Chickadee Celebration

It takes so little

to please them –

a few seeds

a bare branched apple

a woodland hollow

 rushing mountain waters

 an overflowing brook.

We celebrate the gift of rain –

Swelling thirsty roots 

are singing

Water is Life.

We are the lush green forest

 breathing deep the scent of light.

 Chickadees gather in

the fruit tree

shaking tufted feathers

 undeterred by sheets

of cascading silver – 

prepared for

winter white,

as I hope to be –

apprenticed to them. 

Postscript: To be saturated by fall rain is to be given the greatest of gifts because as the poem says, Water is Life. Two days of rain, some light, some heavier downpours culminate in more than three inches of water that has  fallen over a long enough period of time to permeate roots and evergreen fingers, fill wells for now, and to bring back the emerald of green mosses.

 This summer of drought has brought me to my knees again and again as I have witnessed myself as a thirst driven root, insect ridden leaf, a cracked trunk, a shriveled seedling, a piece of desiccated moss, a flower that wilted too soon.

Today I pour my gratitude into the sweet earth giving thanks for this reprieve. With warmer temperatures predicted across the country for the winter I am hoping that summer’s drought pattern won’t become a permanent haunting…Whatever happens I have tasted the joy that Nature demonstrates through every winter bird that visits my feeders so enthusiastically – rather than causing chickadees, titmice, woodpeckers and nuthatches to seek cover, the rain seems to create an excuse for celebration! And like them I too am wandering around in the rain, soaking in scent, sinking into plush carpets of green moss and brown needles, watching the brook waters tumble over glacial stone…It is wondrous to witness, to hear how all of Nature sings and to feel that I too am a part of what is.

My Mother’s Hands

 

It is hard for me to write about my mother. She shut me out of her private life and had little use for a daughter whose birth trapped her in a marriage she might not have chosen otherwise.

 

I learned who she was through images. My mother began her artistic career as a painter who left crows and black beetles in the lower left side of her paintings – always something dark.

 

Sphinx-like she lived a life of silence and yet she revealed who she was through her art exploring different mediums.

 

I always wondered why she didn’t continue to paint.

 

When I was about 45 she began to work with clay. I remember an exquisitely crafted sculpture of a tree with a black hole at its center. That image haunted me for years. Another sculpture terrorized me – a cracked moss green egg birthing a sneering crocodile.

 

The seer intuited what might be ahead…

 

Today, years after my mother’s death I reflect upon her artistic genius and realize she lived her life in liminal space, staying whole and true to who she was through the images she created with such precision, skill, and grace.

Ecocide and PTSD

 

The fierce light of the white star pierced her thick white fur as the mother froze. She was trying to imagine how her cubs could make the jump from one jagged ice flow to another in the cracked deep blue waters.

Just a few months ago she had birthed them on solid well frozen ice – cubs who knew nothing but nurture – feelings of safety, love, rich abundant milk   – trusting their mother implicitly – the solid blue ice that supported them was home. Now her children faced the threat of death by drowning… A mountain of despair flooded the bear’s mind and body. Blind fear slammed through her young. To lose her cubs was more than the mother could bear. All the accumulated bear wisdom – 50 million years of bear knowing – could not help her now. Her children were helpless.

A polar bear that is forced to confront a situation like this one will live with consequences that will change her life. Nothing has prepared her for this day.  Just how she will be affected we do not know…but developing PTSD is a possibility/probability. (Her children, if they survive will have a 1 -3 chance of developing this disorder as well).

According to the most recent research in Neuroscience/Neuropsychology PTSD is a physiological state brought on by sudden trauma, or prolonged trauma that stretches back to childhood. Either way this trauma affects the individual at a cellular level, pre-disposing that animal or person to experience the world through a “darker lens”, one that may be dominated by fear. There is no cure.

Postscript:

The etiology of PTSD involves shock or violence of one kind or another. PTSD may occur suddenly as a result of a single trauma or it may extend over a lifetime beginning in early childhood. Approximately one out of three individuals (animal or human) may develop this disorder.

It is only recently that non human animals have been diagnosed with PTSD. Generations of wild animals like elephants, and whales who have been tortured and hunted down without mercy are starting to ‘crack’ – some erupting into acts of rage that are unprecedented…

Why? They have been unhinged by man’s violence.

