The Turkey Dance

He dropped his flight wings on the snow trailing striped buff/brown feathers, turning sideways to lift and spread others – shafts of burnt umber dipped in black ink – transforming into a shimmering iridescent half – moon fan. Pirouetting again and again. The turkey’s pale indigo head deepened to cobalt; his wattle bled crimson under a rising sun. It was the last week in February. The Turkey Dance had begun…

 Rumblings from the forest had been occurring since mid – February along with an occasional display – incessant gobbling all day long. Turkey gobbling apparently can be heard from more than a mile away, but I could see these turkeys moving through the mixed woodlands behind/around/ in front of/below my house. This morning one grouse was also drumming. It’s the last day of March.

The turkeys returned late last spring as soon as my deranged neighbor sold his house. Although hens continued to nest and raise their chicks on this land each summer, it had been years since turkeys lived here year – round. And so, it was with great joy and thanksgiving that I welcomed home a flock. 

By mid – September about a dozen gathered under my solitary birdfeeder to peck away at fallen seed, providing entertainment for my dove Lily b while he perched in his basket at the window. Turkeys just moved in – wandering around the house foraging for abundant seeds cut and left in my garden, pecking at calendula that was still deep green. Meandering up and down my woodland paths, turkeys sunned themselves on warm days, took cover when it rained, roosted in the pines and hemlocks at night.

 Turkeys are incredibly bright, sensitive, and inquisitive, and while I was outdoors doing chores, they often followed me around. Frequently we conversed. Turkeys are ground loving birds; they are also the most delectable prey animals for hunters and other predators. 

The first snowfall came in November, by which time the flock had  doubled in size. By December, before 29 inches of snow buried the house, I already had at least 40 turkeys living here; all were roosting in the hemlocks, barreling out of the trees like cannonballs after the sun rose; all basked in pale light or took cover in the protected lowlands if the winds were too bitter, or snow was falling. Hooded monks huddled together. 

The turkeys’ daily behavior seemed to depend primarily upon the weather. After the December storm I witnessed turkeys swimming through a rolling white sea, floundering, dragging half frozen wings. There was no way these birds could scratch beneath this freezing mess to look for survival foods. A few flew into bare trees searching for buds.  

The birds were using up so much energy just trying to move. This situation was compounded by an obvious lack of food. Except for deciduous tree and hemlock buds there was nothing to eat. Concern won out; I decided to feed them.

Scattering some seed outside my bedroom window just after dawn the next morning, I called out to the group that was huddled together down below by the brook. As if they already knew what was coming about twenty made an instant raucous beeline for the window with others trailing behind. I must state that I never deliberately fed turkeys before. (see sheldrake.org on telepathy). In minutes I had so many twittering, chortling turkeys that I had to refill my pitcher to scatter more seed.

Feeding established a new pattern – every morning, regardless of weather, turkeys would impatiently tweet and twitter until I opened my window to scatter seed. I had one male I called the king because he was so much bigger than the others. He had a habit of stretching out his long neck to stare in at me with one piercing marbled eye, especially if he wanted more food! This behavior reminded me that all turkeys had excellent vision and that staring has consequences (see sheldrake.org). I also loved watching those powerful clawed feet create trails down to the open brook; the turkeys continue to use the same snowy paths even though it’s the end of March. With feet so strong it is not surprising that turkeys can run 25 hours an hour. Even more astonishing is the fact that these birds can attain 55 miles an hour in flight.

The literature states that turkeys split up into male and female groups during the winter season. These turkeys did not. During the fall, winter and throughout March males and females continue to arrive either as one or two mixed groups, and all are roosting either around the house or down by the brook. Turkey hieroglyphics kept my snow – shoveled paths neatly packed down all winter!

 One day this week two displaying males arrived separately each followed by hens. But this behavior is not the rule; it remains the exception. Some males have been displaying on almost a daily basis for weeks, at first apparently for each other! 

The king is presently displaying with two other males that are almost as big as he is. On this last day of March gobbling began at 5:15 AM while it was pitch black with turkeys arriving for food before First Light. As soon as the males finished eating, they began displaying while the hens continued to peck at seed ignoring the show. Although the groups remain mixed the hens show no interest, even when pursued by three kings whose displays are beyond spectacular! The biggest king has a very red wattle, but all three have blue heads and drooping snoods (a horn that sticks up or skin that droops). I have read that blue heads and red wattles are indications that males are ready for mating. My observations suggest that these characteristics begin to appear as the turkeys gather for the Turkey Dance that precedes actual pairing and mating, continuing thereafter.

 Feeding behavior is shifting. The receding snow is sculpting mossy brown patches of bare ground on the sun – drenched hill. Birch and grass seeds are once again plentiful, and turkeys gather on warmer days to spend the afternoon scratching and foraging like they did last fall. Some days they don’t come for food until late afternoon or dusk. But each group that does come has an orator who clucks and twitters with annoyance if I am not immediately at the window. The turkeys are keeping irregular feeding hours around this house.

 For seven months these birds have allowed me entrance into their world; They have extended the same courtesy/privilege to my little dogs. I am slowly learning complex turkey language. They are teaching me so much about their hierarchies, their willingness to tolerate and respect differences. There are no outsiders in the turkeys’ world barring a predator. Turkey behavior demonstrates the benefits of living in genuine community.

Although I can easily photograph them through an open window while they eat, when displaying the males do not like me watching them which makes it a challenge to photograph this astonishing behavior (Recall that when outdoors I can be around them without incident; these birds know me well). If I freeze at one of the windows they continue to dance, 5000 feathers in the air, trailing wings on the snow, bodies puffed up like balloons, but they are also staring in at me even if they can’t see me… and woe to me if I get behind a camera; they always KNOW. Could this photographic reticence on their part be an adaptation the males have developed to any person that holds an object in her hands because male turkeys remember that they will soon be hunted with a gun? The more I learn the more questions I have and the less I feel I know.

I end this naturalist’s rambling leaving the story open for the next chapter whatever it may be. I do know that I will miss these birds very much when they disperse and leave as they must. Hopefully, I can look forward to meeting future mothers raising their chicks in the ferns and tall grasses later this spring…

It doesn’t escape me that many Indigenous peoples hold the turkey sacred. Turkey feathers adorn many a dancer and are an integral part of Ceremony in too many Native American tribes to name. There is a story told about Benjamin Franklin who wanted the gentle but regal turkey to become the great seal of the US instead of the eagle because the latter is a predator by nature. Even if this story is untrue, as The Franklin Institute insists, it begs a real question:

How might choosing a bird who lives close to the earth instead of one that is a soaring predator shift our relationship to nature? Instead of emulating Father sky maybe what we really need is to become sons and daughters of Mother Earth?

