Thank you to the readers who followed my writings on Wildspell. Blogger has been my writing home for many years, but I have finally moved on. My new writing home is A dryad's tale on Substack. Subscriptions to that publication are free, so please do check it out, if you feel moved to do so.
Thank you again for your lovely comments and support. It meant a lot to me.
Blessings of the wild,
Carmine
Stealing from the chickadees and catbirds, I swallow a handful of velvet-blue June berries. I eat tiny, ripe rubies of strawberries, where they hang in clusters amid leaves curling up under the rays of the mighty midsummer sun. A star god fully visible in the northern sky.
As I eat this warm fruit I imagine swallowing the sun, and the rain, and the seeds of life shaped to grow more June berries, more strawberries.
In the midsummer, finches and robins, sparrows and cowbirds unite in scolding roaming cats, and cicadas buzz in chorus for the first time under the sun.
A marauding, spotted cat with a pink collar has chewed down the catnip I grow for Juniper and Murphy. A judicious application of chicken wire later, we'll see who wins this battle.
Blooming in my native plant garden: blanket flower, purple prairie clover, hoary vervain, swamp milkweed. Butterfly weed, harebells, anise hyssop, pale purple coneflower. Purple poppy mallow, New Jersey Tea, wild petunia, and Canada anemone.
Purple coneflower and summertime are just beginning to unfurl their tossing petals.
I dispense water to their roots, tend to their drooping and injuries.
I pluck out roaming seedlings, murmur greetings to the plants in their happy, green growth and flowering in the cool of the mornings.
I took a weeklong naturalist course on the ecoregion where I live, which is called the Big Woods, or alternately, Eastern Broadleaf Forest.
How would you define a naturalist, I wonder? I think of this as someone who habitually pays attention to the natural world. My textbook on natural history says a naturalist "studies" the natural world, which is more rigorous.
I like learning my share of "facts." But even more interesting are the facts-as-metaphors.
For example. Did you know that it is the nature of rock to be cyclic? Not fixed? Rock forms are dynamic, always in process and transition; similar to every other being and landform — but with their own ways of being, of course.
They are never done changing, as long as the Earth itself is alive. Like us.
Learning this sort of "fact as truth" makes me feel a kinship with rocks. It is another strand in the web of meaning and mystery that connects us all. It gets at truth in a rather meandering, sideways process; one that creates meaning from the perspective of the whole.
This is different from one philosophy of science that I hope does not exist anymore — one that destroys or pulls something apart in order to understand how it works.
One of the instructors in our course joked that their students tend to be either "plant people" or "bird people." I know more about plants than birds, but refuse to be sorted into one category. Birds and other animals, oceans, mountains, deserts, volcanoes, glaciers, stars...all fascinating (though difficult to experience in my own backyard, unlike plants).
Though an elder woman, I am yet a young naturalist.*
With new binoculars and the help of the Merlin birding app, I now have a (admittedly slim) chance of seeing woodland or grassland birds when I hear them singing their songs.
Spotting an Eastern meadowlark or an Ovenbird makes me feel like part of a rarified club, somehow. Though humans have lived with these species for thousands of years, a relatively small percentage of people go out seeking bird sightings.
It takes patience. With my untrained eye I need to search a while before I find the bird that I hear, so the bird needs to stay in one area so I can zero in. When I do find a bird, I am enchanted to see how they sing with their whole bodies — throats vibrating, beaks open wide. It is somehow relaxing, as if I relax into their wildness, their vibrant, singing presence.
Today, on the solstice, it is still early summer here. Yet it feels like July. There is an air quality alert due to ozone and wildfire smoke. We are feeling moderate drought once again. 90-degree temperatures again, with more to follow. Is this summer from now on? Earth is "quite sick" now, reports say.
They also say it is not too late to heal her. We know what to do. Now, "we" just need the will to do what needs to be done.
Anyway, as I look at the burgeoning green beings around me on midsummer day, how I wish I could shoot up as they do in the strong sunlight, and make the most of my growing in the short season of sun, blossoming and fruiting.
This short season we are given on Earth.
For better or worse, I am a spring-blooming flower. I wither, and always have, in hot weather. How sad though, to only feel I can flourish in the coolness of spring and autumn—two brief seasons.
