31 Days Wild, day 13...

The air is thick and still this morning.  Thunder mutters and grumbles in the West and another severe thunderstorm is on the way.

Tiny winged vampires circle and land; the indoor/outdoor cats have their small cloud of admirers hovering over tender ears and noses, wherever the fur is thin and flesh is vulnerable.  All creatures may indeed be sacred, but I will admit to sacrificing a few mosquitoes when they would do likewise!

The Smallwood is dark as dusk; the entry looks like a cave's mouth, and I head for home before the storm breaks.  Moments later the wind howl and tears at the trees; rain sluices down in a flood that falls in sheets and obscures Siloam Mountain--as well as neighboring houses.  Primal!  I watch from the porch...

I did a video of the wind rising...no idea if it will open here if you're not on Facebook, though...sorry!

My skin loved the feel of a cool breeze and light, soft fabric...I am aware of the pleasure of just being, the delight in this incarnation, right now, this moment.

The deck is covered with a mosaic of wet leaves in various stages of decomposition...

In the evening, strange bits of light illuminate the shadows deep within the Smallwood...sometimes softly, edges blurred like wet-in-wet watercolor, sometimes sharp and crisp, a glittering contrast to the deepest shadows.  One in particular, at this most fleeting moment, appear like the glowing eyes of some mysterious forest creature looking back at me from his cave.

Then the bright gaze fades into the tapestry of green, as though he'd closed his eyes for the night...when I go to investigate, there is nothing there.  

They say you can only see the Fae of you look from the corner of your eye, or catch a fleeting glimpse, or from a distance, like the Spooklight in southern Missouri...and so it appears.

When I was younger, I would go for drives down country roads on summer nights.  Moving slowly, sometimes my headlights would catch tiny glowing lights winking back like the eyes of a miniature fox or deer.  I'd stop the car and walk forward until I could see a wee spider crossing the road, hoping I would let it be...and I always did.

A Day Late...or two...11 days in, and struggling

Coffee on the deck with Pepi...birdsong, water splashing, early morning sunlight gilding the spiderwebs and fine grass blades...

Pepi likes the new fountain, too...

Peace.  The breeze stires the prayer flags and the small birds sing their varied song....

Peace.  The only sounds are those of a summer morning and the surf of traffic on the small state highway nearby.

Peace.  The surety of love and the gift of having Enough.

The wee dragon sits by the fountain...

Hotei enjoys the scent of incense in the tiny iron pot...

A lacy leaf hangs suspended in an invisible web...

But coffee on the early morning deck keeps me grounded...

Old cat drowses by my side...

The prayer flags are tattered and faded, but as long as they wave, they carry our prayers with them.

The iridescent gazing ball wears a wild wreath of trumpet vine...

We HAVE been busier than usual, both with people and with work.  Over the weekend and unprecedented 6 orders came through...we are grateful but puzzled.

Strange that there are so many distractions and interruptions in this month of renewed attention and focus.  Joseph says it's no coincidence, and I believe he is right.

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... 

Re-wilding, Day 8

Precious quiet afternoon; a balance.  With all my intent on refocusing, an inner journey, suddenly I am bombarded with The World.

I realized I hadn't taken time to sketch my sweetheart in the current journal...an oversight I rectified this day!

Are these signposts on the path, or obstacles?  Today there was a post from poet/priest/philospher John O'Donohue on community, coming together, working together, without "introverted power games."

But my introversion is anything but a power game.  It's simply who I am, how I function best.    I feel scattered and exhausted with "too much of a muchness."

Other quotes have been pointing to community as well, with a kind of synchronicity.  I will think on this...but I've worked in community, and burned out, going down in some fairly spectacular flames!  I am not anxious to see an encore.

And by evening my body appeared to add its vote--backache!  I read in bed with the heating pad on 8 rather than attending our 2nd Friday art crawl.  The quiet was most welcome, as well as healing. 

Perhaps listening to the messages our body sends us rather than powering through them is also a kind of re-wilding.

The sketch itself is rather painful!  The discomfort shows in my face AND in my inability to capture a likeness. But...it is what it is, and there were almost no other records of the day--and so it is included. 

Day 7 Distractions...and time.

It was a day of business and distraction, culminating in a 3+ hour interview that will be distilled down to 4 minutes.  That is the way of television, of course; I am curious as to what will remain.

At least it assured I would have time to sketch--this from a time-lapse journal page.

So, I was grateful I had taken time in the early morning to wander, and observe, and dream...

Leaves danced and sparkled and shed their droplets with a syncopated patter after an unexpected shower.  Birds crowded the feeders; jays called loudly overhead...

The fence between our backyard smallholding and the shed is almost hidden in burgeoning green.  The rain has provided needed moisture and the green leaves rejoice!

A darkened stem draws spiky lines against the rocks in Hotei's garden...was it sumac, or grape, or...?  I like a good unanswered question or two...

The tin crane sculpture atop the fence is a shadowy presence in all the leaves...I almost forget he's not real.

I love my tiny Zen garden with the dragonfly lantern...perhaps I'll put a candle inside one evening and sit by its flame-light dancing on the rocks.

English ivy climbs the corner of the shed...it spreads everywhere, and I let it.  In truth, I can't bear to cut it back!