 I think this is a query worth pondering when we consider the tumultuous times in which we live.

Postscript: April 1, 2023

Only two hens came in to feed after the snowy white death shroud covered the ground… later around noon I heard piercing cries – a collective lament from the turkeys who had been huddled down by the brook and were now screaming in such anguish that the sound pierced my heart with a knife. A predator, human (some hunters hunt illegally around here) or perhaps a fox had killed one of their kind and all were screeching in collective grief as I watched them as they moved single file through the forest. Without a thought I raced into into the snow to follow their tracks as they fled, knowing of course, how hopeless it was… returning to the house I wept even while acknowledging that there are always two sides to the story – life and hopefully a merciful death.

The Crows Nest

 Bare tree

shadowy veil

old snow

won’t let go.

Beaded Judges

shift

spring tides

 hide

  predators

with eyes.

Crows

 reveal

 old bones…

March is the month when crows scream, screeching and mobbing as they soar through indigo skies – their harsh declarations hurt my ears though I know they are mating and nesting.

Although crows are as bright as the rest of the Corvids they are also mobsters, bullies who haunt the forest to harass sleeping owls; next month they will be stealing birds’ eggs or killing the songbirds themselves. With three billion birds extinct, their predatory nature might be considered a threat. And unlike most avian species their numbers are not decreasing. Crows will consume virtually anything; carrion is a favorite. And the latter quality, much like their intelligence reveals a more ‘positive’ side because crows strip the flesh from the bones of the dead. But overall, these ‘hooded’ (European terminology) birds are associated with death ‘A murder of crows’ is an apt description. Even new age folks associate them with the presence of the Shadow side of Reality.

Women are often described as ‘old crows’ even if age is not a factor, and I believe there is truth behind this description. Patriarchal women, that is women who have rejected their own Motherline for the ‘Power of the Fathers’ fall prey to patriarchal domination, a systemthat is presently extinguishing the lives of humans and non – human species alike through capitalistic greed and indifference. The effects of this destructive way of life may manifest differently for men and women. Here I focus on women.

 The astounding absence of compassion, harsh judgments, the use of silence or screaming as a means of control, rigidity, bullying, knifing other women in the back, an unwillingness to wander across the isles, a refusal to examine personal shadow are qualities that reveal the character of ‘crow women’ who often obscure themselves by acting ‘Nice’. That is, until they strike with vengeance.

I’ve known too many.

Every year when I come round to March I face the dark side of the serpent, as I relive my mother’s absence in my life. I was an unwanted child, and because the mother – daughter bone was broken I floundered, and flounder still while enduring a seasonal spring descent as best as I can. Persephone rises but in my story no mother rejoices at this daughter’s return. As an adult I acquiesced, raged, mourned, and eventually held my mother and myself accountable for damages done. Then I tried to let go and couldn’t. Because I did the necessary work I didn’t know why. 

Enter the crows who helped enlighten me…

Acknowledging the powers of death is important; feeding those powers is not.

Once my mother fed the crows… and her mother did too. Now I have a  neighbor who feeds her crows too.. years ago I periodically left food for these corvids before I lived here until I understood that by feeding the crows I was repeating an old patriarchal story, one that fuels the serpent who has wrapped itself around the earth four times and is gradually squeezing the life out of our planet (Martin Shaw). 

We are destroying Our Mother.

I will not destroy mine.

 I continue to search for memories of my mother that are not associated with betrayal, confusion, silence, or loss. To my great surprise there are some and as each one surfaces, I wonder how I could have ‘forgotten’. A poignant example is a brief essay on wildflowers that I wrote for publication in which I ‘re -membered’ that my mother’s love for wildflowers was a gift that she bequeathed to me as a child.  

Yesterday, to celebrate this bond between us, I bought spring flowers.

And remembered a son who once carried a giant stone egg from one side of an island to the other… 

Old crows are picking the bones… 

Windigo Winter Rolls On

This year in the North country, Windigo stole March, normally a month of subtle change when rain begins, snow recedes and the first tentative walks in the woods become possibility, if not reality.  My turkeys must still swim through white slop to feed if they come at all. On a morning like this one not one gobble. Only the cardinals visit at dawn, yet migrants like the Sandhill cranes, woodcock, winter wren, and phoebe, flew over our county last night along with many ducks … 3 billion extinct, 10,000 migrating – is hope to be found on the wing?

 It snowed again last night with more to come. After 5 months of black on white, bowed and wind whipped trees, shattered trunks and boughs, ongoing freeze thaw and ice, Windigo continues to stalk the landscape. Uneasy, I tell myself that I must expect more extreme weather, floods, and droughts, even while acknowledging that the weather is not really the problem – at least not now. No shoveling is necessary, the earth is thawing and afternoon sun will soften the monstrous drifts and strip the trees of ice before the day is over. Increasingly extreme weather is only one symptom of some disastrous changes that are occurring. 

Windigo is a mythological monster so named by the Northern Indigenous tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy (template for the Constitution – minus rights for women) because this figure used to the haunt the lives of Northern peoples who often starved to death when winter refused to let go. Always hungry, he had to have more and yet nothing ever filled him up. In many images he is depicted as a head, usually with antlers. The bones of the dead.

 In the original Indigenous First Nations tale Windigo was finally vanguished because the season shifted into spring. Nature set limits on the damage Windigo could do at least for Northern peoples. Across the plains it is understood that humans become Windigos because of greed and avarice. It should be noted that every Indigenous tribe has a figure like Windigo; he goes by many names. 

 Today Windigo has become a more threatening monster assuming any form he wishes, and his presence is felt among all peoples, not just those with Indigenous roots. Recall this figure is always starving…As human populations skyrocket from eight billion to ten, Windigo is at the helm. Our Collective Greed and Overpopulation increase his power with each passing day…”More, More, More” His sultry voice is insistent, even haunting our dreams.  

Windigo is stealing souls. I will not give him mine.

  I think of another tale I loved as a child. Little Black Sambo was an Indian* boy who was chased by ferocious tigers who wanted to kill him. The boy gave the tigers all he had to escape being murdered by his predators. Outwitted, the furious tigers then turned on each other in a jealous rage, racing round and round in a circle so fast that they changed physical form transforming into butter!

 Little Black Sambo knew when to let go of everything but himself and got away. And, indirectly, he did away with the tigers too! There’s a lesson here for me and perhaps for all humans about breakdown. 

