August Miscellany: Inevitable, Imperceptible Change

Tell me a story.  Tell me the story of the river and the valley and the stream and the woodlands and wetlands, of the shellfish and finfish.  Tell me a story.  A story of where we are and how we got here and the characters and roles that we play.  Tell me a story, a story that will be my story as well as the story of everyone and everything about me, the story that brings us together in a valley community, a story that brings together the human community with every living being in the valley, a story that brings us together under the arc of the great blue sky in the day and the starry heavens at night, a story that will drench us with rain and dry us in the wind, a story told by humans to one another that will also be the story that the wood thrush sings in the thicket, the story that the river recites in its downward journey.

--Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth

Red Admirable (Vanessa atalanta) on purple coneflower in our garden.  August 2012.

Slowly but surely, as nearly imperceptibly as the season shades from summer into autumn, things are changing, things are shifting.  I feel old attitudes dissolving.  I find myself making new plans, testing new ideas, becoming interested in things I have never been interested in before.  Although I still find myself shifting, day by day, from optimism and a belief that I am on the right path and change is occurring, to a despairing conviction that nothing has changed and everything I have ever done in my life is wrong, and then back again.  I am afraid of what the changes may bring, and often I find myself wondering whether I will ever be successful; there are so many people trying to be writers today, so how will I ever be able to compete and stand out from the crowd?  I wonder, and wonder, and come to no firm answers, even as, slowly, gradually, just under the surface, things continue to change, to shift.  Even when, and perhaps even especially when, I feel that nothing is changing at all.

I have been neglecting my butterflies this year.  In previous years I could not resist a single one that fluttered by me, and I would be off, chasing after it, camera in hand, but this year I have been, perhaps, too focused on my own life to spend as much time with all those other small lives.  The Red Admirable (sometimes also called the Red Admiral) in the photo above lighted on a purple coneflower in our garden the other day and, amazingly, actually stayed put long enough for me to race downstairs for my camera and snap a few photos before it settled in a more inaccessible position behind some leaves.  Sometimes, if you don't come to them, they will simply come to you...

I have a million thoughts skittering around in my head that will need to be written about at some point, but for now I'll just leave you with these links:

• Moma Fauna celebrates the fact that the magic is here and now, all around us on this Earth, everyday and everywhere.  This is something that I very strongly believe myself - and her photos of fungi and slime molds are lovely as always.
• I love sunflowers, so I also love this photo of sunflower fields, singing, from Bo Mackison.  I've never seen an entire field of sunflowers, but I hope that I will one day.  Bo's blog, Seeded Earth, is well worth following, by the way, as she takes exquisite nature photos and posts nearly every day.
• For more amazing photos, check out these of mushrooms and fungi.  I wish I could take macro photos like these with my camera, but I think I'd need a new camera for that.  We haven't had many mushrooms this month because it's been so dry, but we had lots this spring when we had so much rain.
• At No Unsacred Place, Lupa discusses the dangers of talking plants in a well-balanced post on the value of science to nature spirituality.  I would love to see more discussions of this kind taking place in the pagan community, since I feel that many pagans either do not really understand the scientific method or dismiss it as something that takes the wonder out of nature.  My own studies of science in university have only deepened my spiritual practice, and I have found that, far from "de-mystifying" the world, science only reveals more and more mysteries and reasons to find awe and wonder in nature.
• At The Druid's Garden, some useful tips for saving seeds from spinach and lettuce.  We never used to save seeds, but we've started saving some seeds from annual flowers (such as marigolds) this year, and I definitely want to start saving more seeds in the future - maybe not this year, but definitely when I have a garden of my own and hopefully even before that.
• Finally, Marcie Scudder celebrates the value of practice - whatever it is that we do, we practice not so that we can cross it off our to-do lists, but simply to do, to be, and to begin again, day after day.

That's all for this month!  I didn't write as much this month as I hoped and I'll probably be doing some travelling in September so posts may continue to be light for a while... but blogging is one of those things that I can feel shifting and changing, so who knows what may happen.  The blessings of the autumn (or spring) to you, wherever you are in the world.

Rediscovering Poetry (again)

One of the earliest blog posts I wrote here was entitled "Rediscovering Poetry" and it was about how, after many years of silence, I started writing poetry again.  I started writing poetry as part of my practice of Druidry, and as a way to honour both my creativity and the spirit and magic that I found within nature.  I started writing poetry because it was something I enjoyed doing, and because I was beginning to realize that what I really loved to do was not what I was taking courses in at university.  I started writing poetry because I felt that I needed to write, and that I could not survive or live well if I did not write.

