Milkweed and Monarchs - The Wild Hunt Column

My most recent column at The Wild Hunt

https://wildhunt.org/2020/07/column-milkweeds-and-monarchs.html?fbclid=IwAR2EMRvLht9eTv6NlBdNOgLa29kjl-Z0-xjpM_tFqEqmUt78IFzuhoB3iIE

Chamomile and Bears in the Night

I don't know how this came to be but most of my night time visits to the outside of the Cottage take place on the front porch or front steps. From there I can see the night sky, listen to the birds and frogs, watch bats and lightning bugs, and catch up with my husband at the end of the day. It is a peaceful place to be.

Tonight, however, I decided I wanted to be on the ground in the front garden to do a full Moon meditation and ritual. I needed to be solidly connected to the earth so while there was still some light I went and sat in front of the german chamomile plants nearest the northern edge of the garden. I love the sweet, delicate flowers and fragrance of chamomile. I find the aroma of its blooms to be comforting and soothing and I am pleased to have it as part of the Cottage's apothecary.

Darkness came, and I slipped into my meditation with an attitude of gratitude, then performed my ritual. When I was finished I stayed seated on the ground, enjoying being surrounded by my plants, watching the fireflies, and listening to the night sounds.

At one point I heard a scrabbling sound that anyone who lives in bear country or spends time watching bear videos would recognize; it was the sound of a black bear cub moving up or down a tree. I couldn't see anything, but I could tell the sound was coming from the north; from the loblolly pine that grows on the Cottage's northern fence line, or the trees in front of the house
that sits kitty-corner, or the tree in the empty lot across the other way. I continued to sit quietly and listen.

There are many bears in this area, and in this neighborhood we have seen a mother with three cubs of the year, an older and very large male, and several juveniles. We have had them in our gardens several times; they are always just passing through.

I waited another five minutes or so then moved over a few feet to harvest flowers from another chamomile plant. I had the blooms in hand when I heard a different sound and turned to see a little black rump scrambling over a piece of pallet fencing at the top of our orchard not 40 feet away from me. The pallet fences are only four feet wide and two feet tall; little bear could just as easily have walked around the fence as gone over it but bear cubs gotta do what bear cubs gotta do.

I could hear little noises from the momma bear as she moved through the north yard which is a travel path bears frequently use and for which Bear Path Cottage is named. When I was satisfied that she had gone far enough away I stood up to go into the house, but not before giving thanks for such a deeply affirming experience.

What a gift to live and share space with these beautiful and powerful creatures. What a gift to live amidst so much mystery and be given so many answers. What a gift to be a seeker.

Blessed be.

My Personal Almanac

There has been a feeling of detachment hovering around me lately, of disconnection and a low, abiding sorrow seemingly outside the scope of the world as seen through the lenses of the impact of the pandemic, isolation, and civil unrest. I haven't been able to pinpoint the source of these feelings,  and not for a lack of trying. I've just been missing something and I'm not quite sure what it is.

Two days ago I received a package from my favorite tea business, Catskill Mountain Tea Company, with seven different blends of tea. Rootbeer, Thorne Valley, Autumn Leaves, Golden Sunrise, Winter Cherry, Rip van Winkle, and Serenity Valley. The names themselves are delicious, and the scents overwhelmed me in a happy way as soon as I opened the shipping box. Sassafras, lemon, rose, ashwagandha, jasmine, just to name a few. I opened each bag and tin so I could take a good whiff of each tea and decide which I wanted to try first. As I did that I finally identified what I have been missing.

As much as I am a homebody, I also love to be on the go, adventuring with my love. I am used to noticing and marking the passing of the seasons by what I see blooming in gardens and fields as we drive along. The seasonal views and the bloom cycles of the native wildflowers of the Blue Ridge Parkway are part of my personal almanac, and I feel somewhat adrift for not seeing them.