With our current political ‘identity’ crisis, many black and white folks still revile this latter tale insisting it is a story of discrimination and misogyny – totally missing its message. Like Windigo in his current guise as insatiable monster who is with us all year long, predatory tigers stalk the vulnerable as we speak. We have become a nation so starved for meaning that we can’t feel the Windigo expanding within us with the ferocity of a wild cat. Consumers consuming themselves while Windigo whispers ‘more’. We are tigers chasing our tails into oblivion; There is a huge difference between knowing what we want and what we need.

If a story – child understood the difference, why can’t we?

Listening to tale like this with open minds and feeling hearts might help shift perspectives – we might yet begin to change the ending – but will we?

This morning I read an article about Maine legislators angrily fighting over leasing hundreds of ocean miles for fish farming.

 Just when did we decide we owned the ocean that birthed us?  

With this kind of greed …

I leave the reader with an open ending.

• I have Indigenous roots and have been discriminated against for being ‘different’ all of my life… so it’s not that I don’t have compassion – it’s just that I believe it’s time to move through our differences.
• I just finished this story and published it when I learned that indeed the Sandhills are in Maine as of March 25th they are in Winthrop – considering this is the date of the first mother’s day I am including this wondrous sighting. Ancestors in flight

Mayflower Memories

Introduction (‘Blood – Root’)

For the past two weeks I have been obsessed by the thought of emerging bloodroot, a wildflower I have loved since childhood that grows just outside my door (among other places). This obsession, and I take each one seriously, always provokes the same question: what’s really going on here? Bloodroot does not bloom under four feet of snow, and my guess is that this year one of my favorite wildflowers won’t burst with white stars until June. 

Today, I also remembered with astonishment that in the old ways, Mother’s Day occurred on March 25^th, the time when ‘Becoming’ begins, long before the snow recedes. I’m struck by the difference between the two mothers’ days, this one seems so much more authentic, no room for sentimentality when we face this messy, muddy turning from winter to spring (at least in the Northeast).

But I digress…To discover the root of my obsession I started writing as I always do to figure out what’s happening beneath my awareness. The following narrative seemed to write itself. Ah, the root of my obsession with ‘Blood – Root’ was more about my Motherline than the flower! As I wrote the story, I was flooded with memories of my mother that have been obscured by long term mother – daughter confusion and abuse. Abuse twists and distorts memory, so we forget the good parts of what we once knew. After I finished my story I ‘re -membered’ a mother I loved too deeply, one who taught me about wildflowers, how to identify, transplant, and care for them. Clearly her love for these wild plants was passed on to me. And I have carried my mother’s wildflower torch all the days of my life. Even if my mother didn’t have much use for me. No way to know. Enjoy!

Mayflower Memories

We knelt together my grandmother, mother, and I carefully placing freshly dug plants in the rock garden under the swaying white pines. We were transplanting wild columbine, dutchman’s breeches, maidenhair and Christmas ferns in between the silvery gray spikes and star like bloodroot flowers that were buzzing with bees. Those who had already bloomed had huge, notched palm sized leaves. Seed capsules were forming. The year before we had scattered forget – me not seeds, planted wild violets, and dug in the bloodroot that grew so profusely in the woods.

Sprays of blooming forget me nots and violets in shades that varied from deep purple to lavender blue and white had already spread throughout the rock garden along with the bloodroot. Worried about disturbing roots that bled crimson when spaded up by accident, I was also distracted by the scent of trailing arbutus with its leathery leaves that had spread so quickly, their tendrils almost reaching the bench under the pines. Each pale pink or white flower possessed a perfume so fragrant I was compelled to kneel, as if in prayer, to soak in the scent.

The day my mother and I planted the trailing arbutus it was raining. We had recently returned from Maine with two burlap bags of precious cargo, two clusters of leathery leaved arbutus that had so much soil around them that it dwarfed the plants. My mother had insisted that extra soil was necessary to allow the trailing arbutus to thrive. How did she know? 60 years ago, we had no idea that trailing arbutus as well as all wildflowers had a complex mycorrhizal relationship with the mycelial net beneath our feet? When wildflowers are transplanted without extensive foreknowledge few survive.

  Three years earlier my brother, my father and grandfather and I had collected the rich loam from the moist woods where an abundance of wildflowers grew. Together we built up and graded a hill in front of the ledge. Below, my father dug a shallow pond that was fringed with irregular flat stones. My mother directed the placement of each rock throughout the garden and the pond with an artist’s keen eye. My father built the beautiful granite bench from old stones piled behind the farmhouse, and it sat between the two pines that shaded the garden from the heat of the afternoon sun.  My brother and I were excited because my dad had also constructed a complex waterfall that cascaded down the stony hill to mist the wildflowers and feed the pond that was large enough for two children/adolescents and green frogs to wade in!

The rest of the wildflowers – spring beauties, Canada Mayflowers and other anemones, trout lilies, trillium, lady slippers came in time, all transplanted from our woods where they were abundant. Except for hepatica, a delicate blue flower that appeared at the moist edges of the field. Already becoming rare in our area, my mother was unwilling to risk moving even one plant.

The wildflower garden thrived for years under my mother’s, grandmothers, and my careful attention. It wasn’t until my grandmother’s death in 1974 that my grandfather filled in the pond and spread her ashes amongst the masses of wild bloodroot.  A fitting memorial. 

Wildflowers like the ones I helped plant so long ago remain the ones most dear to my heart. When I moved to the mountains, I brought bloodroot, trillium, anemones, trout lilies and various ferns with me and created my own wildflower garden that continues to thrive today. I still search for wildflowers recording wherever I find them. I have yet to find hepatica. These days I never dig up any wildflower or plant that I find. With a couple of exceptions. When the Gore Road was widened and bulldozed again, in utter desperation I removed the last of the shriveling trailing arbutus, lady slippers, and trillium hoping to save these flowers from extinction. To my satisfaction all survived with trailing arbutus spreading everywhere throughout this property, but I never would have risked transplanting it (or any of the others) without knowing exactly what to do and knowing from experience the kind of habitat these plants must have to thrive. My mother and nature taught me well.

All the wildflowers mentioned here are native to the Northeast. Still considered ‘common’, my field work as a naturalist suggests otherwise. We know that wildflower habitats are being destroyed by heavily traveled trails (even on foot), logging, housing, global warming etc. 

Every day I give thanks for the forests that being left to re-wild themselves by visionary people, some whom I am privileged to call friends, for herein lies the key for wildflower survival.

Happily, there are alternatives to digging these plants in the wild if you are interested in creating a wildflower garden. Mc Laughlin Gardens in South Paris sells some native wildflowers and there are a multitude of heirloom wildflower and seed catalogs available to anyone that is interested.

