Web of Life

Journal notes written last year at this time while chaperoning a 5th grade field trip to the WOLF (Web of Life Field) school at Camp Cazadero, Cazadero, CA. 

This afternoon we take a blindfold hike to the purple meadow. First the boys guide the girls, then they switch. Nobody complains about the steepness of the trail.

It is terribly sneezy in the upper meadow. Dry grass laced with California poppies. We sit with our sketchbooks and draw the contours of a rock cliff with a face like a dog. There is nothing like a mountaintop meadow with a view. Purple flower clusters on tall stems. Twitter of songbirds. Bright orange monkeyflower.

This morning I sat and sipped hot tea on the cabin steps in the warmth of the sun; so quiet I could hear the whooshing wing beats of a solitary crow flying overhead. Woodpecker taps. Call of a quail. Some kind of human activity from the dining hall.

 ***

Nighttime astronomy, we are being devoured by mosquitoes while listening to the naturalist tell a story about how the night sky was formed, and that hummingbirds are responsible for the stars. I take a look through the viewfinder of the telescope and catch a glimpse of the pocked and pebbled moon. Then Saturn, complete with rings – so tiny it resembles a bright sticker I could place in my journal.

Shooting star – a brief meeting between two like-minded people who won't ever meet again in the physical world. 

The rabbit in the moon.

After our moon-shadow walk down to the waterfall, the girls run barefoot out of the cabin across the field to see the silver fox recently spotted running under picnic tables. The waterfall made me feel like I was in another country, so lush and green with a small pool at the bottom. Ecuador? Peru?

At lights-out, the naturalist named Raccoon stops by the cabin to serenade the girls, who have caught a second wind after seeing the silver fox. They crown the tiny bathroom with murmurs and giggles while applying face cream and brushing out hair. At her prompting they head for their bunks. Lights out, in bed, we are covered with a blackness not usually seen back home where a constant glow of light emanates from our small town homes. Here it is too dark to even see my hand. Raccoon sings a lullaby, Lean on Me and at the conclusion of the third verse the cabin is silent, and remains so even after she and her flashlight slip out the back door and into the evening air, leaving us to our further savor the silence and invite the overnight fog.

President’s Day at the Coast

On this holiday weekend the winter beach is crowded with people and their amusements: dogs, kites, picnic lunches and sand castles; boats, blankets, cameras, binoculars and phones. Ocean waves thick in the mist rise up and thunder towards shore. Behind me shadows of seagulls float across the steep, rocky cliffs - appearing and then disappearing again - silently, spaciously, always on the move, staggered like sudden gleams of light emerging from the sun’s meeting with the fog-laced background of the ocean’s outer calm.

I begin my walk. How easily my bare feet advance along the seam of hard-packed wet sand trimming the water’s edge. Strangers smile at me for no reason; then walk past and leave me alone again. Swept clean of practical duties, I plan to spend the long morning soaking in nature’s warm, inviting disorder. Footfall after footfall I compress the glittering silt of quartz and feldspar which the waves draw back and return again –  each stroke erasing the shallow print of my body’s brief encounter with this broad, flat stretch of shore.

In the midst of multiple distractions, the ocean’s mesmerizing rhythm of sound fills me with balance and leads me to my center. How to remain here? There is no easy answer. Perhaps walking itself is a first step. Walking toward simplicity. Toward grace. Toward the cold, wet spiral of a small white shell.

 In the distance terraced cliffs of the headland break the bulk of the waves before they can reach this sheltered strip of beach. Deep green and orange plant growth weaves from root to tip along round boulders of grey stone.  While wave action fights to erode the coast and push the shore inland, the land resists the ocean's attack with the strength of its rock. Marine sediment mantles the terraces, much as my mind – at once clean and bare as whitened driftwood; empty as a shell, becomes so easily filled with life’s colluvium – pencils, pads and other particulars of the practical that accumulate in stubborn hollows, bound by the techno-urgency of the modern world.

