A celebration

After many years of slow work, I am celebrating the creation of Present Sense Press and the publication of my first book of poetry.

Needle is now available in softcover for $10 U.S.

Spare and simple, this book is like a pebble in a gravel wash, a rain drop in a storm, a dead leaf in a ditch. It is ordinary, unassuming. But like the pebble, the water drop, the leaf, it also contains in it the whole story, a whole world. Each poem is everything. The whole book is a whole. And in its simple directness it both hides and reveals. 

For years I have felt drawn to create a poem that would "say it all." What would I write if I could only write one book? I have a deeply held intuition that at its center, our infinitely complex world is unimaginably simple. And that it would take a simple structure to convey this. Or an impossibly complex one—such as the world itself.

The world is itself. Poems—at least some poems—are nodes of activity. I am fascinated by Lorine Niedecker's poetic condensing, by H.D.'s powerful images. How to use language to collect and gather energy? How do words make something happen inside? How do they shift our consciousness?

This book is a touchstone for me. I return to it repeatedly when I need to find my way home, to my soul home. Any one poem can be a doorway to another world. It all points to what is already and always here at all times The poems themselves are not important; what they hold inside is everything. May they support you in knowing that you are enough, right now, just as you are.

To purchase copies of Needle, visit www.presentsensepress.com. If you are looking for a holiday gift, all orders recieved by this Thursday, December 9th will be mailed this Friday the 10th. 

I think the honeymoon is over...

Two days after we closed on the land purchase, we went to the bosque for a relaxing evening walk. It will be peaceful, I think, and we can get to know our way around the forest. And as we start out, the bosque is peaceful, with that late-afternoon desert light, the mesquite duff soft underfoot, the air silent and dusty.

As we near the river, we hear a familiar but unexpected noise. Cows?? And then we see them, a small herd of mostly black cattle with ear tags, scattering away from us as we enter the flood plain. Cows?? There aren't supposed to be cows here. Whose cows are they? Where are they coming from?

We continue toward the river, and as we approach the water hole, we see this.

One of the cows has wandered into the pool and gotten stuck in the deep mud. Her face is covered in mud, her eyes are covered with mud. She tries to move when we approach, but she is truly mired. We are worried that she might sink completely and drown, so we take off on an urgent walk the half mile to the neighbor's house and use their land line to call for help. How do you get a cow out of the mud? How many people do we need? There are no roads here—can we get a vehicle in? We call our friend who grew up on a ranch. He is calm and has experience and ideas. It is getting dark by now, but he can bring a truck with headlights and ropes and winches. If you let them stay in there too long, they can get nerve damage in their legs. We should get her out tonight.

So off we all go to collect supplies, as well as two young friends for extra muscle and morale. Well, and who doesn't want to come to a nighttime cow rescue? By the time we meet back at the pool it is pitch black. Pretty soon here comes our friend's truck bumping over the rocky river bottom. By the light of our flashlights we can see that the cow has actually managed to struggle her way across the muddy pool to the other side and is next to the far bank. We whoop and holler encouragement, but she can't seem to muster the energy to move, and even with all the commotion she stands looking defeated next to a little rise at the water's edge. Our friend takes off his shoes, wades in and pushes at her, swatting her firmly on the rump with a rope, and with all of us cheering her on she finally comes heaving out onto the bank. After falling to her knees a few time, she staggers up and stands. Eventually she disappears off down the river, grazing hungrily. 

The next day the owner's cowboys come down to assess the trespass cattle and find over 40 head roaming back and forth on the river and floodplain through our land. A week later, they rounded up about 25, but that still left at least 15 animals grazing on our land and drinking at the pool for the next month and a half. Finally, about a week ago the cows had drunk all the water in the pool and moved on to find water elsewhere

    March 14...

    ...compared to Jan 23

I didn't expect such an immediate reminder about how owning land doesn't mean that I control it. Arizona is a "fence out state" which means that it is the responsibility of landowners to fence cattle out, rather than the responsibility of cattle owners to fence cattle in. So even though these cattle were supposed to be on a grazing lease up Robles Canyon, miles away, there wasn't much we could do if their owner chose not to come get them. We want fewer fences, not more, for wildlife connectivity. Besides, though the river that feeds the pool runs through our land, the pool itself is actually on BLM land, as our property ends just about at the edge of it, so fencing it wasn't exactly legal. And how to fence the cattle out without fencing everything else out as well? 

Our drought is so severe right now that it is heartbreaking to see all that water that should have been available for wildlife drained away in such a short time. I'm all for cattle grazing when done thoughtfully, but letting your cattle run wild is nonsense, taking resources away from wildlife, destroying the prize garden of one of the best gardeners in the valley, getting into other ranchers' pastures. The canyon where the cattle were supposed to be was poorly fenced, the rancher understaffed and overworked, whatever...it just feels like disregard for other people, especially when the cattle are still loose over two months later.

I guess I didn't expect that owning land would be so emotional—so much vulnerability, anger, fear, along with wonder, delight, and awe. I didn't expect to feel so attached so soon to this place, to feel the land open up to us as we open to it. It is such a visceral thing, caring about something. But this is the way it is; connection comes with heartbreak. Loving something means loving all of it. And all good things end eventually.

I find myself praying not just for good fortune, but to be present to whatever comes our way. And maybe learning how to build a fence wouldn't hurt, either.

What we did this winter

    A few of our crazy new mesquite friends

When I was a kid I never especially wanted to own a house, but I have always wanted to own land. Perhaps this came from having a mom who would rather be out driving tractor or exploring the woods than doing housework. Whatever the reason, I now have my wish. In January we purchased 70 acres of prime wildlife habitat in "downtown Cascabel." Lots of land, no house.

We have known about this property for the past four years, but it wasn't until this fall that all the pieces fell into place. Because of its location at the intersection of three major drainages, the part of the San Pedro River that runs through here can have water when the rest of the river for miles is dry. When the conditions are right to create this—as they were last summer—this is a wildlife haven. Recognizing this was piece number one.

    Remaining water from last summer's storms

    Evidence of the large pool of water that lasted here for months this summer

Piece number two was seeing how this land is already part of a coalescing of private and public lands that maintains unfragmented wildlife habitat in this area. This includes land adjcent to us that was purchased by the Cascabel Conservation Association two years ago, our neighbor on the other side who has been reestablishing native vegetation, and many people who have worked for years to create a wildlife corridor in Hot Springs Canyon to connect the mountain ranges on either side of the valley. 

    This mesquite is probably over 100 years old

There were lots of other little pieces, but the final one that brought it all together was about people. The former owner did not live in the area, and friends of his from Tucson had been coming out to camp on the property for the past twenty years. They have a deep knowledge of and affection for this land, and as we talked with them last fall it became clear that their involvement was important. Finding out that there were people who already loved the land and were willing to work with us made us feel more comfortable with the commitment, and we are happy to be sharing stewardship and enjoyment of this place with them.

     Co-stewards Nico, Leza, Luna, and Brian

Since the sale we have had more opportunity to explore the whole 70 acres, and we continue to be amazed at how alive and varied it is and how much we love being there. Its most obvious feature is the 40 acres of mature mesquite bosque near the road. But on the other side of the river, the upland desert is just as incredible, with its secret gullies, vistas of the surrounding mountain ranges, and big saguaros.

    Part of the upland desert in the foreground—all connected to the mountains in the distance

There really isn't good language in our culture for what we are doing. Land "ownership" doesn't capture it, as something this vast and complex isn't just "ours." We are stewards of this place for awhile, and the money we paid is a sign of our intended committment: a committment to learning about the land through "attentive stillness," to continuing to be part of the flow, to paying attention to all the puzzle pieces. 

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Next post: "And then what happened?" Or, "I think this might mean the honeymoon is over..."

Desert Living: Community Garden

    Casting a spell in the garden             (photo credit: John Delberta)

One week, snow. The next week, summer. This sudden snow storm at the end of January sent us scurrying to cover the vegetables with extra row covers. Two days later it was 70 degrees again. When most days bring a 40-degree swing in temperature, I'm amazed that the plants manage as well as they do.

Our community garden here in Cascabel is a place for people to work together. Instead of being organized around individual plots, we all cooperate to grow one big garden. Every Wednesday morning we meet, with masks, to do another week's work. It is one of the few things on my calendar that I rarely erase.

    Garlic and onions are our no-fail crops every year.

It always seem like magic when good things to eat pop out of the ground. Especially when we uncovered those snowy row covers a few days later to find this!

