Ripe Communities: Vulnerability and Patience, July 2014

Ripe Communities:  Vulnerability and Patience   July 6, 2014

Perspective & Hope.

How can I be nearly a year down the road of this particular journey?

It is easy to be impatient, to fear that I am too immersed in the details of arriving, of daily living.  Am I truly moving ahead in my life and my intentions of building rich human community, of devoting my experience, skills & voice— as wilderness guide, engineer, artist, parent, teacher, elder— towards a sweeter future?

There’s something about backpacking together with Shane that feeds my perspective and hope.  We are growing into this new life-place:  one of adult comrades with a variety of kindred interests and a deep history of knowing each other.

Shane’s current inquiry into the botany & ecology of wild places inspires conversations between us about the future of these mountain forests & humans within them.  I leap ahead— linking islands of native habitat & Shane’s idea about bringing permaculture & indigenous plants into local communities & yards— and connect all of that to my imagining of a land-based cross-generational teaching community.

Such a contrast between the more limited & “tame” forests of central North Carolina where Shane spent his elementary through early high school years, and this immense much-more-trackless land of north Idaho of his late teens and early adulthood.  

Musing about his love now of pathfinding across wild topography and his skill in using tiny twig-fires to heat food, we saw the gift of his younger years in North Carolina as a just-right and safe enough container.  That period and place— roaming those less-wild woodlands and learning basic fire skills— provided amazing freedom and stepping stones towards the future he now inhabits.

Something in all of this reminds me that it takes time for big dreams and futures to take visible shape.  Fostering underground roots that are mostly unseen and yet potent is the foundation.  Patience, persistence, holding intention:  they are roots.

(Do you see the mourning dove on her nest?)

Vulnerability seems a gift in this, too.  Often I feel my hesitation to risk; to articulate and share my deepest-held hopes and dreams.  “Someone” might laugh, or roll their eyes!  I might lose some conventional approval.

But I am NOT conventional.  And I do hold these big dreams.

Continuing to introduce myself genuinely as I am has brought in new and inspiring friends with kindred hopes, and I bet that in some years down the road, I will be able to have the perspective looking back of how these beginnings have grown into some chunk of the future I hope for. 

So I cheer myself on— and you, my friends— in holding to dreams.  May shy and wild snowshoe hares emerge to greet us as we stand, unsuspecting that some aspect of us and the way we are present has made a safe place.

Settling In, written May 2014

Settling In May 7, 2014

I arrived in Sandpoint, Idaho ~ 6 weeks ago.  It is a small town of about 8000 and wild creatures are close, like these moose in town the first week I was here:

The mama: 

Mom and 2 teenagers:  

I am working ~ 4 days a week as a cashier at the local independently-owned natural foods store here.  

It is much like Weaver Street Market in Carrboro!  It is a HARD job to learn, I have great co-workers, and it is also a sweet way to meet good people, not to mention some steady cash flow.  I have a bike with baskets so I can commute by a combination of bus and my bike.

There is a separate bike path along the entire 3+ mile route all the way to my door.  I am renting a room and sharing kitchen in a home in Dover Bay, with wetlands, geese, ducks, osprey and beaver almost at the edge of the back porch, so it is a lovely place for my morning run, and to be in the midst of beautiful wildflowers and migrating birds.  

Here is the house:
 

the nearby mountains:  

and the wetlands:

I’ve found Glacier lilies, “grass widows”, shooting stars, and willow catkins blooming:

in the last 3 weeks on a nearby hill where I have sat and just listened and watched all the wildness around me:

Last but not in any way least, Shane!  We are having some incredible times together backpacking and listening to hopes for the future and dreams to get there; discovering amazing new birds and flowers and wild country along the way.  To hear, witness and support this time in his life feels like an incredible and important gift.  He is part of the future that gladdens my heart.  I am finding other incredible community here too, and there will be opportunities for collaboration on rites of passage, beginnings of Phoenixes Rising, and tiny homes.

Shane and I camped together 2 nights near Shiloh Guard Station at the end of April - an area we have now hiked 4 or 5 times last fall and this spring- Here’s a potpourri of flowers, mountains and camping.