The sugar-like sand of the upper beach hosts a tangle of wash-ups: crisp, stranded seaweeds encircled by a chorus of sand fleas; leathery, ribbon-like heaps of giant kelp; black-stained shells of the razor clam. The sand, usually too hot to walk upon in the summer season, is invitingly warm. Soft, loose, it slips beneath my feet and, as ever, pleasant sensations award all abandoned efforts. Halting in mid-expedition, I dig in my toes and lavish lazy waves of pleasure upon this torso of light I call my body, this polished pedestal composed of the elements, this confusion of salt – this sum of splendors that never slows or withholds; rather releases a lovely shimmer of everything it shows – this center of my self.

Inside, Outside

Early morning frost tints the ground white. The orchard is still, waiting for the frozen fog to lift. I open the heavy crossed arms of the cast-iron woodstove, let down the door and peer inside. Piles of cold ash – thin, grey weightless remnants of last night’s blaze, are of too little substance to be gathered up –  flakes that dissolve into a fine grey mist at the slightest touch, unlike the hard, brown dirt clods shaken loose from the deep treads of my boots that I sweep daily into neat little piles.

Outside, the dead leaves keep coming. There is no stopping them from falling on the lawn. Our home, which butts up against a yard of large diesel trucks, used to be a dairy farm – front yard the pasture for grazing and the red barn where the cows got milked. Now the barn is home to our landlord’s odd collection of vintage cars and rusty junk. Yet a pair of barn owls finds the abandoned barn to their liking, and raises a family or two every summer, filling the night air with the vibrant hissing of their young.

Inside the neglected barn dusty cobwebs cover the ceilings and walls. Outside, vertical siding planks are faded and worn with spots of gray wood showing through. The planks pull apart from one another readily, leaving black gaps in between like old teeth rotting and getting ready to fall out. Adorned with rusty corrugated roofing sheets of cold rolled steel panels about to peel off, the roof clatters to the big-band sound of windy afternoons.

Outside, long, snaky tendrils of thorny blackberry swaddle the cabs of a dozen big-rig trucks now abandoned in the yard. Rain-soaked turkeys slink past brown tangles of vine in the sleeping vineyard. A lone frog croaks to the strengthening wind just outside my window. Hard packed dirt of the lane softens to mud and tire tracks melt to puddles. Yesterday’s yardwork comes undone as wet piles of dead brown leaves rearrange themselves across the lawn.

Half in Shadow

-I love everything that dazzles me and then accentuates the darkness within me-                                   

Rene Char

Squinting in the sun, I scan the terrain.  The nature of idleness; I am drawn like a moth into the calm. Venturing into the yellowing foliage of the vineyard, lured by autumn’s call, I search for evidence of a gathering – yet today it is not the laughing curve of blue sky sprinkled with  freewheeling flickers of songbirds or the taunting array of leaf colors that catches my attention. Instead I am drawn to the dark, creeping fingers of shadow blemishing the ground.

The month of October in the northern hemisphere highlights the progressive tilt of the earth's axis, which at the equinox starts out being inclined neither away from nor towards the sun, then continues its gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days until reaching the longest night of the winter solstice. What does the eye notice during the day at this time of departing light? On the white birch black leaves glitter - while a great snaking of dark weaves its way through the prized light of day, lengthening as the sun slides lower in the sky and gets caught behind a row of tall evergreens and the peaked roof of a red-planked barn. Entire landforms rearrange themselves to the eye, highlighted by the shifting shapes of their shadow forms.

 

 

 I cross the paved street, bathed in the bright aura of afternoon sunshine that heats the surrounding air. Climbing the short, steep ledge of dry grass and stone that separates cemetary from road, I stand at the edge of a landscape warm against my skin. Today the silence of this private resting place for the departed is serenaded by the soft murmur of leafy oak. Mirrored in the free-form, iridescent movements of a lone butterfly, an invisible transit textured with light, fleet breezes carries dry leaf and pollen grain on the wing.

