Once upon the last turning of the seasons, under a sky held within the reborn moon and a still midsummer night, my body began to quiver in anticipation of my descending baby. The moment had neared and was arriving at last. At that time, my belly had ballooned out to massive proportions compared to my petite figure. I walked with a whole world expanding out from my womb. Rippling with life. Mountains formed upon the curvature of my features. I heaved and huffed and groaned and moaned. Yet my body willfully conformed to its new demands. It glowed rosy with joy and my booming belly fluttered with delight.

Oh how I loved that belly so.

On this night, I dreamed of the angels. They spoke of my baby drawing near. I awoke trembling and not a moment passed before the first surges washed over me. They were gentle. Like an ancient song reaching out to me, chanting rhythmically of what’s to come and what has always been. They carried me like a wave through the night. Ebbing and flowing from my dreams into my body and back. A sensation rich with intricacy. A melody laced with stardust. Under the cover of night my body rippled and churned as a river meeting the sea.

Soon my body became the wave. I was liquid. Melting into forgotten spaces and filling unknown places. I was becoming a stone carved round and soft by ancient waters. These waters brought me into the light of day, where the sun shed brightness on what was dark and unknown. My baby was coming indeed. My body crashed upon daylight and the waking hours carried my song with me. Eternity stretched into the mundane corners of life.

The light waned and the night fell again, and my body sunk deeper into steady waters. In and out. Back and forth. I had grown used to this beat by now. I became it fully. There was nothing else but this boundless song. Again and again the wave crashed upon the shore. A rhythm like the drumbeat of creation itself. I was the sea, opening into the infinite primordial waters of the ocean. In the night my body could melt into these surges and become fluid entirely. No longer with borders, but an ever flowing rhythm of currents.

In and out.

My breath the time keeper.

My eyes shut and my body undulating and pulsing in the deep waters of all that is ancient and holy.

When the sun came again he saw me ripe and shattering like a storm upon the sea. My voice was thunder that upheaved the waters and brought waves high to seek the grace of heaven. My waters poured from my body as a great geyser may spring forth water from their old, hidden canals. This day my sun would be born through the aquifers of my trembling body.

He came the way sunlight breaks the night. Little by little, then all at once. He came as a great bird finally landing on solid earth after crossing the sea. Eyes gazing into infinity. He was crowned with grace and endowed with ancient light. Descending upon my chest like moss lays upon stone. The oldest sort of entanglement. Singing still that eternal song of creation.

His song is the sort that weaves earth and water into fire. That settles flames into soft earth. That liquifies hardness and engulfs darkness into magnificent, luminous light. His flame burns as a steady candle upon an altar of god. Constant and sure. Faithful and full. He teaches me everyday of love and god and grace. He is indeed a gracious one. My beloved.

On this midsummer evening my world began to revolve around a newly born sun.

Navigating the pilgrimage of pregnancy in its most innate and natural way is one of the greatest surrenders into the unseen yet faithful guidance of the divine. I choose to forgo any medical and institutional interventions because pregnancy to me has been the most potent invitation to tune into god and spirit beyond anything I’ve ever known before. And when I really sit with the experience, I see how much it is meant to be this way. I feel my baby swimming and moving within, yet do not see with my eyes the exact goings on of their inner world. I see the undulating ripples on the surface of my skin and feel the firmness of their back pressed against me, yet they remain largely unseen. Rooted in what is felt, what is KNOWN, yet concealed. As they are meant to be. Hidden and held within the protective realm of the womb. Submerged in water and darkness as they grow and bloom. Pregnancy is by nature mysterious. Uncontrollable. That is an incredibly intelligent design. It is an act of deep devotion and unwavering faith.

It is a sick society that praises the god of facts, science and predictability that tells us pregnancy is a condition needing close observation and testing. That is a society disconnected from what is true, real, and life-affirming. Desperately trying to tame, control and foresee every possible outcome, trying to find problems where there are none, trying to plan and schedule every moment. I simply do not participate in these doctrines that to me feel devoid of anything truly sacred and alive. Pregnancy is none of those things. At least in its natural state, when allowed to fully embody what it is, it is wild, outside of any schedule or diagnosis. It is itself alive and pulsing with intelligence. That is something the realm of science does not understand and so fears. It is an invitation to deepen one's communion with god. The master of the unseen. It is an opening into deeper FAITH. Listening to that which can be heard in the dark, quiet, rumination of growing life. 

I can feel now how much is lost within this experience when we give our faith away to something outside of us. When we need external authority to let us know everything is okay. To get lost in a sense of false security, forgetting that anything can happen regardless of how many tests and ultrasounds we get. Birth is never too far away from death. And it is this contemplation that becomes so important as one treks further down this path. Plans and expectations go awry. Yet when we remain rooted within the guidance of spirit, we may surrender into the unexpected. We may soften into the unforeseen. For that is the faith that is asked of us in bearing life. A presence that prepares and finds peace within the outcomes that are simply meant to be, and that will be regardless of any negotiation on the contrary. We forget here that our babies are just as much active participants in this pilgrimage as we are. They too are on an initiatory path. They too decide and know what is needed in each moment. Sometimes our babies will make an executive decision that we must simply roll with, with faith in the way they choose to walk this path as being exactly what is needed. It then becomes a living co-creation that we participate in.

Everywhere in life we can find this surrender and invitation into faith, yet nowhere else is it so evident for me than in pregnancy, birth, and mothering. It is the temple of god. Here, we walk a path we cannot fully know until we find ourselves within it. A path we cannot predict the outcome of. It is a path we cannot turn away from once we begin. The only way is forward. To descend into the earth. To walk through the flames. To emerge on the other side transformed and initiated in the codes of life and the divine. Re-membering that our communion with god is our own, and it is a constant unwavering presence that need no mediation. That need no intervention. Simply faith. Presence. An open heart. 

This unknown can feel scary. That fear is precisely why so many women choose to opt into that beloved security. It is a lot to hold. It asks for an immense amount of self-responsibility. Yet this holding and responsibility is exactly what prepares one for the enormity of motherhood. It is - again - such an important and intelligent design. It is the design of women alone that have been given this role. We cannot - should not - give this responsibility away to another. Especially, to be frank, one who has no real interest in the mysteries and intelligence of pregnancy and birth, who will not see you or your baby ever again once birth has arrived, and who at the end of the day works for that bottom dollar within a system that perpetuates illusion, sickness and disconnection - everything that pregnancy should not be. The reclamation of our faithful bodies and integrity are the pillars that hold our family together. The woman holds up the standards. It is woman who teaches unwavering faith, service and devotion.

It is the unknowns of pregnancy that open into the mysteries of motherhood. I move through this pilgrimage without knowing for sure how it will all turn out, yet my faith is clear. My trust in its unfolding is steadfast and sure. My conviction is rooted in the remembrance that this is how it has always been, and simply, how it is meant to be. I can feel this never ending, never broken thread of life-bearing that has not faltered since its first conception. The lineage of the life bringer. In every moment there has always been and will always be a woman glowing with the first light of conception. A woman stretching and growing with life. A woman moaning and groaning her baby into the world. In every moment this is so. A thread that has never broken. I find myself held in this thread now like dew on a web. It is a protected path. One directly descending from the hands of the divine. 

This leaning into what some call a wild pregnancy goes hand in hand with our connection to the land. This intelligence shrouds everything around us and in us. We don’t look to a tree and wonder how it knows so perfectly every season to burst from its buds and bloom. We don’t look to a bird and ask how it knows to sit on her eggs and tend to her young. Nature, the wild things, knows what to do. There is an instinctual and innate remembrance that lives encoded in all of us. Some say that humans are different from those cats who birth easily in the quiet, dark spots they designated for such an occasion. But I say, we aren’t that different. We come from the same ancient bones and dust and minerals. The land has been such a potent guide for me, in showing me, reminding me of this innate knowing I too carry. I know what to do. My body surely knows what to do. My baby knows. It is as simple as this. We may soften into the wisdom of the earth here that has held every. single. woman. who birthed her baby upon the fertile lands of our home.

Through pregnancy and birth, woman is moved by the divine hands. 

Descending into the realm of spirit to bring her baby into matter.

