10 days journeying...re-wilding

Wrung out from the night and day just past...tired, but "a good tired."

We gave Joseph's little handmade teardrop trailer to good friends from Chicago, and spent a few precious hours with them last night and this morning, till mid-afternoon when they had to leave...

Sleep eluded me until after 3am, and intense dreams full of portentous images filled the hours before the dawn...

...and so today's journey--this evening's, really--is simply to breathe and rest, and feel the moving air kiss my skin...

...to wander a bit with my camera and my journal, to see what catches my eye.

And my imagination.

I watch the bright jewels of hummingbirds at the feeders, their iridescent feathers catching the late afternoon sun like burnished bronze.  The female has bright obsidian eyes, seemingly too large for her diminutive size.  She has spider-silk clasped in her tiny feet; it catches the sunlight like Rapunzel's golden hair.

What will she do with these sun-struck filaments?  I imagine her weaving them into a magical lining for her nest, impossibly soft.

I love the varied rocks in my tiny Zen garden...they're a varied community that nonetheless seem to fit together.

Swirls and sinuous lines invite imagination in this huge wooden burl...what do you see there?

The cracked safety glass in my shed's door always makes me think of a mask in a web...here, it reflects the trees behind it.

And here are our young friends and the teardrop, ready to start a new life of adventure and love...a most satisfying chapter in the ongoing story.

Change is a constant...times change, seasons change, and we change with them.  Plans change, and we do our best to go with the flow.  That seems to be the message for today...

Finally, standing alone on the back deck, I muse on the fireflies and snowy tree crickets that seem the very essence of a Midwestern summer night--that at least seems unchanged and unchanging--and I feel at home...

Finding quiet when I can...Day 9

Washing my face with the holy water of dew on clover in the early morning...then nature's own rich, dark mud between my toes...that must be healing. I feel like a child at play in the morning of the world.

This tiny star-shaped flower smiled at me from the dew-covered ground ivy...I'm not sure what it is, other than similar to a buttercup in shape.  I love the little mysteries...

The garden is in transition...life and death clearly illustrated in miniature.

A mystery squash, as well...it volunteered this year and I have no idea what it is.  Summer squash, winter?  Is it ready to pick or should I wait...?

They WILL ripen...eventually...

 

It is still comfortable at this hour--coffee on the back deck, sun on my face and bare legs.  Pepi-cat yawns and stretches nearby and the birds ignore him totally.

Sunlight sparkles on the fountain and catches the lemon-colored leaf boat amongst the bubbles.

The new fountain never fails to offer some small bit of beauty...

Bright sun catches glitter-lights on the old garden sculpture; it is weathered to its current form, grains of silica in squirrel shape.

He's lived in my back garden for 30 years, slowly weathering away...

Looking with the eyes of a child, I see a hudred colors and a myriad shapes...and now feel the need to take my hand microscope to the garden to see this magic that hides in plain sight.

I sit quiet on the deck, bare feet on the earth, whistling the song my big drum taught me (for each drum has its own voice, its own song)--and a chickadee and a titmouse landed nearby to investigate.  Our chickadees are normally quite shy, but the song seemed to intrigue them; they cocked their heads to listen.  I half expected them to answer.

It's not so much "carpe diem" as simply being--this moment, before the day gets busier... 

A day of remembering, paying attention, listening, looking...Being There, Day 4

On a day when many people go on big family or neighborhood picnics, attend events, rip up and down the lake on speedboats, celebrate Independence Day with light shows and noise, we opted for quiet, hungered for it, immersed ourselves in it.

It was glorious...

...for the most part!

I'd been meaning to draw the other odd bone I'd found near the lake...I see so many fae faces in it, depending on how I look at it.  Isn't that often the case?  I see how artists like Brian Froud might find inspiration here, I certainly do.

Three fae faces in this single artifact...the bottom one looked vaguely porcine to me!  I turned it right side up, and upside down, and there were more each time I looked.
Can you see them?  I know there are probably more still...but the fae often hide if you look at them straight on.

I'd forgotten how much I like sketching with my vintage Sheaffer pen...responsive lines are such a pleasure.

Alas, I seem to have lost the knack of making a flower chain...this is much stemmier than I remember!  Tighter knots perhaps?  Closer to the end?

I knew how, once upon a childhood morning...

Small, slow lives play out beside our own...he was very beautiful and a bit shy. retracting those stalk-like eyes if I startled him.  Perhaps he imagined I couldn't see him if he couldn't see me...so I tried hard not to startle him!

Tiny forests of moss colonize the rocks and make their living beneath our feet.  Reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss recently, I was amazed again at the complexity of these miniature landscapes, and long for my magnifying glass.

An entirely different kind of moss...this one with a wee spotted beetle I didn't even see at first, till I enlarged the photo...

Tryst Falls was noisy with the raw power of recent flood...but that's the kind of noise that is more energizing than exhausting.

Later, we went to the lake expecting holiday crowds and not planning to stay long...we were delightfully surprised to find only a few of our fellows out soaking up the firework-free quiet.  The loudest noise this late evening was the soft plashing of his paddles and the conversations of geese as they prepared for the coming night.

The recent hard rains exposed more of the  mess left last week by the people with the water balloon party...these were half stuck in the huge mud wallow they left.  

Joseph asked why I felt it was my job to pick thim up (this from the guy who picks up trash and monofiliment on his walks and fishing!)...but it is my job because it is a privilege to restore harmony and beauty, as much as I am able.  (That is not to imply I don't grumble and mutter dire imprecations on their heads, of course!)

