Sparkling Lotus Ink

Grandfather Hickory

Isn't he magnificent?!?  This is how he appears from our front steps throughout our green-season months.  His presence is the first thing I register when I hit the bottom of the stairs and automatically open the door to release the cat.  But there's nothing automatic about the way I stand and gaze at our property's western guardian every morning and night.   One of the things I love most about this image (other than it being one of the few times I've successfully captured the greenalicious haze and harmony that personifies what this place looks and feels like roundabout my birthday) relates to the way Grandfather's shadow rolls up the widening lawn in a capture that illustrates his clear embrace of this Place.    

[I'd also like to point out the graceful young Maple lass in the lower left third's top edge.  She is growing from a stump we judged to be 10 to 15 years old upon arrival. I blogged about Her a few times in the first years here before my big Unplug.]

I took this picture from the dooryard/driveway of the farmhouse across the road.  For awhile now I've been drawn to have reference material for drawing Grandfather from his west-facing profile-side.    Before that I'd spent an hour or so bombing around in the part of our little woods that's open to human passage.  Eventually this brought me back where I'd started and set me walking along the mildly nerve-wracking (due to its narrowness) hump of walk-able ground between woods terrain and the most oft-traveled road in these parts. 

Grandfather's north-facing profile is something I don't usually notice.  To begin with, this road is dangerous to walk along although people do it all the time.  Living where I do I've borne at least auditory and directly-after-the-fact witness to the human risk* of doing so.  Driving on the road with my array of witness experiences, I'm virtually never looking at the tree although I surely feel his presence holding me steady.  Keeping me on point constantly scanning for *people who, more than likely, have no choice but to walk the road in order to secure their groceries.  But I do often admire his opposite southern-facing profile from the passenger's seat with J. when we're heading home from where-ever we've been to the south or west.

This was the best approximation/partial rendering I could get from the middle of the far less traveled street just around the corner from the road.  Truncated to insure privacy for my farm neighbors.  Except these two who were STOKED when I appeared first in the cow's line of vision across the road and then drawing ever-closer while cow did the same and then directly adjacent to the goat's rock there just inside their electrified World.  Both of them posed almost expectantly.  Realized they'd been watching me snippy-snap all my way along the journey to THEIR place and probably understand on their own terms about phone cameras.  But more importantly I realized at a sensory level their oasis of Sanctuary.  Both clearly secure in their Place within a larger Place-for-All.  Farmer lady told me summer before last that the goat could easily jump clear of the wires whenever he pleased "but he likes the cow."  Indeed.  Who wouldn't.

While I was talking to them as I rewarded their posing efforts I realized Grandfather is part of their bedrock life's landscape just as much as mine.  I don't know what that means to them collectively as a micro-herd or as individuals.  But I know they know Grandfather is there.

Standing Still With Water.4

In this week's Riverview report:  I developed an active connection to the young oak closest to the river despite a pool of mental distraction along the way.  Was, before getting behind the wheel, smiling from a place of ease.  But once I started driving it seemed I was automatically moving myself straight into a no-win corner of trying to figure out everything we could possibly need if, during the predicted storms of the coming days, the electricity goes down for an indeterminate length of time.  Or fallen trees block the road and then also everything stops in place even further due to long-term black ice and/or fallen live wires.  Or if black ice becomes so treacherous a state emergency is declared for a few days' running.  Suppose fallen trees and/or live wires block entry or exit from the driveway and it takes a scary long time before that's fixed due to so many other live wires blocking so many other driveways.  Which has actually happened here, as have all these other things. Most of them (except the live wires blocking the driveway) more than just once or a scant few times.  Just as a regular part of winter.  A regular part of life's rhythmn.

What do we Need?  Nothing. Sure?  Positive.  No such thing as positive if we can't Get Out for awhile.  Let's take it from the top.  What do we Need? 

It was a relief worthy of some other deeper-level name to understand what I in particular needed was to shut this level of brain stuff all the way down and simply breathe deeply once my car was parked and I was There.  

[as I write this Here in the future of Then - it's 6 in the evening and pitch-dark except when lightning flares light single portions of the sky.  The thunder is loud but not directly overhead.  Hail's hitting hard against the studio windows.  We don't need or even merely want anything that isn't already here or utterly unavailable to us.  That makes the storm feel invigorating.  I'm free to revel in the Thunder Beings breaking up every energetic thing that's too stuck or otherwise past its expiration date.  To picture so many of my beloved plants safely nestled in their mulch cocoons.  To smile.  Just because it's been a good day and promises to be an equally good evening.] 

Hello.  Find Yourself Here Now.

There/then:  I was being addressed by the young sentry tree.  Felt that distinctive zap of communicative connection without question or doubt.  Having visited this place for five relatively consecutive Wednesday mornings I have a sense that All involved have helped choreograph a basic routine that is becoming muscle-memory natural to me.  Being here is a form of walking yoga as well as whatever it was that occurred on an unexpectedly vertical plane between the two oaks.  On this occasion my entire body is THERE - all the way IN that place the second my shoes hit the ground.  I let the oaken channel guide my steps.  And noticed I was both a lot more careful and considerably more sure-footed as a result.  First stop:  the mulleins growing inconveniently but, being mulleins, they are continuing to thrive nonetheless.

And then a slight backtrack to the Oak Pair for this week's portrait before heading more directly, and a lot closer, to the young sentry Oak.  I would have moved even nearer; close enough for touch but that would've been quite a mistake for somebody on a schedule who lacked boots and/or a change of shoes, slacks and socks.  I did get close enough to grasp the land looks stable enough from afar but it's seriously marshy up close.

I am a greeter not a sentry.  There are the sentries. 

I felt myself directed to look Beyond.  Towards far-off bare hardwood trees congregated here and there on each diminishing curve of the westward river. 

I see. Thank you very much for showing me. 

It felt right to go back to silent communication after just becoming not-so-uncomfortable with vocalizing my communicative contributions.  I breathed deeply into this familiar co-creative comfort zone and without doubt I sensed oaken roots breathing even deeper into this spot of theirs.  Their world.  Knowing of Oaks holding space everywhere and many other things but this is THEIR place. 

Thank you for letting me know you can hear and feel me caring about you.  For showing me who your tribe is. 