Only she can traverse that terrain.  

And indeed she knows how.

She has done it many times before.

Perhaps she never stopped.

And this birth ripples on and on for eternity.

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The emotions that ripple up through the cracks broken up in my heart burst forth with such intensity my heart feels raw and exposed. I feel everything, as though my heart has grown along with my belly. Suddenly, my love overwhelms me. It feels delicate and soft, yet fierce and consuming. I move in the same manner as a creature sneaking off to her den to simply stretch and be transformed in the quiet of the darkness. It’s an interesting paradox to this other desire that swims within these inner canyons, that longs to be seen. To be asked how I’m feeling and celebrated in my stretching and held in my crumbling. Yet my life path has taken me far away from my family and friends. Phone calls and face times just don’t feel the same in a time calling for deeper intimacy and touch. It makes me want to slip away into a cocoon of my own solitude where I may lengthen and contract alone. Giving in to my fate. That is a tricky illusion of the online realm. A surface level connection that is lacking in what we truly need - especially in moments like these. For my mom to rub my belly and my sister to look into my eyes and my friends to ask me questions of my changing self.

It feels isolating to be moving through such a transformation while having friends deep within their maiden boss bitch liberal activist mentality and not really feel understood, seen, and honoured in what is such a life changing initiation. My worldviews have unravelled and been rewoven so much that I don't relate to my friends and their desires of building businesses, dating or protesting. The entirety of my world right now is my husband and this baby growing within me. All that feels important to me right now is this. Is the stretching that I am feeling within me. That consumes my world in the most wonderful ways. It swallows me whole. All that is asked of me right now is to be with these changes. And it's hard to be moving through such a process and not really be acknowledged, understood, seen, or anything at all by those you love. It has been very revealing to me how people perceive pregnancy and becoming a mother. And now actually moving through it myself, I see how much is lacking in our true celebration and care for our women. How much feminism has actually failed women - but that's a topic for another day.

Pregnancy has plunged me into another world entirely. One I feel blessed to inhabit and grateful to be able to explore with such expansive presence. With my being in this other world, one deep within the womb of the earth and cocooned by the dark fertile soils of the land, the topside world just doesn’t feel relevant to me. So a dissonance grows between me and those I once knew. You know how they say becoming a parent changes you. Some people don't welcome that change, yet I see now that the shifting of priorities that happens when one walks the path of a present parent and steward is inevitable, and that means relationships will change, some may begin, and others will come to an end. That is simply part of the crumbling, shattering, quivering mythological landscape of this journey.

I know those who have never been on this pilgrimage or never seen it as such can't truly comprehend what it takes, and what it gives. And although I'm not alone on this journey - I walk within the footsteps of every woman who claimed the role of mother, who have felt that spark of life in their womb, and I walk with all the women who are descended here with me in this very moment - only I can walk this path for myself. And in that way, although it is connective and deeply woven into the motherline, at the same time I walk alone.

A part of me feels melodramatic, that part that is influenced by a world that dismisses mothers and the profound experiences they initiate and move through. It's just the hormones of pregnancy they say - but these so-called mood swings and emotional tendencies serve to weave me even deeper into the earth-shattering changes of becoming a mother. They are the threads of intimacy with my baby and my husband, so that I may feel even more, and more and more. So that I may step up into my diligent role. They are the cords that I may descend upon to retrieve my baby from that which is spirit. There really is nothing else like this journey.

Pregnancy and preparing for birth, motherhood, bringing a baby into this world and stewarding their soul on this earth, well it is a quietly dramatic souring mountain of new sensations, emotions and initiations. It is an internal upheaval and rebirth. It is a mythological landscape not of this world but of the liminal, spirit places. The places we go to bring our babies here change us forever. We swim in those waters throughout this whole odyssey. Becoming mythological creatures ourselves. Unravelling, stretching, growing wings or shedding skins. Perhaps it feels isolating because among many of those who surround us, it is not really seen for the journey that it is. It is not held in the reverence it truly embodies and instead is brushed off, as mundane as going for a shit.

Yes, it is simple in that women have always done this, do this every day, and will always do this. Yet it is also spiritual, sacred and profoundly important. Women aren’t really encouraged to explore these liminal spaces let alone are they understood in them. They are asked to trudge on as usual, as though nothing has changed, when in actuality they are no longer the woman they once were, nor will they ever be again. Not only during pregnancy but even after babe arrives earthside women are expected to bounce back and continue living as before. That is what feels isolating. And although this time does feel like some solitude and stillness is needed, what is also needed is to be held in our descent. To be guided and encouraged as we navigate this new terrain, especially when it is for the first time. Right now I am grateful for the women who do surround me in different capacities to hold me as i walk the journey, yet I grieve for the women my skin longs to feel the touch of, the village my soul misses. I am learning better how to show up for others in their pilgrimage, and how to truly be in service during such times. This journey feels like THE most important path I will ever walk.

Bless the mothers, for they walk the path of spirit and reemerge into the land of flesh forever changed in invisible ways

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The time has slowly arrived in many overwintering homes. Where the fires still burn and the teas still steep, yet the mind dreams of spring. The quiet flips through seed catalogues while feet stay warm by the stove. The drawing up rough plans for what wants to be planted where. The garden is ever so slightly coming to life again, even if for now it is in the hearts of her tenders. The land begins to stir and grow restless. Longing to shake off this winter sleep, yet feeling its pull being held just a little bit longer. For now, we dream. 

Yes, I have begun dreaming of the seeds that long to be planted in this garden. So many seeds! It feels invigorating and inspiring to be a part of all the beautiful heirlooms that one will never find in a grocery store, even better, that can be grown and picked with ones very own hands. Purple carrots and yellow watermelon and white eggplants. The inner child jumps for joy at all that potential for play. 

As I have been sinking into the visioning for the year's garden, I'm reflecting on how I desire to show up in that space in this new cycle. What I learned from last year and what longs to be implemented, improved, or discarded. My vision is a wild utopia. A vibrant green jungle with bursts of unexpected yet abundant colour. Vines climbing up sticks and flowers full of bugs. Oh yes, and some veggies here and there. I can’t deny that a big spark of joy for me in the garden is all the wildflowers. Yet this year I want to see how many vegetables I can squeeze into the new garden beds that I prepared in the fall ( yay for me planning ahead for the spring when I would be heavy with baby and have no care for such hard labour ). You won’t catch any neat rows and evenly spaced crops in my ol’ garden. Mama likes to pack it in. To mix and match. One bed can be full of many different veggies and flowers and herbs. Heck, usually some surprise plants that I forgot I planted. Is it chaotic, yes. Perhaps this year I would like to add a tad bit more order into the space. At least know roughly what I plant where instead of guessing what everything is before it fruits or blooms. That was always a fun game, but we are evolving here. I want to find a balance between a diverse wild ecosystem and a high yielding vegetable garden, and a beautiful flower/bug oasis.

I want to prioritize heirloom plants, unusual crops, perennial herbs and trees that may stay and nourish the space with each passing year. Flowers that will reseed for generations. And intermingled in all of that vegetables that will thrive and feed me and my family. We shall see what can be done this year. Honestly, this sort of garden style is an ever-evolving thing. A living thing. A thing that grows more complex, more intricate every year. In every cycle, things are added, removed and altered, naturally through the process of inhabiting such a living space.

My focus is on creating a diverse ecosystem. In such a place, there are many different plants that serve many different roles. Tons of niches that are filled by multitasking crops, and this divine design creates many layers of assortment and complexity in the care of the ecosystem. It's not so clear cut as to say this plant gives this and that plant gives that. As though life can be compartmentalized into clean boxes, taped up and packed away into their respective places. For example, a pea plant can offer shade to other low-growing crops while at the same time attracting pollinators to its flowers, then at the end of its life, it decomposes back into the soil and gives nitrogen for other plants to absorb. It is this simple intricacy that keeps an ecosystem in harmony. There are many plants doing the same thing, while also doing many different things. When you have several plants that fill the same or similar niches, it strengthens the resilience of such a space. There is overlap. There is a deeply interwoven network of co-creaiton.