    A tribe of buttercrunch

But there has been plenty of behind-the-scenes work to help that magic along: lots of digging and planting last fall, and weeding and watering and mulching since; the infrastructure of our well and greenhouse; hauling manure, ordering seeds. This leads me to think that perhaps all magic is a combination of preparation and good timing, mixed with the ability to receive.

We are now harvesting buttercrunch, romaine, arugula, spinach, kale, cilantro, chard, and pea shoots. If the aphids leave us someting to eat we might have broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower soon. 

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(Several people have asked for more posts about our life here in the Sonoran Desert, so I am making several short entries this week about our daily routine along with some "news" and unusual events. Next post: Guess what we did this winter?)

Gifts from the earth

Birgit planted cowpeas at the community garden this year—Bisbee Red from Tucson's Native Seed Search and Mississippi Purple, a relative of black eyed peas. Cowpeas—or "crowder peas" as some varieties are called for the way they are packed in their pods—grow well in the kiln known as "summer" here. Last week we harvested a big pail of both kinds, and I have been eating the fresh shelled cowpeas stewed in olive oil and herbs, and shelling the dried seeds for storage.

Last night I had a little time after dinner and was shelling a bag of the dried beans. The touch of their smooth, round bodies on my fingers as I sorted the seeds from their brittle pods (mostly by feel) slowed my heart rate, calmed my mind. A kind of inner quiet descended—the first of a full day of tasks—and for those few minutes I was just there with the elemental reality of seeds and food and fall.

Every one of these seeds
is a poem
from the plant to the earth
waiting for the sun to open it up
and for the rain
to read it.

It is still hitting 100 here most days—leading us to dub the month "Hotober"—but fall has definitely arrived. The nights are dropping into the 50's, the angle of the solar oven clearly shows the lower path of the sun, and there are no more afternoon thunderstorms. It is calmer and quieter, and it just smells different, feels different.

This settling, this winding down, is so different from the social picture right now—the human struggle. And that struggle also needs our attention, our engagement, our caring. But the seeds help—their curved bodies cool against my fingers—and the way the seasons hold all of our anxiety like something so ephemeral it could blow away in an instant.

The past four months of studying about racism in the U.S. have helped, too. I have paid so little attention to history before, thinking of it as something past that didn't apply to me now. But if systems tend to continue—just as the sprout from this seed continues to grow into the same kind of plant—history is less like a train traveling from Seattle to St. Louis and more like the nested Russian dolls in which each contains inside it a replica of itself.

For example, it has been hard for me to understand where the currents of white supremacy that are so visible now come from. I grew up thinking that this was a radical, minority position. But as I read the history of the founding of this country, white supremacy was the norm, and was codified into our political structures. Who could own land, who could vote, who was deemed a "person" were all based on race, with the white race at the top. Often the major controversy wasn't whether whites were "superior" or not, but rather, who got to be "white." Even European immigrants from Ireland and Italy, for example, were not considered "white" for a time.

Consider this.

In 1860, Senator Jefferson Davis from Mississippi argued before the Senate “This Government was not founded by negroes nor for negroes,” he said, but “by white men for white men.” That is what I would expect from a soon-to-be Confederate state, but you can find the same sentiment in the north.

in 1858, Abraham Lincoln was running for the Senate seat from Illinois against incumbent Stephen Douglas. In the debates leading up to the election, much of the talk was about race and slavery, with Douglas saying things like, America “was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever,” and even Lincoln responding to attacks with: “'I am not nor ever have been in favor of making [Black people] voters or jurors,' or politicians or marriage partners... 'There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.'”(1)

This is just one example, and when I see more clearly this thread of our history, I no longer feel surprised at white supremicism—even in myself. It is the air we breath, and it makes sense of my own subtle assumptions, ways that I, like Lincoln, also unconsciously prefer that the "superior position be assigned to the white race." Rather than spending my energy being surprised or outraged at the narrowness of the white-focused world view, I want to simply see it and do something different.

As I wrote this post, I learned that cowpeas were relevant to this topic in ways I didn't realize. They were brought to this hemisphere from Africa on slave ships selling African captives in Jamaica, then introduced to Florida in the early 18th century where they became a major crop on plantations in the south. At some point they were brought to the southwest and became part of the agriculture of the Tohono O'odham people whose land used to encompass the area where I live now. Cowpeas have fed people of all colors—in their misery and in their need and in their joyful celebrations; they link us all together in unseen, but fundamental ways.

So I am grateful to the cowpeas not only for their solid reality, and for the quiet they bring that allows me to find my own real center, but for the way they connect us all. This is the ground from which change can grow. 

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(1) Quotes are from Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, PublicAffairs, Kindle Version, p. 205-209.

Getting sick just isn't what it used to be...

Last Saturday—nine days ago now—I woke up not feeling well. I had swollen glands, an elevated temperature (nothing concerning—still under 100), and some intestinal upset. The intestinal upset passed in 24 hours, but the fever stayed—a regular tidal surge up and down from 99 - 101 over the past nine days—and though I never had symptoms in my throat, nose, or head, whatever-it-was moved quickly into my chest and I have had chest congestion and a worsening dry cough since. The most pronounced symptom is fatigue and my sleep itinerary has read like a hobbit's ideal eating plan: breakfast, elevensy's, first lunch, second lunch, etc. Given that I am not a champion sleeper most of the time, I'm pretty sure I have slept more in the past week than I have in the month prior.

All that said, I have honestly never felt "terrible." I have had colds that were more painful, and this has mostly just required constant rest. During the tiny percentage of the day when I wasn't sleeping I still felt mentally alert, and worked a lot on my editing project (since it was something I could do in bed, where I could prepare for my next nap.) I kept my regular work schedule and enjoyed my calls with clients.

Now, though, nine days into this, I must say it is starting to feel old. I am improving, or at least things are progressing, but it is slow going, and I don't see an end to this anytime soon. And this got me thinking about my response to getting sick. I chose at first not to talk about it. I didn't want my friends and family to worry. And I honestly didn't have a lot of extra energy, and needed to pull in and focus on healing. These kinds of small ailments that come when I am feeling run-down have always been an invitation to myself to get rejuvenated energetically. I could see that I was not centered and a lot of my abilities were offline. It felt good to have my very own personal retreat to address these things—and just getting reams of deep sleep certainly didn't hurt. I feel more whole now, more intact. And that feels good.

But I also think that my initial reluctance to talk about this is no longer helpful. Now it feels like hiding. The parts of me that want to continue to keep this under wraps are just that—parts. There's the part that doesn't want to deal with the weight of public opinion and anxiety that comes along with being sick these days. Or the part that doesn't want to feel like a failure for getting sick—that I must not have taken proper precautions. Or the part that feels ashamed for being dirty and contagious and a danger to its friends and neighbors. Or the part that just doesn't want to be told what to do.

I am not listing these parts because there is any truth to them, or because they are the mature way to handle things. I am listing them because they exist. And I am guessing that if they exist in me, they also probably exist in other people. What I can acknowledge in myself softens me, makes me more able to hear other people's experiences with compassion.

I don't know what I have. The Figure-it-Out part of me wants to go into all the details, but suffice it to say that when I got sick I had not been to town for 17 days, and we take good precautions out here. I don't know anyone else who is sick, and so far Tom has not gotten sick either, all of which seems to make COVID-19 unlikely. That said, I can't rule it out, and will proceed as if I did have it until I can get tested. Which is a whole other subject! When I tried last week I was too sick to be eligible for the drive-thru testing at Walgreens in Tucson and not sick enough to go into the hospital. There is no regular testing facility in Benson, and even if there had been one, driving an hour on a bumpy dirt road (and possibly exposing more people) wasn't what I felt like doing. So I took another nap instead. Hopefully I can get tested next weekend at the testing event at the community clinic.

It seems more likely that I have Valley Fever, a fungal infection of the lungs which is quite common here, and which is not passed between people. You get it from breathing the spores from dust or the soil, and I ride my bike regularly on the dusty road, work in the community garden, and hand weed in the pastures. Regardless if I have Valley Fever, COVID-19, or just some run-of-the-mill ailment, the treatment is still the same. Stay home. Rest. I've got that down.

Mostly I am writing about this because I think these are questions and feelings that many of us will face in the months ahead, as we get "something" that feels serious, but not THAT serious. What do I do? Who do I tell? What is my responsibility? Do I get tested? How do I take care of myself? I don't have answers, but it seems like just acknowledging my experience might help us all know that we are not alone in these feelings.

For me, it felt good to take time to myself at first—to not take on the additional weight of the inevitable group anxiety of trying times. But now it also feels important to reach out. To find connections, acknowledge my vulnerability, just be real.