I cried a little in a very pure moment of overwhelming gratitude.  The tears were thick and copious but they dried almost instantly once I felt myself opening psychically.   My crown, palm and sole,secondary heart chakras opened with a gentle lack of fuss or ceremony; they simply opened like a blooming rose brought into a warm room - in complimentary unison and then there I was:  suddenly capable of feeling myself pulled deeper into an under-ground vibe and the pulsing divine presence of universal Root Medicine.    It was so vivid I could almost feel the snap and tingle of the tiny ice crystals forming just under the surface of the ground.  I caught my breath.  This was really happening.  Sometimes, in the past, this kind of occurrence causes a reflexive tightening up and shutting down.  What if this is NOT real and I'm merely batshit crazy?  That recurring fear, all by itself, has the power to hold me steady in Lack Of Progress and/or Getting Nothing where authentic celebration of sentience is concerned.  But not today.  I breathed deeply.  Felt the landscape breathing as a single entity.  I was part of it.  Everything breathed together and I felt, as oaken roots might feel, the rise of slowly moving water energy.  YES. We were all together and it was very googoogajoob groovy indeed. Today there would be no fear or panic or second guessing reality beyond predictable human confines or any other reflex that sets far too many ultimately irrelevant terms to also be a state of true Be-ingness.  Sometimes that happens, still.  But not today.

Thank you for letting me in.   Into this Place.

I felt as if I was mentally chanting.  That, once I was home and the coming storms stopped I could move with privacy among the oaks scattered at the edges of our field's wild windrow.  And there I would find the right vocal tones of the silent chant. I smiled to picture myself stomping around our place all winter chanting out loud.

Thank you for letting me in.

And then as a clear and direct reply The Greeter sang a very swift-paced and incredibly beautiful song.  Hard to explain via words but I felt this song vibrationally - as sound travels through wood.   This is something I know of from the decades full of sensing the way any wood in our home is enlivened and brought back to its living essence whenever J. plays bass for an un-distracted and extended period of time - particularly The Big Boy; his acoustic upright.  This is something I love to experience but now i was having the opposite experience of a tree's vibrational sound expressions passing through me and reverberating the way J.'s bass playing passes through the wood throughout our home.  Everything becoming one long evenly vibrating ribbon of sound translated far beyond the sense of hearing that ribbon undulate and unspool further and further.  Who knows where and when the language of wood stops vibrating?  Maybe it never does.

I also felt The Greeter's song as the river might receive it:  as if it was an all encompassing gentle breeze of universal language.  I felt the song encompass everything I had told the pair of oaks when I first arrived but now in this re-telling my introduction to pair and place was focused primarily on the tree in my backyard as kid.  Which was known to be from a different species.  In somewhat abrupt conclusion The Greeter sang about squirrels - even more quickly and just as beautifully.   It might have been a micro-second.  Or even something I dreamed during the night and then through some sort of confirmation bias I attributed it to the tree as it Was.  But no.   IT was as I felt it to be.

 By now my brain was chattering very feebly and sporadically -purely out of reflex - concerning the proper necessary foot gear for getting closer to the water and The Greeter.  And then. I stood all the way still, finally, all of a sudden.   It was as if I'd never done anything else, stood there looking at a part of the river's view of land on its far side that I deliberately choose not to photograph or otherwise share with word imagery.  Beyond this:  stiff peaked whitewashed 18th century farmhouses dot the higher rises nestled among an evergreen wall of dark green.  And the visible roils of granite ledge pushed far above ground. 

Some of these farms are known at a personal level.  One in particular is beloved for multiple reasons.  I watched mist rise from the ground as parallel smoke rose from the houses' tall brick chimneys.  And saw a gull pass overhead with something long and limp in its beak.  I saw in a perfectly still and well-rooted manner with slowly dawning awareness:  The Greeter was showing me how it lives.  What it senses of the landscape.  What it has come to know as part of itself and part of Beyond. Whoa. I stood still as an oak tree feeling what it was like to be just one young well-placed life form embracing everything about its existence with full sensory capabilities. I breathed in the purely loving energy of this sharing and exhaled heart-spawned gratitude.  Did a counted breath mini-meditation that left my heart and lungs fully open and my brain at least partially grounded in a focus of keeping myself out of spaceshot harms way before crossing the road to approach the river itself.

I kept my senses elevated.  Noticing my joints no longer object to the slanted walk downward.   Appreciating the many layers of ever so slightly different reddish-browns in the dried stalks of still-sturdy vegetation all around.  At the time it seemed likely we'd escape the doom and gloomy weather prediction for at least a few hours.  Maybe for an entire 24 hours until everyone could safely get to where-ever they were going for tomorrow's Day of Eating. But the image above proved to be the brightest the day ever got.  Not yet knowing that I stood before the sun and its reflection.  HELLO.  I closed my eyes and stood more like a water reed than a young oak tree.  For you to take.  Spirit of Place, I thought at first.  Telling me in some Yoda-like way to drink the moment all the way in one cell at a time.  For. You. To know. Come closer.

I was drawn directly forward.  After I snapped the above image I walked all the way down the slanting cement boat launch.  Assuming I now understood.  Because I suddenly saw the "inlet" I've been admiring for years is actually a tributary feed coming into the opposite side of the river.    FOR.  YOU.  And as I felt myself nudged downward ever closer to the water's surface I finally got it.   I was being given a gift.  Once that clicked the rest was easy.  Water energy moved through me - lazy slowing down seasonally dark and ever-potent water guided me to select a shell fragment and a small round stone.

The water was much warmer than I expected.  Not warm by strict definition but not yet shock-cold like I assumed it would be.  It was merely cold like the tap water in my studio faucet roundabout mid-February.  And as the river's energy and literal watery self moved into every crack or crevice of my palms  they felt a lot more healed than they look.  I compassionately noticed the folly of skipping my normal hand-care routine since the previous morning.  Understood without judgement that I'd imagined myself too busy or distracted or interested in something else or entirely too tired to stop long enough to do it.  I examined my gifts, especially the luminosity of the shell fragment.  And the river mentioned something very sacred that has become a cornerstone of my personal taproot's energy.  The gifts having been offered with intention for inclusion and it was such an obvious (and perfect) suggestion that I stood absolutely still staring into my own rough-hewn palm.  I don't know how long it was of standing so still before I could hear the water's steady movement.  Not approaching, passing or retreating traffic.  Not voices amplified here and there - raised in most cases specifically to make use of the water's sound amplification powers.  No chattering seasonal thoughts.  Just standing still and fully present in the place and my body right there at the river's edge.

