Swallowing the sun

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

Midwinter of the spirit

When darkness falls, tend to the candle of your spirit.

On the longest night, sing a song to the sun — that invincible god who burns, yet is not consumed. 

Whisper a blessing to Earth, the Beloved who holds us so close to her, in life and in death. 

Now — at the still point — we remember those who have returned to the earth's womb. 

We wonder what is to come.

We wait — and while we wait, we dream of the blue snow of deep midwinter, lit by the moon's bright chariot and the shine of ice-bound stars.

On the longest night, the fire grows low. 

Hold fast to your evergreen hope. Your red-berried joy. That glowing star that lives deep inside of you, even on the coldest, darkest night. 

And do not let go.  

The Longest Night from Angie Pickman on Vimeo.

Midsummer

In the valley of the white oaks, time is measured by shifting clouds and the zip of blue dragonflies.

The landscape and time itself seem to undulate in unison, as if I have walked into a Van Gogh painting. Isn't Earth the first ecstatic artist? She who expresses her Self through living places and beings? And aren't all of our creations and expressions inspired by this life we are given?

 

When I am here, the present moment seems to stretch into eternity, in the midst of an intensely mortal beauty holding me in its spell — suspended, part of one long, deep, sustained breath. The world breathes. You can see and feel her breathing ... your home.

You can rest now, in the cupped hand of the world. Finally, you are here, in a place you didn't know you were looking for. Here, as you were as a child, when each midsummer day lasted a forever; each day bright and new and full of wonder. You remember, because you are still able to feel that wonder, on such a day and in such a place as this ... a vast garden, a waking dream, a soulscape.

An utterly worldly and Otherworldly beauty, which are one and the same. A heaven and an earth, which are one and the same.

Rest, now, in the eros of gravity holding you close to the beating heart of this world. There is a path to be walked. A sky to expand into. A ground to carry you.

The eternal valley breathes, expressing its being in unfolding, dazzling flight paths, outflung branches, green wind speech, blossoms of blue wild indigo, overflowing gifts, the buzz of bumble bees.

Gather pollen while you may! For you, too, are gathered, into the hands of the Beloved Earth. You, too, love, and are loved in return.

 

You, too, are sacred, and divine, and live forever.

The undying fire

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

—The Shortest Day, Susan Cooper

How it seems that as one grows older, people and times distant take on a glow of solstice fires. 

When you were in that experience, with those people, you had no thought it would come to an end. That your life would not ever expand outward into the world. That loved ones would fall away. That you would somehow—wandering a maze of seemingly disconnected blind turns—dead-end; not at the center but in an edgeland inhabited only by ghosts.

If you had known where your turns would lead you, would you have followed a different path? Useless thoughts, yet the question will be asked.  

Accept that this is your journey, every blind step of it. You are here. There is no "supposed to," only where you are.  Do you trust that is so?

But still, dear friends, I wish we could be together once more around the solstice fire. 

The shape of the celebration was never so important as that you and I were there together, laughing, as the living sparks flew up into the deep night like wishes, and the white owl watched in silence.

I know not what

Yellow Trout Lily
Erythronium americanum

Lily-yellow, tiger-gold the color of the sunlight flooding down on summer solstice like blessings, like good fortune, a healing and flourishing.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail basking
Papilio glaucus

Under glowing leaves that undulate in the wind will I find one glorious afternoon to own my life; all mine, to do with as I will. 

Wild Sarsparilla
Aralia nudicaulis

Last evening, solstice eve, I and my wild-loving sisters tended to the native gardens by the lake near my home.

Together we weeded, planted, watered, sharing our bodily energy to care for native habitat of many species of flowers, sedges, and grasses. All out of real love for the monarch butterfly and every other insect, bird and person that it nurtures.

As someone who tends to go my own way, I too rarely seek out the joys of fellowship. I suffer from the self-imposed delusion that I am a misfit in almost any group of three or more people.

But the gardening women are lovely, kind and funny. Practical and full of earth knowledge, as you would expect from persons living close to the soil. They share their wisdom generously with all who ask.