I miss roadside produce stands and their hand-lettered signs that tell me what they have in stock, and thereby knowing what is in season. I even miss thinking things like, "It's too early for peaches here, those can't be local." I miss thinking nothing of driving down to South Carolina to find peaches, then driving home with the car filled with the intoxicatingly sweet scent of luscious, juicy goodness. I miss going on an unplanned day-trip around this area, seeking berries and corn and green beans and knowing that we could stop whenever we felt like it for a meal or a drink in a local diner. I miss seeing a large bloom of honeysuckle and parking nearby to breathe in that heady scent and harvest a few blooms to taste the nectar.

I miss wandering through farmers markets, taking in the vibrant colors and aromas, marking the seasons by what is available, what looks healthy, what smells fresh and good. I miss asking the growers and makers about their products. I miss coming home with a basket full of goodness.

I am surrounded by gardens here at the Cottage, but I am in the early stages of knowing the seasons here because they are quite different than they were in the shadows of Mount Pisgah. When I moved from upstate New York to the mountains of North Carolina it took time for my body and spirit to adjust to the differences in how and when the seasons presented, and I was able to do that by paying attention to the sensory clues that nature makes available.

Now that I know what I've been missing, I will work on finding a way to adapt.

Juneberry Pie of My Dreams

There are a great many things wrong with the City of Asheville, NC, but one of the things they managed to get right was establishing a Food Action Plan that supports access to healthy food in a limited sense of those words. There are multiple places in the city where fruit and nut trees provide harvest for anyone to enjoy, and there is an online map to help folks find those locations. (Link at the end of this post.)

Six years ago I learned about Asheville's Juneberries (a/k/a Serviceberries) through an on-line group, and decided I had to see what all the fuss was about. I located some of the trees, periodically checked to see if the fruit was ripe, and when it was I sampled that sweet juicy goodness. The berries are small, taste like a mixture of blueberry and cherry, and instantly became my favorite berry EVAH. 

I requested assistance from my favorite co-adventurer and together we picked a couple of berry buckets full in less than half an hour. The trees we were picking from then were probably five or six years old and produced an incredible crop; what we put in our buckets and our mouths was less than a third of the ripe berries on each tree. We took our treasure home, and with our combined harvest I made a Juneberry pie and canned some pie filling. Two jars of that filling went to friends who also had never had Juneberries, and I put two jars into the pantry with the mindful intention of using them to call up summer when the weight of winter became too heavy. One particularly cold winter day I opened those jars of pie filling and baked a pie and a cobbler that each held the bright, warm taste of Summer's promises. 

That was the day I knew that if we were ever able to buy our own home we were going to plant Juneberry trees. And we did, and so we did. In about two weeks we will mark the one year anniversary of our move in date, and the day after that we will mark the one year anniversary of the Juneberry trees (Amelanchier x grandiflora, Autumn Brilliance) that were planted in our front yard the day after we officially moved in. Appalachian Creek Nursery helped get our dream of a critter and pollinator friendly yard off to a fine start. 

At that time I noted that when the Wheel of the Year began to turn back to summer again we should be harvesting berries from our own trees if we could manage to save any of them from the bears and the birds. I hoped there would be a pie or two made and maybe even a few jars set up.

It was a special sort of delight this year to watch as the leaves started to grow, and then the flowers came, and finally the first berries started to show. I've never had fruit trees before, and I thought I would have to race the birds once the berries were actually ripe. Wrong! One day I watched for an hour as a mockingbird came and went repeatedly, taking red, unripened berries from one of the trees. As with everything here at the Cottage, it was our intention to share the harvest with the critters, but I thought at that rate there would never be any harvest to share. I made the decision to net the trees to keep the birds away, and I will just say that is something I will never do again. The trees were miserable, the birds were confused, and I had to rescue several butterflies who became trapped inside the netting. 

Traumatic netting aside, the berries survived and within a week were ripe enough to start picking. The first taste of the first berries from the trees grown by Cottage land and Cottage energy was divine. I'm not saying that lightly, or tritely. I made a pact with this land, and this harvest was part of the reward for keeping my end of the bargain. Be mindful if ever you do something similar to do what you said you would do. The rewards can be grand in many different ways, but the opposite could be unthinkable.

