Earlier this year, I found myself in an onyx cabin in the middle of the woods, alone, contemplating.

What was meant to be a creative writing retreat turned into a confrontation with many things, least of all my writing instruments. I even brought a printer with me, convinced I’d not only write but edit. By the end of the week, it sat in the corner, humming softly, untouched. If you looked closely, you could see the beginnings of a cobweb forming — no doubt spun by one of the many little friends I had made, indoors and out. A fear of spiders I didn’t know I had surfaced and (somewhat) dissolved that week.

The first night, a bear ransacked the garbage bins outside my bedroom window — something I thankfully slept through but discovered in the morning.

It felt like a wink from nature:

you’re a visitor here, remember that.

Message received.

(a friend.)

The first day, I made it a few feet in. The next, a few more.

Day by day, I walked a little farther, always keeping the cabin within sight so my fear of becoming a 6 o’clock news cautionary tale didn’t take hold.

The more I walked, the more I relaxed.

Every morning and afternoon wander into the woods was a small act of reconnection with something I had clearly drifted so far from that that all it triggered was fear.

Every walk, I was blown away by the beauty but also by the savage potential.

Looking back now, I realize I was slowly rebuilding what lives in the space between awe and fear: respect.

The woods surrounding the cabin were beautiful — fairytale-level beautiful — and I have the photos to prove it.

But while the images captured peace, being there physically was more complicated.

I was anxious, at times terrified, to walk too far in alone.

The quiet and stillness — punctuated by cracks, creaks, and the occasional whisper of wind — heightened my senses so sharply it felt like I could hear a single leaf hit the ground.

Every day, indoors and out, I let both the quiet and the sound wash over me — first as deep discomfort, then as deep relief.

I began digging through the memory bank:

when had I become so afraid of nature?

When exactly, did the very thing that sustains me — sustains all of us — become something I didn’t know, understand, or have any relationship with anymore?

Sadness moved through me, then a feeling like I had opened a window to let fresh air into my soul.

But there was more to air out.

The disconnection revealed itself even more deeply later in the week when I decided I wanted to visit a farm.

I’ve always loved food. I love learning about ingredients. I’ve always appreciated the art of not just food and culinary arts, but the art of tending to gardens and farming. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been able to grow something edible myself. Maybe it’s the remnants of having spent time on farms and in creekside gardens in Romania when I was so young the memories blur. Either way, my appreciation for the ingredient runs deep. Deep enough that my favorite college class was The Anthropology of Eating.

On a rainy early morning I headed to a farm visit I thought I had scheduled. When I arrived, I realized I was a full day early—the farm day I had signed up for was the following day. I sat in the car, debated going home then—as these things often happen—started poking around Google maps.

15 minutes later I pulled into Churchtown Dairy.

In the six months since that week in the Hudson Valley, I’ve found myself preparing most of my meals. Trying new recipes. Rarely ordering from Doordash, UberEats, or Postmates. I’ve stopped ordering groceries from Amazon, Instacart, and other services that obscure the journey my food takes before reaching my kitchen.

It’s not just what I eat, it’s the thread I keep pulling.

Where does my food come from?

Who grows it?

How is it produced?

Are the people tending to it happy?

What actually is xanthan gum?

Why does something “olive oil flavored” contain zero olive oil?

The more I tug, the more unravels. And once you see it you can’t unsee it.

I find myself aimlessly wandering grocery store aisles, stores, and bodegas — partly looking for signs of “real” food, partly trying to take in the overwhelming amount of what isn’t that at all.

I think about how there is more variety but less real choice than ever.

I peek into restaurants wondering if the pleasure of eating there would deepen or disappear if everyone asked what they were eating, where it came from, and who tended to it before it became a perfectly seared peppercorn-crusted filet on our plate.

Trying to understand the food system hierarchy in the U.S. is its own descent.

What anyone curious enough to go down this rabbit hole will discover (as with almost every other industry shaping daily life) is that it all ladders up to a handful of companies controlling production, distribution, pricing, and access. Big Ag and Big Food industrialized food the way Big Tech monetized our attention spans and Big Pharma industrialized care. But that’s a story for another day.

All of this for me has been less an act of judgement or regaining control and more an attempt to regain understanding. More importantly, I find myself on a quest to regain connection. Not just in relationship to ingredients and the foods I eat themselves, but to the people who tend to them.

I now religiously go to the Saturday morning farmer’s market and have made friends with the local international (Greek) market, fish market, and meat market purveyors. I’m slowly learning names. I’ve unleashed my curiosity on more than a few, who kindly always take time to explain what husk cherries are and how I might cook fresh sardines without an oven.

What weighs on me now is the reality that fewer people have access to this way of living and even fewer have the ability to choose it.

That the people who devote themselves to growing, making, crafting, and tending to the ingredients that nourish us are fighting a system designed to strip care from the process and nutrients from the food.

That farmland is being converted into solar farms, parking lots, and data centers every day, and most of us don’t realize what that means because it doesn’t affect us directly. Yet.

I don’t have the big answers. Not yet.

We can’t fix food inaccessibility overnight.

We can’t undo decades of nutritional miseducation overnight.

We can’t reverse the dystopian trajectory of industrialized food supply chains overnight.

But I do know this: reconnection is a meaningful beginning.

Reconnecting with ingredients. Reconnecting with the people who tend to them and craft them. Reconnecting with the lineage and lifecycle of the things that nourish us.

It’s not everything. But it’s a place to start.

xT

Is it easier than delivery? No.

But has it been an effort worth making?

Absolutely.

Because just like understanding the history of a neighborhood deepens your experience of it, understanding the history and stewardship of what we eat deepens the experience of food.

The more I reconnect, the more natural it feels.

The less I need.

Not surprisingly, the better I feel.

© 2025 / 2026 | Teodora Nicolae | all rights reserved