It seems strange to me that I still seek role models for how to live my life when I am at this age. Life is a work in progress. Still I am trying on ways of being like identities for the choosing, wondering, Is this it? Does this feel like a life that makes sense?  

But how else could it be. Life needs to change as I change,  something I am mulling over now more than ever as we think about where we want to make our next home.

Because the answer to those questions depends on the life I and we want to live; and on my clarity and bravery about that life, which are currently in short supply.

Bunchberry
Cornus canadensis

When my thoughts circle and circle, I know it is time to stop thinking. Go outside. Be animal, be spirit, be present and unminding and unknowing. Now, the yellow-rumped warbler calls again and again, his voice carried on a south wind through my open windows. I'm coming!

Stemless Lady's-Slipper ready to bloom
Cypripedium acaule

I send to you solstice blessings, my wild-loving friends in both hemispheres. I wish you a hopeful bright spot today, a restorative retreat of sorts, even if only of the mind.

 All of the images in this post were taken about a week ago along the North Shore of Lake Superior, where we stayed in a small wooden cabin hugging the lake, windows open all night to the sound of waves hitting the shore. 

Walking through the longest night

One of my wishes for our new home is that I will be able to see much more of the sky than just a meager patch of it through houses, tree branches and electrical lines.

I wish I could see what the moon, stars and the sun are doing, every day. How sad I feel, thinking of how many years of sunsets and moonrises have come and gone with nary a Me to admire them and praise them for their splendor.

I bought a lunar calendar for the new year. To remind me which phase happens when, to help focus my attention, I thought.

But now I recognize this is very sad; because if I could just look at the moon, like humans have looked at it for millions of years, I wouldn't need a calendar to tell me what phase it is in.

I could look up and see for myself.

Such a simple gift it seems, to be able to see the moon and stars in the sky! How could something once so ordinary have become rare and precious? It seems yet another loss in a time of losses.

If by walking the earth we can bless it with our feet, then by watching the sky we can bless it with our sustained gaze.

Is that how you watch the moon? Quietly but rapt, with eyes wide open, as if you gaze upon the beauty of your beloved?

Now I think that what I must have been seeking by purchasing that moon phase calendar was really a heart connection to the moon, a silver line of light between she and I, along which dreams and wordless mysteries would ebb and flow like tides.

What I was wanting most of all was the reassuring presence of the earth's beauty every day. I wanted the moon to be a companion to my nights, not shut away outside away from me but in my eyes and heart, like a prayer.

On this, the longest night of the year, may the moon creep into my dreams, may the low sun cast his birch-pale light over the wildwoods in my heart.

A blessing of bones

LAST NIGHT, I was blessed by the Old Bone Mother.

In her old hands, she carried reindeer bones. Click! Clack! They rattled as she prowled through the dark stone cavern-space where we sat.

Bones scratched over scalps, rested over hearts as the Dreamers dreamed their way along twisting inner paths, anchored by the pulse of the Drummers.

In the Celtic lands She is the Cailleach. The Unmaker, the Uncreator, the Unwinder, the Remover. Her breath blows cold on the back of the neck in the Dark Time, She throws boulders that make mountains, She brings the fierce cold, She is an elemental force as She moves through this world, collecting what needs to be Taken.

She Takes.

(This was how the story was told to me: She Takes.)

Deep beneath the sacred mound of Sí an Bhrú, Newgrange, in a dark womb of a chamber, She sings as She knits together the bones of those and that which have been Taken, reshapes them to live again on the earth in new form.

Because of Her, nothing is lost to the world, not ever lost, not truly.

And in this space, where the Old Bone Mother paid a visit to the Dreamers, a trickster-shapeshifter-shaman of a man told us: "We are given two great gifts in life. The gift of being created. And the gift of being uncreated. Throughout time, throughout culture, how we respond to these two gifts becomes our religion."

The Cailleach's blessing is to take from us something that needs to go. It is too soon to know what is gone from me. So many things I no longer needed, that I wanted to push out the door like a houseguest overstaying her welcome by months or years.