Fascinating root shapes...last year's corn from my 3 sisters hills still offer their beauty, though no longer anchoring the tall plants in the ground...

Sweet, sweet serendipity...I found the remains of a softball in the woods and loved that it echoed the shape of my round rocks...two years later, it has sprouted a moss garden of its own.

Waiting to become...

My journey unfolds on its own timetable; much more populous than I had envisioned, much busier. much more filled with business.  My husband suggests the Universe tests my resolve, and I believe his take is right--though some things happen because this is when they ARE.  This is when they must be. I can either choose to respond, or hermitize...and so far response has been my most frequent choice.  Jobs, deadlines, requests...the interview...friends...the neighborhood picnic...perhaps next week!

And some things are postponed for reasons I may discern later.  I have saved a nest of dry shavings to make a fire in a more primitive fashion, during this month of re-wilding...and it has rained off and on for a week.

I plan a small installation of black and white stones near the Zen garden...a mandala, a spiral...and again, it is too wet to sit upon the ground.

I trust when the time is right, it will become clear to me.  So much of this journey revolves around trust, and unfolding, and time.

And perhaps that is the lesson.

Rain and Being...Day 6

I've talked about feeling scattered and rather unfocused...that's part of what this 31-day discipline is about.  Finding my OWN way, staying aware. 

"Let your focus be gentle, not forced.  Enjoy it, drink it in, pay attention...but a quiet, accepting, flowing attention.  No need to push in any way...let it happen and gently notice when it does.  Let it unfold, allow it to reveal itself to you."

That was the sense of guidance I got on the 6th day...and so, I did.  The rain fell straight down in sheets that obscured Siloam Mountain...I caught it in my hands, and tasted it, and washed my face in soft freshness, just because.  My gratitudes were many and heartfelt...

My succulents remind me that we all need different things...these lovely, varied plants thrive in dry conditions, and so I had to move them back from the edge of the porch to allow them time to dissipate some of that moisture from the splashing rain!

Although it was rather hot and sticky, by afternoon, I decided to go with my husband to the lake after all; he would fish, and I would explore...but I chose to drop him off and explore the other end of the lake, which was uncharacteristically deserted.

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Rocky Hollow evening, alone on the east side of the lake...and much cooler than I expected.  A pair of green herons ply the shallow water at the inlet end, and a kingfisher startles me with his rattling flight and loud voice, diving after his prey and darting away to perch on an uprooted tree.  Later, a great blue heron joins the fishing party...

I've always complained about the debris that ends up in the lake, like this big tire...however, the green heron found it the perfect perch from which to fish!  Adaptable serendipity...the water is so shallow on that end that the tire was resting in the mud.

As always I am fascinated with bits of weathered wood that tells a myriad stories...I see so many shapes there...

I can see my husband, off in the distance across the calm, mirror-like water...there is no one but me on this end of the lake and the quiet is palpable and comforting.

I've drawn this tree half a dozen times in a variety of seasons...graceful and enduring.

I wonder who lives beneath that rock...

A huge fish swims slowly in the shallows, his fin protruding from the water like a shark's...and of course he is NOT, but I enjoyed the fantasy.  Don't go in the water!

On Being...Day 5

The day after Independence Day...and checking the smallholding for debris, I find this huge cardboard tube smelling of gunpowder and blackened on the end.  I am grateful it's been so damp; it was a year for noise and and flaming wads shooting through the neighborhood, knocking me sideways off my chosen path of peaceful inner journeying.

Loud, unexpected, dangerous, illegal and inconsiderate noise tends to make me cranky as a bear just out of hibernation!

But...the day after is quiet and peaceful and I am beyond grateful...and paying attention.

What do the stones teach me this hot, super-humid day? To hold onto the cool of night as long as possible. To touch the earth.  Even to sweat--and I would not have noticed them had it not been for the debris. 

And had I not noticed the sweating stones by my doorstep, catching and reflecting tree and sky--and me--I would never have seen the patterned, scalloped bone, like infinitesimal fish scales, nor graceful calligraphic lines like an angel's wings...

These are turtle bones, or fish, or bird, or deer...they once contained and supported life; they still sustain the intricate beauty of the miniature, the Plan writ small.

And best of all in learning all this from the stones in Hotei's garden, I rediscover the eyes of a child, delighting in tiny, beautiful miracles of design that God leaves in our path.

"Look!  Look at this!  And this, and this..."


Infinite, worlds within worlds.

It had not rained for two days...this was condensation between the cool earth and the thick, humid air.

Ornate and beautiful turtle bones...

I see a fossilized mermaid's tail, what do you perceive here? (And yes, it's also a turtle bone of some sort, old and weathered...)

The mint is lovely and lush...spearmint is my favorite, tasting of summer...

Peppermint is bold and spicy and a remedy for many ills...

I didn't see the tiny grasshopper till I looked at the photo full size...I've always been drawn to tiny things.

A gift from the garden...a volunteer squash.  We are letting nature surprise us, this year, cheek by jowl with our own planted vegetables.  So far, it's Nature 6, Garden not-so-much, which may speak to us about the concept of allowing.

May the Creator grant the eyes of a child to us all...