My only two caveats: please do not remove any wildflower from the wild, and please do thoroughly research any wildflower you wish to plant after purchasing, because each has very specific requirements.

 Another piece of information worth knowing is that in most places the wildflower show is over by the end of May! 

Golden Eyes

Golden Eyes

 When I was a small child, most girls liked dolls; I had a huge frog that squealed. I dragged the earsplitting amphibian everywhere I went, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would seek out the live frogs who inhabited the woods as soon as I could! 

I think my sibling and I were both born naturalists. As soon as my little brother was old enough, we took flashlights into the woods at night to visit a marsh that quacked! We watched bulging gold rimmed eyes and ballooning throats belonging to two -inch masked bandits who ushered in the spring with hypnotic conversation even while sheets of ice still lingered. (This shallow marsh, bursting with skunk cabbage and budded marsh marigolds was our favorite place to visit because frogs quacked, peeped, and croaked there all spring). Deafening. After the third or fourth night, wood frog symphony ceased abruptly. Each year we returned to count the massive amounts of jellied egg clumps that appeared like magic throughout the marsh. These round clusters were always attached to some kind of grass or detritus just under the surface. Black on the top and white on the bottom the freshly laid eggs enveloped in jelly (that held together even when transporting by pail) developed a greenish tinge as algae covered all the clusters left behind – future food for tadpoles. 

I was eight years old when we collected the first wood frog eggs to raise in an aquarium. We changed the water daily. As the tadpoles matured, we fed them bits of lettuce, impatient for back legs to appear. We were careful to make certain that their home became partially terrestrial as the gilled tadpoles transformed into froglets that breathed air through their lungs and skin. I was transported by gold rimmed eyes, the black masks they wore and their coppery brown/tan bodies that shimmered with an iridescent glow…I always had trouble saying goodbye when we returned our catch to their birthplace as froglets. I loved them so.

 Almost 40 years later when I moved to my present home in the mountains, I immediately sunk an old oak barrel into the ground next to the stream with the intention of increasing the local frog population. Green frogs were abundant but few wood frogs lived in my immediate vicinity (I did have peeper springs and a couple of vernal pools above the waterfalls further up the serpentine brook). I had been haunted for years by the threat of eventual frog extinction after reading scientist and visionary Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ as a young adult. She warned us about the dire consequences of the continued use of pesticides/herbicides in 1962. Frogs were especially vulnerable she said because they breathed through both lungs and skin. Our canaries in the coal mine. Because I loved frogs and hoped to help them survive, I wanted as many as this habitat could support. 

The following April raucous quacking split the night in two. Three days later silence, but in the oak barrel attached to some submerged cattails were three clumps of gorgeous eggs that soon became wiggling black tadpoles. I supplemented my wood frogs diet of algae and rotting leaves with tiny bits of torn lettuce, adding a few bugs for good measure just as I had done as a child. I kept a sharp eye out for back legs and when they appeared I placed a wooden raft in the water as well as a ladder made from bark so no one would drown, and by early July pinky sized masked bandits began hopping around my feet before vanishing into lush vegetation reappearing down by the brook.

That was the beginning. I have been raising wood frogs, peepers, and toads ever since. Eventually, I constructed a large vernal pool upstream by digging out debris around a bubbling spring that fed the brook, ringing it with stones and wild greenery. Until recently this spring fed oasis always held water until the eggs of wood frogs and peepers hatched transforming into frogs. When I discovered that salamanders were eating tadpoles, I began to remove the intruders’ eggs transferring them to another vernal depression across the field, a practice I continue to this day.

Every year more wood frogs hopped around my feet. Peepers also laid eggs in my barrel, and because I had so many tadpoles, I was careful to supplement their diet twice daily so they wouldn’t predate on each other. Green frogs took over the barrel after the froglets left. I caught sight of a leopard frog a few times, but this habitat primarily supported wood frogs, peepers, and migrating green frogs. Naively, I thought my efforts had been successful.  

When summer drought became more prevalent (last ten years) my large vernal pool started to dry up in June – too soon. I checked on others further up the stream. All were shrinking or gone. The water table was dropping. That year I took about a thousand tadpoles down to North Pond to release when my shallow pool turned to mud. A desperate move due to fish predation. Outside my door wood frog tadpoles still thrived in their barrel, only because I was able to control the water level. 

 After the vernal pool continued to dry up most years, the once abundant clusters of wood frog eggs began to plummet. Because wood frogs are an indicator species, (masses of wood frog eggs designate a vernal pool as a conservation area) I found this trend alarming. Last year we had a heat wave in April. Two nights of quacking. Wood frogs laid one clutch of eggs in the old barrel, and then it froze – hard. Two more clusters appeared below in the vernal pool. Not one egg hatched. 

I also spend three seasons in protected forest lowlands and have noted adult wood frogs are still visible, not as plentiful as before, but can be seen if one knows where to look for them. My one hope.  

 I recently learned that Dr. Nat Wheelwright, professor of biology at Bowdoin has been monitoring wood frogs for 28 years. In 2013 he lost a whole pond filled with wood frog tadpolesto a ranavirus within 24 hours. There have been other losses, none quite so severe. Apparently, this disease which also affects salamanders, is becoming more of a threat to sensitive indicator species like wood frogs and some salamanders.

As of December 2021, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed 673 critically endangered amphibian species, including 146 which were tagged as possibly extinct. 9.2% of all evaluated amphibian species were listed as critically endangered.

 Fragmentation of forested areas is a direct result of massive amounts of logging and new housing developments in this area. The role that continued use of pesticides/herbicides has consequences we don’t seem able/or willing to measure. Water and air pollution are ongoing factors. A UN assessment done in 2019 found that half a million insect species are under threat of extinction. All frogs need to eat insects, snails, and slugs to survive.

 Unfortunately, studying a frog of ‘least concern’ (LC) like the wood frog is not a priority with researchers/academic institutions/governments so research is scarce. Most frog sites still categorize these frogs as being quite common in Maine.

“When it comes to frogs Least Concern (LC) is total nonsense. All amphibians are seriously threatened,” states Al Falster, Research Director Maine Mineral and Gem Museum (scientist and accomplished naturalist).

Sources vary but frogs have been around for 250 – 400 million years and have managed to survive 4 or 5 extinctions. They are found throughout Alaska and the Northeast, in small numbers further south. Wood frogs are the only frogs who live above the arctic circle. They adapt to cold by allowing their bodies to freeze (a special kind of antifreeze called glucose prevents ice from freezing cellular tissue). The first warm days and nights thaw wood frogs out. Hurriedly, they migrate to vernal ponds and ditches to lay eggs before vanishing into forested lowlands, the most likely place to spot one. They are ready to breed at 1-2 years and return to the same sites year after year. Sexes can be distinguished by looking at the shape of the webbing on back toes. Females have concave webbing, males convex. Females are larger and sometimes a lighter tan and can lay as many as 1000 – 3000 eggs. I am painfully aware that it’s been years since I’ve seen such large clusters around here. 