Violence begets violence.

Neuroscience/Neuropsychology is providing us with explanations for this apparently bizarre behavior thanks to scientific researchers like Gay Bradshaw and Naturalists like Charlie Russell and myself.

I think one of the most important consequences of this cutting edge research/understanding is that it takes PTSD out of the category of “mental disorders” (removing a stigma) and places it where it belongs – in the cells of our bodies. PTSD is a physiological disorder.

Having suffered from PTSD for a lifetime it was a relief to have validation for my gut sense that this thing was ‘living in my body’, and that there was nothing I could do to stop “it” once the disorder was activated by yet another social stress.

Intuitively I knew…

As a researcher I recognized PTSD in animals that I studied years ago but could never find evidence to support my observations until now.

For anyone interested in understanding more about PTSD in wild animals (and more insight into our own behavior) I highly recommend Gay Bradshaw’s books “Conversations with Bears” or  “Carnivore Minds.”

 

Morning Meditation in July…

 

I have just returned from the brook where I offered up my Toad Moon prayers early this 4^th of July morning to the song of the hermit thrush and to the rippling waters that slip over stone – first honoring my body with a poem written just for her, and then by repeating my hope/belief/intention that the search has ended and my house will get the structural help she needs without invasive machines scarring my beloved trees and land… I release my doubt – a plague that has incarcerated me for months.

 

I felt my body rooting into forested soil… I belong here; I am loved here.

 

Peace filtered through the green – trees, seedlings, lichens, mosses, grasses and the clear mountain waters. Silence, except for Thrush’s morning benediction.

 

A prayerful moment at the beginning of each day opens a spirit door – a portal into the beyond perhaps, but also a sacred portal into myself – though I have experienced this lifting of the veil throughout my life it wasn’t until this winter in a New Mexican Bosque that the trees taught me a lesson I needed to learn. I must create space to do this morning meditation intentionally every single day – for myself, as well as for the Earth adding a third element to ritual. My walks to the river and Bosque began as a survival mechanism to deal with unbearable heat and transformed into a focused morning meditation that I hope to continue for the rest of my life … I didn’t plan it; it happened, and the Bosque full of trees, roots, fungus and hyphae was the medium… S/he opened the door.

 

Now the challenge is to stay strong and true to what I know… a four year journey into the hero’s (?) maze was the way I learned that this particular earth ground needs and contains me… Would her house timbers have cracked if I hadn’t abandoned her? She needs me to love her too.

 

It feels almost miraculous to experience a full moon in a grounded way after my experiences in the desert with an empty sky bowl of thin blue air, mighty winds that stilled the songs of birds and polluted the air, and nights that were rarely dark because the moon rarely slept perching in the sky for two weeks out of each month.

 

Too much air, too much stone, too much wind, a glaring sun… a sky bereft of stars for too long each month, no green, and no water….

 

How grateful I am for home…

 

Seal Skin – Soul Skin

 

 

This body is

my holy altar

my bounded skin

my embodied soul

my closet kin.

Midsummer Meditation

 

 

It is past “midsummer” and we are moving into the hottest time of the year without a drop of nurturing, healing rain… When I walk around I find myself focusing on the many different ferns that grace the forest edges – ferns that hold in precious moisture creating damp places for toads and frogs to hide, places for young trees to sprout, places for the grouse and turkey to hide their nestlings, ferns whose lacy fronds bow low as if in in prayer. Sweet fern covers the hill above and around the brook. The Ostrich ferns are giant bouquets that sprout up around Trillium rock shielding tender wildflower roots. Maidenhair is being devoured by insects, sadly, the only fern having difficulty here. New York ferns are stiff with ladder like fronds and the few cultivars provide soft shades of dark red, blue and green. Along my woodland paths the tall pale green bracken stalks have to be pulled although I leave all that I can around the edges to protect the mosses. All the ferns are forever unfurling in a state of becoming, spiral gifts for any discerning eye.

 

Ferns are just one of nature’s ways of dealing with drought. Without this lacy lime, fading emerald, gray green covering the soil would crack because it is already so parched; I imagine I can feel the stress of thirsty plant roots. Small leaves are yellowing and falling from fruit trees even in June.