Traveling from one gravestone to the next in tight circles, I pay close attention to the shadows cast by each monument. Discarded cloaks of human spirit stitched to the base, the shadows create a shape-shifting mosaic of dark that blankets the sun-bleached ground. This contrast of light and form, fine and intricate as thought, is a reminder of the eventual end to the long journey which we are all called upon to make. We travel as if blindfolded, spun around and pointed toward a destination that’s nothing more than an impulse weaving through time; a wild rose unfolding petal after petal ever wider until encompassing the entire universe in the beautiful expression of a single human life.

Because it is only for a brief time that we come to realize our belonging to the light of day, many of us yearn for contact with departed loved ones long after they have gone. We miss them, and ache for the intimate moments we shared, sometimes living our days wrapped in the barren, windswept crossing of the shadow side. Yet even hearing one's own voice echo in the stark, lonely landscape of a mountain pass seems to suggest that we are not alone. There is an ancient tranquility in nature. It never falls out of rhythm. When we go out alone and enter its solitude, we return home.



The sharp complaint of a blue jay brings me back to the day, sunny and filled with a flowing unknown. Circling back to the vineyard, I step through a sprinkling of crisp, dry leaves strewn across the dusty road. The soft twitter of songbirds swoops down along the vineyard's edge. So many times as I lay in bed at day's end and reflect on what I have seen that day when I looked out from myself, my gaze has completely missed the shadow side of bud and flower and shoot. I  have overlooked the darkness at the root; gentle weave of blackened wings following a flock of grey geese flying northward that gradually leaves my sight.  

Frog on Kale

While we may well miss the stroking hand of sultry mid-summer days clotted with radiant sunshine, bathed and bleached, today the dappled light that shines through the open eyelids of this warm September afternoon calls us to herald the arrival of the upcoming season. Fanning their joyous leaves to shortened days swollen with a gathering wind, well-attired trees prepare to shed their green in a gradual promenade. How wide the world is. We peer inside.

 

Fallen leaves lay strewn along driveways and garden paths in steadily increasing quantities. So many leaves accumulate that any one of them can easily go unnoticed. Their silence is a delicate tap on the shoulder that prompts us to look more closely.
 

Untold wonders clink like small change in my pocket. The field bordering the orchard is a Monet of thistle, grass, and blackberry bramble. To reach the paved walking trail I must cross a channel of knee-high meadow barley dried to a fine golden brown. With stubborn burrs adhered fast to socks, my tender, sneakered feet complain further when poked by the sharp, dry grass stalks. A family of startled California quail flap into the underbrush as I transition to the smooth, grey asphalt.

 

 

 
 

Half moon, a glowing thumbnail hanging in the bottomless blue sky of day, wipes all stain from the sublime expanse unfolding before me. Oh mockingbird – how your swaying trill slits the quiet. My eyes follow the bight white lateral bands painted across the arch of your wings and silently applaud your angular, twitchy tail. So conspicuous, yet the ecstatic patterns of your flight remain invisible and leave no trace. Carried to the reel and ruffles of your spirited anthem upon the bough, your play of movements opens my arms burdened with wishes onto the lips of the day as I peer out through the flimsy lenses of my thinking and slowly raise my mind to wonder, who are you singing to?

A dry leaf skitters across the sun-warmed footpath lined with Queen Anne’s lace. Claret-colored umbrels of inflorescence that once spread their umbrella ribs, bright white and rounded when in full flower – now appear brittle and brown, folding in on themselves in a bird’s nest of self-embrace. They rim the sleepy field with a task no more exceptional than to multiply, one by one,  enveloped by an air both solemn and sweet, unblemished by the shadow of a tumbling melancholy that robs them of their youth. As the world that was not comes to pass, are they, like us, sick for the flourishing postcard colors of home?

 

 



 

 

 

Seasons build and emerge and frame our time here on earth with intensity and surprise. The beauty of the mind is its circular form writes John O’Donohue in his book Eternal Echos: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong. For if our lives were only a line through time, wouldn’t we  miss the strange way in which everything that goes forward is somehow still travelling backward  within the circular embrace of centerpiece, beloved pools of glimpses and gleans as fleeting as a kiss on the forehead, to be collected strand by strand and woven into kingly crowns?