 As I come to the end of this narrative one question looms: What can we do to support wood frog populations? The first answer to this question is simple. Allow forests to re-wild. Once woodlands have a chance to begin recovery vernal ponds will appear naturally. Healthy forests will sustain them. 

Another option is if you have a low moist area that is partially shaded on your property (necessary now with sudden heat waves) dig in a barrel, vernal pool, or a create a shallow pond that doesn’t support fish, but please make sure that you have a regular uncontaminated water source to supplement shrinking waters if you choose either a barrel that has not been treated, or a vernal pool. Either way make certain the area is planted with local vegetation and stones. Emerging froglets need protection. I put a huge piece of driftwood in the center of my vernal pond. Within a year it had marsh grasses sprouting all around it, becoming a hideout for all.

Once your tadpoles get to know you, they will swim to the edges of their enclosure to visit, eyeing you with curiosity. All have different personalities. I’ll wager you’ll never be the same.

Long live the wood frogs, those masters of genuine transformation! – from egg to tadpole, to frog, these creatures are able to bring forth new life.

What’s Love Got To Do With It

My little brother and I spent our happiest childhood years on my grandparents’ pre-revolutionary farm. I remember my grandmother perching us on my grandfather’s oak desk (as toddlers) so we could watch robins and chickadees in one of the 300 plus year old sugar maples or oak trees that shaded the house during hot summer days … trees that we later climbed and lived in, spending our daylight hours with the birds. Bluebirds raised their broods in the bird houses my dad and grandfather built and posted on the ten-acre field just beyond the old farmhouse. Apple, Pear, and Cherry trees thrived in the open landscape. In the spring fragrant blossoms took my breath away; bees sipped nectar from every flower. We took to the woods with flashlights to watch the wood frogs and peepers singing at night. In the fall my brother and I would collect golden apples (as we dodged dining wasps) that my grandmother then baked into pies.

 Set free to explore the woods, swamps, and brooks all year round, my brother and I were naturalists long before we had any awareness of the term. When setting off for the woods as soon as we were old enough, we trailed cardboard boxes behind us. These containers held our lunches, and the bird, reptile, mammal, insect guides that we could read for fun, or  use as a reference for new discoveries.

Neither of us would have said it then but we were in love with dogs, birds, brooks, trees, skunk cabbage, marsh marigolds, salamanders, newts, frogs, butterflies, fireflies, deer – all animals/plants/trees that we could befriend. Virtually every living being we encountered captured our attention. Because we were situated in the country interacting with wildlife was a daily experience. It never occurred to either of us why deer, woodchucks, weasels, and foxes (to mention a few) let us approach them without fear, often following us around.

Nothing changed as we grew older. The forest was our home – our safe place. A place of perpetual wonder. For me it still is.

As an adult educator I taught Natural Sciences/ Ecology at the university level (among other things) but after fifteen years I became disillusioned. It seemed to me that the entire focus was on acquiring and classifying information. Where was the wonder I continued to experience? Something was wrong but I didn’t know what it was. 

I was already a published nature writer who always wrote from personal experience/perspective when it finally occurred to me that feeling, ‘falling in love with nature’ was not included as part of the academic agenda. Why? Because academic learning does not allow a researcher to develop a relationship with whoever one might be studying while observing. Naming and classification are the primary ways we use to learn about our subject (always the ‘other’ – an it). We call attachment behavior anthropomorphizing – attributing human characteristics to the wild creatures and plants we encounter. Materialistic/mechanistic science, our current paradigm, criticizes/ostracizes any scientist or researcher that dares to interject feeling into any academic discussion. Plato’s Mind over Matter lives on. We privilege ‘facts’ that don’t even exist like the famous one about objectivity. (Niels Bohr demolished that myth more than 100 years ago). Today’s facts are too often tomorrow’s mistakes! The current theory suggests that we live in an evolving universe.

 In Natural Sciences we create theories and try to prove them while accruing masses of information. If we can’t quantify it, it’s not good science… A good example is bird migration… we have many theories, have tagged, killed, and dismembered many birds in the name of science but we still have not solved the mystery of how birds find home even when young ones have never been there before. The usual explanations offered include use of the sun moon and stars for navigation, the use of magnetic fields, or attributing ‘genetic programming’ to bird behavior when we can’t find any other explanation. All probably contribute, but the point I’m making here is that we still don’t know how birds manage to return to their summer or winter homes when migrating, or as in the case of homing pigeons, manage to cross oceans to reach their lofts (see sheldrake.org recent release on homing pigeons).

 Although we are finally acknowledging that birds can feel after having lost 3 billion birds, no one other than Sheldrake (that I know of) has posited the obvious – that birds may return to their homes because they are attached to them (I can imagine the screams/outrage – heresy – burn her at the stake).

What happens when we fall in love is that we create a relationship or bond to the being in question be whether it be bird, animal, or tree. Awareness or consciousness seeps in opening a door to communication. We are already related through our DNA (differences are minimal when one attends to the big picture). When we start observing, asking questions, developing feelings, and sometimes identifying with an animal, a tree, or bird that being may respond in unusual ways.

 Last year it was the hemlocks that began the conversation. I simply followed the nudges I was receiving. I made a conscious effort to become a receiver, a person who listens as she observes…I am keenly aware that other species have lives of their own with purposes that may be quite different from mine. Thus, communication occurs most effectively when I quiet my mind and open my heart…I am NOT suggesting that this tree was talking to me, at least in the usual way. However, trees did respond singly and as part of their community, and because I was attentive, insights followed. Most seem to bubble up from my body and this makes good sense because our feelings, senses, intuition etc. reside in our bodies. It’s at this point that my mind attempts to untangle the meaning(s) behind what I am sensing…body and mind – we need both.

There is one more point I need to make. When this kind of communication occurs it carries a grounded sense of truth – a kind of inner knowing that’s impossible to articulate. Like a stone sinking into my pelvis, my root connection to earth creates a resonance with the whole of nature throughout my body.

No doubt my experiences will be considered absurd by many. And yet, ironically, the reason the earth is in crisis is primarily because humans have forgotten how to perceive or listen to the messages our planet has been trying to give us as species after species go extinct. Apparently, few are aware that humans may be next. Earth is our source and context – our home. No small point here.