In the spring of 2011, I stopped writing poetry.  The last poem in my poetry journal on March 26, 2011 is a despairing, dark poem that expressed the fear and uncertainty that was all but overwhelming me at that time. "You know that there are some things you must not say," it begins, and ends with the lines, "...you keep your silence and build walls around your words.  The walls are strong, with no holes..."  I was very, very afraid, and, just as my poem said, I was building walls around myself.  I was blinding myself about an important friendship in my life, which I didn't even realize I was doing until this year, after it was already too late, and the friendship had ended.  I didn't know what was going to happen in my life, and I felt that I was powerless, trapped and unable to follow my true dreams.  I was still trying to write poetry, but because I was no longer in communication with myself, I couldn't do it.  There were things I couldn't write about, so I "built walls around my words" and stopped writing.

Aside from one poem that arrived, unexpectedly and nearly completely, on my page last September and one faltering effort this February, I didn't write any poems after that.  Until now.  For the months of August and September, I have made the decision to write one poem for every day.  Maybe not necessarily one poem a day.  But there will be a poem for every day, so that by the end of September I will have written sixty-one new poems that I didn't have before.

If you follow my other blog, you will know that in June and July I participated in something called the Index-Card-a-Day Challenge.  ICAD was a challenge to create one index card's worth of art for every day of June and July.  I chose to participate in the challenge because I thought it would be an easy way to get into the habit of creating art daily.  And it was that, but it also transformed my relationship to my art by allowing me to become more comfortable in my own personal style and by reminding me of the value of practice - of showing up everyday to create, whether I feel like it or not, whether the art I create is any good or not.

By the end of July, I had decided that I would undertake a similar challenge on my own with poetry: one poem a day for the months of August and September.  The only constraint: each poem had to fit on one page of my poetry journal.  Why?  Because I wanted to rediscover poetry again.  I wanted to get back to writing poetry.  I wanted to let go of the attitude I had developed that everything I wrote had to be perfect the first time I wrote it.  I want to simply practice: to show up everyday and write, whether I felt like it or not, whether what I wrote was any good or not.

I have higher standards of my writing than of my visual art.  Because I have always been used to being not very good at drawing and painting, and because I have no desire to publish any drawings or paintings the way I do with my writing, I am more willing to create "bad" art than I am to write badly.  But bad writing is really okay.  It is still practice.  It still counts.  Maybe I will only be able to write one good poem for every bad poem.  But that's okay.  That's more good poems than I would be able to write if I wasn't writing poetry at all.

Just as creating an index card a day allowed me to start writing poetry again, so I'm also hoping that writing poetry everyday will allow other areas of my writing to loosen up.  In fact, I think that this is even happening already. I feel more at peace with this blog, and more confident in writing about whatever I am passionate about at the moment.  And how is my poetry doing?  I've been writing a poem a day, and so far I have written a lot of bad poems.  I haven't gone back to read over the ones I've written yet, but I suspect that there may be a couple of good ones in there as well.

But even if there isn't, it doesn't matter.  It is still practice.  It still counts.

My First Slime Mold

Last weekend I was wandering about in the wild corner of our yard.  This corner, down in the bottom corner of our yard, straddling the exact boundary where the town ends and the country begins (rather a liminal kind of place, now that I think of it), is a tangle of wild hawthorn, snowberry, Oregon-grape, and the occasional saskatoon, all watched over by two solemn old Douglas-firs.  As I wandered, I noticed something yellow on top of a fallen birch tree that had toppled over the fence separating our property from that of our neighbours.  I stepped closer to get a better look.  This is what I saw:

It was unlike anything I had ever seen before.  It was a bright spot of unlikely yellow in a landscape that was otherwise dominated by dull greens and shades of brown.  It was a brilliant spot of colour in the shadowy undergrowth.  I knelt down beside it.  I peered at it closely, my nose only a few inches from its surface.  It was fascinating.  It had a textured, porous surface and parts of it appeared to be expanding outwards along the surface of the birch bark.  I even felt a sense of brief alarm.  I feel comfortable identifying most of the organisms that I encounter in my local woods, but this was something different.  It wasn't a plant.  It wasn't an animal.  It wasn't a lichen.  It didn't look like any kind of fungus that I had ever seen before.  Perhaps... was it a slime mold?

I've lived in the woods for most of my life.  I grew up in the house that my dad built in 20 acres of forest in interior British Columbia, and, until I left for university, I hadn't been away from the place for more than a month at a time.  We live in town now, but I'm sure that I must have seen slime molds before in my life.  Until now, however, I have never seen one that I actually recognized as a slime mold.  In fact, I don't think I had even heard of them before I took biology in university.  I remember that was my favourite day in my biology class, since I was incredibly excited to learn about a new organism.  I couldn't wait for the day when I would come across one in the wild.