I remember too when it was different — not very long ago at all — in this climatescape where I have lived for all my life, and which I struggle to recognize anymore.
In May, and well into June, the days here were cooler, rainier — so that when midsummer burst upon us, in a dazzle of sun and warm greenness, it felt like the dancing times, the singing times at last were here.
I miss that time.
Once, someone told me her one-line poem that she had never told anyone else, and it was, "I feel lonely for when the Earth was okay."
Then we felt lonely together, and that made it a little less lonely.
Sadness silences me. Anger silences me. Grief and loss silence me. Loneliness silences me. Fear of sounding ungrateful, whiny, privileged, sorry for myself, negative — all combine into the perfect silencing potion.
I am writing anyway. I need to do things anyway. Because it is always the right time to be here, and to be who you are, even when it doesn't conform to societal expectations.
In my effort to acknowledge the positive...yes, it is hot, but not humid.
There is a breeze.
It is "date night."
I am getting together with friends on Friday.
There is pudding in the refrigerator.
And, despite all of my laments, it is green and flourishing still, on the summer solstice, here in this tiny, blooming patch of former oak savanna, in the Mississippi River watershed, of the land called Where the Waters Reflect the Clouds.
*"Though an old man, I am but a young gardener." —Thomas Jefferson
Earth, my body.
Water, my blood.
Do the tides of our blood surge when the moon is full, and calm at its ebb? My own feels in need of stirring, a tonic of nettle and rainwater blessed by starlight.
Floods of river water have overtaken the low-lying trails I walk. The cold water at last unlocked from snow and ice, to trickle, wash, rush through the veins of the Earth.
Kingly trumpeter swans, glowing white pelicans, red-eyed loons, snowy egrets, great blue herons float, stalk, swim and fish where they please, their watery world wide, nearly boundless.
I watch them, from the landing places.
Submerge me in the cold water, let me become boundaryless, shapeless, thoughtless; clear as quartz.
I long with an ancient part of me to drink of wild water, as the animals do, without harm.
Drink at the holy wells, quench my thirst at any stream, river or lake, replenishing my body and blood with that water.
How much we have lost, we humans. Quietness. Water we can drink. Wilderness. The abundance of wild creatures. The dark sky and its shimmering constellations of stars. The stories of the land. Traditions, rituals, and even a sense of our place in the universe.
In the wildscapes, and in the garden outside my windows, I hear spring's first white-throated sparrow, a yellow-rumped warbler, a bluebird.
Chorus frogs in the marsh sing loudly to each other, quickly falling silent at a footfall.
A robin sits upon her precious eggs, in the nest she built under the eaves, next to the back door. From my point of view it is not the ideal spot, as she is startled off her nest every time we go in or out, but it is the place she chose, so we bow to her wisdom.
Rain falls softly but steadily today. Colder here than in Quebec, but three degrees warmer than in Reykjavik. I am both restless and listless in the March-like grayness.
I sipped a cup of nettle tea, downed a spoonful of elderberry syrup. Where is my wild elixir, my Drink Me potion? Within a handful of rain?
Sign of Spring: Finding what was lost.
The snow that fell ten days ago was wet and heavy, and I worked up a sweat as I shoveled it. Each shovelful had to be lifted to the very top of our four-foot snowbanks — high enough that the shoveled snow would not slide back down onto the sidewalk.
The temperature hovered around freezing and I was becoming uncomfortably warm. I took off my hat to cool down. Five minutes later, off came my knit mittens. I unzipped my coat and kept shoveling.
Still too hot, so I peeled off the jacket, and threw that on our front steps with everything else.
After shoveling, I gathered up my sweaty outwear and took it inside.
Only, I was a kitten missing a mitten, as I found out the next morning.
I went outside and scanned the sidewalk and snowbanks. Hmm, a fine job of shoveling, but not a mitten did I glimpse.
I looked the next day, and the next day, too. How frustrating. I liked those mittens. They are blue-gray and match my jacket.
I admit, I like certain things to match.
"Where is it? Who would take one mitten?" I complained to my husband. "One mitten is no use."
Was it someone who had also lost a right-hand mitten, and had been just waiting to find one to replace it?