 

We do not live simply in our thoughts, feelings or relationships writes John O’Donohue. We belong on the earth where the sun fosters life; where the moon blesses the night and the contemplative presence of nature is not cluttered by thought. As I walk alone among refreshing winds and high, thin, overlapping clouds, a slow and open-ended transition brings me to calm. And while this sense of calm doesn’t linger – but only visits, each visitation calls me to feel, think and act beautifully in the world.
 

 

 

 

What a pleasure, then, for these last, precious weeks of mild weather. As the day walks in circles around me I feel swept clean by the wind and gently swayed by the ballerina turns of light-winged flowers. The full-throated chorus of insects and birds, in their sculpted contemplation of rock and starry winking at treetops, slips me into the tranquility of a moment’s stillness. I'm as happy as a frog on kale - content to bask in the worthy call of late summer's glory, watching as the stuff of my mind scatters like seeds and fluff. 

A Bee Oasis

The pond water carries the rich, deep green tint of algae. Now that the tadpoles have grown legs and moved on, the honeybees move in – small hired wings of the orchard and vineyard. Floating free of their white hives they line the water’s edge. Some frolic on lily leaves, while others use rose petals for rafts. I venture to say that they are having fun.

The traffic is heavy and steady at the oasis. Individual bees fly in from the orchard, and then wander out again. One by one they form a steady, aerial stream. Some linger, resting on round, waxy leaves of water hyacinth, sipping cool pond water, rinsing dust from their striped backs and wings before returning to work. Pink-cheeked in the light of day, I am drowsing in the midst of this watercolor calm, dizzied by the honey smell of jasmine vines and blooming rose, this great butterfly of a summer’s day set off by the pond’s radiant glow.

As the golden dust of late afternoon settles I ponder the plight of the modern day honeybee. In her book The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us, Bee Wilson explores the relationship between humans and bees, including the current state of the bee-rental business. In the spring, bees from farms are prepared for shipping all across the United States. The honey bees are first stressed from being separated from their queen. Additional stresses come in the form of being poured into containers. Then further stresses include being shipped across country in shipping trucks. Hives are hauled long distances from field to field, exposing the bees to a wider variety of agricultural pesticides and genetically engineered crops.

 

It is a miracle any of them survive and remain in their new homes after going through such indignities. Large honey producers and agricultural landowners often treat bees as if they were slaves. Yet it is not possible to enslave them; nor can they really be enclosed. As Bee Wilson notes, bees, it seems, are a law onto themselves.  We may convince ourselves that the bees are working at our command, but they work for the purpose of their own industry. They work, but not for us.

Bees, in their great diversity, are the principle pollinators of flowers. The colorful buds and scents that draw bees to the daintiest blossoms are as pleasing to us as they are attractive to them. Bees may visit as many as a thousand flowers on each foraging trip, mixing the nectar with glandular enzymes before depositing the sweet liquid into the hive’s waxen cells.

Ancient Egyptians thought the bee a symbol of wisdom, regeneration, and obedience. Napoleon's robes were known for their embroidered bees because Napoleon saw the bee as symbolic of immortality and resurrection. Are the bees who work ceaselessly to produce sweet, dripping honey – purest nectar miraculously distilled out of air, food of the Gods, medicine as well as food – also messengers to humankind? If so, what are they here to tell us? How much longer will humans continue to search for truths about themselves within the gold of the honeycomb?

This year my summer goes the way of the everyday divine – a series of days, each much like the last, yet each adorned with a unique radiant echo. It is enough for a day to end, for an evening to approach, slow but patient setting of the sun, to be reminded that this particular day can never be repeated. I pay close attention to the growing, flowering, and ripening in my midst, relying on bees and butterflies as guides.

With head gently tipped back and eyes shut I unwind, my body’s pressing weight graciously supported by a striped cotton hammock, feeling strangely youthful as a distant airplane hums overhead – row of tall pines facing me. Savoring the richness of some old-fashioned rest and relaxation sweetened with a spoonful of summer in a jar, I ride the bicycle of my dreams, pressing the pedals along a straight, wide road.