This diversity also includes plants that may mature and grow into the ecosystem over many generations. Things like perennial herbs, shrubs, and trees are really important parts of having a maturing, diverse garden landscape. This process helps to ‘close the loop’ so to speak, in the energy that is spent or invested in the garden. 

In a standard annual vegetable garden, nutrients flow out in a straight line. Crops are planted, perhaps some nutrients are put into the soil through compost and fertilizer, they are watered regularly, the ground is weeded, and at the end of it all, the crops are harvested and the garden is left bare for next year. Everything that was added into the soil through the growing season has already been leached out. The beds left uncovered are once again depleted of whatever nutrients were added, the water drains out and the soil is left compact and parched. 

When we say we are closing the loop of nutrients within a garden, we are keeping all the substance that is added into the biome, in the biome. When we don't have as much leaving the ecosystem, the space may continue to get more and more enriched, and fewer resources are wasted. How we can do this is, for starters, what was mentioned above. Covering the soil. During the growing season, this can look like cover crops that grow low to the ground, which is what we see in a lot of healthy meadows and deciduous forests. Cover crops serve several purposes. They create shade and cover for the delicate biome of the soil. They hold more moisture in the soil through their roots and due to the shade they're creating that prevents evaporation. They are a home and habitat for beneficial insects. And, when they are flowering ground cover, they attract pollinators. At the end of the growing season, these cover crops decompose and give their nutrients back to the soil. Thus, replenishing, aerating and holding moisture. Another fun cover crop is strawberries which obviously have the added benefit of their delicious fruit in your garden.

Another way we can cover the soil is by adding mulch, which is what we see in coniferous forests. Mulch can be anything from grass clippings to straw to plants you just pulled out of the garden. This matter will serve in much the same way as what I mentioned, it is just not living matter anymore so this is something that will immediately start to decompose and melt back into the soil. 

As I mentioned, adding perennial plants scattered throughout your garden space, even your beds, is very beneficial and another layer of holding nutrients within the garden landscape. As they mature, their roots grow more vigorous, holding, extracting and releasing more nutrients from and into the soil. Their leaves drop and naturally cover the ground below it. They offer shade which also serves to hold more moisture in that micro environment. Plus they have the added benefit of offering whatever fruit or leaves they produce. Fruit trees or berry bushes are a great example of something that deeply serves such an ecosystem for its benefits and its nature as a food crop. The more perennial plants there are around, the more mature spaces there are for pollinators to come back to, for bugs to be housed in, more mature roots to nourish the soil and so on. 

When we are looking at where to plant what, we are invited to really pay attention to the land. Where does the water flow, what route does the sun take, how does the wind blow in such a place. This obviously will impact what we plant where and how we can work with the elements to help us here. We want to also invite the animals to assist. The birds, the bugs, the bees, the mice, the snakes. Such critters greatly contribute to a healthy, living and wild garden ecosystem just as they would in an uncultivated wild place. In an immature annual garden or suburban lawns, pests become a problem because the ecosystem is depleted. An annual garden is more susceptible to pests and diseases because it doesn’t have the stability of a mature ecosystem. Its plants are constantly being uprooted. Soil depleted. Niches are not being filled. Where there is prey, in a healthy environment, there will be predators. This can look like birds or wasps that eat bugs that would otherwise run rampant. In an ecological garden, the points I mentioned above like planting perennial crops or even planting more wildflowers, also serve to fill this niche. Balancing the scale of predator to prey. That’s why in such gardens pests aren’t so much a concern as they are in traditional annual gardens. And if they do become an issue, they can be quickly corrected. Pests are kept in check and the sacred cycle of I eat you, you eat me prevails to restore balance and harmony. In such a closed loop system, we are nurturing PARTNERSHIPS. Interconnectedness. An intricate web of relations rather than a straight line of production. 

Those are two very simple ways one can implement the idea of closing the loop within their garden and move closer towards a thriving ecosystem. This stuff really isn’t complex. It is just a reframing of how we think of the garden, and how we show up in the space. Once we reorient our attention to this way of existing in this space, the steps become obvious and we are naturally guided by the land into what is needed in the space. From there it can get more complex through creating living guilds within our garden space which is an aspect of permaculture design, or learning about the art of composting. The point is, that this process can really be as simple or as complex as you desire. The key to showing up and holding such a space is moving from the heart as a part of and co-creator of this habitat. Befriending the critters, loving the bugs, smelling the flowers. Moving from the heart. 

Happy garden visioning everyone. I would love to hear what topics you would like to hear more about within this topics so leave a comment and let me know!

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some other posts on gardening and land communion

closing the garden

gardening the wild land

weaving winter’s medicine

A medicine story of the balkans

There is a phenomenon happening that is so subtle and sinister that you probably haven’t even noticed it wrap its ugly fingers around your life. Not to be dramatic. Slowly, over years of technological advancement and scientific exploration, there has been an eroding away from our vocabulary (and lives) of our most basic link to life itself. Where there once were words to describe every notch and curve of the land, words to express how a tree grows upon a rock or how sand slips down cliffs, there is now a fumbled locution of sounds clumsily trying to describe what we see (when we actually take the time to notice such things). Pointing just off center of the thing. Reaching around but never quite touching it. Is this what has become of our fate? Why is this so? Do people not see the value of holding the words of the land close to our hearts? Of being able to pass on the vocabulary of our alive and natural world to our children? Not just the words ( although they are indeed the pillars of our own inquiry and recognition ) but the things themselves. To be able to walk through a forest, tiny hand in hand and name the fungus or notice the different kinds of moss growing on rotting wood. We have lost not just the words, but the ability to truly inquire into that world. To hold the awareness to ask such questions. To notice when a mushroom grows on a living tree, or a dead one, or the fallen leaves on the ground. To notice the dozens of different kinds of moss growing on one stump. Such details have evaded our consciousness. I feel as though something really fundamental is missing in a life that doesn’t maintain and nurture this presence within the world that sustains us. It starts for many of us with knowing the words. A word helps bring our attention to the thing. To bring it forward in the mind. To recognize it when we see it. Otherwise, we are walking around empty. There is something substantially missing in a world that can name every type of phone brand or recognize a car by its logo, yet couldn’t recognize a tree by its buds or a bush by its leaves. What has happened here? A world stirred deeper into machinery and further from where our actual lifeblood and roots lie.

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Over many years, words that describe the natural world have subtly and quietly been removed from dictionaries - especially noted in the ones for CHILDREN who are just beginning to shape their awareness of life - and in their place come technologically centred words. Things that seem basic to us now, that our children may not get the opportunity to learn. Imagine the words that we missed. Things that describe LIFE. What we see everywhere all around us, yet have learned to ignore and now couldn’t even name if we tried.

That's an interesting process of the brain, isn't it? How it filters. These filters are heavily influenced by the things that we learn, the words we use, the people around us. Imagine the impact of extracting the natural world from our vocabulary and awareness. Our brains start to filter it out. One no longer notices the bird that just sang in the tree above their head, or the sky exploding in colour in front of them.

We don't even know what we don't have the words for anymore. The words exist. They are out there somewhere in the ethers longing to be spoken again. The land yearns to be seen and named. We knew them once. They have just been systemically removed from our attention ever so slowly that we don't even know what is missing. We don't notice what we are looking at anymore.

Here are just a few examples of what has most recently been removed from the children’s Oxford dictionary

Dandelion

Acorn

Bramble

Newt

Heron

Conker

Otter

Crocus

Catkin

And what has been added

Blog

Blackberry ( The cellphone not the fruit)

MP3 player

Analogue

cut and paste

Database

Broadband

Celebrity

We are seeing here folks the slow eradication of the living natural world in our language, and especially in the lives of young children just beginning to learn how to express the world around them. Our language is a pillar of our experience of the world. Having the words for something gives us the ability to experience it on another level. To see it and name it and bring it into our lives as a part of us. To be able to recognize it when we see it again. Words bring it to life for us in a way not possible otherwise. What does it mean for us that our brains are filled with brand names and computer words rather than types of berries or medicinal plants. Children grow up knowing more about computers these days than they do about the land where they live. This to me really comes out as such a blatant ploy to remove kids further from nature and closer to an artificial society. The matter of such words being removed and added is important. It signals to us where they are directing our focus. Directing what experiences our children have when we aren't paying attention. It is to further sever each succeeding generation from the natural world that we all come from and are wholeheartedly enriched by. Kids these days can no longer go outside and name what they see. Heck, let's be honest, grown ass adults can't even do that anymore. However, they can sit at a tv or iPad all day and be artificially entertained and grow up with no real, tangible skills for connection and understanding of the world.

