humankeeper

I saw a duck standing on a rock beside the lake yesterday. All of the other ducks have gone, none remaining to keep her company. She was without flock or partner, looking (if I dare wade into the tempestuous waters of deciphering a duck’s look) utterly bewildered. Or perhaps I can say with more certainty, very, very alone.

I watched her for a time. I was hoping I might see her lift up into the air or maybe a drake would suddenly appear and honk at her to shake a tail feather in time for them to catch up with the rest of their gang. But no other duck came and she did not leave. So I stayed too. In some ways I’m still there now, wondering where everybody has gone while I sit on my little rock island trying to figure out my next move.

It’s no surprise to many of you that I’ve been increasingly concerned about the future of the internet and my place on it. A few months ago Substack sent out a poll to the writers here asking how many of them either used or were planning on using AI in their writing. The results astounded me. More than half responded that they were using it. Surely that number will grow. Of course, AI is already running amok all over the place. 83% of Instagram influencers are using AI (that data was from a year ago so I’m sure it’s grown since then). TikTok is full of it. Small artists and creators are complaining about AI knockoffs over at Etsy. Heck, there’s even online videos showing people how to sell AI art on their platform. Pinterest is pretty much unusable now. It’s everywhere and just like the refusal to label other simulacra like GMO corn and sugar, cloned meat and many of the ingredients in our food, we have no idea what’s what.

I suppose I was just hoping that Substack - a site for writers and their readers, might limit such a thing to the human sort. At the very least, perhaps a tool, or a stamp, or some sort of watermark that floats about the images, videos, and words that come to us from a machine? Is that too much to ask?

It bothers me when people see something coming and just shake their heads in resignation. That’s always bothered me. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to accept that soon I will have to show ID to participate in this digital world so every click, and view, and like shapes some creature that represents me. A Tara built of bytes - a machine avatar of me with no soul or laughter representing the most boring, inane parts of who I am. Worse than that is the feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I participate anyway, knowing where this train is heading. Sometimes a reader or two will tell me the only reason they come on the internet is to read what I write and I shrink down into myself and think, “I’m so sorry”.

Life on this farm teaches me that everything meaningful takes time. Milk takes time. Soil takes time. Healing takes time. Even the smallest insight arrives only after living a little, or suffering a little, or watching how frost lays itself across the pasture at dawn. But AI promises something else entirely: speed, convenience, certainty. Answers without wandering. Knowledge without apprenticeship. Connection without bodies in the room.

And I can’t help but wonder what that does to us—especially to the younger souls who have barely had time to fall in love with slowness before the world nudges them toward efficiency.

I worry that we are losing our tolerance for mystery. I worry that the delicate human muscles of discernment, intuition, and self-trust will atrophy when we’re constantly presented with packaged conclusions. I worry that the stories and memories and wisdom that come from real living—falling down, getting back up, doing the hard, imperfect work—will be overshadowed by something polished and immediate.

What do you think about those last three paragraphs? It sounds like me, yes? It wasn’t me. It was a ChatGPT that spit that out in a couple of seconds after I entered a simple, one line prompt asking it to write something in the style of Tara from Slowdown Farmstead about AI. In the blink of an eye it crawled through my words and wove itself through the cadence and style of my writing and gave me a robust essay. I can recognize my words and sentences from a myriad of different essays I’ve written all lassoed and pulled together into a coherent, relevant whole. A machine knows enough to know the worries of my heart without knowing what a heart is at all. Would you have known it wasn’t me that had written those words if I hadn’t told you? I’ve had people tell me that they know when something is real or AI. Possibly true, but for those rare birds, it won’t be true for long. It gets better by the minute.

But it’s the resignation piece that I just can’t swallow. I think about the world that I want my grandchildren to know and what I’m doing here, in front of this screen. There’s a driver here that includes my sense of morality and principles. An image of us all, noses down nibbling on some sweet morsels together, while the snare around us slowly, slowly gets pulled ever tighter. It’s too costly for me to betray what autonomy I do have. There is much I can’t stop, but I can control my participation in much. I can direct my energies into antidotes instead of getting into lockstep with the masses. I think about that a lot, too.

