Julia Shipley

On Dec. 19, 1995, The New York Times reported the discovery of a man's remains, found “face down in a slushy pocket of glacier” in the Italian Alps, along a path where local shepherds still guide their sheep. The German hikers thought they had discovered someone recently lost. In fact, scientists estimate the corpse had abided in the alpine landscape for 5,300 years.

Since the, this Iceman has resided, among other places, in my imagination.

The miracle of his second coming accompanied me as I moved from my parents house near Philadelphia to Williamstown, Mass., to apprentice on an organic farm for a growing season, before moving back to my parent's house briefly, and then on to a stint at a convent in north-central Pennsylvania to work as their gardener; and from the convent I pursued a series of farm jobs in upstate New York, southern Vermont, each move one step more north, until I paused for a breather in a valley town in Northern Vermont for five years, shuffling through umpteen employments and identities, baking biscotti, clerking a bookstore, filing medical records, landscaping, bar tending, waitressing, cleaning dairy barns, tutoring, until eventually I moved to a small house on a small piece of land and began my project of Dwelling, where I've lived and farmed for the past seven years.

Now, on my frequent walks along the dusty Creek Road to pick up mail in the village two miles away, I think of how the Iceman or Otzi as scientists named him, was entirely indigenous to his environment. He was found with a grass cape and a copper axe, smelted from local malachite; his lungs hosted a fungus called aspergillus; a wheat seed was extracted from his digestive tract; whipworm eggs lurked in his colon: he was...