Maybe some Golden Retriever had picked it up, and merrily carried it away as a prize? (You know how they are.)
Why hadn't I checked that I had everything before I went inside? How could I lose a mitten in my own front yard? I was filled with self-recriminations. Yes, over a mitten.
After a week of this, I gave up on my dreams of recovering my lost mitten, and ordered a new pair.
I should have known. Today, Spring pulled back the edges of Winter's icy pantaloons to reveal a very sodden and icy mitten, on the front steps. Where it had sunk into the snowy edges.
Surprise! Winter trickster strikes again.
It is only March 21. Winter is not yet done with his surprises.
People often talk about "balance" on the equinox because for one day, we have equal times of light and dark. Then somehow that all gets mixed up with spring, which is not a balance at all but a transitioning between the season of not-growing and the season of growing. When it comes to seasonal transitions, or life transitions, there is no balance; more of a balancing.
By no means does spring (or any other season) "begin" at any specific time, much less one day. This is important to note; because if your region is not springlike on the first day of spring, you know it is best not to be literal about these things.
And also there are clearly more than four seasons. Let's look at the meme lore regarding springtime. The seasons following upon winter that we call "spring" actually progress something like this: "Late first winter." "Fool's spring." "Second winter." "Spring of deception." "Third winter." "Mud season." "Actual spring."
Fool's spring, the time I suspect we are in right now, is also known as early spring. Plenty of snow on the ground, melting around the edges. See-sawing between fresh, blue days and cold, gray ones.
The robins, cardinals and red-winged blackbirds, however, are convinced that it is a good-enough spring for them.
The birds do not wait for a better, springier spring to come along, they get on with it. As always, they know there is no time to waste. Sing now! Mate now! Live now!
CHERT! CHERT! proclaims the red-winged blackbird beside the marsh. We are alive, and the time is now.
Needless to say (but I will say it anyway), animals don't have time for bewailing what can't be helped. Instead, they get on with living, regardless of snow, gray skies or less than ideal circumstances.
What if you thought of any circumstance as ideal? All the circumstances in which you are alive.
Now, for instance.
That feels like a winged thought, a way of living fit for birds and humans. Even now, hundreds of miles away, the warblers and monarch butterflies are taking wing, migrating north over this vast continent.
They're coming, it's happening, just hold on.
As a young girl I learned how to swim in the waters of this lake. I did not know then that this was, and still is, a sacred place, where wild rice once grew freely, as a gift to all who would gather it. Where wild, shallow marshlands offered a home for herons and a gathering ground for humans who were here long before my ancestors came to this continent.
When I was young, mowed turf grass ran down to the lake's barren shores. Once a marsh, with liminal margins, the lake then had an artificially neat edge. It was intended entirely for the use of people, not any wild inhabitants. The plants that had for centuries lived in relationship with the marshy shores were mostly gone. Wildness didn't belong at an urban lake of that era. It was at best an inconvenience, and at worst a threat. |
| Day 3: Monarchs nectaring at El Rosario Sanctuary |
I went on pilgrimage to a sacred site. In search of the winter home of my beloved Monarch butterflies.
Monarchs fill me with wonder and delight. They carry happiness on their wings. In summer, whenever I glimpse the flash of orange wings through a window, I rush out into the garden, like a child, to greet them.
Entranced, I watch them circle and float on radiant wings. I pay close attention to which plants they prefer, how long they stay to sip nectar, whether or not they visit the milkweeds. When they leave, if they return.
Like everything we open our hearts to, the Monarchs speak to us, and teach us.
Monarchs and their epic journey south speak to the wild, abundant, mysterious presence of life on this being we call Earth.
Some see Monarchs as a symbol of transformation, and of the soul. Mexican peoples have believed for centuries that Monarch butterflies represent the souls of their ancestors who are returning to visit them, when they arrive around November 2, on Dia de Muertos. Children of the sun, they call them.
A caterpillar miraculously dissolving, then reassembling itself inside the chrysalis to emerge as a butterfly: this is one mystery.
The billion Monarchs who fly for two months to arrive in the fir forests of Michoacán have never been there before. Yet, somehow, each migrating generation knows where to fly — how to find this precise place in this wide Earth — where the guardian fir trees protect them from intense heat of the sun, rare snow storms, and cold winds that would otherwise kill them, and end their ancestral migration.
