Sparkling Lotus Ink

January Thaw .2

Let's take a little walk together.  You might remember all the leaves from a mid-autumn walk in many of the same places. As you can see they're still there settling further into the cellular world of the landscape's history.  On warmer February days I'll begin to groom the frog pond's rockscape in line with late winter pruning tasks.  But for now it's a symphony of decomposition.

Today was so warm that I expected to see a few oily black frog noses peeking through the slim passages of melted water.  Perhaps they sensed how brief the pleasant weather was going to be.  Am very thankful there was a break in the high to gale force winds of recent days so I had a chance for a lingering inspection tour before they descended again.  Looks like this may be our third consecutive January thaw when there's very limited time to be outside enjoying the smell of rising earth and perhaps managing to knock off a few of the lingering items on the Didn't Get Done list.

The stream water was very lively and crystal clear.  I took a little video at this spot and sent it to everybody I thought would be enchanted rather than annoyed.

The above stream views I habitually share are a familiar touchstone.  But when I keep walking into the woods the view quickly shifts to offer a fresh perspective.
not pictured: a daunting amount of fresh tree-fall debris. 
additional context:  on our first evening of so-called 'ownership' I discovered the landscaped pond was full of frogs.  J. discovered an enormous rock that grounds all energy and sight-lines in our backyard.
When we arrived the self-mulched area of the rock was dotted with Jack-in-the-Pulpits in full flower.    The following year I learned that in earlier spring Canadian anemones ring the rock's entire border.  Nearby is the first Hawthorne I noticed during my first full morning in residence.  It took me two magical hide-and-seek years to find its Grandmother.  Smaller rocks form stony breadcrumbs leading towards the heart of our little woods (pictured in the previous post with a look upwards at the heart's crown-land.

Since our arrival we've been encouraging various oak saplings throughout the property.  A few ring our shared hearthstone at the edge of the woods.

Before the third installment of my Thaw documentation let's take another moment to consider the lookout rock.

At some point the rock split.  A few spindly maples set their roots just there but all have died and subsequently fallen since our arrival.  Last year I used my grandmother's method of seeding woodland plants around our home's foundation to (hopefully) seed an additional colony of Jack in the Pulpits within the split.  Time will tell if I was successful. 

January Thaw .1

Glacial Potholes

Also of interest in Shelburne Falls.  Seriously.  Stand still with me and look.

elemental reunion

Today Mama Cat and I walked down to the little stream that cuts through the northern edge of our property.  The wellspring is further up the hill where we live.  From our place the water passes through a culvert.  It reappears as a spring in the barnyard of the farm across the road.   Shortly after the vernal equinox the water rises all the way to the top of the banks and it moves with a thunderous roar.  During the summer, especially in a drought year, the bed is all but empty.  This year I really wasn't sure what was going on because a ginormous chime of Carolina Wrens colonized the wild roses that line the slope down to the stream.  I declared the area off limits to human traffic until the rose leaves started to drop from the cold.  Today was the first time I've visited the water in a close-up way since late Spring.

Crystal water guardians have been in place since our first Autumn.

J. replaced the original (badly rotten) bridge the second or third year we were here.  Now it's nicely weathered. 

So many leaves you have to look closely to see where the water flows ...

what we set in motion

In the Spring, Summer and Fall of 2005 I had the good fortune to keep a garden specifically for essence making purposes.  It was located on the outskirts of a CSA growing space at the top of a hill in the town where I used to live.  I worked in (and passively communed with) this Place at least three times a day - more if I was actively preparing essences. 

Above I stand tall and happy at 45; tending to the stone heart at the center of the garden.  It's filled with gifts of gratitude and love from the original human Friends of Sparkling Lotus Ink - these particular talismans offered specifically to the wild soul of Gaia and the medicine spirits of the landscape as well as flowers growing in that space.

This is the same space a few months earlier, marked-off for me by the CSA's general manager.  I created the stone heart altar space in the center and a few days later made lines of stone to turn the heart into the center of a sacred compass pointing towards the four directions.  With ease of writing the name over and over in mind, I called this space SL2.  Meaning it was the second garden in which I had prepared Sparkling Lotus flower essences.  It was also the first from-scratch garden space where I introduced myself as nothing more than willing hands and feet. 

Of course, as the years roll on it becomes increasingly clear that this was my aspirational goal rather than an ongoing fact.  I had plenty of self-oriented intentions and attachments to outcome.  Many of which I hadn't consciously considered until they bloomed full force. The garden itself scattered potent seeds of fundamental truth about myself/perception in a way I was able to accept and work with in an ongoing manner.  Flowers taught me, virtually every time I looked at them, how to look deep within the BE-ing of all sentient lives just as they're lived. Incorporating this awareness successfully enough to set a strong taproot did not occur over the course of this magical moment of stop-time personal Ascent.  But it did first bloom there in a sustained and ultimately sustainable way.

Above the bed is fully planted and beginning to grow into itself by my birthday at the end of June.  This is the space where Grace's beloved Joyous Warrior was born.  Sometimes, as is evidenced in the picture at the end of this post, I would bring plants in pots from my home garden so they might absorb the hillside's atmosphere a week or so before I gathered their flowers for inclusion in an essence bowl. 

Below shows the signal-sending changes I made to Donna's sign long before there was anything else beyond the patchwork stone heart in the center of the bed.  Note the small collection of stones and feathers (below the sign to the right) offered by other humans who quite early on felt themselves drawn to this work and finding ways of becoming an active part of it.

There's much to share about this very auspicious place and time from the most illuminated aspects of my personal history.  As collective instincts urge us to gather in order to to contemplate and honor Story & Life lines of ongoing meaning to us, this is the part of my own story-life that I'm most compelled to tell.  This is my contribution to the larger gathering of Beginnings we're all beginning to redefine and reconsider.  It's also a very specific visual arc illustrating how a thing quite literally gets set in motion:  Deliberately and by conscious choice.  Perhaps most amazingly to me, this post is also about my learning how my life's dearest wish as a tiny girl became the actual course I've followed with dogged determination; even if it seemed a lurching and perhaps entirely imaginary journey many times over the years.  And yet that's not at all what it's been.  It's been an ongoing act of sentience finding its way to a place where life is lived as just one of many species.