We are companioned

In the imaginal realm, the sky glows like a gray pearl. Snow swirls around me like frost-smoke. 

Out of nowhere trots Fox, with a jaunty air. Sparks of magic fly from his russet fur. Wonder fills me at his presence. 

Fox does not pause in his trotting, but acknowledges me with one backward glance over his shoulder. A clear invitation.

"I am coming!" I call. "Wait for me!"  

But Fox slips along the trail only he can see, and disappears into the tanglewood. 

I head off. Only in such fresh snow would I ever be able to track a fox at all, you understand. Though the drifting snow tries to swallow the prints, I follow them to an opening under the hill. 

I stoop to peer into the cave. I do not see the fox, but a small wood fire burns on the stony ground. 

I enter and sit down. As I warm my hands at the flames, I hear the voice of the fire: "I am here to warm you, to shine down upon you, to bring you light in dark places. Know that you are not alone." 

The ancient stone beneath me speaks next: "I am Earth's bones. For your whole life and beyond will I hold you; you are never alone." 

I hear the liquid voice of small rivulets that trickle down the cave walls. Water says to me, "I am with you, to quench your thirst, to bathe your wounds, to wash you clean. I am part of you, you are never alone." 

Then, from the darkest part of the cave, where the shadows flicker, comes forth Fox. In the firelight, he gazes at me in silence. Then I hear him say, "I am the voice of the bright peoples. We are your teachers, your soul kin and companions in this life. Seen or unseen, we are always with you, so you are never alone." 

 
 
 

Wild sisters

Into the dark wood she climbed up streams of amber oak leaves.

When she reached the top of the little hill, she was still thinking her hill-climbing thoughts, drawing in the smells of earth and leaf and a velvety, caressing wind rarely felt in November.

Thus occupied, the woman did not see the oak russet doe standing in the trees until she bounded away, white tail flashing in alarm.

"Oh, beauty," said woman remorsefully, in the softest voice, a wild-calming voice.

As if heeding human words, doe stopped after four bounds and looked at the woman over her shoulder. She wants to stay away from humans, but is pragmatic. It is no use running further if she is not being pursued.

Eyes turned inside see one reality; eyes turned outward see the deer standing before you.

The deer who is is paying attention and not daydreaming.

For a moment, woman and doe regard one another.

Then the woman withdraws slowly, humbly, so as not to cause more disturbance.

When she later returns along the same path, the doe is nowhere to be seen. But her image is now part of the woman's inner dreaming, the woods she walks in her mind.

The quiet extinction

Today, I watch the sleet falling fast. Determined flakes pelting down, blanketing the stirring brown earth. But this does not bring me joy, or peace.

My heart is heavy now for our wild relations, and how voiceless they are in our human-centered world.

Who speaks for them, who cares about them?

Many things are breaking my heart right now, but that most of all.

Quietly they exist on the edges, pushed into the corners of the earth we still allow them, and even there they are not free to live out their lives. They are displaced, hunted, persecuted, poached, trapped, starved, until finally, the last of their species die.

Quietly they die.

This quiet crisis is happening now, to species beyond counting. This silent extinction of voices we cannot hear. It is easy to ignore it, this quiet retreat...it is like silent drowning. They struggle to survive but cannot call out. They cannot adapt to the loss of habitat, the loss of species, the rapid changes in climate. They cannot change what we are doing to their air, their water, their home. They can only die.

It breaks my heart. I don't even want to live in a world without polar bears, wolves, elephants, eagles, giraffes, lions, frogs or bees. A world without animals is a world robbed of its wonder and magic. A world of profound loneliness. A world in collapse, bereft of meaning and the foundations for life.

Today, I just wanted to say that I care about their lives.

I wanted to say that if I could, I would gladly share half of the earth with them, my relations.

I'd say how my life would have no meaning without their presence. And I would thank them for their life-giving gifts to humans beyond counting, as we inhabit this planet together that belonged to them first.