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p.s. This week was my first test of my 15-minute-a-day commitment to anti-racism work. Up until this week I was reading and studying avidly for much longer than that, but once I got sick it would have gone by the wayside if I had not set that intention. Last week saw the first day when I realized I had not thought about it all day and it was almost time for bed—but I can always make time for 15 minutes. Intention worked.

I recognized early on that the other thing I need in addition to a daily commitment is support from other people. So Tom and I have been talking together daily, I have been engaging in conversations with people who are interested, and I have been able to ask some girlfriends from grad school for specific support. Questioning the "white frame" I have always lived in, naturally creates a feeling of not belonging—so I am purposefully increasing my feelings of belonging with people who are also doing this work.

More on that later.....

What's next?

I am lucky in my mostly white family to have several international additions amongst my neices and nephews, including people from Mali, the Philippines, and Mexico. I have been thinking for the past few weeks about their kids. All of them are young, and what we do now shapes the world they will grow up in.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the upwelling of protest of the last weeks I have been thinking about what kind of world I want for these kids. I want better for them than the world that George Floyd and Trayvon Martin faced. I want them to grow up strong and confident in their own value. I want them to be able to contribute. I want them to thrive.

Systemic racism keeps people—certain people—from mattering as much as others. It is a way of downgrading groups of people for cultural, economic, or political aims. Systemic racism is not something happening “out there” to other people, and it is not primarily just bad people doing bad things. It is something that I am part of, that we are all part of in this country. I am part of a system that privileges whiteness and punishes blackness—as well as “otherness” of many kinds.

Not acknowledging this is the wrong kind of silence. But it is also too easy for me—as a white person—to say that what happened to George Floyd is awful—and then move on. This senseless killing IS awful. But this killing is not an isolated incident. It is only one of many such killings, which were no less awful; and it is part of the long history of racism in this country that has been with us since this country began.

If I want a different world for these boys to grow up in, I need to do something different. And that could start by simply saying: This is unacceptable. And I am willing to do something about it.

The first change I need to make is a change in my awareness. Savala Trepczynski, Executive Director of the UC Berkeley School of Law’s Center for Social Justice says:

…a white person rushing to do racial justice work without first understanding the impacts, uses, and deceptions of their own whiteness is like an untrained person rushing into the ER to help the nurses and doctors—therein probably lies more harm than good.

So I am starting with a commitment to myself: to learn what it means to be white, how systemic racism works, and what the many colors of people in this country actually experience. I am starting by grappling with my own racism.

My goal is to spend at least 15 minutes a day for the next year doing this. I can hear a voice in my head saying: Only fifteen minutes? That’s nothing! But this is actually a sign that I am serious. Systemic racism isn’t going away anytime soon, and I need a goal I can keep for longer than Black History Month. This is not a solution, this is a practice. 

And honestly, I am doing this because I want to. I can see that real freedom lies in awareness—even if that awareness is uncomfortable. Everything I read, every conversation I have with a friend, supports that. In my friend Mark Goodman’s podcast¹ he talks about Zen Master Bernie Glassman, who practiced bearing witness to suffering by holding meditation retreats at places like Auschwitz—or closer to home, on Native American lands. Freedom comes from seeing what is, the joy and the pain.

I should also make it clear that really I am doing this for all the children in my family. Those who identify as "white" will be no less impacted by racism, though they will be much less likely to be aware of that impact unless white people like me speak up.

Once I get started on something it is hard to stop, and I spent far more than my 15 minutes a day thinking about this the past two weeks. I read so much that is worth sharing that it was hard to narrow it down, but here's a taste. Watching attorney and mother Catherine Ayeni talk about why white silence is painful helped me have empathy. Reading Savala Trepczynski talk about why white people are responsible for what happens next inspired me to learn more. And reading Kleaver Cruz talk about why he started the Black Joy Project gave me hope.

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1 Soul Matters, "Episode #12 Soul Reaction--Responding to George Floyd", podcast with Mark Goodman and Julianna Pope

Desert home

    Photo Credit: Tom Talbott, Jr.

The swarm of bees is still there this morning, hanging pendulous from the branches of the mesquite like a giant oriole’s nest, each bee perfectly still and in alignment with its neighbor, wings all pointing down like the hair on a sleeping cat.

Judging by its diameter around the branches, the mass must be layered five or ten bees deep. I wonder what the ones at the bottom feel like, with the weight of their hive-mates pressing down on them. And what would it take to disturb them? As the sun touches the cluster—dappled light filtered through the mesquite leaves—they do not seem to be in any hurry to move. Though the surface bees are awake and stretching now, only scattered bees are leaving and just as many returning; the whole bee-mass seems to be steaming slightly, like a pot just starting to come to a simmer.

The whole thing looks more like some kind of organism than a collection of single insects. A very small furry sloth perhaps, hanging two-legged from a forked “V” in the mesquite. As the day-breezes pick up, the solid blob sways a little—it’s loose, but has weight to it, like a wadded-up piece of cloth that might unfurl to stream out in the wind at any moment.

They arrived late yesterday afternoon, all at once, the swarm a diffuse blur overhead, more sound than substance. It circled, then descended into the bush on the other side of the truck, collecting itself somehow into this compact cluster, hundreds of bees compressed into a ball, a foot-and-a-half long and maybe eight-inches in diameter at its thickest. Though we had seen the swarm arrive—and stepped into the screen room just to make sure it knew we would give it room to pass—we only discovered the bee-ball later, at bedtime, when they had already gathered in for the night.

I go back in the trailer for an hour to do food prep for the day while it is still cool—keeping our tiny fridge closed during the hot part of the day is essential to it actually doing its job—but when I come back out the bees are in pretty much the same state. I don’t know why I expected them to be up-and-at-‘em at first light. Maybe I am taking that whole “busy as a bee” thing too literally. But here they are, with the sun well above the horizon on its fast-track up to the very tip-top of the blue sky, still clinging to their branch like teenagers in bed on a school day.

I take another break from bee-watching and finish the food prep and find duct tape to help Tom tape some popsicle sticks where the latch for the cargo door on the trailer catches so the latch will make a tighter seal and keep the bugs out. This ingenious use of the materials-at-hand works, though we think we will have an even tighter seal if we buy another box of popsicles. Perhaps two boxes…

After all this, it is getting on toward 9:30 and now it is definitely hot, but the bee-blob hasn’t budged. The whole outer layer is doing a slow churn, and the ball looks a little expanded with the bees moving about, but I am starting to think that this pot may not boil while I am watching it. Here and there all over the cluster, a few solitary bees are vibrating wildly, their whole bodies shaking furiously as though possessed by the spirit of God. For a moment, that one bee is all soul, fur flying, lungs flapping in the wind, wings and legs and stripes a dizzy blur. Then it disappears into the slow-moving mass and the day snaps into normal mode again.

I leave once more to put the lentils and rice in the solar oven (which already registers 400 degrees inside) and when I come back the spirit has spread; now there are bees vibrating in multiple places at once, and the whole bee-ball is awake and moving restlessly; individual bees look like they are searching for something, the slower ones nudging and nosing their neighbors, the vibrating ones trampling over the others in their hurry. On the underside of the ball, the lowest bees hang loosely—some just by their front legs.

Lunch comes and goes, and while Tom is doing the dishes, I check back again. Still there! Though now the mass is drooping seriously, dripping like a softened candle under the weight of the clinging insects. They are still moving on the surface, but there don’t seem to be as many coming and going. The whole thing looks heavy and tired under the hot noon sun—which may be mostly a projection on my part. How long are they going to stay? I wonder, thinking of the Far Side cartoon in which the Joneses feign death to get their houseguests to leave. These bees don't seem like they would notice if I was alive or dead, so I resort to knowledge as my offensive strategy, and go to find one of the few books I brought with me, which just happens to be Hoyt's The World of Bees.

According to Hoyt, when a bee colony decides to swarm, they fly in tighter and tighter circles, and usually settle somewhere on a tree limb. If the queen is with the cluster, the cluster will hold and grow. It will be a huge, seething, dripping, shapechanging mass of bees, wonderful to see…and may remain for anything from fifteen minutes to several days. During this time, scouts are sent out…on the lookout for the perfect home.

These scouts do their ‘wagging’ dance when they return…the same dance they do inside the hive to tell their sisters where a new source of nectar is to be found. When the scouts return they dance for whatever discovery they have made. And their excitement is in direct proportion to the mental misgivings they have in regard to their find. It if is adequate and that is all, the dance is done pretty listlessly. If it is perfect…the dance will be done with great enthusiasm.