Feed What Feeds You .1

Thought this might be a nice post to get manifested at a point in the year when there are plenty of gathering options irrespective of hemisphere and general temperature ranges.  Am aware that many who read here actively engage in a variety of ceremonial rituals, including caring for the sacred objects they like to work with and Keep.  More than likely that means everyone also has their own existing care and feeding rituals related to nourishing those things that nourish us tenfold more.   Years ago I developed the habit of making my own consecration oils for nourishing purposes.   I use them to dress candles just prior to lighting.  I also like to warm the oil on the stove, add just a bit of beeswax, and pour it to cool within recycled hand or face cream jars.   This becomes a nourishing and revitalizing butter for all wooden objects of ceremony as well as skin-headed drums and rattles.

~*~ you need a scrupulously clean wide-mouthed glass jar to successfully manifest this project.  As a guide - I use a half pint canning jar for my personal use and in this case I also impulsively grabbed a full pint jar to infuse for wider distribution.  Mainly because I inadvertently over-gathered inclusive materials.  I've found a half pint of oil will meet my personal needs, plus maybe six or seven half ounce bottles to be given as gifts, for 2 or 3 years ~*~

I put the above jar remarks first because there's really no way around their importance at a practical level. Now to the single most vibrationally important aspect of creating a ceremonial oil that is in complete tune with your uniquely impeccable intentions:

when working with fresh/windfall materials:  isolate your focus on your home landscape's most inherently sacred plants that are also at least a bit fragrant and safe enough to be handled over time.  As with any other sacred and ceremonial endeavor there may be one or two that call to you there in the spontaneous moment of scanning what's available to be gathered.

  If you're strictly urban or unable to roam around outdoors:  Take stock of what you've gathered through shops, precious gathering expeditions in a loved one's garden or wild-crafting adventures, and as gifts from friends.  Plan to spend a long slow dreary Saturday or Sunday puttering about your home while a small pan of infusing oil wafts its magic throughout your brain chemistry and home environment.  Be assured that most dried herbs re-hydrate with slow deliciousness especially when they're warmed in a gentle and slow manner.

Note: You'll create a far more phytochemically potent oil by going the warm infusion route.  Or if you get a little science-y from time to time, as I do, you might relish putting up two half pints - one as a warm infusion and the other left in place over slowed-down time as a cold infusion.  That's how I concluded I preferred the latter method - because it felt a lot more vibrationally unique and gorgeously subtle to me.  Among many other things I particularly loved how grounding and centering it became simply to see the infusion bottle sitting there quietly holding space in alchemical process day after week after month.  Every time I picked it up and gently shook it I imbued the container's energy with my own love and gratitude for this tiny little way of slowing time enough to hold it there in my hand.

Perhaps your own emergent recipe will incorporate sacred purification elements of a long-standing historical nature such as the juniper and white pine in the first image.  Or it might revolve around a plant or two with an established spiritual/ceremonial history that led to its inclusion in your garden space.  My interest in Angelica archangelica (seedheads pictured above at my former home) began in my early twenties so when I first felt drawn to making ceremonial oils about a dozen years later it was a no-brainer to base nearly all of them, for years and years, upon the elevating properties of this illustrious herb's distinctive angelically antiseptic scent.

[Note the commonality of cleansing & purification properties held between the two evergreen sprigs and the angelica seed heads.  Somebody working from dried/cached supplies might fill this quadrant by selecting some preciously hoarded copal, amber, or myrrh resin.  If that somebody is you, pound what you've got into smaller pieces or at least scarify your resin in order to release more of its scent's healing and illuminating properties.]

pro tip:  pounding dried tree resin is 'way easier and far less fiddly but if you're used to scarifying tough seeds here's another way to put that highly specific skill set to practical use.

Over the years I've been drawn to create nearly all the infusions I've made with olive oil as their carrier.  For the vibrational/ceremonial oils I generally go with three months of cool infusion on a dark shelf in my dining room.  This makes the coalescence of energetic and phytochemical properties nicely subtle and more about co-creation than 'maximum extraction' as when preparing medicinal tinctures and therapeutic oils.  Matters of scent are easily fine-tuned once the base oil is prepared - most commonly via essential oils and/or strongly fragrant flower petals such as tea roses, their fresh wild cousins, or highly scented lilies such as the ever-popular Stargazer. 

Am repeating a more complete look at the first image so you don't have to scroll up as you think more closely about your own options.  Remember my chosen/illustrated quartet is just an example based on what was immediately on offering at the time I was spontaneously moved to prepare this oil as a ceremonial activity during the current season's mid-point energetic cresting. 

Perhaps your ideal base/grounding formulation is a trio or even a duet.  Focus on what it FEELS like you should work with not What Acey Did.  That having been said - my oil's four-square base is firmly grounded in Place by the two evergreens inclusions.  White pine is a naturally occurring tree ally and the juniper bush by the frog pond is the botanical anchor of the original landscaping plantings. 

If you're reading along thinking I'd really like to do this but where would I even start try this:

Consider, as quietly as possible, what would ground your oil in the most personally meaningful corners of your daily landscape?  Just keep asking yourself that until your automatic answer stops reflecting your lack of certainty.  Go with your instincts.  You have them or you wouldn't still be reading along with any inclination to try it for yourself.  Gather what makes sense amount-wise plus just a little more. Not too much.  Just enough so you aren't cut short if the proportional amounts need to be 'adjusted for taste' as you move into the prep work and your gathered materials begin to look and feel a bit different.

With strong grounding comes the ceremonial need for equally strong elevation. Lavender is an excellent and widely available choice in dried bud form that's often vibrant enough to include in projects like this one for two or even three years after harvesting.  The dried buds in this post's images were given to me (an entire pound. YIKES.) two years ago in fully dried and husked form.  But these treasures from a summer gone by shyly murmured in a steady way within my heart while I was figuring out my recipe - forgotten as they were in the farthest recess of my herbal pantry.  I'd received so much lavender I simply didn't know how to deal beyond shoving the final overwhelming last-straw quart jar of it far out of sight.  Stay tuned for how I'll employ the rest of this retrieved cache - most likely in celebration of the winter solstice.

