Tuebor

Remembering our promise to defend.

One of the first things the docent taught us on my daughter’s school tour of our state capitol was the phrase featured on our state seal, “Tuebor,” meaning “I will defend” in Latin.

“You will see Tuebor all over inside the capitol,” she tells the children.

And it’s true, the motto is still engraved throughout the halls where the ceremony of decision making still occurs, even if the decisions themselves are made, quietly, in offices and private rooms elsewhere.

What powerful words. “I will defend.” They are words that come full of pride, and grit, and a willingness to work at difficult tasks. We defend what we love. What did we once love about this state that we built? Did we love her people? The families that worked the land, and the communities those families built together? Did we love her natural beauty? The sparkling glory of her waters, the glitter of a fresh winter snow?

Or did we love the old growth forests able to be stripped of wealth? The rich soils that could be wrested from the trees and used to grow vast fields of corn? Did we love the copper ore in far northern reaches, the salt mines under Detroit?

What did those who chose this word value? What would they defend?

What do we defend today?

Do we defend the richness of our land? The health of our waters? Do we defend the minds of our children? Our neighbor’s right to a fair livelihood? Do we defend the jeweled flights of dragonflies and shining emerald bees and the golden gleam of warblers?

Or do we defend our right to on-demand poison and the cheapest of comforts? Luxury greater than that of kings of old, with unease that never allows us genuine rest? Endless entertainment, tucked in a pocket and ready to fill the smallest available moment? Robots impersonating people better than the actual people?

I will defend this, every day.

I’m choosing to defend our state in every action I can manage. When wash bins in 10*F weather, so I can keep food waste out of the landfill, I am defending our soil resources. When I feed that waste to livestock, diversifying and enriching their diets, I am defending our health. When I cut an array of tree forages to trial palatability with my pigs, I am defending the land against the ravages of industrialized agriculture. When I gather exceptional nuts from native trees, like an oversized squirrel, to plant out and grow further, I am defending our ecology. Keeping my soil in perennial cover, utilizing heavy mulches, and utilizing mosaic landscapes integrating tree crops, thicket crops, perennial forbs, and limited patches of annually planted ground defends my watershed. Working with biology to provide my fertility defends my neighbors from cancer, and defends the arthropod allies whose populations are falling at breakneck speed.

I wonder if perhaps the problem is that so many of us have spent our lives with our heads in the sterile, bland world we’ve built around cheap plastic surfaces and electric lighting. All we’ve known is poverty, to the point where we can’t even imagine true wealth, wealth actually worth defending. I suspect that perhaps many sense the hollowness, but can’t imagine what might fill it.

What is the remedy? How do we call on our brothers and sisters to defend along with us?

We must invite them into our vision. Paint the picture of what might be possible, what would be worth the work of defending. We must defend everything within our power to defend, so that it may still be standing for the next shoulders willing to withstand the burden. We must defend, so that the little ones can play, and learn, and build under the shield we create for them.

Tuebor.