And here’s the really amazing part. Other bees go to check out the places being danced for most vigorously. Half-hearted dancers stop and go to see what the more enthusiastic bees are so delighted about. Pretty soon the dancing for the one becomes nearly unanimous. This is when the swarm takes flight.

2:45. I check again. The sun is a big hot hand over the whole sky, pressing relentlessly. It is too bright, too exposed, even in the shade. The swarm has continued to sag, and it now looks disturbingly like a dead animal—perhaps a tiny goat hung by its hind feet for butchering. I can’t get the image out of my mind and the squirming insects now look like maggots on a rotten carcass rather than the beautiful gold-furred divinities of the dawn. Bees are coming and going regularly, a handful at a time, and there are several bees “dancing” at once. I try to see if the direction of their dances coincides—maybe several point in the same direction? When I turn to look in that direction the first thing I see is our nearby yurt and screen room. Huh....... Surely they aren't thinking about staying......here! 

The wind has really picked up, and the lengthening strands of bees flap with an elastic weight like the sagging flesh on the back of an arm. The tarps on our trailer that shade its sides are threatening to set sail in the strong gusts, so we decide to take them down for the day. Just as we have removed the tent poles, at 2:59 pm, we hear a sudden roar, and peer out from under the partly-dismantled awning to see the whole swarm up in the air again, swirling in a fast circle over the cluster-site. Once every bee is off the branch, the circle widens and lifts and then slowly gyres toward us; then slowly spins over us as we huddle under the fabric; then slowly drives off toward the yurt (Keep going! Tom mutters); then slowly surrounds the top of the yurt (Keeeep Going…..!); then finally—to our immense relief—heads slowly on up the slope. The last we see, they are circling in a slow bee-funnel toward the top, disappearing over the ridge in a whirl of unseen sound. 

The driveway seems suddenly very quiet and very still. We breath a sigh of relief at their decision, and continue to tie up our awning and think about supper. I hope they like their new home as much as we like ours.

Hoyt, M. (1965) The World of Bees. New York: Bonanza Books.

Allowing light

Sitting this morning to write, the steam rising out of my hot cereal, Papa Quail calling from the top of his favorite mesquite; Gila Woodpeckers, Black-throated Sparrows, a Lucy’s Warbler—all the little morning sounds; Mica Mountain bright in the eastern light, lined with a few blue shadows from scattered clouds; the sink, the stove, the shoes at the door all offering their usual silent support.

Sometimes, I don’t allow joy in. I don’t fully trust that deep sense of well-being that can well up from inside when I am just still—that sense that everything is what it is, that there is a “rightness” in the world. My rational mind is quick to remind me of a possible future that is not so right. Or of a remembered past that still needs examination. My social self worries about other people, doesn’t think I can feel joy when other people are suffering. There is something about accepting that innate, inherent okay-ness that seems naïve and foolish: my amygdala is certain that it would be smarter to look for danger, question everything. Don’t be taken in, it whispers to me.

But all of this seems less certain to me this morning. All of the above strategies seem to bring only a tighter entanglement with my own worries and fears. What if that sense of inner well-being is what leads me to act with courage and confidence, no matter what the future brings? What if instead of sympathy and guilt I were to choose compassion, which can acknowledge both joy and suffering at once? What if accepting my own delight is what makes life worth living, right now?

Can I accept this peace in this moment?

Can I see with my own inner light?

Good company

There’s a little brown fence lizard in the yurt with me this morning. He scoots around on the vinyl floor like a windup toy, belly lifted off the ground, tail in the air, almost on tiptoe. He tries to climb up the plastic trash bag where our trailer awning is stored, but falls off immediately with a soft thump. He rights himself, turns to face a swatch of sunlight coming through the window on the door, and presses his body down so flat in the warmth that he could be two-dimensional. 

When I get up to leave, I shoo him outside so I don’t accidentally squish him underfoot. Thirty minutes later I am back at my chair and hear his little feet again, and see that he has let himself back in through a gap in the canvas next to the base of the door. He runs a few inches, then stops; spurts forward again after a little pause, then stops—his movement reminding me of water squirting out of a hose when you run over it with the car.

What good company! I feel oddly comforted by his presence, though he couldn’t care less about me and my feelings. Maybe that is part of what I like about him—how he has an entire life that has nothing to do with me. How he is a world to himself.

It is also comforting to pay close attention to something outside myself; this brings me back to my body, to the present moment. Even better than lizards for this are snakes. Right now it is still too cold to see snakes every day, though there have been a few rattlesnake sightings over the past couple weeks. One of them was at the neighbors’ trailer, where the snake was having a staring match with the cat. Our neighbors took a picture, then moved it out of their yard. After they texted me the photo I asked where they moved the snake. “To your shower,” was the cheeky response. Nice neighbors. 

But seriously, though snakes cause anxiety on one level, they help my anxiety on another: in snake country I am completely present to my body and my surroundings. Whenever I walk anywhere, I watch the ground, notice where I am stepping, look at what is under each cactus, listen for the polite rattlesnake warning. After an hour or two of this I feel like I have been at a meditation retreat—can feel my body sink, my feet on the ground, my mind settle into a kind of alert rhythm.

Of course if I actually see a snake, that is a whole different story. But I guess everything positive has a downside. And right now, I am just glad to be alive enough to do the crazy leaping snake dance, to enjoy the lizard scooting in and out of the yurt, to be a part of this bright clear day.

The big dog in the pen

Fear lurks inside me like a big dog locked in a pen. It is jumpy and easily threatened, snarling and biting to protect itself—it doesn’t care what it hurts in its mad dash to get out.  I can feel the destruction it causes, but it isn’t the sort of thing I can just wish away. This morning, it is still crouched there in the back yard of my mind, needing attention.

Deep breath in and out. Noticing the feeling of lack of control. Noticing the fear of pain. The fear of suffering. The fear of death. Noticing thoughts about the future. Noticing the tightness in my solar plexus. Noticing my desire to crawl back under the covers on the warm bed and curl up into a ball.

Right now in this moment, life is going on all around just the way it always has—simultaneously beautiful and terrible, joyful and painful. Every day millions of creatures are consumed by other creatures as part of the ordinary course of events. Bee mites attack bees. Tarantula hawks lay their eggs on paralyzed tarantulas. Elk tear grass out of the ground by its roots. 

And simultaneously the feathers on the cactus wren are a miracle of precision. The cabbage from the garden tastes delicious. The upland washes are carpeted with magenta owl clover. Down by the river the cottonwoods swoon green heads over its dry bed.

The virus drops me out of the “observer” position—where “nature” is something I watch “out there”—and into a fuller recognition of my participation. We are no longer strategic commanders, we are the bees, the tarantulas, the elk, and the grass. We are elegant; we are terrible. Life is precious; life is awful. There is no escape from this wrestled dichotomy—it is all wrapped up into one continuous fabric of organismic events. This time is just one time in trillions. This life is just one tiny speck in Life; the universe a shifting, endlessly-changing curtain of interconnection. Including my stomach, which is in a knot. And the fear-dog rattling its chain on its metal stake.

And in this moment, this very moment, as I just sit still—in this moment, there is this drop of consciousness, like the slightest dew drop on the end of the slightest blade of grass. A drop of consciousness so quiet I can rush right past it in my constant dash for the future or the past. A drop of consciousness as complete as a seed—a whole world inside it, lying in wait for the exact conditions when it can crack. Waiting for us to see good and bad, fear and desire for what they are. Waiting for us to touch it, even just for an instant.

We are a single note struck from a silver bell, then gone. We are a symphony banged out of a tin can, reverberating forever.

Good morning, dog. Good dog. Let’s get you something to eat...

My heart is a glass jar

As I write tonight, my heart feels like a glass jar that fills up every day with grief. 

I sit with a client, watch her face move on the computer monitor—all those glowing pixels organized into the likeness of someone I know about as well as I know anyone in my life. I talk to a brother, feel everything that is unsaid beneath the words.  Listen to Tom’s breathing at night, regular and soft on the pillow next to me, a sound I have woken up to for almost 32 years. 

I’m thinking tonight of all the things human beings do together. Before—meaning four weeks ago—I used to feel like I had to protect myself from the amount of activity in the world, all the things demanding my attention. Now all that has slowed to a trickle and been replaced by endlessly scrolling information about the virus. (Our “invisible friend”, the Desert Oracle calls it, which I like because his wry humor helps me to relax.) Gone is the opening of Sounder's soccer season; the entire run of our friend’s theater company’s one-production-a-year, just ready for opening night. I think of the marathon I happened upon just shortly before the virus was reported in Seattle. The Aurora Street Bridge was closed northbound and the lanes were filled with people shoulder to shoulder, running and walking together. Not possible now. Not for awhile anyway.