To round out the quartet/power-square base, I was drawn to pluck the remaining sprigs of Tulsi that had not yet succumbed to our plummeting night temperatures.   As you read my explanation below, think about any plant that YOU'VE actively brought into your garden/life specifically because it elevates your mood, soul and spirit.  The vibrational goal in making a four-square base is to balance the organic landscape energy with intentional humanly-introduced plant energy of equal significance to the person making the oil.  For that reason this is a great activity for Going Within in a unique way that may well reverberate, at least a little, every time you work with the oil or share it with somebody else.

~*~*~

Every year I grow about a hundred Tulsi plants from seed.  Some day I'll explain the whole story but for now:  the plants live as hardened off seedlings ever-eager to become full blooming plants within a variety of containers on our deck and the paved area below it.   In the beginning of the crop's outdoor growing season I pinch off the tops when the flower heads are plump with purple-tinged budding energy.  These are carefully dried for my family's winter tea inclusions.  As the plants begin to branch I continue to harvest for drying purposes, but only here and there.  At this point many of the tea herbs in the field are in bud, bloom or swollen with sought-after leaves so I focus on preparing our daily restorative teas from freshly gathered materials.  In this dual manner I harvest what I pre-determine to be my fair share of the Tulsi over the next few months.  The scant leavings pictured above, on the eve of Samhain, held a deep reservoir of this beautiful plant's juicily scented healing signature:  abundant illumination, spiritual protection and elevation.

Let's review how to recreate my power-square on your own terms:  think about the scents and plant energies that draw you in and hold you steady in both practical and elevated aspects of your life.  

As a very different example from what's on the screen - one year pretty far back in the past I made a square infusion from chopped angelica leaf stems, a few pristine acorns gathered from a particularly meaningful tree, a small white shell of enormous personal significance, and a recently broken aqua aura point.  Later, when the oil felt ready for its final touches, I decanted and strained, placed the clear oil in a fresh glass storage jar, and then added a few drops of frankincense and sweet orange essential oils, plus the precious last remaining segment of a dried vanilla pod.   I shook vigorously for about a week before commencing work with the oil, with the vanilla pod fragment left in the jar. 

While you're finalizing your choices make sure you have a sufficient amount of carrier oil on hand.  Olive oil is often the cheapest and easiest choice especially since most people already have it on hand in their cabinet.  It's easy to find in the market in a variety of quantities/prices.  Of even more value for vibrational considerations, olive oil has a number of established connotations in both healing and ceremonial work.  It weight and viscosity adds a nice little sizzle to a burning candle and hugs the beeswax close when making a butter-cream to feed your sacred objects.

Gather your chosen infusion elements.  Work quietly and mindfully to chop or hand-tear the various elements.  Remember that the more you cut or tear the fresh material, the more surface area will be exposed for infusing the oil with its physical/phytochemical properties.

pro tip:  set aside any stems or woody branches to dry a bit.   When your homespace feels in need of a special cleansing and brightening perk, break everything into pieces that will fit in a simmering pan of water.  The scent will be subtle at first and then (as the dried wood chemistry releases itself into the heated water) miraculously full and rejuvenating.

I'm not sure how long it took me to prepare my pint and half pint jars.  I do know it was long enough to drop down deep into my quiet inner center.  And to relish how healing it felt and how grateful I was to have taken the time and space for the process.

Once you have your materials bruised or chopped place them gently in their jar and slowly fill it with olive oil.  Note:  since oil's so heavy it takes a while for all the air bubbles to rise to the surface.  You can help this along with a clean chop stick or wooden barbecue skewer,  Sometimes for smaller bottles I've used an extra long darning or doll-making needle.  Try stirring the bottle's contents gently then doing something else for twenty minutes before stirring again.  Once all the air bubbles seem to be released cap the bottle tightly.  Turn it upside down on a saucer or in a shallow bowl.  Leave it alone overnight or even a bit longer.  By then any remaining air will have formed a gigantic bubble at the bottom of the jar.

note: I like isolating the air bubble this way even though it means you have to turn the bottle over to get it all the way filled.  But this way you'll have a visual idea of how much oil you have to add due to the curvature at the base of most glass bottles.  Upright, it's easy to get visually distracted by both the lid bands and the congregated infusion materials due to somewhat less curvature at the top of a typical wide-mouthed jar.

Once you've adjusted the oil amount in the jar, it will become very apparent why you're sequestering this project within a saucer or bowl.  Keeping the project as clean and free of seeping oil as possible is a bit fiddly but easy enough to manage quickly and effectively. I like the way this low-key jar tending adds another layering act of careful manifestion.  I usually keep the oil infusion going for a full season.  This would make a lovely family/inter-generational project to begin now and complete in late winter or early spring.

If you have any questions, leave comments or send me an email.

LOVE

Above: my beloved familiar kitty-girl Celeste who died, at 23, two years ago tomorrow.   Here she is as a young lass in one of her favorite resting places at our former home - nestled deep within an expansive colony of Sweet Cicely.  She also loved resting amongst Angelica plants which is what I thought this image showed until I loaded it into this post.  Have decided I like closing-out with this peekaboo glimpse of her all the same.  For she is an enormously big part of the story I'm telling here ...

stand still with me .1

Hours ago I took this particular shot with sharing in mind.   So we could all just stop and look without the razzmatazz of blooming things.  The center background is vertically grounded by the hemlock I've left mostly alone up until last spring.  I haven't tampered with the tree's intentional shape or inherent architecture but I have cut off a raft of secondary branches that were blocking several hours of sunlight a day from the frog pond's general eco-system.

The foreground features original plantings of standard mid-70's issue:  never-fail hostas.  Seriously run amok rudbekia/brown eyed susan, chocolate mint, astibles, columbine, 3 different sorts of iris and spurge.  These are inter- mixed with a variety of native asters and milkweed that I've welcomed and encouraged.  Also way off to the far right corner of this space out of picture-range - there's a wonderful epimedium that's trebled in size under my care and unfailing admiration.