Another mystery. Monarch upon Monarch, mystery upon mystery.
 |
| Day 1: El Rosario Sanctuary |
When the sun came out, then we witnessed the most spectacular sight: thousands upon thousands of Monarchs left their trees and took to the air. I no longer had to look at them through binoculars. They were here, zooming just above our heads as we walked down the mountain.
I walked silently, in a dream, amid the surreal magic of tens of thousands of Monarch butterflies winging around me, pouring down the mountain like a river of joy.
A river of souls, speaking truths to us.
Whispering that our souls are alight.
That our souls co-exist among millions of souls — all striving, all invisibly connected past present and future by a great web of life that flows from and around this planet into the universe.
That our souls understand mysteries that our minds do not.
That our lives are ephemeral, yet beautiful beyond words.
 |
| Day 2: Sierra Chincua Monarch Sanctuary |
See now through my eyes...
Here, resting inside these many mysteries, millions and millions of Monarchs crowd thickly over the fir needles.
Large clusters of butterflies cling to branches, literally bending them downward with their collective weight. They roost on trunks among the lichens and mosses like dense ruffles of stiff taffeta. Like rust-colored leaves that never fall to the ground.
I saw this. This, I saw with my own eyes.
The sight was so vast, so strange, and beautiful, and astounding, and overwhelming, that it was difficult to encompass the reality, even as I stood looking at it.
I looked, and looked, and looked, at the millions of Monarchs roosting in the silent, enchanted trees, or flying very high, black against the bright sky, and it still did not seem completely real.
On the third day, when the temperature rose, and the sun came out, that was the day the Monarchs came to greet us, their relatives. Then they began to fly in great numbers, accompanying us along the path, flying just above and alongside us as we walked down the mountain.
Are you my soul guide? I whispered as they flew past. Are you the psychopomp on my journey through the Underworld?
Then, at last we came to a place where there was an opening, a corridor among the fir trees. And that is where I experienced the wonder, of a river of monarchs, a river of souls: the loveliest sight I have ever seen.
Imbolg is coming, they say. And that reminder is a bit encouraging (though in the north, Imbolg is usually months away from spring).
And yes, it is true that the light rises each day now, minute by quiet minute.
A sense of day, though, can be buried under an entombing sense of frozenness and coldness. Deep snow. Stillness. Days of white-gray sky that hold us pinned to the ice, as we try to find our footing.
Waiting.
I've had enough of resting, now I'm waiting.
In dim January, and February, and well into March, I must wait for the return of my main source of joy.
Joy for me is: The wheel of the year, as it turns toward spring, summer, autumn and the winter solstice.
Feeling the earth stirring around me. Breathing in air laden with precious moisture. Walking the land, hearing wind in the treetops.
Listening to the liquid language of snowmelt, lapping lakes and trickling rivers. Finding names for wild plants and bird calls as I walk. Smelling the fragrance of sweet prairie grasses. Sun and shadows, mare's tail clouds.
Though winter scours my spirit every year, it can gift me moments of stunning beauty...like the night I glanced out to find a diamond snow fallen on the roof, silently sparkling with starry flashes of green, silver and blue under the light of a full moon.
Other days, a quiet beauty flies on black crows' wings as they curve their elegant paths across the sky.
Or the beautiful way a shadow-black oak catches the low-riding sun in its branches and holds it there, like a glowing orb of ice-pearl.
Somewhere, in the wilder-lands, I know that the Great Horned Owl already has begun to nest. And the bald eagles by the great river will soon claim their territory and lay their eggs.
The great movement toward the vernal equinox has begun; as always, so quietly that it is easy to imagine that nothing is changing at all out there, in the snow; or here, in my longing for what is not.
I may tell myself nothing is changing, but it is. Already, I know what I would like to go toward (sometimes it takes months to figure that out).
I wrote this list without needing to think: Warblers. Owls. Migration. Hawk Ridge Observatory. Dawn chorus. Dark sky. Milky Way. Writing in new forms. Tent camping. National wildlife refuges.
More of what brings me joy — for our time is short, and what we love is vast.
I wish you the same.