I am a glass jar that fills up every day with grief. My jar is full tonight; I pour it out onto the ground, onto the dry dusty dirt, onto the little seeds there pulled in tight—waiting.

Karla McLaren teaches that emotions are essential, and that each emotion has a specific job. Grief, she says, “transports you to the deepest places when you have no choice but to let go.” It is our response to absolute loss, and it helps us survive by dropping us down into the deep river that flows underneath all life. To respond to grief, she talks about slowing down, and about the importance of ritual. I think this is why I started writing again here last week—this is my ritual, the place where I can stop and see what is in my heart.

I pour my glass jar into the river; I am waiting for the clouds to break, the storm to begin.

I call a friend who has recently returned from a year in Malawi, and is in 14-day quarantine in a room in a friend's house. She says to me: It’s the little things that matter, our attention to what is right in front of us. Then we are silent for a long moment. Together. Separated by half a continent and a locked-down national border. But the power of her inner stillness in that moment reaches all the way to me here in the desert.

Right now, Tom is washing the dishes in our trailer after dinner. It smells like sausage. Behind me the sun has set, and orange and blue bands stretch across the western horizon, the narrow heads of the scattered saguaros black silhouettes on the hill. The gravel path stretches pale back down toward the empty road. A black-throated sparrow rolls his liquid crystal call out of a dark mesquite.

Everything feels all mixed up together. Our greed and stupidity and thoughtlessness and our raw beauty and our grace.

I pour my glass jar out onto the ground, bend down to give thanks. Tomorrow it will be filled all over again. But for tonight I feel better.

-------------

I wrote this last night, then a friend sent this article today—“That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief.” I especially appreciated his discussion of “anticipatory grief” which I think names much of what I am feeling these days. He says:

“Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. ... There’s a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new.”

He also talks about how to handle anticipatory grief. Worth reading.

Fluxx

For the past couple years Tom and I have been playing a card game called Fluxx, in which the rules change every turn. Success comes not from a long-term plan, but from being able to respond to constantly changing conditions. As I look back at what I thought about my life just three weeks ago—my goals, plans, assumptions—I’m shocked at how much is different. The things I can do, what I take for granted, how I get something done, the way I move through the world, has all changed, at least for the short term and likely longer. 

I think of the way I took my health for granted, my freedom to travel anywhere I could buy a plane ticket. Why not Italy? Or China? And of course I could go anywhere I wanted to in Seattle. The world felt like an open book, full of choices. I just had to make a plan and it would unfurl in front of me like a cash register receipt. If I needed to do something I would just get people together to help. Bored? See a movie, go to the library. Who knows, maybe I could go back to school one more time, study poetry. And when I met a friend, we’d hug, share food, high-five at an amazing soccer goal. I remember the months my mother was in the nursing home at the end of her life and how touch became the language that mattered. I think of the playfulness of a Hakomi workshop—all the ways that touch supports life.

Just three weeks later I can hardly recognize the incredible freedom of that world. So much of what I took for granted has disappeared overnight. And none of us really know what's ahead.

Yet as I write these words in pencil in my spiral notebook I can feel a warmth spreading in my chest, can feel fear and grief loosening their grip. Why does writing down what hurts, help? I suppose for the same reason talking to another person helps. The chance to acknowledge the burden we are carrying. To be honest. To allow feelings to flow, instead of lying stuck somewhere. To recognize that every time something changes, something else is there to take its place.

And next turn it will change again.

For awhile . . .

A friend writes me this morning about yesterday’s post—that he noticed that I repeated the word awhile several times toward the end:

"…and having that odd sensation when repeating a word quickly that some brain mechanism drops out and now the word sounds weird, and what the heck does that sound mean? . . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . .  It’s as if you’ve produced a mantra; something of that word “I” enduring through indefinite time."

I repeat the mantra to myself quietly . . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . . and feel tears rise up.  I could feel something hovering yesterday as I was writing, but I didn’t know what. Now I can sense it better—can feel that it is grief and joy tangled up together.

. . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . .

We are here for awhile and then gone; we are in this place for awhile and then we move; today turns into tomorrow. We live . . . for awhile . . . and knowing that, the grief of impermanence and endings rises up from somewhere down inside me like a shape from deep, deep water. And with that grief, comes joy. They come together, as inseparable as the head and tail of a copper penny. I could feel that yesterday hidden inside what I was writing, but I couldn’t name it; it took my friend to uncover it for me. 

. . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . .

Before bed last night, Tom and I stand outside our trailer for a moment with our headlamps off and look up at the stars. Orion—most obvious; the Pleiades a smudgy patch over the hill. Venus like a queen among her subjects. Some years ago when Tom first started taking photographs, he bought a telescope and took high-resolution pictures of every phase of the moon. For about a year we would go out at night regularly, learned the constellations, some major stars, the Messier Objects. Then we gradually drifted over to birds, and it felt too hard to wake up early and stay up late, and somehow the birds won out. Now I just remember the big names; most of what we studied together, I've forgotten.

This loss of knowledge, and the memory of an ending of a time in my life, often feels sad. But last night I could feel this mantra inside me already, tucked away like a secret.

. . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . .

And I could smile at the thought of past experience: of having spent that time with Tom; having looked out into the dark brilliance of the night sky; having thought and felt and loved with all the awkward grace of any human animal . . . 

. . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . . for awhile . . .

Cinnamon Raison Bread

Right now, as I sit down to write this, I am terrified. Not in the top half of my brain, in the penthouse where the executives are planning and putting together schedules, but in my gut. My stomach has been in a knot for about four days now, especially at night when the lights go out and it would be a great time for sleeping. It feels like a gnome is in there wringing my stomach like a wet hand towel. It’s hard to sleep with this kind of thing going on.

I take a break after setting up the trailer at our new campsite to eat half a grilled cheese sandwich—on Dave’s Cinnamon-Raison Bread because that was the only loaf of bread at the store last weekend—left over from last night’s dinner. The towel-wringing gnome hasn’t left much room in there for an appetite either, and I find I have to remember to eat something now and then. As I bite into the sandwich, the unexpectedly rich, sweet, nutty taste of it rolls over me, and suddenly in that moment with the buttery flavor on my tongue, I feel unexpectedly and acutely alive.

The second bite isn’t quite as good. There’s nothing like the first taste of something. Everything past that is kind of like thunder rolling off down the valley after the first heart-stopping crash of overhead lightning. But that first bite shocked me into paying attention—all the feelings of sweetness, not only in my mouth, but melting down into my limbs; even the fear-train in my stomach making room for something a little softer and warmer; the executives in the rooftop suite pausing for a moment to look out the windows and comment on the little clouds sailing across the sky like sheep’s tails—and I can feel the day rise up to meet me, warm and dusty, a fly buzzing at the window, the sound of horses from the road below.

I am grateful for a little ordinary moment of peace.

*******

We just arrived back in Cascabel, Arizona today, where we plan to stay for the foreseeable future. We are camped at the property where we stayed for several months last year. We intend to lay low for two weeks as we have been traveling down the coast to get here. What a difference from all the other years we have been living in our trailer! Cities grinding to a halt, businesses shutting their doors, events canceling, the state parks closing just after we left California. The virus growing from something “somewhere else” to a presence everywhere and on everyone’s mind within days and weeks. We feel like we have been pushed by a crest of a wave for the past three weeks since the day we rolled through Seattle just as the counts were starting. We are beyond grateful to have a place that we can settle in, call home for awhile.

It has been hard to write in this blog for awhile—this winter because I was busy with other things; now because I don't even know where to begin. But it helps to start. And I can feel how the act of writing grounds me. I know how much I appreciate hearing the "voice" of the writers I know in my life. It is almost more important than the things they write about—just the sound of the way they put words together, a sound that is unique to each person. I miss it when their voices are not in the world; and I hear that there are people who miss mine.

So I would like to continue doing this for awhile—noticing the little things, just checking in with myself, letting my voice out to run around a little, not taking it too seriously or trying to make anything spectacular. Seems like this is a time when we all appreciate hearing our loved one's voices. When we are appreciating what we have today, right now.

Like Cinnamon Raison Bread, the last loaf on the shelf.