[am pointedly not mentioning the pachysandra in this area and elsewhere.  in an ideal world I would never ever mention this specific plant and it's 'miraculous' mid-70's Fool Proof planting solution status. But someday I will do an entire post illustrating what an ecological dilemma this diabolically invasive plant poses.] 

The skewed mitre-frame beyond the straw mulching created by dried plant stalks.  Follow that line of tall extinguished plant matter.  It joins with a comparable line to form a not-right angle.  This is goldenrod.  I hope to root-out more of it before the ground freezes but there are a number of other things I hope to do with a lot more sense of urgent purpose.   The large rust colored mound of spent flowers just left of center is a snowball viburnum.  The tree to its left, directly in front of the hemlock, is a Japanese dogwood.  She's not completely well but I prune all dead branches over the fall, January thaw, and earliest spring.   When we first arrived she was merely partially dead but she barely flowered.  Now the tree's yearly rise of life-force is contained solely in living wood.  She flowers beautifully and on every bough that's survived the winter.

Two volunteer offspring saplings flank their mother.  One is incredibly robust and may in my lifetime replace her mama in the role of visual anchor.  She'll be tall and lithe but ever so off-the-mark by a yard or two in relation to where a Perfect Eye would place, plant and maintain the backbone planting features.  I've planted another somewhat less date-the-trend type of tree; in a comparably less design-y obvious place but right along the same undeniably pleasing sight line.  Will introduce the Fair Lass on the other side of winter.  It will be her second here and how she responds next spring will determine whether she's planning to put energy into being a 'proper' tree or if she'll survive more happily as a multi-sprigged shrub.  

Also share-worthy:  yesterday a/k/a the first day-long sun we had after so much rain sleet or snow - I did indeed visit Grandfather Hickory just as I intended.  I would share more of him and his Place beyond my personal sense of connection but that would involve walking rather than standing still with me.  Today I'd much rather we all just stand still in this moment of embrace. 

oaks to grind .3

Oak-ay.  Yesterday morning I learned that oak energy possesses a fairly slick sense of humor.  Not to mention powerful dream tendrils but that's not something I quite realized until this morning.  Visiting these oaks as a regular part of my daily life has been illuminating in ways that make me want to INSIST that everyone everywhere go find their nearest moving water and then also find in that space a tree that's clearly waiting to be found.  In and amidst everything else they do and dream and feel I'm pretty sure they're also definitely waiting for US.   Because of what's happening between me and the oaks.  And the obvious fact that there's nothing particularly special about me and yet this entirely mind/heart/self/soul/universe expanding experience is happening to and through me. 

Trees, I'm pretty sure, would like to give this type of heightened and permanently altered awareness to as many human beings who are open to it. 

Note:  If it's impossible for you to physically visit moving water and its nearby trees then let yourself remember a favorite place from your life's experience.  Put the memory on your inner sensory wide-screen and BE where you once were.  Push into the water's memory of YOU.  See if a tree appears spontaneously.  You recall it being there, all of a sudden, or the image rises spontaneously from moving water in your mind as a gift to your body as well as your brain. 

Dare to ask for that gift if it doesn't appear spontaneously.  See if there isn't SOME way to connect to your memories as a present tense experience.  It will be uniquely powerful and entirely real because you've had to actively jury-rig circuits of circumstance and ability in order to make the connection sing.

In my walking and snapping tour of the river I noticed the young oak tree that radiated such joy in its sentry position right at the edge of the river's flood plain.  Yesterday it radiated a growing understanding of Oak's place, and thus its own, within this particular slice of Landscape society.  I stood in a ceaseless and very chilly drizzle trying to work out to what precise category of progeny this tree 'belonged' in relation to the pair I'd just visited.

I'm not so far away.  For lack of a better way to put it I stumbled into a tiny window of understanding the young oak was singing a song of determination.  To and for itself.  In order to know its own oakeness more fully.  I thought at the time the tree was singing about the river as it slows and thickens noticeably, week-to-week.  Writing these words I understand that would be me projecting the songs I sing myself concerning the absence of flowers.  Summer's right around the corner.  And in my adult life I have made it true.  Summer, for me, will always be synonymous with 'growing season'.  And that's something that begins, ready or not, as soon as the first seed catalogs arrive.

Upon reflection I think the tree was speaking of its lone status.  And growing awareness that Oak reigns, in this tiny speck of Place, far more fully and subtly than was noticeable to me while the hardwoods still had leaves.  Oaks stick out at this time of year because their leaves were the last to turn color, dry to death and fall to the ground.  At this point in the year they're the only hardwoods with any stray leaves still attached to the tree. 

Thus I could look around and pragmatically grasp a shred of the deeper mysterious beauty: The young oak tree is gaining relational awareness capacity to share and receive information from a tribal network of pheromones and root systems.   I stood perfectly still in the unpleasantly chilly rain that didn't bother me in the slightest.  I let both that surprising fact and the young oak's continued triumphant learning curve sink in as a cellular experience. 

The rain we had all day and evening yesterday cast an extremely low ceiling.  I walked around at length taking inadvertent videos I thought were actually pics in the form of killer New Glimpses into this tiny roadside universe.  This was possible at a relaxed sauntering pace because I left a solid hour of time to spend here. Truth being greater than fiction: During the colder new england months I am not the hale and hearty type unless I can immediately come inside and strip down, warm up and don dry clothes from the skin out.   That's inconveniently princessy and particular of me, I do realize.  The oaks seemed to know all about it as well.  When I approached them the one on the right (above is the one on the left) started vibing something about looka here it's the coming of the Oak-asional woodswoman. 

Given the world we're all inhabiting at the moment I've developed zero problem making immediate jumps to this other form of what goes on in the same spaces we humans inhabit within our dogged insistence of making ourSelves and our endless foibles top of the consciousness pinnacle - but still.  I did not care (certainly not on top of having already yielded to the moment to the point of the rain not-bothering me, anyway...) to be flexible enough to imagine that Oak medicine - of all stalwart and perservering things - would be inherently funny.*  To itself if a little more than just a little bit too on the nose for my own tastes.  And in the moment I flashed on understanding so simple and obvious I was fully downshifted by it.  Whoa.  Absolutely none of this was chance or a mere happenstance of right place/right time.  The tree on the right, heckling me with sure swift pun-laden remarks was a representation of my husband so authentically there in that moment because that's how deeply embedded the oak medicine spirit is within his own soul and spirit.