These beautiful ( perhaps that is another element of it, at least to me. The beauty of such words as dandelion or conifer, or such experiences as catching a whiff of a flower. It is romantic, yes. It is alive and rich with sensation. Compare this to the bland, empty words and meanings of database or ipad. For me, it is clear as day. It is a visceral knowing that this does indeed affect the richness and aliveness of our lives when our vocab is shrouded in lifeless words such as these) words that are used to describe what we see around us are being forgotten. The experience of going out and being able to name the expression of a landscape and its formations, or the growth patterns of trees, is a huge loss to the human consciousness. Words hold power and when we can no longer name what we see around us in the natural world, the less we will remember and understand it until one day we stop to recognize it entirely. What we can name though is 50 different kinds of phones and cars and video games. What is life even? When it becomes centred around such synthetic things. What sort of effects does that have on children who grow up without a relationship to the breath of life and instead find their life cord connected to a computer screen?

I discovered a book a couple months ago that highlighted this beautifully, and actually was what first brought my awareness to this swapping of nature for computers.

The lost words

A collective project that was made as a sort of rebellion against this eradication of the natural world in children's lives. It was intended to be a short dictionary for kids (and adults honestly) with words of the land that had been removed from the junior's Oxford dictionary, so hopefully they may be remembered still. Such seemingly simple words as kingfisher, heather and adder that are becoming less and less known, and remembering the importance of maintaining these words within our vocabulary. To be enriched by what we see around us, and to be able to know it, name it. It is a lost art, to walk through a meadow and know what plants one sees around them, or to hear the birds and recognize them. That is where soul is found. In running with the wolves and singing with the larks and laying in a bed of moss.

Soul is found in seeing the 5 clustered needles of white pine and the peeling skin of birch.

It is found in the crag rising up around a flat landscape or an eddy pooling at the bank of a river.

It is there in the braided strands of a delta and a sopping marsh

It is right there in the murmurations of starling and swooping of swallow

In the painted silhouette of a heron and the vining curling swirling network of bramble

In the vibrant autumn displays of maple and larch

Ever since discovering this book, it has sparked a passion in me to be able to hold this legacy of the land, so that I may pass it on to my babies. To reweave myself with this wisdom so that my children will know it too. To not let such things be forgotten but instead, elevated and celebrated by tiny hands and feet that feel the importance of those strings of sound that come together into something meaningful and guide them into a life connected to all that is alive and well.

Many of us have forgotten how good it feels to be in such an interwoven and intimate kinship with the land that we can see meaning in what is around us. What a sad and empty world it would be if we lost such a connection to that which is ALIVE and instead just held on to a pulseless, empty void of technology.

The lost words was turned into a marvellous, melodic song that lives as a prayer for the living world and sacred words. It has very much woven itself as a hymn for me and this baby that grows in my womb. Every time I listen to it tears swell in my eyes and my heart fills with sensation and baby dances in my womb with joy. A spark of something very much alive. A spark that feels like, where we come from. The place were my baby resides. A holy land.

I will share the words as they are for me the most potent aspect of this blessing.

Enter the wild with care, my love

And speak the things you see

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow

And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river

May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight

May you enter now as otter without falter into water

Look to the sky with care, my love

And speak the things you see

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow

And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding

Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light

And in the dead of night my darling, find the gleaming eye of starling

Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter

Walk through the world with care, my love

And sing the things you see

Let new names take and root and thrive and grow

And even as you stumble through machair sands eroding

Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing

Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker

Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker

And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus

And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home

Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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M

What does it feel like to be crowned by mushrooms and wreathed with fern

Does the forest take pleasure in the timber of logs that crash upon the bushy earth

What does it feel like to be undone, tree by tree,

And rewoven by the fungal networks beneath the soil

Laid to rest in compost and made a garland of stardust

Replanted as seeds upon the fertile earth

Does the earth enjoy the sensation of water caressing bare rock

Of being slowly rounded out into finite curves

Is the land aroused by the rain falling upon her parched soils

Oh how exotic those droplets are

How deliciously they are absorbed into her cracked skin

What is the sensation of snow falling upon soil

Does it resemble the feeling of bare skin embracing

Does the land relish in being taken so fully by the sky

That she is covered completely in his luminous body

Not to be seen again for months, Is there pleasure in her entombment

What does it feel like to be a crystalline flake of snow

Slipping out of a cloud and floating down to earth

Is there thrill there, cascading down an endless sky

What is held in a branch of a tree that grows heavy with snow

Bending down in prayer to touch the earth

Finally able to kiss the soil from which it came

What songs are sung when a crystal is formed deep in the empty spaces of the earth

What does it feel like to be moulded together, atom by atom, over millions of years

Is it the same sensation as the first breath of life, of coming more and more alive

Does a tree grief, do rocks sing, does grass cry out when it is cut

What does it feel like to stretch and open out of a curled cocoon

As a butterfly or Fern

What’s it like to disintegrate into juice and emerge with wings

To feel the wind kiss a fanned body for the first time

Is there pleasure there, to finally take flight

What does it feel like to be split open so deeply and filled with water

Does the ocean savour the feeling of darkness and solitude where water meets the oldest parts of the earth

What’s it like to be filled so completely that you become infinite

To know emptiness so perfectly that form melts away into fire

Does the earth feel her boundlessness or notice her boundaries

Where rock becomes dust and dust becomes star

Is there sensations in these curves and crevices?

Same as the ones we feel in our bones

Perhaps that is where they come from

A memory from when we were minerals in the soil and seeds in the bushes

I have these memories of being a kid visiting my family in Macedonia. I would stay with my grandmother in the home my mother grew up in, with my two cousins who lived there. Whenever I would come my grandmother loved to give me things she had made, as grandmothers do. Things from long ago. She would open up the big wooden armoires in the room where I slept and sort through piles of wool blankets and handmade dolies. She would take out these beautifully made wool cardigans and vests, socks and sweaters and want to give them to me. I would look at them in awe, and ask her in my broken Macedonian, "You made these!?". My little Canadian city brain was very impressed with what seemed like such a complex skill I hadn't been exposed to much.

They were extremely well done with fine details and seamless finishes. I loved them. I asked why she doesn't still make such beautiful things anymore and she said "For who? Nobody wants them". My heart sank, that confused and saddened me. Perhaps a part of me that was born and growing up away from my grandmother and only able to visit her on short, sporadic trips enjoyed having something that connected me to her, that she had made with her own hands, that she wanted me to have. It made me feel connected to her and that was really special to me. But looking at my cousins and all the kids I knew there, they wanted nothing to do with such old-fashioned and unappealing things. It was social suicide to be caught out in the world with an ugly thing like that on, so the kids said. Dramatic, yes, and so revealing of how these grandmother and grandfather skills and wisdom were viewed. They were unappreciated, and not only that, but seen as repulsive. One of my cousins went as far as to fight me on the matter when I wanted to wear one of my grandmother's cardigans out into town and actually refused to join me when I wouldn't change. I walked alone. It was very interesting to me. I thought it was quite a shame because these creations, these skills, they were not only beautiful but so valuable. The fact that the next generation I was seeing in front of me wanted nothing to do with them meant a great loss was taking place. Wisdom and connection was being misplaced. My grandmothers didn't need any pattern guide or online tutorial to just know how to make these things. They grew up learning it. Not just one pattern or another, but the underlying skill level that allowed them to create their own designs off the top of their heads. Why has such a craft been so devalued?

I asked my grandmother to teach me how to knit, but that first time was hard for me to get. I wanted her to pass down her knowledge to me, yet it wasn't until a couple years later that I got more serious about it and tried again. I found it enriching to learn the process of weaving different designs and patterns, to form them into garments that can be worn for generations. I now notice the behaviour of my cousins as a turning away from the old ways, and a desperate desire to be accepted by a society that is moving towards technology, progress and modernity. They wanted nothing to do with that knowledge of my grandmother, and my grandmother no longer felt a purpose to continue her crafts. Her old creations collecting dust in draws. My heart cries out for that.

