Diving Deeper

Prairie dogs cry for rain

One of my favorite writers on wilderness and the true spirit of it is Stephen Harrod Buhner.  This commentary on water knowledge and 'the focused power of human consciousness' comes from 'The Loss of Biophilia and Biognosis', Ch. 4, p. 61 in The Lost Language of Plants (2002) by Stephen Harrod Buhner.

This gives me new respect (and greater tolerance) for the little creatures who burrow under the forest floor where I live (and sometimes leave my plants with their poor roots hanging in mid air).

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If you kill off the prairie dogs there will be no one to cry for rain.

- Navajo warning

Amused scientists, knowing that there was no conceivable relationship between prairie dogs and rain, recommended the extermination of all burrowing animals in some desert areas planted to rangelands in the 1950s "in order to protect the sparse desert grasses.  Today the area (not far from Chilchinbito, Arizona) has become a virtual wasteland."

- Bill Mollison, PERMACULTURE

Water under the ground has much to do with rain clouds.  If you take the water from under the ground, the land will dry up.

- Hopi elder

Burrowing creatures, such as prairie dogs, open millions upon millions of tubes in the soil of Earth.  As Mollison notes, these "burrows of spiders, gophers, and worms are to the soil what the alveoli of our lungs are to our body."  As the moon passes overhead the underground aquifers rise and fall and Earth breathes out moisture-laden air.  This exhalation of negative-ion-charged air through the many fissures and tubes opened by the burrowing creatures helps create rain.

How could indigenous peoples have known this?  By all our standards of scientific knowledge they could not.  We have neglected to realize that indigenous peoples have always had access to the finest probe ever conceived, one that makes scientific instruments coarse in comparison, one that all human beings in all places and times have had access to: the focused power of human consciousness.

- Stephen Harrod Buhner

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Much of the Great Plains has been converted to farming or pastureland, and prairie dogs are not often welcome in such places. Because of their destructive landscaping, they are often killed as pests. During the 20th century, about 98 percent of all prairie dogs were exterminated, and their range has shrunk to perhaps five percent of its historic spread. National Geographic

For another kind of 'cry for rain' in the recognition of the therapeutic potential of subjective healing experiences (and how these do depend on the 'filter of human consciousness', J.L) such as those possible sometimes with aquatic bodywork, see this latest post on my other blog Aquapoetics.

Washing a rock

 



Washing a rock, one finds rocklike presence within.

“Zen Dust, Zen Sweep” Dominique Leigh, Mothering Magazine.


Ursula K. Le Guin  on rocks:

In general, rocks aren’t living in the same way or at the same pace that we are. But you can find a rock, maybe a big boulder, maybe a little agate in a streambed, and by looking carefully at it, touching it or holding it, listening to it, or by a little talking and singing, a small ceremony, or being still and quiet with it, you can enter into the rock’s soul to some extent and the rock can enter into yours, if it’s disposed to. Most rocks live a long time. They’ve lived a long time before we pass them, and they’ll live a long time after. Some of them are very old, grandchildren of the coming to be of the earth and sun. If there were nothing else to be known from them that would be enough, their long age of being. But there is much other knowledge in rocks, there are things that can be understood only with the help of rocks. They will help people who handle and study and work with them with pleasure and respect, with mindfulness.

Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guinn, p. 309

[The above quotes were gratefully received from Susan Wiseheart, a fellow rock lover!]

A note on collecting rocks

The urge to collect is the natural response of the human psyche to an aesthetic object that speaks directly to it, stirring memories that lie deeply within.  Collecting confirms the indigenous belief that the human psyche reads and understands symbols and that attraction to beauty is a function of psychic awareness. 

Malidoma Patrice Some. The Healing Wisdom of Africa.

In nature there are so many things that attract the eye and elicit the urge to collect and arrange - flowers, leaves, twigs, stones, feathers, seeds - and rocks.  Andy Goldsworthy's natural and ephemeral outdoor sculptures are an extraordinary example of this. 

