To begin Earthseed, I’ll have to go outside. I’ve known that for a long time, but the idea scares me just as much as it always has.
Next year when I’m 18, I’ll go. That means now I have to begin to plan how I’ll handle it.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2026
I’m going to go north. My grandparents once traveled a lot by car. They left us old road maps of just about every county in the state plus several of other parts of the country. The newest of them is 40
years old, but that doesn’t matter. The roads will still be there. They’ll just be in worse shape than they were back when my grandparents drove a gas-fueled car over them. I’ve put maps of the California counties north of us and the few I could find of Washington and Oregon counties into my pack.
I wonder if there are people outside who will pay me to teach them reading and writing— basic stuff— or people who will pay me to read or write for them.
Keith started me thinking about that. I might even be able to teach some Earthseed verses along with the reading and writing. Given any chance at all, teaching is what I would choose to do. Even if I have to take other kinds of work to get enough to eat, I can teach. If I do it well, it will draw people to me— to Earthseed.
All successful life is
Adaptable,
Opportunistic,
Tenacious,
Interconnected, and
Fecund.
Understand this.
Use it.
Shape God.
I wrote that verse a few months ago. It’s true like all the verses. It seems more true than ever now, more useful to me when I’m afraid.
I’ve finally got a title for my book of Earthseed verses— Earthseed: The Book of the Living. There are the Tibetan and the Egyptian Books of the Dead.
Dad has copies of them. I’ve never heard of anything called a book of the living, but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that there is something. I don’t care. I’m trying to speak— to write— the truth. I’m trying to be clear. I’m not interested in being fancy, or even original. Clarity and truth will be plenty, if I can only achieve them. If it happens that there are other people outside somewhere preaching my truth, I’ll join them. Otherwise, I’ll adapt where I must, take what opportunities I can find or make, hang on, gather students, and teach.
12
We are Earthseed
The life that perceives itself
Changing.
EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2026
The Garfields have been accepted at Olivar.
They’ll be moving next month. That soon. I’ve known them all my life, and they’ll be gone. Joanne and I have had our differences, but we grew up together. I thought somehow that when I left, she would still be here. Everyone would still be here, frozen in time just as I left them. But no, that’s fantasy. God is Change.
“Do you want to go?” I asked her this morning. We had gotten together to pick a few early lemons and navel oranges and some persimmons, almost ripe and brilliant orange. We picked at my house, and then at hers, enjoying the work. The weather was cool. It was good to be outside.
“I have to go,” she said. “What else is there for me-for anyone. It’s all going to hell here. You know it is.”
I stared at her. I guess discussing such things is all right now that she has a way out. “So you move into another fortress,” I said.
“It’s a better fortress. It won’t have people coming over the walls, killing old ladies.”
“Your mother says all you’ll have is an apartment.
No yard. No garden. You’ll have less money, but you’ll have to use more of it to buy food.”
“We’ll manage!” There was a brittle quality to her voice.
I put down the old rake I was using as a fruit picker.
It worked fine on the lemons and oranges. “Scared?”
I asked.
She put down her own real fruit picker with its awkward extension handle and small fruit-catching basket. It was best for persimmons. She hugged herself. “I’ve lived here, lived with trees and gardens all my life. I… don’t know how it will be to be shut up in an apartment. It does scare me, but we’ll manage. We’ll have to.”
“You can come back here if things aren’t what you hope. Your grandparents and your aunt’s family will still be here.
“Harry will still be here,” she whispered, looking toward her house. I would have to stop thinking of it as the Garfield house. Harry and Joanne were at least as close as Curtis and I. I hadn’t thought about her leaving him— what that must be like. I like Harry Balter. I remember being surprised when he and Joanne first started going together. They’d lived in the same house all their lives. I had thought of Harry almost as her brother. But they were only first cousins, and against the odds, they had managed to fall in love. Or I thought they had. They hadn’t gone with anyone else for years. Everyone assumed they would get around to marrying when they were a little older.
“Marry him and take him with you,” I said.
“He won’t go,” she said in that same whisper. “We’ve talked and talked about it. He wants me to stay here with him, get married soon and go north. Just…go with no prospects. Nothing. It’s crazy.”
“Why won’t he go to Olivar?”
“He thinks the way your father does. He thinks Olivar’s a trap. He’s read about nineteenth and early twentieth century company towns, and he says no matter how great Olivar looks, all we’ll get from it in the end is debt and loss of freedom.”
I knew Harry had sense. “Jo,” I said, “you’ll be of age next year. You could stay here with the Balters until then and marry. Or you could talk your father into letting you marry now.”
“And then what? Go join the street poor? Stay and stuff more babies into that crowded house. Harry doesn’t have a job, and there’s no real chance of his getting one that pays money. Are we supposed to live on what Harry’s parents earn? What kind of future is that? None! None at all!”
Sensible. Conservative and sensible and mature and wrong. Very much in character for Joanne.
Or maybe I was the one who was wrong. Maybe the security Joanne will find in Olivar is the only kind of security to be had for anyone who isn’t rich. To me, though, security in Olivar isn’t much more attractive than the security Keith has finally found in his urn.
I picked a few more lemons and some oranges and wondered what she would do if she knew I was also planning to leave next year. Would she run to her mother again, frightened for me, and eager to have someone protect me from myself? She might. She wants a future she can understand and depend on-a future that looks a lot like her parents’ present. I don’t think that’s possible. Things are changing too much, too fast. Who can fight God?
We put baskets of fruit inside my back door on the porch, then headed for her house.
“What will you do?” she asked me as we walked.
“Are you just going to stay here? I mean…are you going to stay and marry Curtis?”
I shrugged and lied. “I don’t know. If I marry anyone, it will be Curtis. But I don’t know about marrying. I don’t want to have children here any more than you do. I know we’ll be staying here for a while longer, though. Dad won’t let Cory even apply to Olivar. I’m glad of that because I don’t want to go there. But there’ll be other Olivars. Who knows what I might wind up doing?” That last didn’t feel like a lie.
“You think there’ll be more privatized cities?” she asked.
“Bound to be if Olivar succeeds. This country is going to be parceled out as a source of cheap labor and cheap land. When people like those in Olivar beg to sell themselves, our surviving cities are bound to wind up the economic colonies of whoever can afford to buy them.”