When I learned how to crochet and knit, my hands began to move of their own accord. Each stitch was like putting into place a fabric designed a long time ago. Rewoven with my hands. I watched my grandmother making these incredibly intricate sweaters, tablecloths, vests, you name it. I always found it quite amazing at the skill level that was simply a part of her identity. Any grandmother, anywhere in the world will have such skills. Things like knitting, lacing, weaving baskets, working leather, making clothes are such valuable and practical skills that were just a part of life for them. Part of their sustenance. How they enjoyed spending their days. Something purposeful. It was something learned through simply living, from seeing others work the threads, from having the time and space to create. Yet these are not just grandmothers’ crafts. These women practiced their art in their youth, and have decades of experience under their belt. It wasn’t something they picked up when they got older. It was taught to them when they were children. Now all these crafts seem like they are only practiced by grandmothers because we have gone generations not passing down these practices to the children that need them.

Most women today have never even picked up a pair of needles. They have no idea about making beautiful things with their hands. It's considered merely a grandmother's task. Unproductive, outdated, something done when you have nothing better to do. There has grown a reliance on stores to stock everything that one needs. In that people have grown dependent on things outside of themselves and their communities. They see that as progress. As a blessing to not need to knit that sweater yourself anymore. The more you can get other people to do what you need, the better. Although it is a blessing to have options, it shouldn't diminish the value of true handicrafts and of learning skills for yourself. Of bringing the products, knowledge and worth back into the hands of makers.

Long forgotten is the skill to know how to make your own clothes, weave your own baskets and tend to your own animals. Of taking time to make your baby their own sweater. That special heirloom item that can be passed on to many babies afterward. Things that hold meaning, made with your own hands. The knowledge that you can pass down to your children. That is generational wealth. Something meaningful. Something of high quality made right in your own home or in your community. Our grandmothers practiced this as second nature. It has been an innate part of life for as long as there has been life, not only because of necessity but because it gave purpose. A spark of inspiration. An opportunity to sit in circle. To share and exchange knowledge. It is a foundational element of true connection and a flourishing community, let alone the practical life skills and creative knowledge it offers. 

Why is it that the value of handicrafts has diminished over the last century? More emphasis has been placed on having a successful career and making money than on the joys of creating functional and beautiful things for your family and community. I'm sure most of you have seen the comparisons between this modern age’s architecture compared to a few decades ago. The detail and beauty that went into the most mundane of things simply for the desire to make something more beautiful. Today, people just want to make something as cheap as possible. As simple as possible. As little detail as possible to appeal to the most amount of people. It's lacking in soul. You can see it in the mass building of houses and condos, in cars, in something as simple as a park or a bench. Humans, especially in the western world have lost that joy for making life beautiful. That pleasure in taking a moment to notice the details of a thing - there aren't so many details to notice anymore -. That ecstasy in bringing colour into their lives. Why are so many people drawn to a dreary black and white life? A world that has lost its soul. The loss of the art of handicrafts runs hand in hand with this phenomenon. People think “I have better things to do”. What exactly is that better thing? What is better than making something with your hands, than teaching your children timeless knowledge, of knowing you are carrying on centuries-old wisdom? I will never understand.

Now we have the independent woman archetype that finds more value in what she offers the workforce than how she makes and tends to a home. Not how she creates beautiful things for the pleasure of working with her hands. Not how she raises her babies. Not how she carries on the legacy of her grandmothers. Few long to remember and carry on the knowledge of handicrafts. The skill of making their own things. Of using the wisdom that has been taking shape for millennia. Not letting it be forgotten. 

How different would life look if more women saw the value of gathering together to make a quilt for a friend's matrimonial? Or a Blanket for their first baby? Imagine how much meaning and spirit would be held in such a garment. Woven with love and devotion. Patience and laughter. Imagine if women felt the joys of regular hangouts to knit together and share stories. Handicrafts, women's work, and gathering all move in one pulse. Women have always gathered together to work and play. Many hands make light work as they say. Women have always passed on to each other the details of a new knitting pattern or an improved design. No gatekeeping such essential skills. It was more fun to share and exchange. I honestly think it would make us a lot more fulfilled than grinding that 9-5. More happy than a lonely life. More abundant than keeping what we know locked inside our chests. 

There is medicine in handicrafts. There is medicine in learning the skills that our grandmothers and grandfathers carried. There is medicine in working with our hands. In unravelling a hurried lifestyle and instead creating beauty in what we do. Weaving wisdom that can be shared with others. 

I've been on a journey of weaving soul into my home. Dismantling the minimalist culture lacking in detail and true expression. Inviting in colour, art and magic. Humans are innately artistic beings when we allow ourselves to express it. Art is making. Art is that which sparks passion. When we create space our life opens up into a canvas for our artistic expression. 

Traditionally in a close-knit community, most people would have a wide range of skills and the knowledge to do different crafts. Yet usually, everyone had their one thing. The craft that they practiced more, that sparked passion in their hearts and became proficient at. Everyone in a community had their craft. Their art. And so it was a community that filled every niche that was needed. There was a woman who made the finest cloth, the softest buckskin, the most beautiful baskets, or a man who made the toughest knives, the best tools, the loveliest instruments. Everyone was tending to a craft that not only brought immense joy and development of skill but filled a necessity in the community. Perhaps nowadays such things aren’t so much a necessity, it's easy to find a cheaper, more readily available version of whatever we are looking for, lacking though in quality and soul. But what fun it would be if we filled our own niches as a community. If we all took the time to master certain skills and uplifted each other through the quality of craftsmanship. It would be fulfilling. Joyful. Woven with (he)art and soul.  

This makes me think of the holi days that are coming up in December and the influx of shopping and gift-giving that happens. What if instead of buying a gift we took the time to make one. What if we accepted the invitation to expand our capacity for art and beauty in our lives. If we saw the value in taking our time, in making something with our own hands. In imperfection and learning just for the pleasure of it. To give someone a gift woven with our own hands, that actually embodies the time and energy we desire to share with them. That, to me, is a precious thing. These are traditions that live on through our hands. 

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I turned to my plant relatives. the healing herbs. Those that have been known for millennia, for as long as we have roamed this earth, to support these bodies that are made from the same soil. I noticed immediately how they began their work. Helping to alleviate some symptoms and ease others that still needed to be worked through. Promoting my body to clear out the infection. Some herbs actually worked to strengthen certain symptoms that were actually important healing processes that needed a boost. Like when I had a dry cough - what would be called an unproductive cough - herbs helped to moisten and actually expel what it was that my body was trying to remove, making it more productive.

This is something to remember when working with herbal medicine and the healing art of our body, they are not a quick fix, and they ideally do not bypass the natural healing processes of the body but are there to serve as aids. Symptoms are often important because they are the body trying to recalibrate and restore harmony. Shutting them down is counterintuitive to healing. Sometimes what we want is to strengthen them. To help clear out. To help amplify, so the body can do the work. The herbs I worked with didn’t immediately clear the infection, I don't think anything would have that wasn’t engineered in a lab and artificially working in my body. It was simply a process I needed to go through, my immune system needed to work through, that ultimately supported the rejuvenation and strengthening of my entire system.

When we allow these functions to work in us, to move through us, they heal in all directions. Not only the physical dis-ease, but once we emerge from that state of unwellness, we are strengthened, and our immune systems are stronger and more capable of continuously maintaining harmony. Our circulatory system is rejuvenated. Our livers are renewed. After an illness that we allow to reach its natural end in our body, we are renewed and at an even higher level of health and well-being than before. Why an illness like an infection keeps returning is because we artificially medicate ourselves and don't allow the body to heal in the way it is designed to, it is never strengthened, and the infection is never fully cleared because the body never learned to clear it out itself. So whenever this bacteria presents itself in this environment of misbalance, it goes right back to wreaking havoc, more than before, and we actually weaken the body and its immune response.

