Moving toward Betelgeuse

Everybody has chore goals: clean the house/mow the grass/scoop the litterbox.

And more complex, multi-step goals. Like "plant more native flowers this spring," "get rid of 30 years' worth of accumulated possessions," or "find a new place to live that meets the requirements of two people who want very different things" (to name a few of mine).

But sometimes progressing toward some ideal is not exactly a goal. Not in the sense of analysis, problem-solving, list-making, or even about taking action...at least, not in a linear sort of way.

 Can we talk about that?

You encounter moments when you overlap your past with your present, and see the differential. Somehow you've managed to expand your view of the world or yourself. Not because you've cleverly delineated a goal and a plan to reach it; but because you grew toward it all unknowing, like it was the sun.

Over many days or years, you chose to embrace an idea: a way of thinking or experiencing the world that moved you, imprinted itself on your impressionable heart. And you don't realize until your Current Self unexpectedly collides with your Past Self that these selves are no longer the same.

How does this happen?

It's like you're traveling along a spiral, where you come around to some version of yourself every so often and give a nod to the person you were the last time you traveled this path. Maybe you're a star on this cosmic spiral I'm envisioning, and you notice that the luminosity you're emitting has leveled up. Maybe you had been as bright as red Antares, the heart of the Scorpion...and now you're even brighter, moving toward Betelgeuse.

But you realize this only when you juxtapose where you began with where you are now.

The idea that made me think about these encounters with oneself in the first place is the way that some indigenous peoples define "persons," and how that is broadening my circle of compassion and relatives.

All humans are persons, but not all persons are human. All living things are considered persons; and the definition of "living" is wide and deep, encompassing mountains, mosses, waterfalls, lakes, winds, clouds, the animate Earth itself. All our relations.

I am still thinking about ancestors, the land and their relationship to one another, you see.

How much wonder does such a personed world hold, how much sacredness and magic? This way of seeing wanted me to claim it. I know this because I encountered it many times, was on its trail in books, poems, articles, interviews, art, the leaves along the pathway stirring in its wake.

I've thought of animals as persons for a very long time—but not mountains.

I've thought of birds as persons for a long time—but only more recently bees.

What I'm saying is that if I can't see a fish as a kind of person, then I am the one lacking, not the fish.

So good news for people like me who are not planful. Who don't have words for what they're seeking until it shows up like a gift. Some part of you may be mysteriously working away at finding that thing and making you a better person, through an underground process that neatly bypasses your tendency to get stuck in your head.

Well played, Evolving Self.

Putting down roots

I hear leaves drinking rain;

I hear rich leaves on top

Giving the poor beneath

Drop after drop;

'Tis a sweet noise to hear

These green leaves drinking near.

—W.H. Davies, The Rain

So the rain falls and falls in this late Spring, feeding the amber waters of the rushing Minnehaha Creek, running high in its banks and carrying paddling ducks downstream on a much wilder ride than usual.

Between rain showers, I've cleared a bit more space on the south side of our house and tucked in clumps of native flowering plants dear to bees and butterflies: Hoary Vervain, Aromatic Aster, Yellow and Long-Headed Coneflowers, Butterfly Weed (for the monarch butterfly caterpillars, which feed only on milkweed), Prairie Phlox, Anise Hyssop, White and Purple Prairie Clover, Elm-Leaved Goldenrod, Virgin's Bower.

All perennials, so it will take a while for them to get established and begin to flower, especially with the cloudy, cool weather. I feel a bit like a just-planted bit of flora myself, feeling my way back into my native soil, spreading my root system, deciding which direction to grow.

Kew Gardens in May

Though it is nine days into June, the maple seeds still hang in clumps, helicoptering down and sprouting at will. The peony buds still swell slowly, ready to burst into bloom with a week of sun. The brief flowering of crabapples and lilacs petals all washed away in spills and squalls of raindrops.

Prairifire Crabapple we planted last spring

My young north boulevard tree, a Prairie Gem Pear that replaced an ailing Ash, just welcomed two vigorous  new Ussurian Pear cousins, courtesy of the City of Minneapolis Forestry Division. Despite its name, this species hails from Asia and is not native to Midwest prairies.

But it does flower in spring, and if can't be local, it is at least ornamental--and small enough to live under the power lines without getting butchered by the utility company.

To further dive more deeply into a Minnesota frame of mind, I just read Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Life in the North Woods by Peter Leschak, who has lived for nearly 40 years in a log house he and his wife built on a parcel of land in Lake Country. (Which is what Minnesotans also call "Up North," to distinguish it from the rest of a very lakey state). 

If I had any romantic illusions about the idea of "living off the land," they have been dismantled. But there is a lot of territory between living off the land and living closer to the land, in search of older traditions made new, and that is the direction in which I am being pulled. Feel free to suggest any readings that may have inspired you on the subject, I am eager to soak up more.