 I am not suggesting that education isn’t important if one is going to make most disciplines, including science, a career choice. However, it is critical from my point of view to include in one’s education learning how to be present to the experience of being with a frog, or weasel, because this is when a person can also develop an emotional attachment to that being.

 ‘Falling in love’ allows us to see, sense feel intuit in ways that defy explanation as I just tried to explain using my experience with hemlocks as an example. Perhaps learning to listen is the most important skill of all.

Unfortunately, the dominant culture continues to privilege mind over body, intellect over senses. ‘Trust the experts’ or take a course and become a ‘master’ something – you fill in the blank. Or maybe like me you accrue degrees. What we need to remember is that learning is a life – time process. I believe I am learning this lesson well, because the more skilled I become as a naturalist, the more obvious it is to me that I will always be a beginner.  

In closing I hope that I have demonstrated through this personal narrative that education is not enough when it comes to learning about the complexity that is Nature (inside or outside academia). We learn the most by integrating our thinking with our senses. We educate ourselves to learn more about some other non – human being but… 

WE SAVE WHAT WE LOVE.

Resurrection

Experts quiped 

you would

not rise

Too old

they said

Abandoned

Pink and Rose.

No one

 imagined

 resilience,

  pattern 

  birthing

form

to vine.

Gray green

 veins

swell,

pulse,

pump

sugars 

skyward,

powered

by a

single root.

Bowed blade

circles

round to

 Beginning

 buried deep.

Spiral loosens,

ascends

seeking sun

star heat.

Two translucent

leaves appear.

 Oh, remember

who you

are!

Scarlet Runner

 Sunrise

 Passion,

Auburn Light.

In the monotonous gray glare, spring feels like a dream. It is a challenge to stay present to now without succumbing to something akin to despair. Another round of raging northeasters… Will this winter ever end?

 But I have help. Mourning doves are cooing all day long, turkeys are gobbling, and flocks of chickadees and cardinals gather at the window for seeds.

And now I am witness to the birth of a scarlet runner bean.

Ten days ago I threw an old mauve and rose bean seed in a packet of liverworts that I was taking to my friend‘s lab to view under a microscope.

The seed was an old one that I had used for a number of years in winter bouguets. I still have no idea why I added the seed. After a year or two scarlet runners are no longer viable (according to experts). Imagine my astonishment when I opened the packet and discovered the seed had germinated! My friend, an experimental scientist and I peered at the root microscopically; I was astounded to see hundreds of rootlets waiting to penetrate soil that will eventually allow them to join a mycelial network.

When I reached home I planted the sturdy white root in poor compacted soil, the only untreated medium I had access to during the winter.

Three days ago I noted the bulging surface. The seed was struggling to break hard ground. One day later the seed case was visible as was a grayish veining leaflet that curled in on itself in a tight spiral as if saying goodbye to its root. 

After a trip to a greenhouse for organic (non – miracle grow) medium the next day I amended the soil on the surface, raking some in with a fork but left the root untouched.

Within 24 hours I had a bean plant. During this period I photographed the changes that occurred within hours – just obsessed by the process – and just as if I hadn’t been planting  seeds all my life! The naturalist in me obviously retains a child of wonder.

Yesterday’s poem was a tribute to my charged relationship with this particular bean plant. It wasn’t until I finished the writing that It became clear that the boundaries between the seed and myself had blurred. 

I have been a gardener all my life and had only recently given up growing scarlet runners because the abundance of deer ravaged both vines and flowers. Fenced in gardens create such artifical man made boundaries…so I adapted, believingmy life with scarlet runners had come to an end. 

(my garden full of scarlet runners before the deer destruction)

Well, not quite. I promised this bean that s/he would find home here and be left to grow into maturity safely. How I will acomplish this? Fencing. I‘ll transplant the bean next my  protected guardian cedar!

Sandhill Cranes; Women with Wings

Sandhill Cranes – a Nation of Women with Wings

 

Historically they used the Eastern flyway but were extirpated by hunting… a slow recovery is in process and the stately Sandhill cranes are once again returning to breed in Maine… so far only birders have been keeping track of their numbers but these majestic pre-historic birds have haunting cries that are often described as bugles, rattles, croaks and trumpets and can be heard 2 -3 miles away. They also utter sounds that combine a kind of brrring in unison. Their impending arrival next month calls up a chant I love…

“There’s a river of birds in migration, a nation of women with wings.
There’s a river of birds in migration, a nation of warriors with wings.”

I remember the chill that crawled up my spine as those words seeped into my body all those years ago… I wept, not knowing why.

I had exactly the same experience when I first heard the brrring cries of Sandhill cranes heading towards the river to roost in New Mexico seven years ago. Entranced, I stood there struck dumb – awed as tears slid down my face. 

I re -membered, felt something – but didn‘t know what it was… and whatever it was/is still haunts me when I hear that song or recall the cries of the Sandhills circling round in the sky to orient themselves to the right direction before heading to their northern home to breed.

I am a woman in migration, a woman with wings….

Today when I listen to the cranes on You Tube,  – I‘m impatient thinking about them and need to hear their eerie unearthly calls before they arrive – I am keenly aware that we have lost three billion birds. And even in the fields I visit to watch Sandhills feeding on old grain and corn I also see the signs: POISON STAY OUT. This vulnerable population is ingesting pesticides that are sprayed on the fields – not just here but everywhere. Not one birder I know who visits these fields to watch the cranes ever mentions those signs.

 

The cranes are also actively hunted in the fall and spring along the Eastern (Tennessee and Kentucky) and Central Flyways (fourteen more states situated on or near the central highway – the route most heavily traveled). In Maine there is not enough evidence to be certain about just how the Sandhills get here, but my guess is that they use the Eastern Flyway because they remember the route from long ago when they once migrated to Maine in healthy numbers (see sheldrake.org). Some observers in Maine and other New England states believe they are seeing the same flock (s) migrating north and south. These birds, like so many species, were extirpated by hunters… it’s taken a couple of centuries for them to begin a cautious return. That we have Sandhills nesting so close to my home is a source of poignancy and pure joy.

I am a woman who sees…

Women and Birds belong together: we are the hunted ones, dismissed despised, invisible, murdered. Like birds. Who will notice when we are gone?

 I am only too aware of how many women we have lost to violence, rape, and murder – the reality that patriarchy perpetuates. Men must have their guns. Women must remain silent or be silenced … We could rise up as ‘a nation of women’ to stop the carnage but as things stand now most women can’t even be civil to one another across the isles. Our resistance to quelling the bird and animal hunting massacre speaks to our tacit acceptance of the superiority of man, the rightness of his love of guns and lust, our acceptance of the worst objectification women have ever been subjected to, and the need to allow the killing machine to continue. 

