prices on most of my items. Not the case, as I found out moments later while scooping up the rest of my items at the co-op. Indeed, with the exception of a rotisserie chicken, EVERYTHING was either the same price or cheaper at the co-op.

I was surprised. I usually shop almost exclusively at the co-op (supplemented also by staples from Costco) because it has the largest variety of locally grown, organic and specialty food in my community. But lately I have left the store staring aghast at my receipt. I thought it must be because of where I was choosing to shop. Hence, my experiment today, which proved the grass is not always greener on the other side.

I used to not worry so much about food prices. Back when my husband and I both worked and the economy wasn’t in the toilet. But the current situation has gotten me questioning my values: Should I sacrifice the quality of my food to save money? Or should I pay the high prices and scrimp on other things?

So far, I’ve been choosing the latter. We don’t eat out very much. We rarely have “date nights.” We even more rarely purchase new clothes, toys and books and just don’t do impulse buys. We conserve energy in our house, sometimes to the extent that I am actually wearing a coat and hat indoors. We try and bike as much as possible to save money on gas and, fortunately, live in a town where we can do so. We also have the luck to live in a place where we have direct access to farmers and can purchase food year-round straight from the source either at farmers markets or through community-supported agriculture programs, which is the route we have been going. Indeed, our CSA is, to me, the best deal: it provides us with the freshest organic food (high marks for quality, health and environment), helps us support small locally based farmers (high marks for community and conscience), and gives us produce that is significantly cheaper than comparable fruits and veggies sold in the store (high marks for my budget).

I realize we are lucky to even have the luxury of these considerations. For some, for many, these are not options at all. But after my trip to the chain store today, I wonder if we sometimes make assumptions about cost that aren’t necessarily true. And true cost encompasses not just the price rung up at the cashier’s stand, but also the cost to our health, community and environment. Is something really cheaper if it causes us health problems down the line, contributes to the destruction of our local or national economy, and ravishes the environment?

This economy is forcing me to define my priorities, to realize exactly where I stand. And I realize that good food is, for me, something for which I am willing to sacrifice a lot. I pray that we will continue to be able to do so.

Normally, I would just put my feet up and resign myself to a day of rest, but it was the day of my husband’s birthday party. So I decided to tough it out, thinking that unless I actually vomited, the show must go on.

It was in this state that I met my first rutabaga. It had been part of my CSA box, and I had shoved it to the back of the crisper, vowing to find SOMETHING to do with it at SOME point. A week had ticked by, and I had done nothing, so it was time to figure it out before the root went bad. I decided to take the path of least resistance and make the recipe for soup included in my CSA newsletter.

The name sounded exotic (“Smoked Paprika and Rutabaga Soup”), and I was not feeling adventurous. I took a rutabaga out of the bag and inspected it. It looked sort of like a turnip (which I do not care for), but bigger and with reddish coloring. I held it to my nose carefully, ready to pull it back at the slightest hint of revulsion.

I sniffed hesitantly. It smelled like earth. Finding the smell not at all unpleasant, I inhaled deeply. To my surprise, being in my delicate state of digestive and olefactory affairs, the scent was not only non-repugnant but also strangely grounding and, dare-I-say, delicious … ?

A friend of mine who had lived on many farms in her youth told me once about how good soil is the holy grail of farming. I remembered her words as I slumped into a chair and continued to breathe in the scent of this vegetable, consciously experiencing and exploring the soil that had made its existence possible—and, indeed, had nourished most of the organic produce I had consumed during the last several months. It made me feel connected to my sweet CSA farm and its wonderful life-giving dirt. And so, so grateful.

I peeled the rutabaga and then cut off a slice. I put it to my mouth and, not finding the initial taste unsavory, continued to chew. Again, I was surprised: It was scrumptious, tasting rooty and sweet and just the perfect amount of starchy. It was the first thing I had been able to eat all day. I cut a few more pieces and actually started feeling ever so slightly better.

My husband came back with my son from a grocery store trip and found me in the midst of making the soup.

“Honey!” I exclaimed. “God gave me rutabaga!”