All of this is colliding with other forces in my life right now. There are always things I cannot write about and other things I won’t. Troy and I have been working for years now to bring forward a coroner’s inquest into our daughter’s death. It is exhausting, draining work with only the smallest of hopes that maybe one person, one “shareholder” will learn something that could change the fate for another young soul in danger. At last we have arrived in the final days before we begin that process. We both dread it and feel burdened by the weight of the call to do it anyway. We’ve also been trying, in our flawed and feeble way, to be present and open to two friends in our lives who are navigating the deaths of their young and beautiful wives. And we were able to offer our love and shoulder for another friend who is going through a great deal of devastation in her own life. For these beautiful souls we can offer our love in ways we simply would not have been capable of before we lived with grief as our ever-loyal companion. Maybe it’s these very real, very raw and insistent parts of a life that hold us in the world in ways that the gloss, shine, hollowed out words, and art of AI cannot.

I feel like that lone duck. A tad bewildered and unsure of what comes next. I write because I am a writer and therefore I shall continue on with writing. My longtime readers will know I’ve been flirting with the idea of a paper newsletter that actually comes to you through the mail - something you hold in your hands. Maybe that’s going to be it. Maybe what I offer will look different from that. I’m just not sure and so I continue to pray for guidance and do what I can here and now.

We’re buying an old stereo system so I can play my records again. I have a wood lathe in a box that needs my introduction. I have a cabinet full of the most luscious wool and vintage fabrics that are waiting for me. There is paper and my favourite pencils that my hands yearn to manipulate again after too much time hitting a keyboard. I have a shoulder I need to rehabilitate and my Bapka’s cottage cheese buns to master. Our winter tent awaits and my assured mastery of cooking over raw flame requires I actually try it more than a couple of times. There is much to do with my hands, yes, but there is also much to do with my heart.

My wise daughter and I were talking a few months ago about how I felt like some of my relationships were anemic and, often, frustrating. She reminded me that I have friendships that I simply don’t put much of my effort into. We might see each other now and then or talk once and awhile, but it’s true - I really don’t foster the special, deeper connections I have in my life. I decided to change that, and I have, and it’s been so enriching. I’m sending handwritten letters again. I’m making things as gifts again. I’ve visited with friends and spent time in wonderful conversations, feasting on beautiful food, and taking long and lazy walks in the forest. It’s been so fulfilling that I’ve forgotten to bemoan the relationships that are not capable of that kind of depth or fulfillment and, you know, that’s been a tremendous gift. Often, especially in relationships we don’t choose - like in our families, we can get lost in all of the frustrations and baggage of people we were given, but perhaps wouldn’t choose. How liberating it’s been to let that go and truly appreciate and feed the relationships we can choose.

That’s an antidote of sorts too. Our precious collections of skills and knowledge can be stolen and mimicked in the sound of a voice, but it will never hold a soul. In the mid 1980s a group of fishermen came together to figure out ways to protect their water systems. They coined the word “riverkeeper” which is defined as a person that “strives to be the voice of the water body that they work to protect, preserve, and restore”. I want to be a voice of the human that I work to protect, preserve, and restore. In fact, I’ve given myself the job of humankeeper and, you should know, the vacancies are many and life is hiring.

I will continue to collect the skills the generations before me let slip through their fingers. I will endeavour to learn and teach. I will set aside the callings of my ego for the recognition of my flaws and have the confidence to share them so we might recognize them in ourselves. I will be chipped and bruised, wrinkled and slightly askew in my most human of ways. I will make mistakes and own them. I will celebrate the same in others who genuinely work to recognize and overcome their own foibles. Generous grace in a time of slicked perfection from a machine that devours the best of us and spits out our bitter bones.

I came up with all sorts of reasons as to why that duck was alone. Maybe a hunter knicked its wing just enough to keep it land bound. Maybe she’s an old duck and recognized that she doesn’t have it in her to make the trip. I doubt that explanation the most. She would still try to stay with her flock even if it meant death came to her when she was airborne. What better way for a duck to die anyway? I could ask AI why she might be there, but all that machine can do is crawl the minds of others and feed them back to me. What’s in my mind, my imaginings that conjure up feelings of sadness and despair at the plight of a little duck are mine alone. I won’t write them here. AI can’t have them.

What I do know, that the little duck doesn’t, is that I’m not the only duck left on the universe. You’re out there, too and I know many of you feel the same way. You have to. We have to. We are connected and belong to one another even when there’s not a familiar soul around.

And so I plod forward, committed to being a “humankeeper”. I collect old books. I will make those buns with my grandchildren. I will stand, as long as I stand, on the soft skin of the earth reminding her I’m still here, reminding myself I’m still here. It matters. Don’t throw up your hands in resignation, fellow humankeepers. Lift up your noses from the kibble and notice the snare. There is still time and the children, yours and mine, need wayfinders for the coming time. Even if it means being the lone duck, so be it. And I will be it, too.

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