A pause for thanks

For the last few months I have been sorting through boxes of papers from my parents’ house, and this, and the upcoming one-year anniversary of my Dad’s death has me thinking about my relationship with him. In the past, I would have emphasized the differences between us. Now I'm feeling our similarities.

As I have said before, my father was very private, and at least in his adult life, only talked to a few people. He liked to be social if there were games involved—ping pong or volleyball or horseshoes—but when it came to talking, it was mostly his family that he turned to: primarily my mother, and while I was at home, me.  When he did talk, he tended toward the monologue. It was like he needed a place to unroll all of his thoughts in front of him so that he could understand what was in his head. And then at the end of the conversation he would roll all of them back up again until the next day when he would take them out again as though no one had ever seen them before. My mother—as I said when I wrote about my father last year—did a lot of knitting.

He also wrote voluminously—in longhand on yellow notepads and spiral notebooks, and later on the computer—and then created booklets out of what he wrote, comb bound after he got his own comb binder and copy machine. He wrote about all the different projects that he was involved in: water rights and field burning and property-boundary disputes and taxes. But the subject that he wrote about the longest, and the one he and I always talked about, was religion.

Thinking about this now is odd. On the one hand as a kid, this was upsetting. My dad’s conversations with me felt oppressive and heavy and often left me feeling trapped and taken over by someone else’s life. It took me years to unlearn enough of the passive stance I took toward those conversations to have my own boundaries and direction. And yet those conversations were also the precursor to my own life-long interest in spirituality and my deeply-satisfying work as a therapist.

I had come to peace with my father some years ago, but as I look through his writing I keep seeing new things about our relationship. For example, even just as I was writing this, I realized that he didn’t talk to me about everything. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to me that he had all kinds of projects going on, but he mostly talked to me about religion. Or perhaps I only really listened to him when he talked about this subject. Either way, that’s news. Either he knew more about me than I realized, or I had better boundaries than I thought, and could tune out things that didn’t actually interest me. Maybe I was there at the dinner table with him, not exactly out of choice, but at least out of inclination. 

*******

The other night, late in the evening, I was finishing up reading Dad’s letters to his siblings, and had been talking about my thoughts and reading passages to Tom who was doing something else at the time—working on his pictures or getting ready for bed—and he commented after something I said about Dad, “Boy, you two sure are a lot alike.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this. I don’t want to be that person who talks on and on at the dinner table long after everyone’s eyes have glazed over. I don’t want to be so compulsive about what I am thinking about that I can’t put it down. I don’t want to make booklets about religion and send them to my relatives and have them not respond.

But when I reflect on it, Tom has a point. I was, after all, talking to him mostly to figure out what I was thinking. I also write a lot, and as I look over old journals I notice how often the same themes come up. And I make books: a row of handmade books of poems and essays sit on my shelf right now, and every few years I organize whatever it is that I am working on into some kind of collection.

Dad didn’t have a public place for his ideas. It hurts my heart a little to see him begin a letter to his brother with a remark about not having heard back about the booklet he had sent to him recently on religion. And I can remember my own reluctance to open letters he sent to me at college because I was pretty sure I already knew what was in them.

I am aware more and more of the importance of having people just listen to you. Mom and I and other people in the family did listen to Dad in many different ways. My sister was better at listening with a tennis racket. My brothers listened through music or ping pong or working together on the farm. I think Dad was happy enough with the avenues he had for self-expression.

But looking through his stacks of writing, and wondering what drove him to work so hard to put his inner thoughts into words, and feeling that same need so strongly in myself, makes me feel especially grateful to have some public place for my writing. In particular, I am grateful to have this blog, which I never would have started without Tom's encouragement; and I am grateful for all of you who read it—your listening, and your letters back to me, encourage me to keep writing. This has been a place where I can "talk out loud" about what I am thinking; and it challenges me to put my thoughts in a form that I can share with other people. Both of these help me know myself better.

I am also feeling grateful for Dad, just for being himself. As time goes on, I appreciate him more. And this is a good thing, because Tom’s right: we are a lot alike, and so if I am going to love myself, I had better learn to love him. 

******

In later life my father finally condensed his thoughts into one short piece about his religious position, titled “Religion and Me”, that I think is a good summary of his lifetime of thought. And in a letter he sent me along with the booklet, he wrote a sentence that I appreciate again reading it now: Thanks for being this Philosopher’s Sound Board over the years. I think realizing that he was thankful for who I was goes a long ways toward building that bridge of love over the troubled waters of the past.

Feeling more appreciation for my father isn’t something I could have tried to do. It just happened as a natural result of the passage of time and my continued interest in my dad's life. Understanding and empathy come from engagement. And I believe that we are each engaged by what we need to be engaged with—that we can’t help it. That what we each need to look at grabs us by the collar and won’t let go. And so if we turn toward whatever has us in its grip, it is likely that this will lead us in the direction of love. Because really everything leads in this direction. Even hatred. Even separation. Even our own stubborn clinging to everything we know. Help is there where we least expect it.

Dad did this—he turned toward what gripped him, to the best of his ability. And I think that talking and making booklets helped him to distill his life into a place of more acceptance and humility. And that helps me see that the things that I do naturally—no matter whether from compulsion or interest—will do the same for me. And I am remembering the phrase with which Dad often ended his correspondence—with love and affection—which makes me think now that he might have saved his best point for last.

WHAT IF? (Part 3c: But wait...there's more!)

    The hazelnut orchard next to our trailer this summer. See end of post for why the ground is so bare.

My unplanned foray into the world of hazelnuts has one more twist. When I researched hazelnut farming practices I discovered some surprises.

The Willamette Valley is Hazelnut Central, growing about 99% of U.S. hazelnuts, otherwise known as filberts. A major threat to this crop is the filbertworm, the larva of the moth, Cydia latiferreana, also native to the area. The moth lays its eggs near the nuts and the larva burrow through the shell to munch on the kernal, leaving nothing to collect come harvest. The common practice for hazelnut farmers is to spray a pesticide to kill the eggs or the newly-hatched larvae before they have a chance to enter the nut.

Because of the skill of the filbertworm, organic hazelnuts are rare, with a mere 1% of hazelnuts being grown this way. And there is an interesting catch to organic hazelnut production. Even if the worm can be eliminated on the orchard itself, the worm lives on native white oak trees (Quercus garryana) and so oaks neighboring organic orchards are a source of re-infestation of the hazelnut trees.

Because of this, organic hazelnut growers may be encouraged to cut down native oaks on their property.

WHAT...?!!!?

Suddenly my plan to buy organic hazelnuts doesn't seem so great.

Oaks in the Willamette Valley and surrounding mountains are part of two ecosystem types: oak woodlands and oak savannas. The oak savannah is actually a grassland, with scattered single oaks that grow broad canopies due to the lack of neighboring trees. The Willamette Valley was once covered with oak savannas, but with changing human priorities, only a tiny fraction of this ecosystem remains, perhaps less than 1%. Oak woodlands are also increasingly rare, with around 5 - 7% remaining. Much of the remaining oak habitat is privately owned and on agricultural land, so this clash between sustainable farming methods and oak conservation is important.

If I was going to make a list of trees I would most like to be friends with, oaks are top candidates, along with cottonwoods and aspens. Their massive limbs and calm presences make them look like elder beings striding along over the grassy hills or settled into the draws. There is a small cluster of oaks along a seasonal stream about a mile from Tom’s parents’ house and I walk there frequently on hot days to feel the sudden coolness under the trees, and listen to the chatter of birdsong in the branches. After the hot asphalt road or the bare Christmas tree fields, this oasis of life is a welcome relief.

So it's a shock to me that my organic hazelnuts could be coming at the expense of my beloved oak trees.

    © Rick Shaefer   Used by permission of artist.

And it reminds me that things are never simple. John Muir’s oft-quoted thought, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe,” applies just as much to organic farming as anything else. More and more we find that not only do environmental goals collide with large-scale food production, but that different environmental goals also collide with each other. As I said in the last post, affliction is an inevitable part of life.

There are no easy answers.

And ironically, fully recognizing that seems like a step toward grace.

I was planning to end this article with a discussion of research collaboration between the University of Oregon and an organic farm to try grazing pigs under their trees as a way to reduce the number of filbertworm larva overwintering in fallen nuts.

I was going to use this as an opportunity to talk about how complex systems need complex responses—and that no matter how much we try to simplify it, the world we live in is complex.

