Annie and Mike, hard grafters, green fingers, have spent their entire lives in toil, Annie bringing up six kids on her own with no money, shifting here and there as chances opened then snapped shut, Mike working his way through a series of addictions, last stop Morphine for a good decade, now just the booze and a broken back.
But all the way, certainly for Annie, surrounded by incredible growth, making endless stands in fresh scraps of land borrowed from some dodgy landlord, legs apart, back bent, getting rooted into that soil, planting, weeding, working, working, as peppers, tomaties, corn, berries, peas, growth and fruit and the sheer energy of life pours up. It leaves you gasping. A miracle! In one sense they're on the fringes, broke, ancient Fergie tractor that won't start, stints in the county jail, but they're also truly in the heart of things. The house in which we sit is full of animals and stuff, piled to the rafters with jars of strawberry and rhubarb sauce, hot red pepper jelly, heirloom tomato juice, dill pickels, green salsa, herbs and herbal remedies, all organic. The harvest before last they were picking two tonnes of tomatoes every couple of days...last year they lost the lot to deer...And that's where we fit in! They found a new plot of land just a month ago, having been booted off the last by the old woman who owned it, and a gun, but no teeth. There's the greenhouse up, 4 acres ploughed, Annie piling in seeds and shoots, in long thin strips, mixing it up, putting friendly veg together, with lists on scraps of paper in the tumble-down caravan in the corner, all shaped within her dream. Yet the white-tailed deer, the mule deer, maybe even some elk lukr, and this year they're not having it - we've been here a week and our chief mission is to get a good deer fence up - 7.5 foot tall, 3 feet in the ground, using great stobs that Mike's cut from the forest, mainly lodgepole. And we're getting there. After 4 or 5 days of working digging out the holes and balancing in the logs, we're back today feeling grand after getting 28 of the posts fixed in, pretty solid and true, with Tamarack larches sitting there for the gate that will open to draw you into the King's Garden - the sign's already hanging on the roadside.
It's great to be feeling that we're really helping these guys to see their farm begin to take shape, to go back a couple of days after weeding, feeding and mulching strawberries to see them begin to reach out, heavy with fruit. But under the burning sun it would all be pretty backbreaking of spirit as well as of spine were it not for the fact that Becs really sensibly asked for an arrangement that we work our socks off between 8.30 and 1.30, then gather kids, cheetahs, shootarocket (Kai's wee toy dog) from the mud and stumble into the Granny White Dragon to make off for a bit of family time.
And the kids are just being so amazing with it all, happily digging about as we work, rescuing voles and beetles from post holes, spending half an hour studying bundles of baby spiders hanging like grapes, carefully avoiding the killdeer nest scraped beside the raspberries with its four speckled eggs, helping Annie plant or simply sitting, floppy hat, grimy face, against a lodge pole in the sun. But also grateful for the time we get away, to swim, or eat ice-cream, or look after the two litters of kittens at Annie's house (their passion).
We're reckoning on being here for maybe another ten days, then looking to head into the hills for a good stint of wild camping and 
some calm. And hopefully not too much rain. We got away on Saturday evening and Sunday, afdter the local farmer's market, heading high up the Twisp river valley to an isolated spot, but totally unseasonally for this neck of the woods, where it's usually well up toward 100 and dry as a bone, water streamed from the sky ....storm
Wind wrenched from stones and
tossed, a spinning javelin open
the earth, rich river of wind
broad as the giant canyon
yawning, roaring, rough-shouldered
sigh across the land,
carried in your curls, love's voice amidst the storm.
We couldn't even figure out whether the great pile of bear poo close to our camp was steaming from freshness or from the rain. And when we managed to get the fire going and sat in what felt like the middle of a river to eat our pasta, pools of water gathered in the bottom of our bowls. Yum.
The solstice has been and gone. Three nighthawks have gathered above our heads in the last of the light, and surely it's our noise that's other-worldly, not their rattles and hums, utterly here, now, at home. Rather like Freya Storm and Kai Raven at the moment, be-wellied life-force. Like a wave. Or the music of an Aspen tree unravelling the breeze. So, as the days shorten we'll head north again in a wee while, chasing the light.
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