  Just like the birds we are under attack by the NRA.

Is our only viable option flight?

 What I have learned from the various women’s movements is that taking to the streets is not enough, standing up for our beliefs is not enough. Truth telling is not enough. Endurance is not enough. Patriarchy isn’t crumbling – Yet. I’d like to think it might be in its death throes because this destructive system is now turning on itself – like a dragon swallowing its own tail.

 Nature is also intervening to redress hubris and imbalance, graphically demonstrating to humans how stupid we have become as a species. As we poison the fields the Sandhills feed in, we poison ourselves. The elements of wind and water make certain that no  home grown food or field will be spared.

I am a woman in flight.

I dream of joining the cranes, who in their most ancient wisdom  understand that no species survives without genuine community. Not pockets of like-minded folks, but the kind of community that embraces all differences, in deference to the whole.

Our culture praises human endeavors and independence while I look to cranes who reveal and reflect the interdependence that all of us need to survive.

Leave until it’s safe to return?

I‘m learning how to listen….

During the month of March I don my feathery cape, becoming a bird woman who is obsessed by bird migration. Even with masses of snow covering the ground my beloveds are starting to migrate to their summer homes and breeding grounds. Each morning I consult Cornell’s bird cast to find out which birds flew over my county last night. At First Light, long before dawn I am outdoors standing in the snow recording a new migrant call, a cardinal song, a courting male dove, turkey twittering, gobbling, chickadee convocations – embracing a chorus of avian concertos. I watch the pair of ravens fly through a deep blue crack between twilight and dawn, silent, perhaps praying for all. Messengers in flight. I scatter the first round of seed. Once inside I place some on my windowsill so that the chickadees and I are parted by less than two feet….

I cannot live without them.

Still listening…

I’m a warrior woman in flight,

attached to Roots 

sprouting hyphae

 under frozen ground.

A few bits of information regarding Sandhill cranes:

Most Sandhills use the Central Flyway but some fly over Mississippi. There are four flyways in all. During migration the cranes typically fly 200 to 300 miles a day attaining speeds of 25 – 35 miles an hour. During migration family groups travel together. At night they feed and roost communally. Sometimes cranes gather in the thousands but most groups are smaller. Sandhill cranes mate for life and except for nesting spend their years in close relationship with relatives and friends. Always watching out for each other. They breed and nest in bogs, marshes, damp meadows and open wetlands. Although some migrants will breed in the US many continue to Canada and even beyond, entering Siberia. Sandhill cranes are one of the most ancient birds on earth. In Nebraska one fossil was found to be ten million years old

.“There’s a river of birds in migration, a nation of women with wings.
There’s a river of birds in migration, a nation of warriors with wings.”

We Save What We Love

My little brother and I spent our happiest childhood years on my grandparents’ pre-revolutionary farm. I remember my grandmother perching us on my grandfather’s oak desk (as toddlers) so we could watch robins and chickadees in one of the 300 plus year old sugar maples or oak trees that shaded the house during hot summer days … trees that we later climbed and lived in, spending our daylight hours with the birds. 

 Bluebirds raised their broods in the bird houses my dad and grandfather built and posted on the ten-acre field just beyond the old farmhouse. Apple, Pear, and Cherry trees thrived in the open landscape. In late spring fragrant blossoms took my breathe away; bees sipped nectar from every flower. In April we would set off for the woods with flashlights to watch and listen to the peepers singing up the night. May brought hepatica, bloodroot, violets, oh so many wildflowers often hidden under old leaves. Summer nights were alight with fireflies -both yellow and green. In the fall my brother and I would collect the golden apples (as we dodged dining wasps) that my grandmother then baked into pies.

 Set free to explore the woods, swamps, and brooks all year round, my brother and I were naturalists long before we had any awareness of the term. When setting off for the woods as soon as we were old enough, we trailed cardboard boxes behind us. These containers held our lunches, and the bird, reptile, mammal, insect guides that we could read for fun, or use to reference new discoveries.

 Neither of us would have said it then but we were in love with birds, brooks, trees, skunk cabbage, marsh marigolds, salamanders, newts, frogs, butterflies, fireflies, deer – all animals/plants/trees that we could befriend. Virtually every living being we encountered captured our attention. Because we were situated in the country interacting with wildlife was a daily experience. It never occurred to either of us why deer, woodchucks, weasels, and foxes (to mention a few) let us approach them without fear, often following us around.

Nothing changed as we grew older. The forest was our home – our safe place. A place of perpetual wonder. For me it still is.

As an adult educator I taught Natural Sciences/ Ecology at the university level (among other things) but after fifteen years I became disillusioned. It seemed to me that the entire focus was on acquiring and classifying information. Where was the wonder I continued to experience? Something was wrong but I didn’t know what it was. 

I was already a published nature writer who always wrote from personal experience/perspective when it finally occurred to me that attachment, ‘falling in love with nature’ was not included as part of the academic agenda. Why? Because academic learning does not allow a researcher to develop a relationship with whoever one might be studying. Naming and classification are the primary ways we use to understand our subject ( always an ‘other’ – an it). We call attachment behavior anthropomorphizing – attributing human characteristics to the wild creatures and plants we encounter –  Materialistic/ mechanistic science, our current paradigm, criticizes/ostracizes any scientist or researcher that dares to interject feeling emotions into any academic discussion. Plato’s Mind over Matter lives on. We privilege ‘facts’ that don’t even exist anymore like the one about objectivity. (Neils Bohr demolished that myth more than 100 years ago). Today’s facts are too often tomorrow’s mistakes! 

 In Natural Sciences we create theories and try to prove them while accruing masses of information. If we can’t quantify it, it’s not good science… A good example is bird migration… we have many theories, have tagged, killed, and dismembered many birds in the name of science but we still have not solved the mystery of how birds find home even when young ones have never been there before. The usual explanations offered include use of the sun moon and stars for navigation, magnetic fields, or attributing (random)‘genetic programming’ to bird behavior when we can’t find any other explanation. Most if not all probably contribute, but the point I’m making here is that we still don’t know how birds manage to return to their summer or winter homes when migrating, or as in the case of homing pigeons, manage to cross oceans to reach their lofts (see sheldrake.org)

 Although we are finally acknowledging that birds can feel after having lost 3 billion birds, no one other than Sheldrake (that I know of) has posited the obvious – that birds may return to their homes because they are attached to them (I can imagine the screams/outrage – heresy – burn her at the stake).