I was going to talk about different disciplines working together—how growing food requires a knowledge of history, ecology, agriculture, demographics, philosophy, etc. For example, understanding that oak savannas in the Willamette Valley were probably maintained by Kalapuya and other local Native American groups using controlled burning. Or recognizing that there are over 140 different species of wildlife that use oaks for resting, feeding, or nesting. Or knowing that timing of agricultural activities and crop selection makes a difference. Or identifying the cultural values underlying our food production systems and recognizing the impact these values have on our surroundings.

But as I tried to do this, I realized that I was doing exactly what I said we shouldn't do. I was proposing an "answer". I was making complexity into something that we could imagine being in control of. I was making it too simple.

I would like to resist doing that at least for the time it takes to finish reading this post. I would like to hold the questions as questions. To leave it open. To just pause.

And perhaps in that pause, this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke that my sister reminded me of recently would be relevant:

...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
                       —Rainer Maria Rilke

    Young oak tree contemplating the future.

-------------------

ENDNOTES

A note about the drawing by Rick Shaefer: this is actually a type of oak called a "live oak" not a white oak, but Rick so captured the feeling of reverence that I have toward oaks, as well as the Tree's place in the savanna habitat, that I decided to use it anyway. Rick's work is impressive, both for its skill and the global scale of his view—I highly recommend a look at his website, especially his recent piece, The New Colossus, about Wall Building.

If you would like to read more about the research I referenced above, click here for a short synopsis of my own, and here for links to the project itself.

And I promised to tell you why the ground is so bare around hazelnut trees. The short answer is for harvest, as hazelnuts are collected by sweeping them off the ground after they fall. But the more I look, the more convoluted the reasoning gets. Bare ground means less habitat for filberworm larva and other insects. Bare ground means fewer ground squirrels and gophers who gnaw on tree roots. Moles would eat the insects, but they leave mounds that interfere with the harvesting equipment. Ground cover would help soil fertility but it also attracts more bees, so less ground cover means fewer bees are killed by insecticides. And on and on... The complexity of the reasons for simplifying an environment so dramatically point to the complexity of the actual system, regardless of how simple we try to make it.

WHAT IF? (Part 3b: Beyond helplessness)

    © Marc Hanson   Used by permission of artist.

The last post helped me to calm down—but I still didn't know what to do about the hazelnut sprayers.

What I could see was that my first response was violence—violence toward the workers in wanting to scream at them to stop; violence toward myself in telling myself there was nothing I could do. Either leads to helplessness: I’m either helpless to the strength of my emotion, or helpless to my inner criticism.

I am looking for a third option.

What I find is something I will call containment. There will always be affliction. Life lives on other life. There is no getting away from it. It doesn’t matter where on the food chain we eat, we are eating living beings, plants included.

In this case, there will always be affliction associated with growing food—hard work, weather, insects, markets. A farmer is faced with all kinds of difficulties. This farmer’s attempt to deal with these difficulties is pretty normal. (Though what the normal response seems to miss is that this style of farming attempts to destroy the afflictions themselves without seeming to recognize the whole new set of afflictions this creates.)

Similarly, my response to the people spraying is normal—my anger, fear, and disgust are all natural responses to feeling threatened. These are not only normal, but these responses are necessary—they let me know that I am alive and awake. They let me know what I care about.

The question isn’t how do I get rid of all affliction, or how do I get rid of my responses—these are both impossible. The question is, how do I contain my response, like a fire in a hearth, so that it provides useful heat, rather than a destructive blaze?

In this case, I can think of several options:

First, by pausing. Just stopping before acting allows my mind to settle so that I can think clearly.

Second, by my attitude toward my response. A friendly attitude to all of my feelings allows calmness to arise more readily. A critical, self-blaming attitude only creates more upset emotions.

Third, is to really feel what I feel. To name my feelings—all of them—and to simply experience them, viscerally, just as they are.

When I do these things, finally my mind begins to open up and start to work again, and I think of some alternatives to the violence of my first impulse. 

• I can talk to the workers to find out what they are spraying.
• I can ask the landowner to give us notice if they are spraying in the future.
• I can research hazelnut farming practices.
• I can choose to purchase organic hazelnuts.
• I can invest in an organization that promotes organic farming in the Willamette Valley.

Or, the option that I had already instinctively taken:

• I can write a blog post about it.

This whole approach of containment is not something I thought up myself. It is another example of help, in this case in the form of a book that I had read before, but forgotten, until I unearthed it from a storage box just after the spraying incident. The book is David Brazier’s The Feeling Buddha, which offers a practical approach to acting with courage in the face of life’s inevitable challenges. This is based on Brazier’s interpretation of the Buddha’s first teaching, but does not require Buddhist beliefs to appreciate or practice.

Brazier’s book helped me see that part of my helplessness came from my misconception that my action had to eliminate the affliction. I was trapped in an all-or-nothing approach. If I can’t “solve the problem”, then why bother trying at all? Since most problems are not solvable, this results in a lot of “why bothering.” 

Not only that, but it was okay that the problem wasn’t solvable—this is the nature of most problems. Even if a problem has a solution, there is another problem waiting to take its place. This is part of the natural order of life—that problems, afflictions, exist. Birth to death we are faced with them. And that’s okay. Just because we face problems doesn’t mean we are failures. It just means we are alive.

I will let you read the book yourself if you are interested in more about this. But I would like to return briefly to the statement I made last post that we need all the shadow parts of ourselves. Whatever for? Wouldn’t we all be better off without them?

All these things that rise up in us let us know what actually lives in the depths of our minds. It lets us know what we fear, what we hate, what we don’t understand, what we crave. All of this is important information. It lets us know with exquisite accuracy what work we have to do.

But the work we have to do is not the work of eradication. It is the work of containment—again, containing the fire in the hearth.  Afflictions are the fuel; our responses are the spark. Fuel and spark together creates the fire that we can then use—when protected from the wind—to nourish passionate, meaningful lives. 

We need the shadow parts not only because they represent dismissed aspects of our multifaceted selves, but simply because they contain a lot of energy. When I cut the parts I don’t like out of my life, I reduce myself—my fire is too little. When I allow these parts to rule me, my fire gets too hot—I destroy myself. 

We are invited instead to a practice of constant tending. To see the affliction of our lives for what it is: beyond good and bad, failure and success, it is fuel for the fire of a meaningful life.

---------------

Brazier, David. (2002). The Feeling Buddha: A Buddhist Psychology of Character, Adversity and Passion. New York: Palgrave

WHAT IF? (Part 3a: What if we owned our shadows?)

       Holding Onto the Shadow Self.   © Loretta Mae Hirsch   Used by permission of artist.

This is not the post I planned to write today.

I thought I was going to write about something else, but after about an hour at my computer, I hit a dead end. I have a bunch of ideas, an outline, pages of notes, but I can’t fit the pieces together. The harder I try, the more stuck I get. And as I get stuck, I get more and more frustrated. So of course, I do what I know best—I keep trying harder.

As I am struggling to find a path through this confusion, I hear a motor start up outside and an intermittent hissing sound. I step out the door to see two people swathed in yellow hazmat suits, complete with full headgear and respirators, spraying a young hazelnut orchard planted in recent years next to Tom's parent's house.

As I watch them driving their cart filled with metal tanks, dowsing the trees in God-knows-what just a short distance from our trailer, I am livid. Any thought about loving my neighbor or accepting the world as it is flies out the window in my fury at the utter arrogance of our approach to this planet. At how everything is geared to efficiency and appearances. That anyone could think that there was anything healthy about a field of bare dirt in someplace as lush as the Willamette Valley. Or about spraying something all over our food that requires a hazmat suit to apply. Or that our perfect nuts are worth destroying every insect (and the chain of creatures that feed on them). I feel sick. MY home has been invaded, my little island of privacy and safety and peace, and it is no step at all to imagine how all the other creatures in that field feel. And worst of all, I have no voice—it’s someone else’s neighbor’s property and they can do what they want with it. What I feel like doing—running screaming at them to STOP IT—would get me nowhere.

Gone is any plan I had for the day to continue writing about good will and tolerance. This may be nature expressing itself as a pest-control service, but I am having none of it.

The irony of the timing of this is not lost on me.

The day goes on and they continue their work in the field—the silver mist of spray floating out in the breeze, the psssst of the nozzle, the rattle of the engine. A series of other unfortunate events doesn’t help my mood and late in the day I break down crying and ask Tom to help me sort through my feelings. What I discover as I talk about the day is that I am using the same words to describe the men in the field as I am using to describe my own behavior this morning trying to write this post.

“We get so focused on achievement or efficiency or perfection that we aren’t attending to the real needs.”

This is my first clue to the deeper layers of what is happening.

