got journey?

If you're ready for a journey I'd' like to invite you to riding the waves.  There's good reason the subtitle is a tale about being home in the world or at least I thought there were a number of good reasons. mostly thought the thoughts and words, deeds and seeds of riding came through time and travel down a road i know is family to many. the road leading to the kitchen, the road leading to your inner self, the road leading to the road. everything becomes something else and then it becomes what it is in riding.  the real truth, the inside job that was the work of peeling back the layers and layering the feelings so that i could invite language to bring the story of mrs. scattergood, of baubo, of rachel carson's children to the foreground while the myths of nature gods and the gods of fresh dill and spices ran through the weeds collecting the stories they wanted to tell by amplifying, merging and dreaming the seeds into the multiple realities ........that is what riding is about.  Say what?  Ah, well when you take myths you have loved all your life and trust yourself with their story, you write about yourself through their flavors and summon up their deeper meanings and powers.  And if you're kind to yourself and trust your inner voice you move through the doubts and take the wave anyway.  You just ride it. But you might also bring along Basho and Jack Kerouac and your best self, whether lived or dreamed of in any of your realities, even your spiritual journey lands; and you move to the rhythm of words that speak the sounds and capture the feelings you want to convey. Sure, it's a canvas and you have a palette.  Sure, it is not the same as toking on someone else's time out of time because you're brought into the mix.  It is meant to travel on the outside, on the inside and on the road to home.  I'd be honored if you checked it out.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D3VL9AC?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660

coming soon, the march moon

     The March moon is also known as the Full Crow Moon. Like all moons it has many other names but if you’re going to go full circle, and you will, you will need to bring in the circle of crow women. In all worlds circles become meaningful and compress the many into the one; thought forms into symbols that breathe and dance to inner rhythms and rivers of feeling. There is nothing more difficult than meaning without a home to root it. Circles provide roots and turning; and joining and movement. You will find, if you join the dance that the dance was going on for a long time before; not just minutes or even hours; but days and centuries. A very long dance brings the lives of those living and past into the same form. Recognizing the symbols, that’s the key to unlocking form’s content and moving into the eternal stream.

hopes and dreams

     We have to talk about our hopes and dreams with our friends and listen to bird songs as they were meant to be heard – a part of everything, including our hopes and dreams. 

They are not backdrop or incidental. They are a part of everything.  

 Borges is right, “All writing is dreaming.”   

All dreaming is becoming part of the song.

Thanksgiving Day at the river

For over a year now it’s been my practice, if you will, to go by a wetlands area right by my house. I go nearly every day. I began going there because I felt a need for solace and this place drew me.  I had often gone there but not as a daily practice. If I don’t go or if my schedule doesn’t allow time, I still manage to see it, send my love and say hello and goodbye; often as I pass over the small bridge that overlooks my part of the river. 

This place has become my spiritual home, my refuge. I love it because of the birds, the small river that is sometimes just mudflats or rivulets of water braiding and moving over the pale sand; because of the way the sky looks over the trees, the reeds and the river and reflected in the river too. I love the wind or the stillness there. I love it when the trees are fully clothed in leaves or slowly shedding them as all the colors of the fall dance in the autumn lights and the colors reflected in the river draw from the season’s palette. I love the sounds of the woodland birds all around; the rattling of the kingfisher as it circles around the river and disappears back into the trees.

My special place is the back part of the river. There is a pair of eagles that live there. I first saw one of them over eight years ago, before anyone knew we had an eagle in the area. They have been raising their young every season since. I mostly see them on the river side; many people see them on the street side across the river from me because they go to see the eagle’s nest and the young. They have to sit in a parking lot which now has a designated eagle viewing area to see the eagles and their nest. My view, when the eagles are around, gives me the chance to see them drink the river or to come soaring round the bend in the river toward their home area. I see them take breaks from raising their young and doing other things as well but I’ll leave some stories for another time. 

Just the other day I saw a deer come onto the mudflats to drink. I never saw a deer there before but someone I met at the river said there was a deer path from the street side that led all the way down to the river across from my lookout area.

The park I go to, my lookout area, is small but gives me a beautiful view all around. The beauty of it comes through is so many ways but clearly going there nearly every day brings a special relationship with it. It provides the chance for chance things to occur, like seeing the deer. Which, by the way, not used to seeing deer there, I first tried to figure out what kind of bird it was. When it rearranged itself from drinking the river to standing up, I saw it unfold into a small buck with antlers. Both of us were transformed.

It might be a stretch to call going to the river, or the wetlands, a practice. It has become a regular part of my life. It keeps me feeling connected and loved. I go there to journey too. Being there is a way to be at home with my deepest self. One day my notes from the river might be a book, right now they’re a way to be present to what I have experienced which becomes a springboard for other thoughts. I feel like I belong. I don’t go there just to see the birds but sometimes curiosity about the osprey in the spring and summer and the eagles too, get the best of me and I go hoping to see what they’ve been up to. The leaves coming on the trees, I now know, mean I won’t be seeing the eagles so much. But I do see them a lot this time of year. The osprey has, like clockwork, returned on St. Patty’s Day. I go to welcome them. And in the fall, round about mid-October, I wish them a safe journey because they head to South America.  

The place I go is such a small park that few in the area know it. It has a name, the same name as the street that leads to the small parking lot; but I renamed it for the redwing blackbirds that live in the reeds as you pull into the lot. I call it Okalee Lookout because “oka-lee” is the redwing’s song. Naming it was sort of a revelation. It showed me how much I felt a sense of connection here and how the name could be anything so long as I know where I meant and didn’t feel possessive about it. Even though it’s my wetlands and my river, I know I belong to it just as much as it belongs to me.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

§  Went by the river just now, around 11:30 A.M. with Lynn to say hello to the eagles and a quick thank you.  Well, both were in the tree over and just off to the right of the osprey platform downriver. I guess, never thought of this, their view there encompasses the whole of the river and their home area. Maybe they’re keeping an eye out for the pesky osprey that pinned their kid down in late summer.  I told them about that incident. In fact, told them twice because I saw it twice. Adolescent eagles soon grow to be the fierce mama and papa we have living with us but osprey are daring creatures themselves and probably tired of eagles trying to steal from them. 

§  It is always special to go there when it’s a day like this, a special time set aside for celebration. Our T day dinner is small this year but I’m feeling good and grateful.

§  The sky is overcast and its cold, I think mid-thirties. The leaves on the last hold out in front of our house have carpeted our front yard and it seems like we didn’t knock ourselves out raking. It’s another gift for today. The blanket of leaves looks like it should and keeps that harsh cold and stone emptiness of winter away for another day.  The river was high and the sky was beautiful in it. When the eagle drinks the river it’s drinking the sky’s reflection. When I go there, I don’t seem to be tasting the river but I am quenching my thirst and finding the comfort and connection I have come to love and need.  I am truly grateful.

§  And I forgot to add that for the first time, I believe, I saw a marsh hawk there, a harrier. Lynn saw it also and even says she thought she saw two. Now that would be something since I don’t believe that they travel together. But this is my journey bird and so it was especially beautiful to see it clear as I did, on this day.