 

I find myself wondering what mycelium highways are being created beneath the surface of the soil. The hyphal root tips are seeking water to feed what plants? Nearby trees? New seedlings? We know from Scientist Monica Gagliano’s work that these mycorrhizal fungi hear the brook’s barely rippling water and are making their way to its source… but I can only imagine this… I cannot see it. I do however, trust nature’s ability to adapt, and this knowledge brings me the greatest comfort of all. Nature can be trusted; S/he has seemingly endless ways of managing even during the destructive age of the Anthropocene.

 

When I meander around the house under the thick shade of the many trees I planted so many years ago, feel the soft moss beneath my feet, and smell the scent of moist air and water preserved in part because of my effort to work with nature, I cannot help but give thanks for living in this hollow, a well forested glen, where I find reprieve from lack of rain.

Solstice Lamentation

George Floyd…

I awaken to the muted songs of birds… the spring cacophony is spent… the brook barely ripples below the house, although the summer green still calms me, a balm for eyes that ache in the waxing, too brilliant, solstice sun – too many hours of light leave me agitated, scattered, pushing me towards mindless doing. Professional writing becomes a chore. I am too tired to read at night because of so much daily physical activity. Beneath the surface, tension works against the part of me that simply wants to be… I long for longer nights to redress this cyclic extreme – an imbalance that also leaves me enervated. Agitation and enervation both. Too much light casts no shadows.

Tomorrow the solstice heat will begin to climb – my summer torment has begun. And with the heat comes the noise of crazed motorcycles and guns. Aggressive people love the Fire, take pleasure out of crushing breath out of the innocent resulting in yet one more death of a black man.* Numbed by this latest atrocity, one that is literally beyond my comprehension, I am at the mercy of flames that I despise, and heat that steals my breath away too. I want to go with the turning facing this fierce inferno but cannot let go of my yearning for stillness, sanity, water, and peace…

The rains have not come. The soil is pitifully dry – vernal pools shrink to a dangerous low; almost two months have passed since we have had a soaking rain. It surprises me that so few notice. Kingfisher hunts hapless tadpoles in a disappearing pond. It seems to me that life’s predators hold sway. I witness drooping leaves and plants, water my garden every day, and try to live with the crushing depression that haunts me. My short term memory is deserting me – I leave glasses in one room and can’t remember where, food gets left on counters, precious pictures are stupidly and mindlessly deleted, where’s my bug net? I can’t stay in my body. Too much pain.

This year I am desperately trying to find someone to replace rotten timbers in my cellar and to interrupt what has become a serious health threatening moisture problem. A local contractor backed out last spring, leaving me searching desperately for anyone to do the work I need done… I would have had all winter to find someone else had he told me he was not willing to do the job. This betrayal requires taking some concrete action that I have yet to take… Three months have gone by and still nothing. I am now wondering how I can get by without replacing the timbers… I am constantly on edge – frightened about what will happen to my cabin, and what this means for me – all this frantic movement going on around me, and I am standing still.

I am weary from repeating an old pattern – why is it that I have so much trouble getting help? Hopelessness rises out of the depths. He has pearl white fangs and too many teeth…

*George Floyd’s horrific dying, while he struggled for breath is a crime so horrific that it has taken a week for me to absorb it. It reflects the gruesome reality of human cruelty. I never saw the video – just one revolting look at the picture struck me dumb.

What upsets me the most is that no one seems to notice the underlying pattern that accompanies these atrocities. First the murder, then outrage and protesting, and finally a return to the status quo. Oh yes, and every time millions to speak to the “hope” that accompanies the protesting – “This time it will be different”. We are a nation addicted to hope.

By the way, what’s the difference between hanging black man from a tree and crushing the breath out of another? Racism is a brutal FACT of human life then and now.

 

If only my bear would come…

If only my bear would come…

The Song of the Forest

 

When He comes

I forget who I am.

My story vanishes.

Boundaries dissolve.

Emerald green,

leaf filtered light,

clear mountain streams,

trees, lichens, moss –

become ‘all there is’.

In the still dawning

Animals speak.

 

Nature’s ultimate gift is that given the chance S/he dissolves the artificial socially constructed  boundaries that humans have erected to separate themselves from the Earth who is burning in the Fire, unable to breathe as many of us are struggling to do now.