Here are some herbs and remedies I worked with to support me specifically with an upper respiratory infection that can be good to have in your home apothecary, especially during this winter season. 

Elecampane root ~ This was a big one that I worked with every day that really helped me clear out the phlegm buildup in my lungs. It is strongly affiliated with the upper respiratory system and is a robust expectorant - which helps bring up mucus. It is a good tonic to nourish and support the lungs over longer periods - in this way, it helps to clear out infections. Some would call it an antiviral/ antibacterial herb, although this is an inaccurate description based on how herbs actually work in the body. The way that it works is to actually strengthen the lungs, to help bring equilibrium so the lungs can clear out the infection themselves. Its fragrant, resinous roots are good for when infection sets in, when phlegm is yellow/green and it helps to overall bring up stagnant mucus. 

Marshmallow root - This herb helped to make my cough more productive - more wet when it was in a very dry and irritated state. Marshmallow is a very moistening herb that works on the mucous membranes in the body, which include the lining of the lungs This helped rev up my cough and continue to clear out phlegm. It is also known as an emollient, which has the action of softening hardness or tension in the tissue which can occur in the lungs when so much coughing is taking place. Also helps to loosen hard and stuck phlegm along the lining of the lungs. 

Liquorice - Is a potent treatment for dry and inflamed tissues, namely in the lungs. It has been employed as a remedy for cough and respiratory complaints for centuries and is a very old herbal ally. Also one of those herbs that is known to help the body clear out infections and soothe irritation. 

Mullien - Is a really good tonic for the lungs. Tonic essentially means an herb is good to be taken in small doses over long periods to restore and rejuvenate the body, often these tonic plants have an affinity for certain systems in the body. In this case, Mullein would be a good tonic for the lungs specifically. Mullein helps to calm spasms in the lungs, soothe coughs, especially good for when one is taken by intense fits of coughing. It is a good muscle relaxant in this way. While at the same time helping the lining of the lungs loosen stuck mucus and support its removal. 

Thyme honey - Thyme has traditionally been worked with to clear out infections, often used as a wash externally for this purpose, and internally taken as a tea. Helps soothe sore, irritated throat, especially when it is combined with honey. It also has a tonic effect, helping to restore the body to optimal health.

Yarrow - I used this herb as a steam inhalation along with mullein to help clear out my sinuses when they were very blocked. Yarrow is known also as a good herb for infections, although perhaps not the most productive for this case, it still aided in offering its medicine to the places it was needed.

Bee propolis and pollen - The medicine of the bees. Are old remedies used to rejuvenate the body. Strengthens and activates the immune system to continue its work. The bees are the shamans of the natural world. The healers. Everything they do and everything they are is medicine. Their potent elixirs offer vital nutrients that naturally elevate the restorative and healing qualities in the body.

I recently re-watched the da Vinci code, and it activated in me many different emotions and thoughts. It's one of those movies that really leaves an impression, and it opened a vast portal of contemplation for me. It inspired a little exploration of the mythology of Christ. Through this, I discovered movies recounting the tales of this man and his followers, stories and gospels recounting his journey. What I saw stirred something really conflicting within me. I saw people following Christ, in the name of god, in the name of the holy kingdom. Promises hidden in metaphors given to misunderstanding people. People worshipped him, gave up their whole lives to be with him. And their relationship with this source they call god became greatly entangled in this man they saw in front of him. A holy man no doubt. One deeply tapped into a loving communion with god in almost every moment. An inspiring man.

Yet what I saw and heard was how they began to put him in the place of god. The son of god. The distinction between this man and source itself became blurred. I felt conflicted because, on one hand, I saw people seeking a connection with god. Seeking a life in complete devotion to the spiritual. I also saw a man being worshipped rather than the values and wisdom he spoke of. Reading pieces of the Old and New Testaments, there is a blatantly obvious difference in focus and direction. I suppose I felt a dissonance with the idea of worshipping a person as the face of god. I don't really believe the point was to idolize the person. I feel that the point was to receive in our hearts the words he spoke. The wisdom he shared. The remembrance that he remained close to. If you know me you know I disagree with placing people on pedestals. And what I saw in these retellings were apostles going and spreading the word of god that came through the lips of another. Spreading a message they sometimes didn’t fully understand. From one’s lips to another and another. Where was their true connection to the divine, beyond A son of god? Where did their true service lie? 

Why is it that so many religious doctrines - I use Christianity as an example here - became an idolization of one human? One lightworker. One being connected to the divine meant to be a guide for our own remembrance and connection to god, not THE god. Not the one to worship. Every time I have connected to this vibrational imprint of Jesus Christ, I receive the same insight. Firstly, his nature was radiating such boundless, unconditional love and wholehearted service. He was close to god and indeed deeply impactful. Yet at the same time, the point of his message has become lost to many, yet his face is plastered everywhere. The teachings that were shared through the vessel of his being have been diminished and in their place came the being Jesus Christ. Not what he knew to be true outside of himself. Many know that these holy beings didn’t come here to become idols. They perhaps never desired to be remembered. What was important were the messages they came here to deliver.

This is something that humans get easily twisted. We worship idols. We latch on to an image, a person and forget to distinguish between the messenger and the message. In that, the message gets more muddled. Because the messenger is one human. One glimpse of a boundless divinity. One expression of it. Within their guidance, we must find our own connection, to a divinity that we can only ever truly know within ourselves.

In some of my exploration of our ancient ancestors, those that revered the land and sky, the source of creation, the life breath that moves through all things, the expression of the mother was at the centre. It was a natural and innate connection that formed through seeing women birth. Seeing women be portals between this world and another. Through seeing women grow a fully developed body inside of themselves, and deliver a soul unto its form. Many have forgotten how truly divine such an endeavour is. The symbolism of the divine was rooted in something tangible felt, seen and experienced. The idea of us being in the image of our creator, of life echoing source, it was a simple connection to make.The creator as mother. That which gives and sustains life. If you notice ancient artifacts from that period in history, way back before there were centuries that marked the year, the statues of what is presumed to be the great mother, the creator, the woman, has curving breasts and round belly, yet is lacking in most other features. Often there is no head, or if so there is no face. The arms and legs usually are missing as well. That is not accidental. It was believed that to capture the divine in a face would be to diminish their true nature. To diminish the vibration.

What was revered was the essence of what the creator represented. The echo of what they saw in themselves. A round belly holding life. Full breasts that sustain life. To them that was as close to god as one got. The process of life was holy. Bringing life here was sacred. There was no figurehead apart from that. There was a symbolic representation, but nothing more. No one human took on the role of god’s sole representative. The nature of the divine was the life-giver. Yet all played their role in giving and nurturing life within the community. To put a face or place a person onto the formless would take away the glimpse of god that resides in all. Yes, some would say it was primitive ideas. Yet no less complex. No less meaningful. And I would argue, closer to the essence. God in all of her complexity is simple. It doesn’t need idols and intricate designs and all these tools and people. It is just there. Waiting for connection.

In many indigenous traditions the face of god was never carved, never drawn. It was unthinkable to attempt to capture the eternal into such form. To do so would detract from the true nature of such a force. Yes, there were shamans and priestesses who devoted their lives to their relationship with god, and oftentimes were the people who carried out a community's ceremonial devotion to source. Celebrations and rituals were often led by them. Teachers were sought out for guidance. Humans need guidance and we need each other. Yet we also need our own faith, rooted and true. Living in our hearts, in direct communion with god. 

Right now we live in a world fiercely independent. Now more than ever we have freedom to do and be whoever we want. We can make money on our own terms. We can live anywhere in the world we desire. The world is our oyster so to speak. Yet we live in a society of people who have lost their relationship with god. And it shows. 

Now feels like a time when we can really cultivate our own relationship with source. We can get close. We can feel him near. We never really needed a church or a priestess to connect with what is innately a part of us. They are good tools. They are valuable ways to intentionally enter sacred space. To be guided by the wise. But not at the expense of our own knowing of god. Not at the expense of bypassing our inner wisdom.

