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Rex Alphin's Stories From the Land
Rex Alphin is an explorer and archaeologist. Among the pastures of livestock and rows of peanut plants he cultivates to make his living, Rex unearths gems of simple wisdom in stories he discovers all around his Isle of Wight, Virginia peanut farm where he grew up with both the pen and the plough. In 2005, Rex first began to send his essays to the Tidewater News, and the positive feedback he received from other members of the community prompted the local editor to offer Rex a column with the paper. Now, in 2011, his essays, deeply rooted in farm life, are collected in one volume, titled The Nature of Things: Stories from the Land, recently published by Richmond’s Brandylane Publishers. Rex’s family farm was originally purchased by his grandfather in the 1930s, and has been passed down from father to son for two generations. “The land has stories of its own,” Rex says, “I just discover them.”
From an early age, his parents taught him the importance of curiosity; that an inquisitive mind was an important tool for living, and thereby, farming and writing, too. Part of this pursuit inevitably led him to “see what’s on the other side of the road,” but in the end, he says, “I was never truly disconnected from the farm life…come drought or flood, or hurricane…I will make my place here. It took leaving, to understand the value of my life here.” Out of that understanding, we have the opportunity to enjoy the written memorials he builds with the stroke of his pen, elevating his life’s work, and the work of untold numbers of farming men and women to a poetic level.
In The Nature of Things, readers will find tales of arresting prose—like the story of Wooly Bully, an older Bull who was defeated in a contest for the affection of the herd’s cows. Mr. Alphin deftly renders the plight of Wooly Bully and the animal’s subsequent moans of despair in a humanizing light, illustrating for the reader so clearly that loss is a natural part of life, for bulls and humans. “More people comment on that story than any other,” he said, “everyone has had an experience that lets them identify with Woolly Bully.”
There are stories of triumph, too. In a number of essays, he touches on the difficulty and risk involved in farm work. Machines break, people can be hurt, and animals are not always cooperative, but the joy and relief of hard hours and long toil rewarded by a solid harvest make it all worthwhile. “This lifestyle,” Rex tells us, “it sets within you an approach to life, where you just deal with whatever comes, because you don’t know what’s coming. It’s out of any man’s hands.”
It’s this kind of insight, written with grace and founded on experience, which makes The Nature of Things a compelling read for anyone seeking a new way to understand life.
Along with the poetry of farm life, Rex’s work captures the process of human growth as it is tied to nature. His ideas are especially important for future generations, who, like the farmers and the peanuts flourishing in Isle of Wight, will be faced with a myriad of challenges and obstacles. But with nourishment and determination, each one can rise up from the soil and grow. Rex Alphin’s writing provides hope for people who believe in the possibility of regeneration for human society, and a return to a more harmonious way of life, centered on small communities working together to educate and sustain each other.
Along with being an early morning laborer in the fields, Rex is a philosopher. (Few peanut farmers will likely tell you their favorite Russian novel is Anna Karenina.) When asked about his future plans for both writing and farming, he said, “They will continue to feed each other…two vocations working side by side as brothers.”
Rex Alphin’s The Nature of Things: Stories from the Land is a bountiful yield of insight distilled from his examination of the oldest human way of life. Fortunately, these words and stories will not be left to hide in the soil. pl
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5.5 x 8.5” hardcover, 188 pages.
Retail: $24.95
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