I took my time picking those berries. I talked to the trees and thanked them, I looked at the branch structure, and the leaves, and even the saplings coming out of the ground. I also took notice of the cluster patterns of berries at the end of new growth, already beginning to get some idea on how each tree will need to be pruned back. And of course I was tasting berries as I was picking, standing in the sun in the front yard. I had waited a long time for this harvest and I wanted to enjoy every moment. 

This first harvest season for these trees I took about 8 cups of fruit, and the birds took that much as well. I believe that is pretty good for two year old trees, and look forward to the harvest increasing every year. I have been a bit surprised that the neighborhood bears haven't taken their share...yet.

Does it surprise you to know I baked a pie the night I picked those berries? I savored the taste of it at the very end of the day, and the flavor melted into my mouth and my spirit, a combination of the sweetest summer memories and the best summer promises ever made. These are the things that keep me grounded in the here and now, living every moment of every day. 

https://avl.maps.arcgis.com/apps/StoryMapCrowdsource/index.html?appid=4200139df5a245d5a1983b81798c97d8

Going Green, Gone Solar

About 750 years ago I was a little kid living in a small town in upstate New York. It was actually the only city in a rural county, surrounded by dairy and farm land, and from my youthful perspective not the kind of place where progressive thinking was a common thing. Yet somebody was progressive enough to install a solar energy system on a little house near the high school, and before I knew anything about anything I was enchanted by the thought of the Sun keeping a home warm. Solar energy became part of my eventual dream for a little cottage. 

Fast forward centuries later, and Rhodes and I bought a little house last year that clearly had the potential for becoming our combined dream home, and the house that needed some work became Bear Path Cottage. 

As a couple we are committed to going green as much as we can. We aren't ever going to win any awards for being environmental heroes, but we do our best to reduce our negative impact on the environment, and to reduce our carbon footprint. The green changes we have made to the outside of the property are the most visually evident ones; adding gardens and planting trees and other things to attract and sustain pollinators as well as make our family a little more food independent is a big deal to us. If we don't beat the birds, raccoons, and bears to the berries every year, well, that's just part of the gardening game in the mountains and they are just some of the neighbors we can share our harvest with. 

Some additional changes we made were replacing the electric tank water heater with a gas tankless system, replacing old windows with more energy efficient ones, and when we decided to add a parking space for my father-in-law's entrance to the house we opted for a permeable parking system. That choice was inspired by (though it looks nothing like)  the amazing parking system that we saw when we visited The Wild Center in Tupper Lake, NY. (https://www.wildcenter.org/thrive-together/sustainable-building/our-green-facility/) Those water penetrable paver lots made such an impression on us we carried the thought of them with us for four years. Thanks, Wild Center!

We had long discussed and agreed that we wanted to implement solar options if we bought a house where it was suitable. The long roof side of Bear Path Cottage is directly south facing and is basically a solar dream. After we closed on the house I attempted to research reputable local solar companies, but it is not easy to find information about that. The regional electric company was also no help, and there is actually a great deal of misinformation on the internet. We decided to put that project on the back burner until we could find more information. 

We had just started talking about it again when I saw that a former colleague is working as a sales rep for a solar company. I chatted with her a bit, did some research on the company, and then she came to meet with us to discuss the process. We were excited by the options presented to us, and couldn't wait to get started.

In February of this year a crew installed the solar panels on our roof. I admit it was a little disconcerting to listen to people drill holes in the less than a year old Cottage roof, but the work crew was professional, our rep was on top of everything, and in half a day's time we had the bones of the system in place. 

Duke Energy seemed to drag their feet on their end of things that had to happen to get the system running, and then the arrival of a pandemic and the related shut downs also slowed things down a bit. No worries - we are patient people. After more paperwork, and more emails, and the installation of the net meter, we were finally ready to power up. 

Four days ago Rhodes followed careful instructions from the solar company and flipped the switches that officially turned Bear Path Cottage into a generating facility, complete with a net meter and a solar photovoltaic generating system. But what do these $5 words even mean? 

For starters, it does not mean that we are off the electric grid, and it does not mean we can make money from the electricity generated by our solar panels. Duke Energy doesn't like either of those things, and does not allow them to happen. 