It is something to think about. Something I have found valuable in my devotion to what some call god, is to strip away the faces, the names, and simply connect. That is something I feel is missing when I see someone devote themselves to Christ, or Buddha, a guru or dalai lama, or whatever figurehead has been placed on top of the true connection to a source that is available to all of us at all times no matter what. God has no face. No agenda. Our connection to source has no name. There is no place we need to be or person we have to become -or not become- to be able to tap into this. There is no prejudice. No title you need to hold. It is simply there. Here. Everywhere. Always. The more we allow others to dictate our connection to god the more they wield the power over our lives. The less we feel her close. 

What can be helpful, is the messages these beings deliver. Such stories have always guided humans on earth. They teach us how to move closer to our source. How to be in right relationship with this place and with each other. They teach us lessons and wisdom that are invaluable. Blessings and guidance delivered from god. And these pieces of wisdom that we share with each other serve to elevate and enlighten all of our lives. Yet they are not given to only a select few. They are not delivered to an exclusive group. It is universal wisdom. Given to any and all who listen. Some of it has landed here on earth. Some of it floats in the ether, waiting for us to hear. The wisdom of god is not limited to some, that’s why there can never be a figurehead of god. We all have access to this eternal wisdom. Let the teachings that have been shared guide you and invite you to hear for yourself the whispers of god all around you. Waiting to be heard by your ears. 

I would love to hear from you! Feel free to share your loving thoughts on the matter and let’s start a conversation.

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When we consider the garden that we are working on as a living biome, our actions are called into question. We are asked to consider not just ourselves but the well-being of the other inhabitants of such an ecosystem. We are asked to consider the health of the soil. We are asked to consider what resources are unnecessarily leaching out of this garden circle. We are asked to consider whether we are feeding the space or depleting it. When it comes to overwintering our garden with this new perspective, the plants that we were so ready to rip out of the ground and throw into garbage or compost piles come forward to serve a purpose. The leaves that we are told to rake up and put away reveal themselves are valuable just where they are. There is so much to say about leaving a good thing well alone when we as a species have a tendency to insert ourselves into every process. When we hold an ecological gardening perspective, however, when we step back and see our garden space as a living ecosystem alive and thriving without our input, we see better how we may serve the space. We no longer are the director, but the directed. We no longer are dictator, but co-creator. We see how the land has an innate desire to tend to itself in far more complex and intricate ways than we understand. It is easy to jump in and dismantle an ancient process that we don't understand. Yet this also dismantles a web of relating that is designed to serve the health of a biome. When we remove ourselves from the center and instead step into the circle together with our relatives, we start to truly show up in service. Those brown, wilted stalks now become homes for overwintering bugs and food for the birds. Those leaves become rich compost for the soil, and a nursery for young critters to stay warm. We see those annual flowers we planted drop their seeds and take root for another generation of growth. We see how we can collect our seeds directly from our garden rather than depend on a seed market- which is a big recalibration of the way we garden. Left alone, life congregates life. Life nourishes life. Life will naturally move towards restoration. When we take our role as gardeners as stewards of the land, we facilitate a deeper complexity that may be woven into the spaces that we tend to. Life seeps into empty spaces, fills forgotten niches, and grows more whole. 

When we step aside we see how well the land can take care of itself. And when we become caretakers of such spaces instead of chiefs, we have an opportunity to create an oasis of diversity and life. I spoke of the blessing of ecological gardening in a previous post, yet this time of year as people are closing their beds for the winters and the land rests after a productive season, I am reminded of how much humans desire cleanliness, order and control. At least we have been trained to do so. The idea of leaves being left on the ground is appalling to some. The thought of looking out the window and seeing those ugly, dead stalks of what once was alive is unnerving. Folks would much rather just clean it all up, and scrap it bare for when they are ready to use it again. As though its only purpose is to serve us. It is disassociating with the autumnal death that brings chaos and unravelling to a world trying to maintain order. But alas, the leaves will fall anyway, the plants will wilt, the creatures will rest. Let yourself be a nurturer of habitat, a pioneer of life. In such a world where habitat is becoming more and more scarce, especially in urban environments, let the space you weave be a haven for our forgotten relatives. Let it be an animated wellspring for all the wild things. Including ourselves.  

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The autumnal days are volatile. Shifting into something different every moment. Here the scale tips and moves us closer to Father Winter's embrace. The days are muted. The colour that once radiated from the land now seems dull and quiet. All melting into shades of brown. The vibrant emerald greens have softened into dusty moss and copper. The deep reds and oranges of autumn now shift into burgundy and bronze. The straw yellow grass goes flat and dark like rust. The scent of pine catches in the air. The only spirited colour comes from the larches that jump out from the mountains in a soft golden gleam. In summer they are disguised among the conifers, but fall is when they come alive for us to distinguish. A mantle of clouds hangs in the sky and the rains come often, as though making up for the dry, burning summer. Now the landscape is sodden and moist. Rivers flow through the grass and are lapped up by the sandy soil. The rain feels good, it's an invitation to stay close to the hearth and just listen to droplets topple onto roof and porch and any surface that is willing. What stories rain down from the heavens?

Where September and October felt electric, sparking the journey into autumn, November is the beginning of the end. Winter feels close. Its breath is in the air. Its hooves can be heard in the dark frosty nights. A roaming creature finally coming to rest. November feels like the last exhales of activity and the first breaths of emptiness. There is nothing left to do. 

I feel this when I wander around the garden and find myself at a loss. When my mind is still looking for something to do, it is now confronted with the hush that rings through the ground and up my feet. It sighs in my body a great sigh. The land rests. The last leaves have fallen to the ground. They have grown brown and musky with the scent of the earth. The trees reveal their bare selves to the land. Suddenly the nests that were once hidden can be seen through the open spaces. The turkeys that once hid well in the canopies now show their beautiful plumage. The crows caw at the tops of the trees, their black forms stark against the empty branches. The land is raw. 

Bare. 

Exposed. 

Awaiting the quiet embrace of winter. For now, it starts slow. The frost only embraces us in the cloak of darkness. When the air is still and the stars hang high. We awaken to a glistening white world held in mist before it quietly disappears with the first rays of light. Yet one can smell snow in the air. It is close. As though it is waiting on the edge of the clouds for when we least expect it, to come floating down and surprise us. It is that distinct crisp smell that is a sure sign of winter's arrival. The mountains surrounding our little valley are already gaining that wintery landscape of snow and ice. 

I feel this shifting landscape in me too. I grow more still, perhaps as an ode to the end of autumn. My heart echoes the songs of November. The low-pitch, earth grumbles that shake and moan and lay still upon the ground. My body feels tired. As though exhausted from the activity of summer and the last sprint of autumnal energy. This year, it was a big journey. My heart feels like feet that have danced all night and now must lay and rest. I feel the land grip me with firm hands. She tells me stories in the dark grey days. She speaks of the dens of the old days. Those that held the winter at bay. My home is turning into a den. A dark cave. Outside these borders is the crisp air that catches in my lungs, yet inside we are warmed by the crackling fire. A den that holds a wild, hibernating creature. On the walls are painted the pictures of the past, and candles glow as votives to what is to come. This den is dark and cozy. It caves in like a womb and holds us close. There is nowhere to go but here. As the sun disappears behind the mountains and clouds, the light I find is reflected in fire. The warm sustenance of its glow brings radiance to my soul that is otherwise dark. Such is the turning of the wheel into winter. Darkness reigns, with the steady hand of stillness and the torch of melancholy. 

I’ve always seen the crone of winter dressed in these garments. A sort of poetic sadness drapes around her neck. A gown of tears flows down her bony body. Her eyes glow with memories of what once was. She arrives in her chariot pulled by shooting stars to bring to our hearts the grief of what is no longer. Much has died in autumn. Those things now lay to rest in the empty garden beds and compost piles. Corpses spread upon the ground that we revered in October, now gather up tall in a pile to decompose. It is arduous work. And we are left to gaze upon their forms and witness that which is left. What remains. What will soon be turned to rich soil. Perhaps it is the fate of this time of the wheel, to be sorrowful. To find the blessing of such expression. To let the hands of her dark form guide us back to the fire, to sit and be. And through her words, we are told the stories of these spirits. The spirits of the darkness bring quiet. The spirits of bare trees bring the raw emotions of the heart. The spirits of frost bring remembrance. The muted colours of the land remind us to empty of ourselves.

