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.

The Sonoran Desert, written October 2013

The Sonoran Desert and Its Wild Life October 26, 2013

It's funny.  While traveling by train, I have been "landing", quite appreciative of the gracious invitations of various families:  a flat bed to sleep in and a place to shop and cook, launder and shower, but without any expectations of the particular place.  This has led to all kinds of lovely surprises.  I just had 2 amazing days in the desert ecosystem around Tucson, Arizona, courtesy of my Servas hostess, also a Carol.  So this blog is born of my love of this land and its creatures that I got to be close to.

I went hiking in Sabino Canyon the first day- a recreation area in the National Forest with great displays and a nature walk with all the desert plants labeled, plus miles of trails.  

Then yesterday we went together to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.  This museum is a mix of botanical garden, enclosed habitats and excellent educational information.  

The Sonoran Desert is the only place the saguaro cacti grow, and I loved learning about them and their ecosystem.  They don't start branching or flowering til they are about 70 years old, and the diameter of their shallow root systems is roughly equal to their height.  

The prickly pear cacti are amazing, too.  Carol treated me to some of the fruit, called "tuna", frozen and then juiced.  It is brilliant magenta and somewhat reminiscent of pomegranate juice perhaps.  When I learned that cochineal, a prized deep carmine dye that I knew about from spinning and weaving, comes from a small insect whose home is the prickly pear, I wondered if the cactus is pulling a particular mineral out of the desert soils that is the source of these intense colors?????  Agave are important here too, and the ancient Hohokam desert people farmed them by aligning stones as "water bars" whose slight accumulation of the rain water was enough to improve the growth of the agave.

The desert ecosystem is amazing and fragile.  Bats and butterflies pollinate and are critical.  Over-harvest of the agave for alcohol is upsetting the delicate balances, as is habitat destruction for the saguaro and the bats.  People are learning  to intentionally provide housing for the bats when repairing the highway bridges they now use as caves….

In honor of my recent sighting of a mountain lion while driving near my north Idaho campground, I loved seeing the young male cougar at the Museum yesterday, learning that he was rescued as an orphan kit this spring from a backyard in San Jose, and getting a great picture of him!

Twice a day, falconers on the Museum staff offer free flight demonstrations of raptors.  It was amazing to watch and to learn more about their training.  To see them in flight as they are in the wild, but up close, was phenomenal.  We saw a barn owl and Harris hawks.  One of the staff noted that the owls are less "bright" than the hawks and slower to train as most of their brain capacity serves their incredible sight.  The Harris hawks are unusual in hunting as collaborative families, somewhat like a pack of wolves on wing.  All these raptors are housed at a distance and during the demonstration come zooming in out of the desert to the Museum site where multiple falconers direct their flight from spot to spot over observers' heads with strategic, sequential placement of food on various perch cacti and trees.  

Here is the barn owl.

The Harris hawks have a hierarchy, with an alpha female leading.  At the end of yesterday's flight, the handlers were heading out into the desert to find her.  Perhaps they have radio transmitters to aid?  (they had to go, so I didn't get to ask!)  They said she is quite an accomplished huntress and had taken off after a rabbit.  I loved that they were working with the ancestral in-bred characteristics of these birds and flying them free, with intermittent glitches like this unplanned rabbit chase.  There were six of the birds working together yesterday.  Here's a shot of 3 of them in the process, and a great portrait of one alone.

“The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now; there’s a power in me
To grasp and give shape to the world.

I know nothing has ever been real
Without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
And they come toward me, to meet and be met.

No thing is too small for me to cherish 
And paint in gold, as if it were an icon
That could bless us
Though I’ll not know who among us

Will feel this blessing.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

Reminders of Grace

Here I am in Cincinnati, six days down the road from my final push to concretely begin this journey!  

Non-negotiable deadlines (energy models at work wrapped up, final boxes in storage, travel items packed & timely arrival at the train station), traveling through 4 Amtrak stations at various day and night hours, and meeting up with host families in 2 cities:  I feel a bit scrambled, and at the same time, quite pleased and very aware of a state of grace.

It started as I headed towards my last day of work, aware that I would not see these various friends or this town that I call home for many weeks to come.  A strong sense that I am not embarking alone came over me, fed by all the conversations of recent weeks.  

My life and inspirations are interwoven with those of my closest "people", and the way that I feel held and cheered on by each of you buoys me up and keeps me company.  I made an impromptu decision to stop at my friend Bill's to say goodbye in person, and we had one of those lovely conversations that can happen between close friends.  The kind that seems to tap into deep wisdom and reassurance by way of simple things.  

This one underscored the gifts of synchronicity that spark amazing connections and long-lasting relationships.  Bill and I met at my sister's mailbox one summer morning.  Something clicked and we agreed to meet for non-coffee (neither of us drink it!).  

We see each other sporadically but, as with other friends, there is a deep kindredness.  The years have included events small & large:  Big Red day lilies and crocosmia, siblings in crisis, wrenching losses of loved ones, timely help with my tiny house project.

In witnessing each other's struggles, hopes and stories, and their intersections, there comes a confirmation that we are each unique, integral AND also interdependent to the Whole.  That in that there is hope, especially poignant in the light of human challenges that are global in scope.

That as we each live wholeness forward in our individual lives we are also somehow strengthening and sweetening the quality of the entire weaving for the collective.

I drove on to work able to remember, for a while, this reminder of "grace" that comes with the connection of one human being to another.  And on the four lane highway, as I drove east, I saw an odd, loping shape ahead and slowed.  It was a young raccoon, amazingly crossing in safety.  

Even on concrete highways there can be a graceful dance between us and the young, wild world.  

It seemed another benediction, and indeed, this sojourn of mine has begun with many rich conversations and intersections, some planned and others unbidden, all weaving a tapestry that is beautiful and continues to hold me in hope.