We have a choice to re-establish interconnection – to become part of the  original family that birthed us 500 million years ago… regardless of outcome.

Developing an intimate connection with Nature allows us to disappear into the whole. Ironically, dissolution is where peace is found.

June Moon: The Berry Moon

 

I watered the soil thoroughly because it was so dry. I intended to plant my seeds and May has been a month of bizarre weather extremes. The last waxing moon frost occurred this week with temperatures in the mid 20’s. Finally, it was time…

 

When I awakened during the night a light drizzle sweetened the air as a solitary gray tree frog trilled from the brook. At dawn I was disappointed that rain had barely wet the leaves and yet the sky was soft with dark gray clouds, and it was delightfully cool, a perfect day for planting.

 

I felt excitement rising as I gathered my chosen seeds and began raking smooth the damp sweet earth, marveling of the fact that each seed contains the miracle of its own becoming. I was imagining the riot of color that would be visible by early August as I poked each seed into its home, tamped it down, and afterwards, watered again. Nasturtiums and Scarlet Runner beans would provide the back-drop for the perennial flowers in the lower garden all of which had escaped the frost. I was well pleased. Because of the light drizzle the seeds would not dry out today, I thought, with some satisfaction.

 

Finishing with the rock garden I moved up the hill to my herb patch. I planted four basil plants, the dill seedlings were nestled next to the lettuce, with parsley in between; happily the lemon thyme was recovering from its winter ordeal. Finally I seeded more basil directly into the soil and poked more trailing nasturtiums around the lettuce because the latter would be gone before the nasturtiums were big enough to shade the plants.

 

This simple little herb patch gave me as much pleasure as having a big vegetable garden once did. It was the relational act of co creating with the earth that mattered.

 

Afterwards I walked to the pond in the still gray air. I love humidity when it’s cool because the moist air holds the scents of so many trees plants, bushes and flowers. The combined effect is intoxicating. Especially now with the lilacs.

 

When the rain began I was back in the house. Instantly my eyes witnessed electric green emanating from the trees – all plants were breathing, saturating themselves with moisture. The evergreens stretched their fingers out, and the deciduous trees turned their leaves upward opening them to the sky. The grosbeaks, red wings, and cardinals sang love songs. Everyone loves the Cloud People.

 

Seeding in officially marks the end of heavy garden work for me. For two months I have been digging and moving plants from the big cottage garden into a smaller one that I can see from our screened and glassed in porch, our summer living room.

 

Reflecting over the past few years I remembered becoming disenchanted with gardening – the work was becoming too hard – so much so that I thought I was ready to let go. I was wrong. When the grass began to crowd out the delicate spring flowers and other old fashioned perennials so dear to me I realized I was missing my old friends.

 

At that point I left for the NM desert where I tried to garden in a hostile environment on land that did not belong to me. After attempting to create an oasis in impossible heat and wind I was forced to give up gardening for a second time, this time out of necessity. In that process I had developed a new perspective on gardening in Maine. It might be hard work but the rewards were worth it. I was ready to try again.

 

When I returned home this spring I knew that necessary construction would ruin what was left of the old fashioned overgrown cottage garden. Trusting that this work will happen ‘sometime’ motivated me to move plant after plant – choosing carefully what to keep and what to let go. The result is that I have created a lovely cottage garden that contains my most beloved perennial flowers. Hopefully I can care for these, at least for a few more years. It’s been quite a process, and I have learned the hard way that gardening is as necessary to me as breathing.

 

June’s full moon is upon us. Because so many wildflowers are sprouting fruiting bodies besides strawberries I have re named this solstice moon the Berry Moon… There is an old purple Berry Woman that lives in this forested wood inside an Elderberry bush I recently planted who can be coaxed out of hiding if the need is great. I hope she will help me break out of the paralyzed state I find myself in. I need help believing that I can find the builder, the help I need…

 

Once, a few years ago she left me a seed…

Tribute to Grizzly Bear Expert: Charlie Russell

(1941 – 2018)

 

 

“Learning entails more than the gathering of information.

Learning changes the learner.

Like dwarf pines whose form develop with winter’s design, the learner is shaped by what he learns.”

