May Eve – A Time of Becoming

(unfurling three lobed Trillium by Trillium Rock)

 

Returning home to Maine in April has allowed me to experience winter turning her ancient wisdom filled face towards the maiden of spring. Although the month has been chilly, and until two days ago snow covered tree stripped mountains still held white dust, all Nature is celebrating renewal.

 

In the woods the maples are turning a deep rose red. Here in the yard all my fruit trees are waiting for May’s rain and the warmth of a waxing solar sun to set fragrant bursting blossoms, as are the lilacs. Blood red cardinals sing love songs in my pine forest, whistling up the dawn. Wood frogs croak in the vernal pools, laying jellied egg masses, young foxes race through oak groves crackling leaves in their wake. The goose stands watch over his nesting mate at the pond, a loon does the same, haunting the sky with his song.

 

On this still soft cloudy morning I peer into the forest beyond the brook noting a palette of grays  – the tree people on stilts – some slender, others thick, all well rooted – the trunks of some trees like maples and beech are smooth, others like ash and white pine are deeply grooved. All are well nourished by those who have gone before. Bare branches will soon be covered in feathery lime green. Balsam, Hemlock, Spruce and Cedar scent the air with Pinenes, those powerful healing oils of the forest whose fragrant breath heals damaged lungs.

 

This year I am listening to the sounds of woodpeckers – Sapsuckers bring in the first hummingbirds, Pileated woodpeckers carve oval doors, Downy and Hairy perch on telephone polls pounding deadwood when I walk to the pond.

 

On January 1st the first bird I heard was a woodpecker –a drumming flicker in New Mexico. The first bird sighting of the year always carries a message for me, and that day I had a vision of holes.

 

Something was coming… Now that this country is struggling with a pandemic that we humans have brought upon ourselves with our selfishness and disregard of non – human species – both plant and animal – we are reaping the first harvest of that which we sowed… And yet, all nature in the northern hemisphere celebrates this turning of the wheel, despite human suffering. Life goes on; and being able to participate in this process is a joy without parallel.

 

This year I turn towards May Day with reverence.

 

Yesterday I spent hours on my knees working in my overgrown perennial flower garden with the awareness that the position of my body revealed the depth of that reverence – I was bowed in prayer…

 

I feel overflowing gratitude for being alive, for being able to sit by still pools of water. I give thanks for ears to hear spring singing. I listen to the brook flowing – water rounding granite stone – just below the house. I walk through the deciduous wooded parts of this patch of land marveling over the tenaciousness of life to re –create itself out of a fallen tree stump, a rotting log. I count eight kinds of moss and lichen on Trillium rock. Emerald green sphagnum moss permeates my soul in the bog.

 

It is enough.

 

I am grateful, oh ever so grateful, to Nature for teaching me to see, to hear, to taste, to dream, to learn, to seek truth, to reflect, to feel fear, anger and heartbreak, and still to say yes to Love.

Bless Be the Trees that Bind

Photo credit Lynn Rogers

 

Today I begin to honor all trees as we enter the dark months of the year. The (three) Days of the Dead are on our doorstep and the veil thins – this is a reality that so many refuse to experience out of fear. This weekend we will return to “natural” or Indigenous time – giving us a chance to rise with an early morning sunrise and to allow a darkening sky to wrap her velvet cloak around us as the days continue to shorten. Nights are long and sweet, inviting contemplation, dreams, and deep abiding gratitude to befriend us.

