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Nature is the ultimate creator. At a nearby gardening store or hardware store, get an assortment of seed packets to plant newness into your life. If your thumb is not the greenest, try nasturtiums which are extremely hardy, grow quickly and spread, beautifying any area. They re-seed themselves, which is a lovely bonus. Light the following candles:
Green candle and peridot or jade for creativity, prosperity and growth
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Centuries ago, healers were the wise women of the village, the healers and midwives who could halt a fever with a poultice or hasten the setting of bones by concocting medicinal tea. The lore of growing and gathering healing herbs has been passed down for hundreds of years. A learned healer knows which phases of the moon are best for planting seeds, how to plan your garden by the stars, and how to create spells for health and harmony. In the grand tradition, I learned at the knee of my aunt Edith, a very wise woman who would take me for walks through the woods and show me the uses and meanings of every flower, weed, and tree. From her, I learned that lovely Queen Anne’s lace is, in fact, wild carrot; that pokeberries make the finest blood-red inks; and which meadow greens and shade-loving mushrooms are safe for a noonday salad. I was in awe during our tromps through the woods, walking mule upon mile to map every acre and spy every specimen.
Nature was our cathedral, our classroom, and our calendar. Every spring, we could mark April I by the blossoming of a solitary clump of delicate Dutchman’s breeches amid a raft of rarest wildflowers. I thought Aunt Edith was teaching me about plants and trees, only to discover years later that she had shown me the sanctity of life and passed on a legacy I now treasure and pass on to you.
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How can a journey up a stream turn into a mystical experience? My visit to the Aegean island of Samos showed me how I could connect with archetypal figures from Greek mythology through the beauty of nature.
Last night, 2019’s only lunar eclipse took place: a spectacular “supermoon” eclipse. We watched it from our back yard, watching the Moon slowly darken into a ruddy ball, and then, dramatically, the bright edge of ordinary Sun-lit surface burst into being and steadily reclaim it.
Lunar eclipses are really cool. Astronomical events as a whole are really cool: meteor showers, eclipses, transits, and particularly that extraordinary rarity, a prominent comet visible to the naked eye. Whenever possible, I take the opportunity to experience these phenomena, as they bring home in a visceral way that we are on a planet, in space, and there’s a lot of other stuff going on out there.
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On the second day of my spiritual pilgrimage to the confluence project sites I drove into Oregon and toward home, because the sites actually led back that way. The first site I visited was Celillo Park. It's currently the only site where the project hasn't been installed, but I wanted to go there anyway. It used to be underwater, because of the falls that had been there. It was supposed to be a protected fishing site for the Native Americans But in the 1950's the U.S. government built dams, which changed the Columbia and silenced the falls.
I’m lying in bed with my lover when the power goes out. The only light in the room is now coming from the moon’s reflection on the snow outside the glass doors. We look at each other, wondering if we caused the outage. We were running a lot of appliances in our room here at Yosemite Falls lodge, we may have blown a fuse.
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Warm water bubbles beneath my knees. I feel weightless. The pool is just deep enough that I can't sit, so I let my feet touch the sandy bottom while the rest of my body floats. The water must be the same temperature as my blood for I feel neither warm nor cool, as if heat and cold were a foreign concept. In these hot springs it is easy to forget where my body ends and the water begins. I run my hands up and down my legs. I expect little bubbles to rise to the surface, the way they do in the hot tub, but instead I feel a thin slimy film upon my skin. I wonder about the mineral content of the water. The smell of rotten eggs announces sulfur and I wrinkle my nose, then quickly re-frame my association from disgusting-gaseous-anomalies to miraculous-healing-waters and manage to enjoy the odor.
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