Of course, I was thrilled when I stumbled across my yellow slime the other day.  It was a perfect reminder of my practice of observing the small details, of being alert to the tiny pieces of wonder, magic, and beauty that cross our paths, and that we might otherwise not even notice if we aren't paying close attention - if, for example, we're too busy sending messages on our cell phones or are simply too wrapped up in our own lives to notice anything outside of them.  It was also a reminder of how there is so much diversity of life to be found even on a mere acre of land in town, and of how there is always more to be discovered.  I could live here for my entire life and not take a step away from our yard once and probably I would still not see all that there is to be seen.

Of course, I was so excited I had to rush back to the house immediately to grab my camera and bring everyone else down to see it as well.  They know me and my eccentricities, so maybe they were just humouring me, but I think they were pretty excited by it as well.  After all, it's not every day that you meet a slime mold.

I returned to the wild corner a couple days later and my slime mold now looked like this:

Although it was still fascinating, I was thankful that I had seen it while it was still in its glory.

Slime molds are odd creatures; once considered fungi, they are now recognized as a unique class of organisms in and of themselves.  They are a member of the Kingdom Protista, a catch-all kingdom for anything that's not a plant, animal, fungus, or bacterium.  They are unique in that each slime mold is like one giant cell composed of thousands of individual nuclei (in comparison to the cells of, say, a human, which have only one nucleus each).  Other slime molds live as single-nucleus, individual cells most of the time but can join up to behave like a multicellular organism when conditions are right.  Slime molds show unexpected intelligence, and can even find their way through mazes.

As I watched my yellow slime, I wondered: where had it come from? where was it going? what - if anything - was it thinking? what does its universe look like?  It had an other-ness about it that the more familiar plants and animals and fungi seem to lack - or perhaps that other-ness was simply more noticeable because I am so much less familiar with slime molds than I am with those other organisms.

I won't be surprised if I start seeing slime molds more often now.  Often, these things work like that.  You see something that you have not seen before, and then, with your awareness of it triggered, you're seeing it everywhere and you wonder how you could have ever missed it before.  It was like that for me with lichens, and with mushrooms.  Now, slime molds are what I'll be looking for as I peer into corners and wander about in the woods.