 

This year, perhaps more than any other, I am crossing this threshold feeling a peace that I haven’t felt in months. Not because my life is simpler – it isn’t – I face so many unknowns – conflicts remain and some have escalated as well as darkened, health issues are unresolved. However, I am emotionally aligned with this seasonal change and the loss of harsh white light – a fierce light that casts no shadow. We live in such a frenzied culture. I am so negatively impacted by the monstrous amount of violence, the hatred, the lack of empathy that surrounds us … somehow the darkness helps me to process these daily atrocities with more equilibrium…

 

When the Great Bear rises in the early evening at this turning of the wheel I give thanks knowing that bear slaughter is coming to an end in a few weeks time. Hopefully, because of the cold, most bears that survive the hunt are bedding down beneath the roots of welcoming trees…

 

All trees are my steadfast friends. Around the house I have tied bits of orange ribbon to new seedlings that will someday spread their canopies over an unyielding desert floor (if left to grow when I am gone).

 

I continue to water my junipers who are so well adapted to desert conditions that they can continue to absorb moisture much longer than other trees, these same junipers that are being sprayed with deadly herbicides to kill them off.

 

Inside during the next few days I will be adorning the base of my Norfolk pine with a ring of white lights to celebrate this season of tree gratitude.

 

I have already tipped fragrant fir, pinion, and juniper greens for a wreath that I will weave some time in the next few weeks to honor the Circle of Life.

 

Outside, my adopted juniper provides juncos, sparrows, chickadees, thrasher, and flicker with predator protection. My tree was starved for water after four months of probable, not so benign neglect in my absence, her growth stunted, bunches of needles withered and dry.

Interrupting this cycle with watering, quiet conversation, and the power of touch I notice the tree has responded by turning her needles a dark spruce green – a welcome change from former ashen gray. This tree has a star at her center to celebrate the sanctity of our bodies – the importance of genuine feeling – When I think of trees I also think of women, especially the women of myth who turned themselves into trees or were turned by others into them – but I also associate trees with genuinely kind, loving and heroic men like Dr. Lynn Rogers who has advocated for white pine trees in Minnesota for decades…

 

Because of my intimate relationship with trees and plants I experience their losses on a visceral level, and am presently dealing with the violence that one man enacted on the limbs of the gracious cottonwoods that once created a cathedral on the path to the river. I told this man that what he did to the trees by chopping off their limbs, he did to me, and of course, that was his intent. This act of personal revenge for some imagined slight has left me grieving.

 

What I didn’t realize until this morning is that my dreams forecast this egregious action before it occurred. It was written into the stars and part of one man’s pathology. What he gained is questionable because as a tree woman I will not forgive him… I create a deliberate intention to remember… and perhaps in the process I can in some way “re-member” those broken cottonwood limbs returning them to wholeness like the girl who lost her hands.

Forgiveness is sometimes a way to release one’s hold on truths that often need personal attention. And violence is perhaps most deadly when it occurs covertly because hidden brutality paves the way for “forget it and just move on,” not surprisingly, this tree maiming man’s philosophy… he lives it well.

So I approach this time of year grieving personal loss and giving thanks for the trees that bind; all of whom hold me in their arms with Love.

Witnessed

It was dark

when I first heard Her

whooing overhead

bearing witness,

ushering in

the First of the

Harvest Moons.

The seasonal wheel turning towards

ripening fruit and seeds.

Summer’s Bounty.

This goddess, my mother,

is cloaked

in feathery mole brown splendor

a Sphinx flying

through the night.

S/he heralds the

Gift of Water

answering earnest prayers…

As ‘Changing Woman’ she brings rain

to soften cracked desert ground…

Greening every thirst driven plant pore.

And puddles formed

as rain barrels overflowed

And I was filled with Joy –

even before I started for

Red Willow River

under a pure white moon blossom

perched below a

down turned velvet bowl.

Hidden somewhere in a tangle of branches

She observed my approach…

And when I passed

under the Cottonwood tree

the Owl took flight.

Her wings

made no sound

when she landed

on a snag

above my head.

Steely yellow eyes glowing

Like coals – fiery

embers, Second Sight.

Presence flooded me

with wonder –

I knew Her well.

After this sudden burst of insight

I felt Her Love seeping through

this body birthed with holes.

Seen at last by my Beloved

I give thanks for

the Owl that

calls my name.