Acts of man

A couple of days ago, a friend posted a photo of a rhinoceros on Facebook. There was a bloody stump where its horn had been and it was sinking to its knees, dying from an unspeakable act of cruelty.

My friend wrote a poem to express his rage toward the poachers who killed the rhino for its horn. Punched in the gut with grief and sickened by a glimpse of this horror, I voiced my sadness on the thread of comments. 

Later that day, a wildlife rehab organization posted a photo of a bald eagle in Alaska caught in a leg hold trap. A woman found and tried to rescue the eagle. She was charged with interfering with legal trapping. 

The magnificent wildling, who had broken both of its wings trying to escape, was beyond healing and was put down.  

Two days earlier, I’d finished a book with several excruciating scenes of animal cruelty that seemed to be a commentary on how much damage that deadened humans wreak on all around them.

Sadness sticks to sadness. It accreted into a mass that day. A heaviness, an injury no one could see. Probably everyone who saw those photos felt injured by them. What did they do with that injury, I wondered? How do we carry such sights, such knowledge? 

Sometimes we are afraid that we can’t. We look away. Not many look away with indifference…we look away in sorrow. 

We look away, with a grief so keen we are afraid to give ourselves over to it, lest we sink into it whole, never to rise again. 

We feel rage, like my friend, or are nearly crippled by the pity of it, how helpless we feel, how appalled and shamed by our species’ atrocities.

The only way out is through, though. 

Maybe our compassion, even an ocean and a continent away, helps heal the wounds suffered by that rhinoceros, that eagle, our planet. It certainly helps our own humanity. If we look away too much, we are only pretending evil doesn’t exist, and help no one at all. It is right to feel pain. But it is still hard. 

I begin to think that the fall of man really did happen, and keeps happening. Not with God and the serpent, but when humanity chose this path that views the earth and everything on it as a “resource,” i.e. a commodity, with no spirit, sentience or intrinsic worth beyond the money for which it can be sold.

That evening, I sat down with my Native Gardener’s Companion. 

I began to plan the new gardens I am going to plant come spring, and all the caterpillars, bees, butterflies and birds they will feed, and my heavy heart began to ease. Helping, the only cure I know. 

The love that binds us

Some say we protect that which we love....

...because when we love something, we take it into ourselves, and it somehow becomes part of us, to be sheltered and nurtured and cared for and helped.

Others say what we love will save us...

...because love for other creatures brings meaning and joy into our lives, rescuing us from aloneness in this world.

The works of video art embedded below speak to the oneness that connects life on earth, the love that binds us all in an intricate and ancient web of existence.

And, like love, they are heartbreaking in their beauty. If you do not tear up at least a little while viewing them, you are made of sterner stuff than I....

"The Awakening" is part of a dance, film and photography project for monarch butterfly conservation. I am happy to say they exceeded their initial Kickstarter funding goal a couple of days ago, but I'm sure there will be future opportunities to chip in.

I post it here in honor of the three monarchs I raised last summer.



Moving for Monarchs: The Awakening from Moving for Monarchs on Vimeo.



The "Ashes and Snow" video by Canadian filmmaker Gregory Colbert is described as "a poetic field study that depicts the world not as it is, but as it might be—a world in which the natural and artificial boundaries separating humans from other species do not exist. The viewing experience is one of wonder and contemplation, serenity, and hope."

A consecrated Earth is always the paradise I imagine--a kind of Eden, with humanity's relationship to the all the world's creatures restored--it would look a lot like this stunning film.

Ashes and Snow by Gregory Colbert from Gregory Colbert on Vimeo.

I don't even want to think about a world without Monarch butterflies, or polar bears, or gray wolves, or elephants, or bees. And yet, to turn a blind eye, to refuse to see what is happening and do nothing is unloving and wrong.

I do not know how it has happened that so many have forgotten that we--humans and all other living things--are all vital characters in an enduring love story old as time. Our well-being and survival are knitted together, blood, breath and bone...encoded in our genes in ways we cannot yet measure, yet that are nonetheless real as the love that binds us.