Just the night before, I had read that when conflict arises, the first work to do is inside ourselves. In this case, the first thing I am finding in my intense emotional reaction is something that I didn’t see in myself. In Jung’s word, part of my “shadow”— all the things I haven’t accepted or admitted to in myself.

When I was writing this morning I was not paying attention to what I needed (time to think, a calmer brain, perhaps some help) I was just focused on meeting the deadline I had set and how to construct a rational argument. I was ignoring the real needs, like honesty or connection.

So part of the shadow was that what I was reacting to “outside” myself was a mirror for what was inside.

But the deeper shadow work is not just about sheepishly admitting to my behavior, as though it was a fault to apologize for and improve on next time. This is just as much a quest for perfection as the original projection. Claiming my shadow also means recognizing that not only do I possess whatever I am condemning outside of me, but that I actually “need” those qualities to be a whole human being. That I need access to my arrogance, my thoughtlessness, and my will to power in order to be a whole person. That claiming my anger, my fear, and my violence is necessary. If I don’t acknowledge all these things as existing in me, and existing as a part of a full spectrum, then my choice about how to behave is actually no choice at all. It is just repression of everything that I don’t like, as though I could choose one side of a polarity and live there. And things that get repressed, tend to come up sideways eventually.

What if I claimed my own capacity for destruction? Or the ways in which I am thoughtlessly efficient? Or just my own basic will to live, which always comes at the expense of other life?

What if I owned my fear?

I started writing these posts as a response to my fear. I am concerned about wildlife habitat, the health of the earth, the future of human society. Most of all, I am concerned about the polarizing nature of much of the conversation surrounding these issues. The primary question on my mind is: how do we address the issues we face without creating more “us and them” energy?

Owning this part of my shadow helps me to address the “us and them” division that lives inside my own head.

But though I am less reactive now, I honestly feel no closer to knowing how to respond to the hazelnut sprayers than when I started.

As I am wrestling with this, trying to figure out how to finish this post, I find myself getting frustrated again—I feel that familiar "pushing" stance where I try harder and harder with fewer and fewer results. This time, though, I notice. And I do something different.

I stop.

Let’s go do something else for awhile, I say to myself, and decide to go cut up an old sheet for a rag rug I am making. Cutting a long straight strip of cloth is the perfect mind relaxant, and as I focus, my thoughts settle and the path forward clears.

I began this series with the idea that help can appear when least expected. And what I realize is that this small invasion of my life in the form of the hazelnut sprayers is actually the help I need right now. Getting triggered into my own “us and them” thinking is not a distraction from these posts; it is a real live test case for the ideas I am working out. It is the perfect opportunity to learn by doing.

I don’t have to have all the answers; I can just stay open, follow my responses to this event, and see where they lead me. And this basic trust—in myself and in the process—opens up some ideas to try next.

       Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow.    Used by permission of artist Amy Bogard

Knowing this is enough for today.

(to be continued...)

WHAT IF? (Part 2: What if we remembered our relations?)

    Pine Marten

While everything that humans make and do is "nature expressing itself," our “making and doing” has isolated us from many of the rest of the world’s inhabitants. We have forgotten our relations.

This seems at least partly due to the “human” and “nature” split that I talked about in the last post. When we use the terms “human” and “nature” we begin to think of them as somehow equivalent: as though “human” were on one end of a see saw and “nature” was on the other. We forget that we are just one species—ONE—among millions. One current estimate is 8.7 million. That looks like this:

1    (That’s us.)

11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111………

That is only 352, but you get the point. 8,700,000 is a lot.

It is easy to forget that those zeros stand for more than the space they take up on the screen. Imagine 8,700,000 written out fully rather than symbolically. If we continued with the hatch marks, each page in a typical book would hold 2860 of them. A book with a hatch mark for every other species on the earth would be 3042 pages long. That is a very, very, VERY large book.

    American Red Squirrel

So to recognize that there is us.

AND there are 8,699,999 OTHER kinds of life that we share the world with.

This would be the place in this post where it would make sense to talk about extinction rates. Where I might mention how the usual background extinction rate is something like 5 species a year, and about how the extinction rate at this point is 1000 times that, more on the scale of the extinction of the dinosaurs. But one of the reasons I am writing these posts is that I am looking for a different route through this material. We have all heard about habitat loss and climate change, but this doesn't change how we live. I know when I hear things like that it is not really motivating; I just feel discouraged.

I get glimpses every now and then—mostly when I am still and silent—that there is a subtle but profound shift in my awareness in which I get a sense, for lack of a better word, of "okay-ness." I can't yet fully identify this shift and I certainly can't yet reliably live it. But I know that it exists, and every now and then I find it for a few minutes. Perhaps it is a sudden recognition of myself in the eyes of another creature. Perhaps it is really wondering what it means to do something as radically ridiculous as turning the other cheek. Perhaps it is actually letting in the idea that I am a light in the world.

What I do know is that motivating people to change through fear and shame doesn't seem to be working. Though it may galvanize short-term action, it also creates divisions—both in our hearts and in our communities. We can only care for what we love. And in order to love our relations, we first have to love ourselves.

    Western Screech-owl

So instead, I will start by saying that forgetting our relations is pretty normal. I don’t believe that ants pay much attention to the well-being of plants that can’t grow around their ant mound. Or that the cougar worries about the rabbit. Or that deer are concerned about grass. For the most part, this kind of worry would not be very helpful to that animal—it would simply create a creature that could not survive. This is not adaptation; it is neurosis.

Most species pretty much take care of themselves. And up until now it has mostly worked. Different species came and went, populations increased and decreased, but in the long run life on earth has become increasingly more complex and specialized and interwoven, mostly as a result of the collective effect of individuals going about their individual business.

    Metalmark Butterfly

But we find ourselves in a different situation now than the mountain lion and the ant. We find ourselves in a situation where our ability to problem solve and our communal reach has extended our impact in a way never before seen. We have not only developed more efficient ways to find food and shelter, allowing us to expand where we can live and in what numbers, we are also managing to reduce many of the factors that would have previously limited our population growth.

Human population estimates as of June 2019 (according to the US Census Bureau) list the current number of people at around 7.57 billion. If you thought the number of species is a lot, try wrapping your head around these numbers.

7,577,000,000

If it took a book 3042 pages long to hold a hatch mark for every species on earth, how long would that book be to hold a hatch mark for every human being on earth? Ready?

2,649,301 pages.

    Green Shore Crab

So this is another reason why it is easy to focus on ourselves. There are a lot of us. And we are big and noisy and interesting. We take up a lot of space. We make race cars and operas and World Cups and best sellers and satellites and movies. We wage wars and claim water rights and drill for oil. We can talk to someone from any country in the world by tapping our fingers in a magical pattern on a little glass screen. We can see pictures of ourselves (maybe even videos) from the time that we are born to the time that we die. 

There is so much about nature expressing itself as humans that is fascinating and beautiful and dizzyingly awe inspiring. And also terrifying and terrible. I do not understand a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the things that we are capable of as a species—physically, mentally, or spiritually. And I can turn on a screen that will show me pictures of human beings doing fascinating and courageous and stupid and inspiring and horrifying things from all corners of the planet at any hour of the day or night.

Where is there the time or the inclination to think about bobolinks or blister beetles?

    Blister Beetle

And this is not even taking into account the effect of wars, natural disasters, scarce resources, or just the daily effort of making a living and raising children on our ability to take the time to think about other creatures, or the systems of the earth as a whole—the air, waters, forests, fields, and lands that sustain all of life. There are many reasons why we have forgotten our relations.

I believe our relations are worth remembering. That having empathy and understanding for other creatures is part of knowing ourselves. That when we see the connections between things—can see the systems rather than just things in isolation—that we can find our place in the world. That what we do to the least of them we do to ourselves.

    White-tailed Deer Fawn

Wise men and women of all peoples throughout the ages who have known these things. Have known that life depends on other life. Have known that our well-being is tied to the well-being of the web. Have known that our nest is our nurture.

What would it take for us as a culture to remember our relations? Would it take nature developing a new mind—one that has more consciousness of the whole? Is this mind already in us and just needs practice and discipline to access? Are there indigenous cultures that know more about this? Is there a spiritual force in the universe that connects us to a larger reality?

And what would we have to give up? What would we have to face in our own hearts? What would we have to feel?

What if we were to remember our relations?

These are enough questions for a lifetime. But when I think about what it would look like to remember our relations right now, right here, today, I think of this:

“From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.” 

                       --Ursula K. Le Guin

    Coyote Pup

All photography by Tom Talbott, Jr., licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.