Whilst we should take care not to do damage by picking wildflowers before they can seed or removing fossils from special reserves, many items are just calling to be noticed and appreciated in this very human way.  It's also a way to remember a wild place you've enjoyed.

Here is a 'Stone Walk' from a book called The Artist Inside by Tom Crockett which contains many intriguing ways of cultivating your creative self.  I used this often with guests at my previous retreat and many of them went home with rocks that they (much) later wrote me about!

The Bobcat and the Peony (poem by Sulis)

The poem below was written last year after I had the delight of seeing an adult bobcat and later a kitten at 3 pm in the afternoon while driving into the forest land where I live in southern Missouri.  Both creatures seemed quite unafraid of us or the vehicle, and we held eye contact with the very healthy adult for an astonishing length of time when we stopped beside it.

It was in an area of the forest near Flat Rock Creek (made famous by my neighbor Ken Carey's lovely book A Flat Rock Journal: A Day in the Ozark Mountains).  This area has recently been devastated by the most destructive kind of logging practice in the wake of a spring storm that brought many elder trees down.  I hope the bobcats have found somewhere safe to wait out the drama and that they will be back. 

The peony was growing incongruously (definitely not native) on the road side a short distance after I glimpsed these beautiful animals.

The Bobcat and the Peony by Sulis (17 July 2008)

An imprint flashed
its thoughts of light
between leaves of trees
and there
she was.

The long slope
of body intent
lithe with stealth
and yet
she paused.

In flank view
faced my gaze
and held
held me
in her health.

No fear in that
twitched ear.

I would have been
crushed
but for the unexpected
tameness
of a peony.

Innocent in white

and more light.

Interesting aside:  While seeking out an image for this post, searching peonies and bobcats, I came across the web page - Lore of the Cat: The White Cat - Symbol of Light and Good: The Talisman. Perhaps there is some protection for the forest in my curious double-sighting.

The talisman is a magical image which has the power to avert or repel evil.  Where the cat was believed to give powerful protection and to ward off unpleasantness of every kind, its image became widely used as a talisman when no living cat was available.  Cats carved over Theban temples gave them protection.  The Japanese used cat images to guard mortuary chambers against rats. A famous seventeenth century wood carving of a cat shows it sleeping among peonies over the door of a shrine in the temple of Nikko.  The cat was credited with having driven all vermin from the temple.

 

Sleeping cat, carving attributed to Hidari Jingoro, Toshogu, Nikko, Japan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

And now for the beautiful wild creature itself - perhaps one day I will photograph the Greenwood Forest one I was lucky enough to encounter.  The one I saw had the short tail and flicked ears but was a softer brown to match the Ozark forest terrain.

Life in an Ozark forest: water to trees

A few years after I first moved to the Ozarks in 2003, I wrote this to a friend:

My neighbor, who makes his living from logging, has just 'devastated' an area nearby and across from our favorite spring.  I had decided not to plant trees next year (each year I've ordered just a few more and a few more too much it seemed).  But then someone lent me Jean Giono's beautiful fable with woodcuts, The Man Who Planted Trees, and I realized that I can compensate for that particular patch of logging by planting up our bottom-land meadow.  The riparian corridor for much of our creek has been slowly eroded so that's another good reason to restore it where I can.  I'll need to research what  indigenous species would be good to put there.  I love the native pawpaw and they love those moist spots. 

Viriditas: for the love of trees

October is a month of mixed memories for me - the endings and beginnings of several important relationships in my life.  This is what life is - endings and beginnings.   Living in a temperate zone, it is the endings we might feel most strongly with the falling of leaves.  But there is still so much beauty in the trees! 

In England there are garlands of 'old mans beard' and clusters of berries along the country lanes - my father helped me gather those once for a wedding.  He died in late October, far too young. In my Ozark forest, the dogwoods are blushing dusty pink in the filtered light.  I've been lost and found in this forest.

