“If you seek treasure, you must dig where you stand.”
This is a story with old bones. It comes up in many folktales and fairy tales across the world. In Rumi’s ‘In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo, In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad’, in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and most recently, in the version of an old folk tale story that unfolded at Pollok Community Centre, told on stage by the kids at St Marnock’s Primary School dubbed ‘The Peddlar of Pollok. The format of the tale is simple – the hero receives a call to adventure, telling them that a great treasure can be found in a far-flung place and they must answer the call, leaving safety of their own home to seek the treasure. The journey is long and arduous, their back aches and their feet are blistered when they finally arrive at their destination. They look around to find that there’s nothing there. No treasure. Nada.
People mock the hero in this moment, they point and laugh at how ridiculous they’ve been to journey all this way, to follow their heart out beyond safety to seek reward. But here the story takes a turn – the hero receives a message they could only have received in this place – the treasure is back home, where they began their quest. They return home, they grab a spade and dig. Sure enough, beneath that old tree all along was riches. Maybe it’s pirate gold, maybe it’s a glut of ripe apples heavy on the boughs of an old tree, or maybe it’s the deep sense of knowing and belonging that comes when we dig into the dark earth beneath our own feet.
Our climate is changing rapidly, our systems of power and control are failing us – on a daily basis we are faced with horrific images of despair and injustice around the world, and what can we do? We’re somehow complicit in all this and what can we do? There is a great call to adventure to save the planet right now and so many of us are paralysed, helpless in the face of the great yellow fanged monster of bloated capitalism and corporate greed. What can we do? Is it all hopeless? Not so. We can look to the old stories for a bit of wisdom – we can dig where we stand.
© Eoin Carey
On Saturday 30th November, the community of Pollok came together to do just that. Armed with spades we turned our gaze towards our feet, dug into the soil across from the community centre and sunk some roots down into the ground to create an orchard – a food forest for the future. Where once there was a bare hillside now stands a collection of apple trees, planted by the people of Pollok, importantly: planted by the children of St Marnock’s – local to this area. These are children that will walk past these trees on their way to and from school, will watch them grow, blossom and fruit over the years. We hope that they will taste the fruits of their labour in years to come. They’ve staked a claim on this place, on the future: “we’re going to do things a bit differently here.“
Digging where we stand is more than sticking spades in the soil, and planting trees. It’s creating a legacy. An old Greek proverb says that “a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” We need to start showing up for young people now more than ever, consider the generations that are to come and what they will inherit. It was clear to us that the young people of St Marnock’s care deeply about the environment – they were well aware of the challenges of food security and injustice in and around Glasgow. Through storytelling and performance workshops with Eco Drama they were able to capture some of their hopes and dreams and express them as part of the Planting Day.
© Eoin Carey
Involving the community in decision-making like this is so important, it helps people build a relationship with the place that they live in, not just the people that live there but the more-than-human beings that share the place with them. This relationship with place is important, it builds ecological consciousness within people – without understanding our relationship to nature and our local places, how can we expect people to care? It is our hope that the children involved with the planting of trees will remember the experience, that they will consider what further actions they might take to care for nature in the future, that they have some understanding of the benefits of trees for people, climate and nature all at once. We hope that they know that they have power and agency in a world that seems to say otherwise.
So I ask you this – where is the treasure where you stand? What stories does the land carry that are calling out to be told? How can we speak them out, call out the injustices and celebrate the love in the world?
There’s treasure beneath your own feet, waiting to be unearthed, all you have to do is dig where you stand and you’ll find it.
With huge thanks to Storyteller David Hughes for producing this thoughtful piece which captures the essence of our Community Engagement with local residents of Pollok, including pupils of St Marnock’s as part of our Pollok Grows Together project. You can find out more about David here.