~*~Loving irascible human inconsistencies as I [sometimes] do I have to point out that I've spent pretty much my entire life grasping quite thoroughly that without our ability to laugh and authentically see the humor of A Thing we are, collectively and as individual soul entities pretty much dead in the water.~*~

That would make me ... a married-in Oak?  Partially oaken by nature left unexplored? On my first visit I felt a natural kinship to the oak on the left.  I thought Lunar/female and, thus, the other tree would be Solar/male.  Grasping this seemed more than sufficient.  On some oak-casions people need to be hit over the head repeatedly in order to go deeper.  Minus the pun these are my own words.  Said many many times.   Most often, I'm pretty sure, to the J.-man.  As I admitted that to myself here on the screen for the first time since having this experience I chuckled.   But, in final truth to be told, the lone song-dog in my heart started howling appreciatively right there on the spot.

Nonetheless on a somber morning full of rain rather than snow as predicted I was reflective.  Woke up with a sense 'the Lunar tree' wished me to investigate the wounds humanity had so glaringly inflicted upon them in order to make room for the road.  We sacrificed, she conveyed, in a way you must learn from.  Given the rush of insights I experienced once I arrived it now makes sense that, when I first approached this pair, I was most drawn to the 'the wounds' of a weathering and wind-wrought nature. 

Is anyone who reads here a bird-watcher with special knowledge of ground fowl?  I know only the basic local triune of pheasant, grouse, and woodcock.  While walking back up the rise from my detailed and much enjoyed inspection of the rainy boat launch -  I inadvertently disturbed and partially distressed a female not-duck but with similar (just more delicate and russet) coloration and markings to a female mallard.  We shared a moment.  I hope I soothed her within it.

ouch

Hello.  I'd like to introduce you to one of my most important tree friends here in the walking-around world of my life since the late '90's.  This is a Shagbark Hickory that may or may not still exist within the energetically percolating surroundings of a nearby nature sanctuary that's definitely still "with us".  I'd planned to take a jaunt over there at some point during the weekend to see if the tree still stood.  My sense is that it does. 

The plan was to go there on something of a re-con in and out mission due to hunting season.  After not being there for ten years the instinct is to wander around at length looking and examining privately while also documenting all areas that I used to document when this was my Wild place to go.  Take an offering of a very specific nature for the tree, hug it if it still stands.  Take some pictures if that felt right.

The idea's been germinating since partway through my reading of The Overstory but by last mid-week it felt imperative that I take myself there ASAP.  Not sure why.  But it's certainly true that this specific tree  remains a shining beacon to me in meditation, dreams and by way of the infinitude of pictures I took of it during all seasons over the course of 6 or 7 years' time.  But then something or other that I did on Friday made my lumbar spinal region quite unhappy.  It coulda been anything, really, because I was 'way more into getting things done bing bam boom than I was mindful of how, exactly, I was [evidently mis]-using my body along the way.

In consequence I'm currently having a lot of sciatic nerve pain from its root allllllll the way along its course, top to tip.  This is not a new thing for me - it's just a thing I generally stay mindful enough to avoid aggravating to the degree that I have to stop my life to get things properly soothed and healed.  I haven't answered any emails since this re-injury made itself known.  Will get back to everyone as soon as it's no longer foolish to sit up and type in this manner for more than the time it's taken me to get this written and posted.

LOVE.

This was the third or fourth time I hugged the Shagbark Hickory.  The scarred-over wound portrait at the top of this post contained holes where I left many gifts and healing talismans as offerings to the tree's medicine spirit.  Did this for more than a year before telling the tree I was moving in for the embrace.  Will tell that story at some point after my spine's in a better state of balance.

Place/Keeping .1

Walden Pond.  Living Deliberately.  Long revelatory conversations with significant friends talking passionately together while perambulating the pond; deeply immersed in the details of whatever we were deliberately making of our shared and individuals lives.  Tourists speaking animatedly in a number of languages.  People walking quite deliberately by themselves; often with a book in hand and a special passage within it marked by a careful finger. Looking around.  Looking Within.

Walden Pond. 

In the image above the right hand side of the background features a long tiered wooden structure where people sit, talk, and ease themselves into the water for a bit of swimming.  My son learned to swim in that spot as a young boy.  We were inner city dwellers at the time and summertime weather could get stifling despite the harbor breeze.  Looking back at my small but mighty family's shared root system, I often reflect on the innumerable times we'd pile in the car and arrive at the pond just in time for the magical early evening glow's debut.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.

My interest in/appreciation of Thoreau began in childhood.  My grandmother used to read me Walden Pond any time I got upset and couldn't find a way to calm down again.  That's what it used to be called, especially for children: calming down.  But now I see what I needed to do was nothing short of totally re-rebooting my emotional barometer.  I'd be spinning out emotionally in a very unquiet way and she'd firmly open to the bookmarked page and begin reading in a loud unquestioning tone from where-ever we left off the last time this happened.  She wouldn't stop until I'd long since stopped out-bursting emotionally and was actually listening.  Had been listening for quite a number of minutes.  Because she was reading me something other than the bible.  That alone gave this book and whoever wrote it very special status, indeed. 

Whenever we reached the end of Walden Pond we'd begin again on the heels of fresh Upset.  This went on straight up until she went in the hospital and, eventually, died there from stage 4 lymphoma cancer.  I was seventeen and it was the literal eve of Nixon's resignation.  My mother came home said well it's over, and asked me to give her the name of somebody she could call to be with me while she devoted herself to calling relatives and friends.  I blurted out the name of a 21 year old guy I knew through church and community theater.  Once, about a month earlier, I'd gotten tipsy on beer in his back yard and boldly sat on his lap unannounced and uninvited.  She called him, not knowing what else to do.  And he in turn had notknownwhatelse showed up with a six pack and willingness to drive us both around town barely speaking until we settled-in at his newly married buddy's house.