What have you encountered recently in your own explorations?

~~~

More information on slimes:

• Lessons of a Slime Whisperer by Justine Riekena - One of my most favourite blog posts ever and one which really made me want to see a slime mold for myself even more.  Justine is a pagan and animist and has a love and appreciation for all of the "small things" in nature that are often overlooked.  You can also check out her great blog at Pray to the Moon.
• Slime Molds in British Columbia, including some lovely slime photos, at one of my favourite websites, E-Flora BC.
• An introduction and some fun facts about slime molds.
• An article about slime mold intelligence and another one on maze-solving.

Like what you read?  Please visit my new blog: At the Edge of the Ordinary.

Book Review: Spirit in the Grass and Motherstone

I headed out this morning to the grasslands.... My vision for the book was as yet unclear... As I drove along the icy road, my eyes searched the land, but I saw nothing.  The day was dull and the light was flat.  Where and how would I begin?  I had images in my mind but I could see that they didn't exist.  I soon began to realize that I had to let go of all my preconceptions.  I had to get myself into "the present", to see what was actually out there.  Only then did the landscape slowly begin to unfold.

-- Chris Harris, Spirit in the Grass: The Cariboo Chilcotin's Forgotten Landscape

Spirit in the Grass and Motherstone are two books published by Canadian photographer Chris Harris.  Both of them explore in photos and words aspects of that region of British Columbia, Canada that is commonly known as the Cariboo Chilcotin.  Both books are beautiful examples of a spiritual way of looking at and understanding the natural world, and of a bioregional approach to nature spirituality and understanding.  Whether you live in British Columbia or not, to flip through the pages of these books is to gain the inspiration to seek out the wild places and the bones of the land in your own region of the planet - and to honour and revere the sacred land itself.

Spirit in the Grass is a celebration of the grasslands of the region, grasslands which remain relatively untouched by negative human pressures, although they have been used by humans for millennia - first by the native peoples of the region and then by the ranchers who came later, and now by the hikers, naturalists, and artists who are drawn to this area.  Contributions of both ecologists and poets to the book highlight the unique ecological character of the grasslands, as well as their spiritual value.  Chris Harris's photos illustrate the extent and sometimes unexpected beauty of this land, which can also be harsh and unforgiving.  In his captions to the photographs, Harris describes his struggles to understand and feel part of the land - and to capture its depth and beauty through the lens of his camera.

Motherstone (co-authored with writer and poet Harold Rhenisch) explores the poorly-known volcanic region of the Cariboo Chilcotin - the region of the most active volcanoes in British Columbia.  Rhenisch's lyrical prose and poetry explore the natural and human history of the region - from continental drift to the descent of the glaciers to the native trade routes (obsidian, gathered from the volcanic slopes, was a valuable commodity) - and are a perfect complement to Harris's photographs.  The photos and prose together aid the appreciation of the Earth as a planet among the stars - a planet that remains very much alive at her core.

To walk in the Motherstone today is to be present when the land sees itself for the first time - which is a moment that does not necessarily ever come to an end.  It is to see the living Earth in her ongoing eruption and to recognize her as a mother.  There is no other planet like this.

-- Harold Rhenisch, Motherstone: British Columbia's Volcanic Plateau

Both Spirit in the Grass and Motherstone are large format, coffee table style books, allowing the gorgeous, full-page photos to be appreciated fully - although I'm sure that nothing can compare to the actual experience of being there on the land itself.  What impressed me most about both of these books is that, while neither of them are about nature spirituality, both are clearly created from an intensely spiritual viewpoint, a viewpoint that acknowledges, as a basic fact, that the Earth is alive and sacred.  Although the prose often discusses ecology, geology, anthropology, and other disciplines, this is not science writing.  This is writing that is informed by science and inspired by the deeper spiritual connection that an individual feels to the land.  And the photos are like visual prayers in praise of the Earth.

Another thing I liked about these books is that they do not exclude the human element from their celebration of the landscape.  They are not glorifying a "wilderness" or damning humans for what they have done wrong, but celebrating the spiritual connection between humans and the Earth, and exploring the ways in which an individual can come to an understanding of the land as a whole.  The books describe the ways in which humans have used and lived on the land for thousands of years, and the photos often include human figures - although of course such figures are always dwarfed by the grandeur of the landscape around them, for humans are only one small part of the life that is our planet Earth.

I highly recommend these books to anyone, in any part of the world, as an example of a bioregional nature spirituality, and of how photography, poetry, and science can together be used to both celebrate and better understand this planet on which we live.

Just Start

I think the hardest thing about blogging right now - and, if I'm honest, about quite a lot of things in my life - is that are simply so many things that I want and need to write about, and that I want and need to be doing right now.  When I finally sit down at the keyboard or with my notebook and pen to write, or when I finally decide that this is the time to take action and start doing things, then I don't know where to begin.  There is simply so much that I could be doing, that I could be writing about, that it overwhelms me.  I stare blankly at the page.  I start to write about one thing, and it starts to turn into something else, or I'm no longer sure where my writing is headed, or I start thinking about another topic that suddenly seems so much more interesting than the topic that I'm writing about that everything just falls apart.  There is just much going on right now, so many ideas bubbling to the surface and demanding to be acted upon...

I want to write about the changing seasons and my observations of nature, as I walk this land and as I look up at the sky, tales of the Earth's creatures who I encounter on my path.

I want to write about the magic and the sacred that are within the everyday.

I want to write about the work that I've been doing lately, how I've started writing poetry again and I've started playing the flute again and I've made art every day for two months and I've finished working through The Artist's Way and I've finished writing a novel and all the new thoughts and ideas and plans that are starting to make themselves known.

I want to write about science and spirituality and animism and paganism and agnosticism and Druidry and creativity and all the other curious strands that have come to make up my meandering path.

I want to write posts that inspire and uplift and intrigue and delight and challenge my readers.

I want to write so much.  Just a month ago, I was almost constantly worrying that I had no ideas and I didn't know what to write.  Now, I feel like I have so many ideas, whenever I try to write, they all come crowding into my mind at once and nothing comes out.

Just a few months, I was struggling to keep from sinking once again into despair about my life, about what I would do and how I would live and where I would go.  Now... I still worry about these things, but I am beginning to have faith once again that I can do this, that I can do the things I have dreamed about, even though my path may look strange and erratic and contradictory and even just plain wrong to many of the people I meet.  There are simply so many things that I want to do with my life now.  I feel like they've all been building up over the last 6 years and now they've suddenly all pounced on me at once.

I feel as though, after the nearly 6 years I spent in university, pursuing dreams that were no longer mine and going down paths that went nowhere, I have finally come alive again.

It's all a bit overwhelming, although wonderful and joyful and even frightening as well.

I have to keep reminding myself to take things slowly, one step at a time, one day at a time.  I have the time. I don't need to rush because there's nowhere to rush to.  I'm already here.  I'm already on the journey, and that's what matters.

It doesn't matter where I start, as long as I start.  Just start.