THE FLAVOR OF PEOPLE (TERROIR IN THE HEARTS OF HUMANS)

I am deep in the throws of writing a memoir which means

much of my brain is living in the past and is making my 

present musings a little bit loopy.

In particular, I keep running over this idea that

certain ground produces specific qualities in the 

people who are born and raised there.

Like soil, water, air from your home town

seeps into the literal cells inside your body

and produces some type or maybe a few types of people.

It's some confluence of psychology, agriculture

and southern metaphor hyper-extension that

keeps trying to push itself around like a hoola-hoop in the hands of 

a tired toddler.

I can't quite get it but I also refuse to let it go.

Consider this is your warning for the fever dream that might be 

in the paragraphs below.

I can't make it make sense.

I also can't stop thinking about the vein of truth within it.

Delightful graphic t-shirt on display at Mast General Store 

Do you know what terroir is?

I learned about terroir back when I was still pretending 

that my relationship with alcohol was sophisticated and benign.

Once I left the world of being a wino, I kept terroir as a vocabulary word

because it helps to add a layer of sweetness to so many aspects

of my personal (and sometimes professional) life of growing and eating.

I'd talk about it in real life more but

apparently I have a speech impediment in both French and Spanish.

Attempting to say the word out loud inevitably requires more explanation

and second-hand embarassment than is reasonable for my friends to endure

so most of my musing around terroir remains deeply seated inside my mind.

If you want an official, full blown definition, you can check out this link.

My best summation is that terroir is the way 

the environment seeps into growing things

and gives them a regional flavor.

It's most often discussed in relation to wine but

it also exists in the superlatives around most artisanal foodstuffs.

Cheese, pork, tomatoes, coffee and tobacco all have distinctive

flair based on the soil, water, air, and sunlight parameters that exist in 

the environment where they reach their maturation.

 Terroir distinctions are predictable and quantifiable but also elusive. 

Think for just a second about how honey is labeled

based on the flowers that the bees forage through.

Honey created by bees primarily foraging on clover will taste

different than honey created by bees who foraged primarily on lavender.

Lavender honey doesn't taste exactly like lavender because the process of

mashing up the pollen, vomiting it out and then fermenting it

creates the most dominant flavor, that of honey.

Still, if you taste honey from lavender pollen, you will

wonder what that hint of something is until the label or your tongue

sorts it out for you.

This is sort of what terroir is but to really get it, 

you need to take it a little bit further.

Honey with a particular terroir will have something that 

can only really be produced by the entire region and won't be

easily linked to one factor like pollen type.

 It is flavor that exists when several environmental factors

collude to produce a specific flavor or type that is only

present in that environment.

Take the bees out of the environment and they may still 

make great honey but they will never quite make the same

honey that they make in that one place.

Bring in new bees from outside the environment

and the unique flavor will be found in their honey too.

It's a cool thing to geek out on how these 

things come together, which of them are essential for

the flavor and which are optional.

It is not really a problem to be solved

as much as a game to play with like-minded geeks.

Another thing that people obsessed with terroir 

do is pair different organisms from the same region

to fully taste and understand the place.

You may have seen or experienced a hyper-local meal

with an avante-garde chef where the field and producer

of every food, wine, animal, cheese or vegetable

is listed on the menu or highlighted by the misty eyed waitstaff.

My mouth is watering as I remember some of these meals

I've eaten, including some I've made

for myself.  There is some truth that the freshness of local

food enhances the experience but terroir is more than that.

The slow roasted pork with smoked peppers and sweet potatoes

that were raised in fields beside each other were made to be together.

The berries and peaches macerated and steeped

with bourbon, poured over buttermilk ice cream from cows down the way

will always transcend anything storebought or trucked from all over.

Shrimp pulled from the salty brine and served with tomatoes, 

okra and field corn proclaim the angle of the sun and the 

wind off the tide as shared experiences with each bite.

It's as real as it is ephemeral.

One week's haul from PBO farmer's market (remember those figs?)

If you are still with me, God bless you.

Also, have a snack because I'm sure I made you super hungry

with all my food imagery.

The metaphor that my brain wants to stretch past all sense and 

reason is the notion that maybe people have terroir as well.

What if I'm the way I am is because of genetics and environmental

factors and socio-economic conditioning AND

because of the red dirt my soles ran barefoot across AND

because of the hymns sung in an awkward key AND

because of the smell of cigarettes mixed with wood fires?

What if the things that I consider my unique personality are actually

a predictable outcome of being exposed to a certain environment?

That I'm not special in the sense that there are a lot of other

people like me that have been produced in this region for 

generations and our flavor of person will continue to be 

produced as long as the environment supports our creation?

What if once the environment shifts, our flavor shifts?

The people like me would cease to be produced anymore

because the factors that created those markers no longer exist.

Is your hard drive fried yet because mine definitely overheats here.

Want one of these rad shirts?  You can get one from The Peak Church.

One of the reasons I can't quite shake this metaphor lately is because

of an experience I had last month. 

I was sitting at a monthly meeting I attend with other people of faith

who are particularly concerned with how we can support 

our LGBTQ+ siblings in ways that are actually loving.

We gather to share and learn about all sorts of things on this topic

and these conversations are some of the most fruitful and holy I've

ever participated in.