However, it does mean that we are now offsetting our electric bills with renewable energy produced through the solar panels/generating system installed at the Cottage. This is how our solar company explains our system: "After solar panels are installed on your home you begin producing power. Any excess power your home doesn’t use will be sent back to your utility company. Your electric meter will run backwards. You will feed excess energy to the utility company during the day and then receive it back during the nighttime, at no cost."

It also means that some time down the road when solar batteries became an affordable option we will be able to store any excess energy produced by our generating system and then potentially go off grid. Additionally, we will still pay Duke Energy for whatever usage we have over and above what the Cottage produces. 

In less than four whole days the system has produced 58 kilowatt hours of electricity, and yesterday produced nearly 25 kWh. According to Duke Energy, we used 773 kWh in the last billing cycle of 31 days, which averages out to slightly less than 25 kWh per day. Translation: overall we are breaking even with output and usage, so are successfully reducing our use of fossil fuels and our carbon emissions. That's a good feeling, and another part of the dream coming true.

Dear hometown person from the 1970's who installed a solar energy system: someone noticed, and it made a difference. Thank you. 

Note: No photos, because the electric system bits are boring, and the panels blend so well with our roof that they are difficult to distinguish from the angle from which I could take a photo. So, here's a photo of the view from the Eagle's Nest at The Wild Center. 

Spirit Can You Hear Me?

A link to my column published in The Wild Hunt.

https://wildhunt.org/2020/04/column-spirit-can-you-hear-me.html

Time is on my side...

I wonder what I would tell this kid if I could go back to 1983 and actually sit down and talk with her. I wonder if she would listen to me, but even more than that I wonder if I would like who I might have become if she did. I do talk to her, and to many of the versions of my Self as they existed within this lifetime; doing so is part of the healing work with which I am engaged. As for going back - all I have to do is close my eyes.Time is nothing more than a human construct for measuring events that seem like they should matter. The more in tune I become with fully living each moment, experiencing each event, the less relevant the construct of time becomes and the more relevant the event. Eventually time will have no meaning to me, and hold no sway over my existence. When did I last see your face? Last hear your voice or your laughter? When did I last see the roses bloom or drift with the ocean? It was just now, this moment, In the room where memory is always present. There is no need to hurry through or Hurry on or hurry back. Doing so negates the value of being In this moment. Doing so negates the value of being.

For there is nothing lost...

I had a fairly well established daily routine before the COVID-19 pandemic initiated the Great Regrouping throughout the world. I am not a very social person and my anxiety disorder prevents me from straying too far or too often from home, so I didn't think social distancing would change my life very much. Wowser, was I wrong.

For the first time in my 53 years of living, I have had the opportunity to allow my body to find its own rhythm. I have a once a month writing deadline, and I am currently answering only to the demands of nature for working to get my gardens established. I might sleep three hours in a night, or I might sleep ten or twelve. I might be up before dawn or not go to bed until then.

My daily spiritual practice has evolved into happening while I am working in the gardens or outside for a walk about. It happens while I am sitting under the loblolly pine, watching the baby American Robins in their nest, or sitting under the night sky. Bear Path Cottage has become a rather substantial sized altar, and my connection with the Divine is ever deepening.

Inside the house, well, some days it looks like I am losing a game of Jumanji, but the world hasn't ended because of this lapse in housekeeping. This is just another part of life that is slowly settling after being shaken up. When my kids were little I embraced a "messy doesn't mean dirty" housekeeping style, and I am once again keeping home with that liberating philosphy.

I am shaking off a lifetime of constructs created by a world external to me, and that is exhausting work. I am grateful for the time to allow my entire being - body, mind, and spirit -  to rest from this work as it needs must. I am most grateful for the journey work that has led me to a place where I can recognize what is happening and embrace it without paying harsh judgment to myself.

I am also mindful that I am not living within a destination. I haven't arrived anywhere. I am still traveling, no matter how far I go or don't go. I am living wholly in this moment. I am alive.

“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”
― Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Finding Grace

Today I wrote to a friend that I have been trying to find some grace in every day.