It embarrassed me tremendously to be in a married couple's house when the people involved were just 3 and 4 years older than me and we all knew all sorts of weird and mortifying things about each others parents due to being from the same church group.  I didn't know where to look or what to say but fortunately I was largely ignored. There was a single bookshelf with mostly high school 70's english class  novels sitting on it.  Walden Pond was there.  I stared at it for a long time, wondering if I should be worried that I had no desire or ability to cry and couldn't really remember my grandmother as she'd been when she read to me.  It took her a long time - well over a year - to waste away to death without once knowing why it was happening.  Her doctor and my mother believed if she knew she'd stop wanting to live.

[no comment.  Which of course means I actually have several in mind I'm all too prepared to share but this is neither the time nor the setting.]

It really bothered me that she didn't know why she was sick and unable to ever be well enough to return home.  If she couldn't get home, to her bible and various representations of her faith, would she be able to move on to where-ever?

On the first evening of her passing I abruptly stopped worrying about whatever might or might not happen when I got back home and whether or not Pearl would be able to make her way towards St. Peter and her deceased siblings without her bible.  Because the newly married couple had weed in addition to seemingly endless beer. Had I not reached out to accept the joint I would have become the focus of the entire evening.  I didn't want that.  They were leaving me alone because they thought I was numb with grief and it was fine with me to not-realize they were absolutely correct in that assessment. 

Nobody wanted to talk about The Whole Nixon Thing.  They talked instead about camping at the Delaware Water Gap.  I'd smoked before but not effectively.  My grandmother was dead.  That left my mother in charge.  The only other time I've felt that specific combination of terror and dread with such intensity was later in the evening on election night 2016.  At that time I thought not so much of Thoreau but of Emily Dickinson.  I'm nobody who are you.  We'd all be nobodies soon.  That was so clear to me I'd been clinically depressed since the previous summer.  I might have remained in that condition if  closed head brain trauma hadn't shifted the narrative in so many unexpected ways just a few days later.

Back in the Nixon era thread of this post I effectively got high for the first time on the night of the day when my grandmother died.  That's how one of the assembled Old Friends in that living room put it.  I was effectively stoned which in my case meant sitting stock-still and silent.  Looking around with enormous eyes.  Our hosts had a land tortoise.  Sometimes it was on one floor of the house and other times it was lumbering in an excruciatingly slow way in a quiet corner of the other.  I once saw it climbing up the stairs.  On that night the weed was stronger than usual and an enormous need to speak instead of Just Sitting There suddenly overcame me.  I stood up with dramatic pointing of fingers on both hands and shrilly announced the reptile's laborious movements.  

The tortoise - about whom I never once asked a single question although I was even more painfully curious in those days than I was shy - was, ultimately, pretty much the most interesting and tenderhearted aspect of that elongated moment from my past.  I was intensely curious about the creature and wanted badly to get to know it better but I never indicated any such thing in the months I dated That Guy and therefore spent more weekend evenings than not sitting in that specific living room.  Smoking just enough weed not to be noticed and then potentially questioned by the group; abstinence of any kind at any point in the proceedings was viewed as subversive rather than sensible.  Or inhaling with clear intent to keep going until the last seed popped whenever my mother happened to be Acting Up. 

Nearly everyone who gathered there in that plaid-upholstered '74 living room of Young Lives/Anytown USA had at least one parent who Acted Up on the regular.  All I had to say upon arrival was that tonight it was once again happening at my house.  I learned how to relay the information breezily and without the slightest inner feeling.  Managing a smile at times, almost, and oftentimes while UNawkwardly accepting the proffered joint that hovered closest to me once Acting Up was mentioned .  Then I was free to get back to watching the tortoise because everyone involved accepted that's what I did once I smoked.  My grandmother remained dead.  She'd been the one who raised and cared for/about me.  She was gone with a finality that for me befitted the way she'd lived.  So I kept that in mind in place of grief expressions that 'wouldn't bring her back.'  It seemed likely she'd be proud of me, if she was able to know about it, for holding that kind of line as she'd worked diligently to teach it to me.

Be sensible.  Have a bank account into which you unfailingly put a solid half of everything you earn. No use in crying over spilled milk.  One way or another pretty much everything in life boiled down to spilled milk and I'd see that for myself once I was Old Enough.  Respect the president of the country no matter what he does.  Never LOOK at a hippie let alone become one.  BE. SENSIBLE.  Always be clear about  what you love and don't let anyone take it away from you, ever.

Everyone I knew fully realized she'd been my lifeline.  Everyone, including That Guy and his friends who all understood I was even more transient from their point of view than I felt myself to be, kept eyeing me nervously waiting for me to lose it in some spectacular wreckage of a Way. 

Maybe I never did - then, or any time since, because my grandmother was no longer available to read Walden Pond to me until I pulled myself back together.

I went to the woods.

The above image was taken from an outlook that's either two or one third(s) of the way around depending on whether you proceed clockwise or counterclockwise at the pond's beach-based entry point. I used to walk the perimeter paths a lot during the year when my son was learning to swim in the company of his father and, oftentimes, a family friend with a loud hearty laugh.  T. would laugh as loudly as he could in imitation of the sound.  I'd hear them both as I walked no matter how far away they were; their joy amplified to ambient status thanks to water's sound conduit properties

In my own case I initially 'went to the woods' because it was there in a way the civilized world was not and could never be.  And because I thought dominant culture was based on absolute insanity borne of shortsightedness. (Plus the way our culture arranged itself with our complicit acceptance if not approval into contortions so toxic or soul-numbingly petty and trivial in comparison to what society could be).  I didn't see how I could possibly live well or even at all with the hurt and apprehension that conventional living evoked in me.  I started reading Thoreau for myself as a young adult for much the same reasons.   More than once I've found my sense of personal equilibrium and resolve through the words I do indeed at times read aloud to myself.  I sit bolt upright when I do it, holding the book and my uncompromising tone of voice just like my grandmother would.  But I never really thought about that until just now.