My affinity for finding community and learning from

those who have been marginalized is a lifelong effort.

I want us all to be free.

Here on earth as it is in heaven.

This group of like minded folks feels the same way

but we don't always know the next right thing to do

as individuals without some of the kind of growth that takes place together.

The speaker for the night was someone I admire on social media,

who is leading a church in Raleigh that is fully affirming.

She introduced herself to me and insisted that she knew me from somewhere.

I chuckled and said...well, we follow each other on socials

but I think I just have one of those faces.

As she started her presentation, she gave us a brief bio 

which highlighted the likely reason I seem so familiar to her.

We're from the same county, the same town, and 

grew up in the same religious denomination.

We were seperated by a few miles and twenty years of timeline.

After the meeting was over,

 we tried to compare last names, family trees, 

and potential places or times where our paths or our DNA crossed.

We couldn't pinpoint anything closer than the Quaker settlement

that our common ancestors started in Snow Camp in the 1700's

so we have to conclude, we didn't actually know each other beforehand.

On the surface, we share a few similarities but no one passing

us on the street would think we're closely aligned or related.

We have no shared schools, work experience or facebook friends.

But there is something deeply similar between how

we move and operate in the world,

the things we chose to focus on, and the

values that we express.

Are there ways to know each other that transcend time?

Do we have the ability to share experience with someone

outside of things like books, music, movies, art?

It kept bugging me.

Until I remembered terroir.

Neon signs from the universe found at The Stock Room on Ocracoke Island.

I am twenty years older than this person but I know 

so much about her creation and maturation because the soil that seeped

into her bones is the same soil that seeped into mine.

Our shared flavoring also includes the air we pulled into our lungs,

the humidity that rung sweat from our bodies,

and the musical cadence of our particular location's accent.

I mean, none of this is sounds unique to our home town right?

You grow up where you grow up, you take on the lens of your people

and then probably work hard to unlearn it as you settle into maturity.

Everyone does this kind of thing.

It's called growing up.

The thing about us is, our home county is a pressure cooker

that has churned out extremes for over 250 years.

From the 1969 race riots in Burlington to the almost constant presence

of demonstrations around the Graham courthouse, evil is alive and well

and arguing with good in front of our faces.

On the one hand, there are always residents who want freedom

and egalitarianism, probably some radical acceptance and whatever

this decades version of shared community with a growth mindset looks like.

On the other hand, there are active, organized groups of racists,

using fear, prejudice and violence to enforce their world view.

Both are homegrown products of our county.

Both are consistently present in material amounts.

I would love for anyone who is inclined to believe that we are living in a post-racial society to live for a year in any neighborhood in my home county.

On the way to the courthouse that is defended by a statue of a confederate

soldier erected where the county's first black lawman was murdered,

they will pass a colorguard of giant traitor flags

(Trump or Confederate flavors are welcomed in equal measure).

While eating at a local BBQ joint, fish house, or grill

they will likely overhear a host of jokes that 

contain problematic slurs or tropes that many of us wish

had been left behind post-segragation or post-women's lib

or just post-Elton John.

If you look like you fit in even slightly here,

you will hear the quiet part said out loud

and then you'll hear it followed by either a chuckle or

'you got that right'.

The resentment at the loss of 

the good old days where everyone knew their place is palpable.

Delivered via the bathroom at Creative Tattoo Studio in Durham

Before my whole three family members who read this

get up in arms, I KNOW it's not everyone.

I KNOW.

But don't try and ignore that Uncle So-and-so still drops the N-word

if he thinks he can get away with it

or that our churches, funeral homes and restaurants aren't

still largely segregated.

Don't try to pretend that you want to minimize the 

KKK activity or the deep anxiety you still feel

when interracial or homosexual couples hold hands in public.

This evil is not dead but is actually thriving more than ever.

I also KNOW that there's a long history of activism that keeps

our county moving foward.

I KNOW that there have been, are right now and will be

many people deeply committed to justice and transformation

who originate in this spot.

I KNOW.

I'm grateful.

I'm one of them.

I love my home county.

I love my home state.

All of it.  

To take away any of it changes

the character of the people who are formed by it's

persistent dichotomies and pressures.

We need the honeysuckle and the poison ivy, 

the copperheads and the cardinals,

the hurricanes and the droughts.

Which brings me back to terroir.

How did the place that produced me and 

my newly met twelfth cousin

also produce a sheriff so racist he shakes hands 

with the local white supremacists in front of the courthouse?

What do we have in common?

How do we go together?

Are we complementary flavors?

Do we bring out the best in each other

or in some way highlight the essence of creation?

Are we the cure or the relief for what ails us?

Is my home county a training ground for subversive

minded people?

What factors make you a wanna-be-nazi and which 

make you a rainbow lover?

Can we tweak it one way or the other?

I like imagining that part of why I am the way I am

is the result of some semi-magical creation process.

It's probably bullshit of the most self-centered kind.

I still can't stop turning it over again and again.

My therapist has really helped me accept that 

not everything needs to have a resolution.

Life is teaching me that the trip along the way

is usually more satisfying than the destination.

Like the meaning of life or the search for TRUTH

I am never going to really understand whether or not

people have a terroir.

I'm just going to keep turning this idea over

for as long as it entertains me and sparks my imagination.