The first poem below is about this paradox of loss and gain.  Its mention of Raven reminds of death but also of reflective memory and the wisdom that comes of that.  Raven has brought messages to me on several occasions.  He is mentioned in my posts The Hanged Man (Odin's Ravens) and in Like the Wings of my Father.

Lost by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

I recently rediscovered the above poem in an email I wrote to my partner Joe who has helped me beyond measure: 'Thank you for walking me in the trees.  I wonder if you know what this was doing to me?  I was listening and I heard.  I'm grateful.'  I wrote the next poem for Joe.  Here you will find my own green cat.

Viriditas by Sulis (Sara Firman)

That gleam on green
whose swift pause
is a glimpsed mood
half-hidden at the edge
of a foliated dream
sending its soft mewl
a rippled renaissance
through furred leaf
whiskered and burred
is the verdant one
sleek feral queen
masked in oak

Quick pan, ripe puck
track this brightening
of the imaginal realm
teach this aspirant
of feline stealth
claw-sharp ways
to blur the physical
outline of her face
merge with you now
in green wood deep
moon blanched love
wild and forever

Thank you from the bottom of my heart Joe!

The beautiful green cat image used to illustrate this post was created by Angela Russell.  It was shown at the Tate Modern, London, as part of an exhibition of Therapeutic Art created by people with personality disorders who enjoyed art therapy as part of their treatment.

For more poems about trees see The Solace of Trees (7 poems by Sulis)

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Direct perception of nature: a book review

My perceptions of the natural world and the power of non-verbal communication between its elements (from rock to plant to animal) have been stimulated by living in the diverse bioregion of the Missouri Ozarks and working with water as a therapeutic medium.

Several books by Stephen Harrod Buhner have shown me what is possible, in terms of understanding life and one's place in it, if you are willing to step out of the everyday linear paradigm and into the all-pervading non-linear (oscillating) vibration that is life.

This month, in a workshop on developing intuitive skills for aquatic physical therapists, I'll be sharing his approach to direct perception in an adapted exercise from Ch. 12 'Depth Diagnosis and the Healing of Human Disease' of the book I have reviewed below.

Direct perception is a way of truly knowing, not thinking, what is going on inside a person that some people call intuition. The intention is to know the person's problem, and what it needs, by perceiving them directly, without any judgment.

How often does any of us do that?

The Desert House: a story

      
'That tamarisk', the realtor said, pointing at the feathery green-grey tree generously shading the north side of the house, 'is probably home to a king snake'.  A harmless snake, I knew it would slither out to scout for less-friendly members of its species each evening.  A  king snake was a good omen.  Also called 'salt cedar' that tree would drop a mess of needles and kill any plant under it, the woman derisively informed me.  'Take it out straightaway'.  I knew to be wary of her.

Just as the guardian king snake hides in the debris around the tree, there are layers to sift through before truth and purpose are revealed.  The friend who lived nearby in the high-class gated community where he re-posed for a while to make millions had been victim to that.  As summer came harshly in, he had dug up the trees on his newly acquired plot and shifted them to spots more preferable to him - slowly and shamefully they died.  Then squirrels arrived and dug up his ground cover, as if in subtle vengeance. 

In the picturesque seaside town on the southern Californian coast where I had been living, awkward yuppies strolled restlessly up and down in front of the chic restaurants and boutiques and homes they owned only at weekends.  Pacific Coast Highway lived up to its grand name - cutting beach-goers off from the sand, giving sightseers fast passage.  Local newspapers wrote sad articles about the planned suicides of dispirited bohemians who had hung on, and brash mansions encroaching on unruly cottages. 

The little oasis my new husband had rented for decades had been sold to developers; and we were out.  A  cheery contractor told us the owners intended to rip out its heart, chop down the trees, and add the expected generic features.  Our visitors had always commented with delight on the zany cracked tiling, the brilliant stained glass set into wonky windows, the friendly plants creeping through the vent panels, the bejeweled spider's webs.  They didn’t notice the absence of a dishwasher; but the new arrivals would.