I am just sad that no one has taught that reality to so many...this is the only Earth we have.  As they say, there IS no Planet B.

But order and peace restored, I got in one more quick sketch of the lake, and soaked in the welcome quiet.

After the flood...Inner Journeying, Outer Explorations, Day 3

I walked up the Desire Path (as Robert Macfarlane calls these casual foot-maintained paths created by humans and other animals in his book, The Old Ways; A Journey on Foot) to visit the Smallwood after the storm.  All looks well, if sodden.  The wet-weather rivulet sparkles and rushes down our abandoned alley, cutting a new channel as it reaches the open area in imitation of a larger river in flood.

...happily this time it stayed peacably on the east side rather than diverting to our basement; the first year I lived here the sound of rushing water was a new Niagara.  

I love the way the newborn river catches silver light in its tiny turbulence, winking bright between the overhanging leaves.  Belle helps me to inspect the rate of flow...

When I was little, I used to float leaf boats down occasional creeks like this...and a quick check with my Inner Journey guide answered "so what's stopping you, silly?"  Of course I had to try it again. 

I'd forgotten the leaf must be DRY, otherwise it immediately sinks; I'd lost the wisdom of childhood.  Finding a dry leaf in all that rain was a challenge...but we did it, Belle and I...

And then of course had to sketch it in a corner of my journal...

The new garage-sale frog was FULL of water from the downpour...I guess it really WAS a "frog-strangler" as the old farmers around here used to say!

Walking barefoot in the wet is one of life's simple pleasures...

The volunteer mulberry just beyond the bird feeders glistened with rain from crown to root...it looked as though it had been painted with transparent liquid silver.

It reminded me of a lyrical passage from Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles: "...we are loved, like all living things that Gaia sustains.  There is poetry in the canopies of forests and in the gentle roll of hills, a song in the wind and a benediction in the kiss of the sun.  There are stories in the chuckle of waters in creeks, and epics told in the tides of oceans.  There are trees...that seem sometimes like they have grown all their lives just to feel the touch of my hand upon their trunks, they are so welcoming to me...." 

And so this mulberry has always been.  I greet it daily, give it my thanks, eat of its fruit and feed it with leaves from my herbal teas...

...each moment of gratitude is a moment of Grace.   

Once more from Kevin Hearne..."you'll feel it in your toes as you walk upon the earth."  And again...
"Walk as though you are kissing the Earth with your feet," said Thich Nhat Hanh.  And so I did, mindfully, full of gratitude and paying attention to each step, ...and if I did not, my knee reminded me! 

Its roots were exposed by the hard rain...who knew they were so multicolored!

Wild grapes I didn't know lived in the Smallwood...

a last flower on the garlic mustard...

The shed tucked away safely in the lush green world...

And back inside before the next rain, my need for fire found expression with a beeswax candle magnified with a quartz crystal...

Moments of Grace indeed.

Wandering Between the Rains...Day 2

An unexpected rain storm necessitated a change of plans...which is really what this is all about, come to think of it.  Response, not plans.  And so I took a fresh juicy peach out onto the covered back porch with my coffee, my journal, and a tiny candle and enjoyed just being.

I've always loved fire and been drawn to it...this morning's rain necessitated a much smaller one!  But the scent of woodsmoke speaks to my soul, and so I found a dry twig to be my primal incense...

The hole-stone I found yesterday became a pendant to remind me of serendipity and exploration...

The wet logs, years old, are home to many things including this slug.  He moved amazingly quickly!  I'd almost lost him by the time I found my camera...

Someone's home is spangled with crystals...Grandmother Spider hides inside, wisely keeping dry.

The oldest logs wear striated Elizabethan ruffles...they feel velvety to the touch.

Boris has been doing yeoman service, directing the torrents away from our foundation...he never fails to make me smile as I brush the leaves and cobwebs from his ears. 

I am not sure why a pool in a stone always makes me think of the Eye of God...

The striped hostas make flowers that droop...they're spangled with rain as well.  Between showers I wandered through our urban wilderness to see what I could see.

It's such a pleasure to have small bits of nature nearby.  One of my first natural history books, long out of print, was called The Local Wilderness, and I love finding it still.  In truth, more now than ever.

Trumpetvine flowers remind me of my grandmother's back garden...I used to wear them on my fingers when I was a child.  Quite festive, really...Dragon Fingers!

Bright leaf shines like a beacon against the sodden soil...

It was a most satisfying day, ending with dinner out with my husband, and, right before bed, a downpour that filled rivers and streams and overran low-lying roads.  I'm very glad we got to the cabin yesterday, because when the long muddy drive is soaked it's hard getting back out!

All is well, all is well.

Small Pleasures...

...it's been a rough couple of months for me and for my family.  An unexpected and too-early death knocked the pins out from under all of us; we are cocooned in our individual lives, feelings, perceptions, stumbling about and knocking into walls that are sometimes one another. I am not feeling at all able to work on my book, it requires too much organization, for now.

A great deal has happened since my Solstice post, but for now I will just say thank God for small pleasures and the simple, everyday things.  A cup of favorite tea, a purring cat, my husband's touch, the beauty of the wild birds outside my window--the sacredness of the everyday.

...a favorite pen with a fine and flexible nib...

...the beauty of flowers...

...a bird seldom seen...I was journaling about him, above...

...and always, journaling, learning, growing, creating.

The class I'm taking is called Everyday Sacred, and it is helping...I have a focus that is letting me see more clearly and let go.