 “Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell”   Gay Bradshaw

 

 Learning from Nature;

A Personal Reflection on Charlie Russell

 

Naturalist Charlie Russell never went to college. Instead he spent his youth backpacking through the Canadian wilderness with his family. Nature was his mentor and home.

 

Charlie was a life-long student of Nature*. Although I never met him personally I read his astonishing books, Spirit Bear and Grizzly Heart. By the time I watched the Canadian Film about his work with grizzlies “The Edge of Eden” I recognized a kindred soul.

 

Charlie dedicated most of his life to befriending, studying, and educating others about Black and Grizzly bears. He spent 11 years in the Russian wilderness raising orphaned grizzly bear cubs and interacting with adult grizzlies, demonstrating to the public that these animals are not dangerous to humans unless they are hunted down by them.

 

Charlie never carried a gun and never had an altercation with a grizzly; he did carry pepper spray that was only used to protect the cubs he was raising from adult bears who sometimes prey on the youngsters. Most pictures show him walking in the wilderness with a wooden staff.

 

I was profoundly impressed by Charlie’s respect, deep humility and endearing compassion for the bears he encountered. He allowed bears to educate him through keen observation, keeping an open mind, asking challenging questions, reflecting, drawing his own conclusions and sticking to them, (a way of being that mirrors my own process).

 

Charlie Russell life’s work may someday change the way humans perceive bears. Charlie understood what it meant to love a bear and how this ability shifted the relationship between humans and bears to one where mutual respect developed into deep abiding friendship.

 

Charlie spent his life as a truth seeker. He wanted to understand how bears think and was capable of looking at behavior from the bear’s perspective. In addition to having a keen, discerning, open mind, he acted on his intuition and used all of his senses to educate himself about the bears he studied.

 

In Conversations with Bears Charlie states that learning changes the learner; the learner is shaped by what s/he learns.

 

Learning about bears certainly shaped Charlie into a remarkable human being.

 

Charlie understood that bears needed respect just as humans need it; that bears responded positively to apologies, just as humans do, that bears needed to be loved just as humans do – and if these criteria are met people have nothing to fear from bears.

 

Conversely, if the need to slaughter is on the mind of humans, a bear will pick up on the threat. Most bears choose retreat as a strategy when threatened but occasionally one will attack, and it is those bears that feed man’s fear and hatred of nature, while terrifying images of giant blood soaked teeth and jaws keep the NRA in business.

 

As Charlie stated, bears don’t become dangerous without a reason. If a bear is frightened or hunted down by people or by dogs s/he might retaliate. The same might be true for a bear that is separated from his food by humans, or a female grizzly with cubs that is cornered. Dwindling habitat and a sustained policy of shoot on sight has created a situation in which traumatized bears – bears who have witnessed their mother’s being shot or being targeted for the kill generation after generation – is taking a terrible toll on these animals, who left to their own devices would befriend humans only too willingly.

 

Charlie’s dedication to bears, his extensive life experience living in peace with bears (even as a rancher), his love, respect, and deep compassion for Ursus provides us with a model the rest of us could follow. Bears and humans could co –exist peaceably if humans would only allow them to.

 

To this naturalist who has not had any encounters with grizzlies or polar bears but has developed extensive knowledge of Black bears, thanks to the bears themselves, who taught me most of what I learned, Charlie was a beacon of hope and sanity. Personally, he was the one person who helped me the most to trust my intuition, my senses, the truths of my body, when working with bears. When Charlie asked questions I heard my own silent queries verbalized.

 

To be educated and shaped by nature like Charlie was allows us to re-enter the Circle of Life, a way of being in the world that would end the existential loneliness that so afflicts our modern population.

Cross Country Journey…

From New Mexico to Maine

–

 

Last November I had a terrifying dream. I was looking down at a river from a great distance. A huge iridescent pulsing blue serpent (it looked like a python) was swimming along the river; it was bearing down on us; there was nothing I could do to stop it. For the Huichol and some other Indigenous peoples the presence of the blue serpent means death is on the horizon.

 

As a precognitive dreamer I recognized that some frightening force that involved a bodily threat was on its way (snakes represent the life force/body in most mythologies), but beyond this realization had no idea of the precise nature of this menace – just that it involved the whole culture. In late January I had two more precognitive dreams reinforcing the same threat before the C/virus struck the United States.