What happens when we fall in love is that feeling creates a relationship or bond to the being in question be whether it be bird, animal, tree. Awareness or consciousness seeps in opening a door to communication. We are already related through our DNA (differences are minimal when one attends to the big picture). When we start observing, asking questions, developing feelings, and sometimes identifying with an animal, a tree, or bird that being may respond in unusual ways.

 Last year it was the hemlocks that began the conversation. I simply followed the nudges I was receiving. I made a conscious effort to become a receiver, a person who listens as she observes…I am keenly aware that other species have lives of their own with purposes that may be quite different from mine. Thus, communication occurs most effectively when I quiet my mind and open my heart…I am NOT suggesting that this tree was talking to me, at least in the usual way. However, trees did respond singly and as part of their community, and because I was attentive, insights followed. Most seem to bubble up from my body and this makes good sense because our feelings, senses, intuition etc. reside in our bodies. It’s at this point that my mind attempts to untangle the meaning(s) behind what I am sensing…body and mind – we need both.

There is one more point I need to make. When this kind of communication occurs it carries a grounded sense of truth – a kind of inner knowing that’s impossible to articulate. Like a stone sinking into my pelvis, my root connection to earth creates a resonance through my body.

No doubt this attitude will be considered absurd by many. And yet, ironically, the reason the earth is in crisis is primarily because humans have forgotten how to perceive or listen to the messages our planet has been giving us as species after species go extinct. Apparently few are aware (or care?) that humans may be next. Earth is our source and context – our home. No small point here. Next stop the moon?

 I am not suggesting that education isn’t important if one is going to make most disciplines including science a career choice. However, it is critical from my point of view to include in one’s education learning how to be present to the experience of being with a frog, or weasel, because this is when a person can develop an emotional attachment to that being. ‘Falling in love’ allows us to see, sense feel intuit in ways that defy explanation as I just tried to explain using my experience with hemlocks as an example. Perhaps learning to listen is the most important skill of all.

Unfortunately the dominant culture continues to privilege mind over body, intellect over senses.‘Trust the experts’ or take a course and become a ‘master’ something – you fill in the blank. Or maybe like me you accrue degrees. What we need to remember is that learning is a life – time process. I believe this naturalist is learning this lesson well, because the more skilled I become the more obvious it is to me that I will always be a beginner.

In closing I hope that I have demonstrated through this personal narrative that education is not enough when it comes to learning about the complexity that is Nature. We learn the most by integrating our thinking with our senses. We educate ourselves to learn more about some other non – human being but…

 WE SAVE WHAT WE LOVE.

Shadows on the Snow

Shadows on the Snow

The following poems were written after making a decision to move into an apartment for the winter, and then struggling to understand what went wrong. Instead of community I met with hostility, and as we know one breeds the other, and for a time I got caught by my shadow too.

Called home out of necessity and need, the longer I stayed the harder it was to leave even when 16 feet of snow crashed down from the roof blocking the entire front of my house. ‘The Peace of the Wild Things’ is in my blood and as hard as I try, I can’t seem to make an adjustment to living in a town where crows and wo- ‘men’ rule, and birdsong is absent though migration is under way.

Last night I dreamed that Little Deer, (a very real small deer who lives on my land with his mother) who also carries my Indigenous name, was struggling to get to my window at home, though I am here. He couldn’t make it through the snow. It was just too deep. His struggle and mine are one. The night before, on the seed moon, his mother, Red Deer, appeared just outside the same window around midnight…

How to interpret such dreaming and experience is always the challenge, even when Nature speaks through two of her own…Am I being called home by my Indigenous roots? What I know is that here, I am locked into isolation that deadens me.

I have committed repeatedly to keeping an open mind, although not one person has welcomed me; virtually all have criticized my every move – focusing on my dogs. Just two days ago another complaint came in about my little girls – even though they hadn’t been here for almost two weeks! Obviously, someone is deliberately using the dogs to intimidate/blame insisting that I am not cleaning up after them when I am. Two days ago, I wrote to the owner naming the bullying and harassment that I continue to experience.

I have given up asking why.

What has happened is that I am starting to realize that harassment and hostility are not the real problems. But apparently being here is.

First of all, this behavior constellated my own harpie! I have ruefully acknowledged her as a part of myself, and that helps a lot.

  As a result, I am in the process of letting go of the confusion, anger, and resentment I initially felt, although I still feel keen disappointment. Naively, I suppose, I hoped for some kind of community. I have tried to imagine what kind of lives these people are living – lives perhaps without meaning attached. Bitterness perhaps.

I am also refusing to make a decision at this time. The practical part of me says it is time to leave my home in the winter, but my soul body is struggling, so I keep taking her home, grateful that I still have a home to go to. I cast daily circles of protection around us, and prayers for clarity are ongoing.

I am grateful that I am old enough to be patient. I also suspect that the hand of patriarchy is behind the confusion I can’t seem to let go of. My feelings are being blocked, which means my poor body is stuck experiencing unpleasant bodily symptoms. I can’t feel what I think I know.

I remind myself that I grew up in an ocean of confusion – whatever I felt was dismissed as nonsense if the feeling contradicted thought… this deadly pattern is repeating.

I share this conundrum because it is helpful to do so for me, and because I hope this writing might help others. When I am having difficulties, writing poems seems to help me articulate points that journaling doesn’t. The latter – too rational maybe?

Split Nomad 

(1)

Caught

Betwixt and Between

How can this be?

Peace,

Stillness

Sounds of Silence

Soul stitched

to Nature

Cardinal whistles

Turkey Twitters

White pines

Open skies

Winding brook

Waters rippling

as they rise

Sweet breathing

Beloved animals

And yet

Tortured body

drowns in

 churning waters

Abandoned

I can’t let go.

Day after day

Even here

 denied

sleep 

Body 

Keening

Innocence

a crimson stain

 on the snow

There

White Blobs of

Blinding Light

All Night Long

Steel and eggshells

Rules, 

Screaming Harpies

twisting meaning

Dead eyes

Envy?

Absence of kindness

stares of hatred?

Unnerving

one room to hide

Another kind 

of prison

Cringing

even the dogs

walk on air.

Flowing like Water

(2)

In the dream

I stand snow – bound

at the Crossroad

Listening

a still point

 centered

two paths

ahead

only I

can choose…

Postscript on snow.

 When snow covers the land and forest I love I struggle to stay attached to the deep green religion of hope, so psychically I am more vulnerable in the winter than during the other three seasons…My body thrives when her feet are touching brown earth. And from a visual standpoint, months of snow also creates monochromatic monotony… It is no surprise to me that death roams the hills and valleys in winter snow.