Tears overflowed, silently. My heart overflowed, silently. This went on for a while. And then I felt at peace.

Last night, I was blessed.



Last night, the drum was alive under my palm. Though stored away for long years, it still had not forgotten how to sing, how to vibrate and shiver its skin in answer to my hand, resonating for long moments in the humming silence. I played the drum, the drum played me, for a moment all one and the same.

I have walked the passages of Newgrange, Sí an Bhrú, in body. A dozen years ago, in the springtime, when the lambs frolicked and the Cailleach slept.

Did the echoes of that mystery plant their seeds in me then? The potent magic of the Irish-green grass, the druid sun tracing gray stone spirals, the paradox of timelessness amid great age, those stay with me.

But if I am a drum, one beat was struck on me that day at Newgrange, resonating over years until the same hand last night struck me once again.

Maybe it is as he, the shapeshifter-shaman, said: "We are all Drummers on the Skin of Mystery."

Mystery is rattling in your ears, striking Her fists on your bones. When She strips you bare to scour you and refashion you, when you are uncreated and lose your identity, your trappings, your anger or your way, say to yourself it is a gift.

She Takes, and it is a gift.

Last night, this is how the story was told to me. And then, how I told the story to myself.

And now, I tell it to you.

The Sun in Splendour

So it is written...as the solstice nears, the land and the people rejoice. 

It is true that for many months in the Northern Hemisphere, light has been flooding into the hours long ruled by darkness...yet only recently here in Minnesota has the air gentled enough against the skin to suggest that fickle summer might finally decide to make herself at home for a while.

As mentioned in my last post, our long spring and my jobless (but not project-less) status has given me time, between rain showers, to enbiggen my garden and plant native perennials that are the beloved of bees, butterflies and other hungry pollinators.

Digging up sod in May...

The rainy chill has kept them in skinny and slightly floppy estate for now, busily establishing their root systems--and, I suspect, occasionally being nibbled on by the neighboring cottontails, for whom Stazi watches out the porch window.

For now it appears to be more maple seeds than flowers, but just you wait.

Established plants (catnip, daylily, rudbeckia, sedum and artemisa) alongside newcomers (nasturtium, Virgin's Bower clematis, butterfly weed, prairie clover and yellow coneflower) in the fluffing-out process.

Stazi Lu at twilight, on the lookout for garden-eating rabbits. She is not grainy in person.

Wafts of peony*, iris, shrub rose, coralbell, columbine, apple blossom, late lilac and lily-of-the-valley float on the soft air as I pedal through my neighborhood, braking to sniff blossoms that my neighbors have planted on the boulevards for all to enjoy. Since there isn't much going on at the moment, flower-wise, in my garden, you won't mind if I share a few pics of theirs, will you?

A phenomenon known as "flower-sparkle."

My trusty Schwinn Blue Breeze carried me along the banks of Minnehaha Creek, where the waters burbled and chuckled, stirred by swizzle-sticks of dangling branches, brewing a kind of sun tea for fishes and ducks and arching river-water grasses. All seeding, fruiting, burgeoning and almost shivering with the life singing within.

Minnehaha Creek, looking west...

...and east.

Cottonwood seeds

I plopped down on a wooden bench, tuned my ear to wind-chime calls of cardinals and liquid spin of quick water, and wrote, "gallon pail floats by, just out of reach/ripple-shake, shining lake/mosquito bites/human writes/sniffs air, smiles/scratches leg."

The litter-picker in me wishes I could've nabbed that floating pail....

Also it is written: Now is the time for fairs and celebrations of all kinds!

Dear friends invited us to join them at the Mississippi River for Solstice River & Global Water Dances. Sixty cities around the world (was yours one of them?) joined in this choreographed participatory art event to call attention to the global water crisis. Hundreds of people hung over the railings of the Stone Arch Bridge, watching the dancers spin and whirl their bright sun banners, holding in our thoughts the intention of clean water for everyone. The celebration culminated in all of us "holding the river," represented by a blue swath of fabric stretching 1,200 feet down the center of the bridge.