 

I was planning to return to Maine at the end of April because I had to be present for foundation work to begin on my little log cabin, but in early March I had a very personal precognitive dream. “It’s time to get going.” I began packing that day. More frightening dreams followed as my sense of urgency increased to an unbearable pitch. All I knew was that we had to leave as soon as possible. I barely slept, yet my dreams were relentless. I trusted the truths of my dreaming body because she is connected to the Body of the Earth… my earth body self knows things I cannot even imagine…

 

We left for Maine on the last day of March. A 2500 mile journey lay ahead but I was so relieved to be on the road moving away from an unknown threat even though we were also moving towards a peopled concentration of the C/virus. I had planned carefully for the trip. We slept and ate in the car, used the woods as our bathroom. Our only contact with people was at gas stations where we wore gloves, kept our distance, and paid with a credit card. With the C/virus escalating as we moved towards the east coast it was imperative that we took no chances.

 

There were some serious issues between my companion and I that went unattended. I believed we were not in any hurry and could take as long as we needed to make the trip safely. My driver disagreed, refusing to stop for any breaks despite knowing that this unexamined  willful behavior was dangerous to his health. We made a record breaking trip in three and a half days, arriving here in the middle of the night in heavy rain.

 

I was unbelievably grateful although my nervous system had been on scream because of the interminable high speed driving and stress. Two days later my companion was hospitalized. He paid a steep price for ignoring my pleas and (probably?) those of his doctor. Fortunately, he is all right now. For about a week after our arrival every time I closed my eyes I saw a speeding highway. I am still recovering from an acute PTSD episode.

 

What got lost in the chaos/trauma around our return were the special moments we shared during this trip. All the astonishing Rosebud trees were blooming in four states we sped through. If we hadn’t stopped each evening I never would have gotten a picture of one. Night became my Beloved… every morning I longed for her and the peace that would come at the end of that day’s frenzied driving…

 

 

After finding a quiet place on a country road to spend the night I made sandwiches for us, fed the dogs, gave my dove Lily b his water and took my dogs Hope and Lucy for their only really long walk of the day exercising my aching back and body and breathing in the sweet night air in the process. On April 1^st I heard the first peepers singing their hearts out. Every night I gave thanks for the day that had just passed. I experienced a strange sense of being protected by Something.

 

In the morning I awakened to the whistling calls of the Cardinals, (my absolutely favorite bird except for Sandhill cranes). I was starved for the spring bird cacophony that had been missing in Abiquiu. I was relieved to see that diversity still existed elsewhere. One night we stopped before dusk to camp in the driveway of an abandoned house. Lily b had a chance to be outside; he perched on an old upended garbage can and stared at his surroundings with rapt attention. I watched a phoebe fly into an open porch with twigs in her mouth. Meadowlarks sang heartrending serenades. Awake before sunrise I walked the dogs for at least 15 minutes and gloried in the shimmering golden light of dawn… The pale green of unfurling leaves brought tears to my eyes. One night we camped on a hill inside a magnificent six-acre state park. While walking the dogs just before dark a whole herd of white – tailed deer passed by us in the valley below. It was here that I was able to take pictures of the Rosebud trees. That pre-dawn walk will stay with me forever. The rolling mountains were so astonishingly beautiful tinted in deep green and lime. I fell in love with spring again.

These precise images stand out with a peculiar starkness and clarity, perhaps because overall the trip was exceedingly difficult and exhausting. For those moments at least, I was emotionally present, living in my body.

 

I am writing this reflection eighteen days later. The threat of the virus is minimized in this area because stringent precautionary measures were taken from the beginning of the viral outbreak. It is possible to shop, use a pharmacy and get gas locally. My vet, doctor and the dedicated folks of the Bethel Health Center are less than ten minutes away.

 

I wonder what specific threat was avoided by our hurried departure from Abiquiu. If past experience is any indication, I probably will never know.

 

However, with that much said I suspect it had to do with the virus itself. My companion repeatedly ignored my pleas to use protection when dreams told me the virus was “under our feet” before it was publically acknowledged in Arriba county where we lived.