Above is my favorite outlook point at the pond's perimeter.  The first picture in this post features the view Thoreau might have seen when he ventured out of his cabin and took in the new day's air.  Once, back when the second bush-president had declared the official opening of the second gulf war, my moments of peak despair were interrupted by news of an impending release of Faith in a Seed.   Just thinking about that (and a fresh out-loud re-reading of On Civil Disobedience) kept me going until J. gave me the book as a Christmas present.  I read it with such tender love and gratitude that each sentence took root in my soul.  And grew outwards embodied within my own faith in seeds of many kinds.

*****

Ever since children and babies started living in cages at the pleasure of our federal government - like that's a perfectly okay thing for an even partially civilized nation to do - I have been thinking about the stability and grounding I know I'd get from reading Faith again.  All the same I have been totally unwilling to give a book that means a great deal to me a connotation of this particular magnitude.   Maybe it's time for me to learn how to change my mind about these kind of things.  It's now.  It's happened and continues to be happening.   And yet.  When has faith in seeds ever been more relevant and meaningful?

healing light(s) .1

Wasn't sure what image to choose for this one but finally settled on this fragment from a long ago Business & Communication altar in a place I no longer live. I chose it because the topic of this post first made itself known in my bubbling consciousness during that linear time frame.  Gazing at the image it's not that hard to send myself back to Then during this same time of year in 2002.  I'd been distributing homemade flower essence preparations for just a few years.  Hardly a week went by when I didn't spend meditation time actively seeking a sense of connection to others who were pro-active and committed in our patterns of inter-species communication.  People absolutely called - beyond a shade of doubt - CALLED to prepare and distribute flower essences.  Not (ever) as a business.  But just because.  What else would one do if so called?

In the larger human world of daily context I was still learning what it meant to live in xurbia rather than a thriving metropolis.  I cultivated social ties with other Gaia lovers (and more specialized plant geeks) in a local radius that, over time, proved nothing short of transformational.  I also treasured a circle of more far-flung friends with similar interests.  What gave me a sense of being set apart from those connections was a lack of knowing anyone else who was making their own essences.  That specific form of circumstantial loneliness guided me to seek psychic contact with whoever these unknown people might be.  I formed the habit of moon gazing  while asking if anyone else was Out There doing and thinking and learning the same kinds of things.

yes 

Sometimes I would have the sense I'd managed to connect somehow and in response the connection was reinforced with that single word.  It didn't take long to begin wondering about matters that no longer seem strange to me - not even when I hear myself saying them aloud to somebody else.  I wondered if these affirmations were an actual reception and transmission process in the classic psychic sense OR if they might spring from the collected energy within whatever groves we claimed as part of our particular sacred space(s) - whatever rocks we might have collected and carefully configured - whatever dreams we might share, person-to-person, without even properly remembering a single one of them.  Surely our most potently sacred and personally true self releases particles of itself in such ways.  Within those places where we danced unself-consciously and at times without clothes.  Within the places where we saw - just for a split second of linear time - another sort of Being caught offguard by our presence.  Moving swiftly through something seamless and fluid that separates their time in shared spaces from ours.

yes.    yes.  yes.

One long summer evening back then I sprawled on my bed staring lovingly into the wide flung bough of a silver maple that became deeply meaningful to the point of feeling like a member of the family during the 14 years we lived there.  I was looking at the tree and then all of a sudden I was looking at a kind of holographic map of the country, seen only in shadow form but yet quite clearly that's what I saw.  I don't mean in the hallucinatory sense, I just mean my inner visual screen superimposed itself in a way that was far more compelling.  Because I was seeing beautiful leaf green, electric blue and buttery yellow lights twinkling and gleaming here and there all over the country.  I saw rose and turquoise and a deep jade-like green so exquisite that I wept in gratitude the first time I realized I might be able to replicate it with just the right mixing of watercolor pigments.

we are here.

It was such a perfect summer evening that magical abilities such as these seemed as natural and ongoing as the presence of whatever favorite cooling beverage you sip as you gaze long and deep into the sky.  I had no trouble believing there was cumulative value in what we do at the earth loving and healing level that moves far beyond whatever our specific reasons are for following our inner and outer guidance systems.  I understood this sort of thing was moving and transforming just as it always has on this continent.  Throughout the planet, come to that: the universal power of Word transferred to other forms of universally understood language.  Fragrant smoke from a sacred fire wafting beyond time and space.  The earth's heartbeat mirrored in a drum's steady rhythm.  When-and where-ever we set our messages of love and commitment to each other in place through the way we dance along with the flickering elements of sacred flames or add pop and sizzle to a heart drumbeat's foundation with rattles of all kinds and spontaneous wild-timbred vocalizations. 

we are here.  we are doing what we've learned it's important to do. 

[This post serves as a prologue to something long and more layered concerning how and when I received confirmation of another person having an empowered and empowering moment quite similar to my own vis a vis a sudden beauteous awareness of other human souls projecting themselves as colored lights - here, there and everywhere.]

the water in between

Our little stream feeds into this local brook.  It in turn feeds into the river I've been documenting as part of my Wednesday morning routine.

This pictures hints at the sluggish tone of the water's movement and its currents.   Although it's the most accessible place to photograph the dramatic impact of the water's increasing passageway from the corner of our property it's also a spot that borders a main local artery road.  Beneath that road the water passes underground until it's just about to slip into the wider currents of the closest full-fledged river.

In the above image you can actually see the first thin scrim of ice forming closer to the banks.  We came to this spot yesterday specifically so I could take pictures linking one watery perspective to two others I've already shared on this blog.  It was J.'s idea to hook it up with errands and our established plan to accomplish them via some specific back roads that we both love but haven't traveled together since mid-spring. 

I was immediately taken by the strong-spirited Willow guardian.  I was also struck by how dramatically the water's passageway narrows from one side of a low-seated two lane bridge to the other.  J. accompanied me for about half of my perambulation, narrating the water's journey in relation to specific geographic/local landmark terms.  I was half in and half out with my listening skills because, you know, taking pictures.  With two different cameras.  That part was my idea.

as we plummet to the teens

Yesterday we had snow flurries off and on throughout the very chilly day.  The ceiling was so low and dense with cloud clover that I would not have imagined a crystal clear overnight sky.  It was 19 degrees F at around 1 o'clock in the morning when I took this picture through the front door window.  Later I sat down on the bedroom floor under our south facing window and slowly studied the brilliantly clear constellations, one at a time. 

Happy Weekend, everyone!