No kayaks on the water this year. The river roared, huge, lunging and surging with its mighty waters fattened by months of snowmelt and rainstorms.

Dancing the water cycles together.

Honoring the solstice and the river at the same time felt right, as if we were speaking with the waves, casting blessings upon the waters, renewing our commitment to protect and care for them. Joining with our community in celebration was healing, too, and not only for the river. Humans need to dance and laugh and celebrate...Jamie Sams, creator of the wisdom-questing Medicine Cards, says:

When we remember to make Ceremony, blessing every rock and flower on Earth’s surface assists in reconnecting us to our Mother. The connection process must be done with joy and celebration. When we do ceremony, we have not forgotten to dance our joy of unity and harmony, thus healing ourselves. As we heal, the Earth Mother feels our joy. We are like cells in and on her body. The power of love, the power of healing, the power of compassion, the power of unity, and the power of knowing are our abilities.

I love the thought that our joys are interwoven with those of the earth, that we heal as we are healed. Through writing this blog, I try to call, receive and send along the blessings and healing and beauty that I find, and I give thanks for others who do the same. We are all one, all healing each other, yes?

Beauty, abundance, color and--after the flowering earth and old Sol himself, perhaps the brightest star in the summer firmament: art fairs. :)

Browsing the wares at Edina Art Fair.

A weaver from Peru demo-ing the skill that goes into weaving his handspun, hand-dyed woolen art hangings.

(I am trying to look at the misspelling of Thich Nhat Hanh with compassion.)

Delightful urban folk art created by Anthony Pack, an artist living in Kansas.

Long have I coveted the exquisite etchings of Michael Bond, a British artist living in Wisconsin. I am in no position to purchase one at the moment; but one fine day, I vow that I SHALL give one of his landscapes or cityviews the place of honor in our home.

I didn't take any photos of his display, but here are a couple of images from his gallery to give you a small idea of how beautiful they are.

"Somewhere in Brugges"

"River Seine"

I brought home two art tiles from Kirsten Walstead of SoMi Tileworks, now happily decorating the dining room and kitchen. I love their handmade-ness, their subtle natural colors. They are like stones, human-made stones with milagro images that rather than saints invoke the familiar spirits of birds and oak trees.

There were also some stunning woodblock prints made by artists hailing from Duluth, MN, in lake-and-woods country (here is a link to the Northern Prints Gallery where scads of woodcut loveliness is on display). I always head for these beauties because they endlessly interpret my favorite artistic elements: line, composition and strong graphic forms + nature.

Altogether it was lovely to be among all the woven, shaped, sculpted, pressed, pieced, imagined, painted, polished, rubbed and otherwise fashioned objects made with humor, love and often great thought, skill and care. I find that objects or anything else made in this way seem to radiate peace and wholeness, almost a sense of completeness and integrity like a living thing.

~   ~   ~

In case you wonder, I am still riding on an English tide. Rainy days are the perfect time for rewatching the BBC series Sherlock, starring the oh-so-British-witty-and-charming duo of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

And my summer reading is Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, gorgeously written historical fiction about the 16th-century Thomas Cromwell that I and about 800 gazillion other people highly recommend.

Lest you think my life is all lounging about, trailing clouds of glory, know 1) our ancient secondhand washing machine is suddenly leaving random smears of motor oil on our unfortunate linens, 2) I had a cavity at my recent dental check-up, 3) that I am dutifully calling in morning and night to learn whether I must sit in a county courtroom to render judgement on my peers (aka "jury duty"), and 4) I am dragging my feet a bit as far as job-hunting is concerned, and the State is sort of Breathing Down the Neck of my Career Break at the moment.

The blessing of numbers 3 & 4 is that I find it needful to focus and prioritize, not my natural talent or tendency. See? Looking for the blessing, that's me.

As for you...may the sun shine upon you. Solstice blessings and river songs to all, and as always, thank you for your company along the way.

Public house, Notting Hill, London

*Phenological note: Blooming three weeks later than usual!