I am tired. Somedays I am exhausted, even beyond the normal fatigue I deal with because of some health issues, or the physical fatigue that comes from working outside as much as I am able, and I think that this is normal during this difficult time. The pandemic and the political climate in this country, on top of everything else going wrong in this world, can be overwhelming. So I make myself slow down, I make myself see, I make myself hear, I make myself feel, and by doing that, I find grace, which in turn gives me hope and some sense of peace in this Upside Down.

Yesterday morning I was busy moving wagon loads of plant debris from the raised bed in the front yard to the compost pile out back. Its a bit of a walk and on my second trip back I sat down on Blueberry Hill to rest. The sun was warm on my face and there was a light breeze blowing. I closed my eyes for a while and did a quiet meditation, then I opened my arms and let that wind move through me, carrying away all that was negative.

When I opened my eyes again the day seemed a little brighter. I heard the low cooing of a Mourning Dove in the loblolly pine branches above me, and I turned my eyes to see if I could find the bird. A pair of them had been nesting in another tree in our front garden, but had abandoned that nest after a wind storm. I was hoping to find their new home space, but they both moved in and out of the high-up branches and then flew away.

Movement on the ground caught my eye and I saw a female American Robin doing a funny little walk/run across the driveway, moving towards where I was sitting. She would stop and look at me, then run a little more. She eventually went up the hill past me and I watched until she caught a worm then flew up into the tree over my head. And lo, there it was. This year's nest in the loblolly pine. The minute she stepped close to it two little heads on two scrawny necks popped up out of the nest, and those little mouths were wide open, ready for their elevenses.

The Sun was lined up so perfectly behind that nest, behind that branch, that in that moment the babies were completely backlit. The light actually shone through their beaks, illuminating them and making them appear transluscent. It reminded me of last Autumn when the rising Sun shone through the sunflowers blooming in our front garden; the whole scene was so magical that I held my breath, not wanting it to end.

Then their mom moved to feed them, and in the next instant she was fluffing her wings and settling down over her babies in the nest. Take whatever message you want to take from that moment, from that image, but I was just so overwhelmed by love that I cried.

I sat there under the tree for a while longer, musing about that moment of grace and about the way the Wheel turns. Moments pass, days go by, the year moves on, but I am often gifted with reminders of how everything is connected. Sunflowers and baby birds kissed by the same Sun. Friends who share music that makes them dance, or laugh, or cry, or worship. Art that makes people smile or sigh. Garden talk and critter pictures; despair and hope; loss and love.

There is grace in every bit of it, and I am blessed.

One Mississippi...Two Mississippi...

I am awake in the wee hours of the morning, summoned by the noise and power of the first real thunderstorm of the season rolling through the river valley in which I live. Without even thinking about it, I find myself counting the intervals between each flash of lightning and burst of thunder, and my mind is flooded with memories of comforting and empowering my children in the dark and stormy nights of their tender years. 

The helper is a simple meditation and sleep ritual that I never realized was either one of those things until now. The children would call to me or come to me in the dark, frightened by the storm, and we would wind up snuggled together, sometimes just one of them and me, sometimes all of us snuggled together on the couch. In the lull after a boomer I would ask "Are you ready? Let's watch now," and they would very nearly hold their breath, waiting for the night sky to light up. When it did, we would count outloud together: One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. 

BOOM! The thunder would come, and they would jump, but their eager minds were already busy watching for the next flash to cross the sky. As they grew older those lulls between flash and boom were often filled with questions about different kinds of lightning, how storms move, or what animals do during storms. They each went through a phase when they just had to spell out the word, Mississippi, in the sing-song rhyming chants so many of us know from childhood, and I remember a night one of the girls dissolved into giggles because she was missing her top front teeth and couldn't say the word. 

I would gently encourage them to hush, to watch, to listen, to quiet their breathing so they could hear. They learned that they could tell when the storm was drawing closer and when it was moving away. The lull between boom and flash would lengthen, their fear would settle, their breathing would slow, and eventually they would not so much fall back to sleep as to be carried there by the peace of the lull and the sound of the rain. 

Sometimes when it storms now, I wonder if they remember. 

The boomers have passed through now, and the sound of the rain is hypnotic and sweet. My gardens are being watered, and I am going to wrap myself in gratitude and allow the rain to lullaby me back to sleep.