So we were taking a look at a place the agent called 'way out there'; Cost-co and nouvelle cuisine were a half-hour away.  You reached the ranchito either by rounding the mountains at the base of which date palm oases drank up the water that crept through an active fault line; or by the long waves of a road that crossed Sky Valley, as broad as its name.  On the corner of Happy Valley Drive, a low-slung brick house with a wide wooden porch nestled behind brave desert plants. 

The place seemed to offer an oasis for any desertion of the soul.  This desert defied its outward appearance with its underground supply of water; just as even the saddest or baddest of us have deep-running souls waiting to be drawn upwards.  In the front yard was a huge rock pool fed by natural hot water from an artesian well drilled almost 500 feet into the floor of an ancient ocean.  I had the odd experience, standing in the spacious hallway at the center of that desert house, of ley-lines converging.



How easy to imagine peaceful nights closing in over the ring of mountains, candles around the pool, hours of whispered thoughts for bright stars that died long ago.  Human stars, I learned, had stayed there to escape from false adulation.  But the owner was a spiky cactus holding prospective buyers off.  A film set-designer, his breakfast bowls were patiently placed, and never filled in the weeks we went back to view; a paintbox and paper with bright splodges were laid out pretentiously on an artist's desk.  

Back in the coastal city, a well-meaning society lady invited me to join her women's book club at the latest grand hotel.  We gathered in a room of mirrors to stretch in lackadaisical yoga under the sweet approval of a young woman and then rocked along with a black African-American dancer.   I realized that my spirit would dry up in such a place.  The desert needed no mirrors in order to show me myself.   The expansively empty talk that lifted me up and dropped me down like a gullible girl might fade there.

To see life in the desert you must look long and diligently - the tracks of snakes, the camouflages. In the rundown office of the buyer's agent, I went through the form for house-buying.  Sheryl was voluble with local blah.  Changing her tune to match our hopes, she was sure we’d be a great success, sure the waters were wonderful, sure of everything and proof of nothing.  Too many mistakes on those forms for me  - my partner thought she’d called me, admiringly, 'Miss Eagle Eye'; I heard 'Miss Pickie'. 

Sheryl and Joan, the seller's agent, were dealing with a touchy owner.  They were nice only up to a point, the point with the money.  Money was behind all those expansively empty words I heard.  When it didn’t come tumbling out of the glittering pinball machine at the pull of the lever, they were off to the next station.  I didn't want to be mistaken for a pinball machine.  The local native American Indians were gambling on it, drawing the crowds to their gaudy casinos along the highway to the desert. 

The house was not for us, though I still think of it.  Of how certain places stand on geological power points that I can feel, and others may not.

(Adapted from an essay by Sulis/ Sara Firman, written November 2001.)  

For more on snake medicine see Snakes (two poems by Sulis).

Winter colors: the spirit of place

In the world of home interiors, natural tones, are often boring neutrals.  Yet the natural world is never boring or neutral.  Even in winter, colors abound.  One winter, when I lived in a cabin beside an Ozark creek, I decided to enliven my white-walled living space.  I didn't anticipate that, not only would it end up being an interior I felt more at home in, but that the change would also blurr the boundary between my indoor world and the outdoors. 

When I scanned the color-wheel for paints, I thought I was selecting on the basis of the ceramic floor tiles, the artwork and fabrics that were already in the space.  I wanted colors that would bring out the less visible, accentuate the least obvious.  Many of the paintings in the room were seascapes and the fabrics and furnishings came from exotic countries - none of it was typical of the rural Ozarks.

The colors I chose had names like Veiled Violet, Heart of Palm, Complimentary Cream, and then a combination of all of these merged on one wall in a textured faux finish (one of my ex-husband's skills).   Admiring the results, I noticed that these names could be 'localized' as Stone Violet, Sycamore Skin, and Switch Grass.  The glass doors overlooking the creek, reflected this subtly changing color palette.