I sit and listen to the tales. I watch my heart leap out of my chest and move closer to the fire. My body sinks, melts, softens back into the earth. I am low to the ground. Like a creature crawling on all fours, feeling the insulation of the earth embrace me. My belly hums and my soul groans and rolls in the chambers of my body. Where my colours were once vibrant, now they have melted. I blend and bleed into the brown landscape like a deer inseparable from the forest from which she came. I disappear into it. 

There is so much to be said in the silence, that I must let it speak for itself. 

To read more of my seasonal diaries:

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Hello my loves, yes it's me. Reemerging out of my den to commune with the world again. Thank you for the love and kindness you have shown in my little absence. It has been quite a transformative few months. So many changes and integrations have been taking place in my personal life that it has felt very natural and needed to step away from the online realm as I tend to and land in my physical world. Two months ago my husband and I packed up all our things into our jeep, bones, feathers and all, tucked in our cat and her four newborn kittens, and sailed off across the province to an unknown place, following a whisper of god. We arrived at the place that we would know as our home. Our little slice of heaven. A two-acre homestead with berry bushes and fruit trees and a sweet little cabin tucked away in a valley of the Rocky Mountains. A place where crystalline rivers flow down from snow-capped mountains. Where wildflowers bloom freely and unselfconsciously. We find ourselves in a town that holds a total of two shops on the main road, and where locals fight to keep cell towers away from their precious valley. A wild, slightly unhinged place indeed. Our view is a sea of green conifers and clear waters. Our drives into town take us along mountainsides and above turquoise rivers. Traffic? No such thing here. And the night you ask? Eyes are blanketed in a nurturing cover of pure, pristine darkness. As the darkest recesses of the soul. The night here is suspended in a heaven full full filled with twinkling ancient ones. The star nations sing the old songs, and it shows. Here things are quiet, quiet enough to hear the grasshoppers spring and the breeze as it weaves through the mountains. Home.

To say that this has been a dream of ours for as long as we can remember would be a slight understatement. For years, our blood flowed with the visions of one day arriving on our very own land, that we could steward and grow our family on. Everything that we did was with the ultimate vision of living in this way. It wouldn't appear that way though, as we have been nomadic for many years with only the last few having slowed down to stay in places slightly longer than usual. With each move, I felt more and more ready to land. My feet longed to take root. I desired so deeply to stay long enough somewhere to truly get to know a place, through each season, each year. A place to call my home. In the quiet chambers of our hearts, we sang this song, we spoke these words, we reached out to touch these visions.

Now perhaps we have not landed in our forever home just yet, but this place is a doorway into living our desires in the ways we can right here, in the eternal now. We asked ourselves, "How can we live this dream already?". And it looked like this, a rental property in the mountains of British Columbia. All this time we had been thinking the only way we could live this dream was to buy land, and we just weren't ready for that yet. Once we allowed our vision to expand, new opportunities suddenly revealed themselves.

Actually landing into this reality has been a blissful, heartening, humbling, empowering and sometimes challenging experience. An awakening into the ways we are so completely and divinely led from our hearts in this life. Weaving together our heart's clearest hymns into our waking life. Having this come forth for us was an orchestra of events that cascaded in unexpected ways, moments that invited us to step deeper into our truth. Moments that asked us what it was that we truly desired. Moments that revealed to us next steps that at times felt scary and unknown (as many good things do). 

Making this decision came with so many emotions for me. It was a big integration that came when we said yes to this land and this opportunity. It was an invitation to step up and hold something bigger than anything we had known before. It felt huge. And I felt ways about it. Of course, it's easy to feel the excitement and joy. The radiant laughter that arrives after a decision is made but before the rational mind steps in. Then came the fear. The doubt. Are we sure we can do this? It revealed to me the parts of myself that still shrivel up in the face of big responsibilities. It revealed the parts of myself that live in lack. "Can we afford this?" was a big question I had for myself and a big part of where my fear was coming from.

So many tears were shed in the thick of emotional turmoil that led to clarity. My body felt shaken. I had a big reaction to this initiation. Many emotions exposed themselves and the fear of such a leap of faith made me question this decision multiple times. But after all, it was clear that it was a LEAP OF FAITH. A jump into the unknown abyss of plenty. The crevices of eternity. Down we go into the belly of the goddess to be taken where we must go. When we are called, we must go. So yes, my feet shook as I moved closer to the ledge. My heart raced and my voice quivered. Tears threatened to break through the dam of my belly. And yet still, holding my love's hand in mine, we leapt, together. 

Perhaps that sounds somewhat dramatic for such a seemingly mundane decision. But for us, this was everything. God was speaking to us through all these opportunities that presented themselves, it all felt holy and oh-so-important. We were walking a pilgrimage. And in all life-changing decisions, there is the breath of god that leads you. This breath filled our bones and sang in our hearts and even in the fear and uneasiness, we KNEW, this was it. In the fear of the unknown, I heard the voice of the mother remind me that life always protects us and guides us seamlessly into each unfolding moment. I knew because I have been shown this again and again and again through my life, and in my life woven with my husband. In this love is woven the very fabric of divinity. Once I sat with the fear I was able to swim deeper into my emotional chasm and find lucid understanding. It felt clear that we made the right decision. And I knew in my heart of hearts that it would all work out. And low and behold, as soon as we said yes, life took the reins and made sure we would have everything we needed. Opportunities started to unfold that offered us an abundance of resources. Sacred answers to our doubtful questions. Decisions were made smoothly that allowed us to close old chapters and embrace this new one we would be embarking on. Once I leaned into trust I was shown life's majesty. We are always taken care of. The fear dissipated and made room for more trust. More leaning in. More knowing that we deserve to have that which we desire, and it is up to us to ask for it, to claim it. It is up to us to step up and hold it. Here we are claiming it. It was even more than what we asked for. 

Fast forward two months and many things have continued to land, shift, and integrate for me. Living the reality we have been speaking and envisioning has been expansive. We said goodbye to a life of nomadic travel and said hello to our roots. We have planted them in rich soil so they may grow strong. It was time. Here we are now. May it be a home to many. May it be light that guides and a nest that holds. May it be sustenance embodied in form. 

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Blessings family, to a way of reconnection with all that we are a part of. 

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Walking back home to the land

With our hands on our hearts

With our feet on the earth

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I would love to hear from you all, what was an experience you had with the hands of god, that asked you to take a LEAP of Faith?

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Feel like diving in to more Tales of the Hedgewise? Here are a few highlight publications.

Gardening is a deeply connective process. One that ties us to the WEB of nourishment, sustenance, wild ecology and intention. It is a really special way humans have woven themselves into the natural world, working with the powers of growth and the life cycles of plants to provide rich food for us. Gardens have been around for millennia, humans have a natural urge to make beautiful things and tend to the land. This is not new. But every intention woven into the space is unique. 

These days it has become twisted into the same routine that we see everywhere in a monochrome culture. Order, control, columns and rows, sameness. Mainstream gardening has grown more and more challenging with more and more work needing to be put into maintaining an unnatural environment. Essentially, one that is stuck in a perpetually immature state, not allowed to grow beyond the initial annuals and pioneering plants. Attempting to keep a garden in this state, where only your annual vegetables are growing in orderly rows tightly controlled with weeding regimes and fertilizers adds a lot of work to the gardener trying to go against the natural succession of a healthy ecosystem. Beyond the gardener, it is a depleting practice for the land and doesn't offer much opportunity for life to truly take root in the ways it desires. 

In the environment, there is a process called succession. When a piece of land has been cleared or plowed, we can see this process very clearly. The first plants on the scene are often those that we define as weeds, those prolific growers often found on disturbed ground. They thrive in this environment with exposed ground, lots of sun and soil that other plants would not be able to survive in, soil that has become heavily compacted or depleted. These are the pioneer plants, they are the beginning of reestablishing a healthy ecosystem. Once the pioneer plants aerate the soil, bring up nutrients from deep in the ground with their long taproots, and create more moisture through their ground cover, other plants are able to be seeded in their nursery-like environment. These plants hold ever more complex niches that begin to fill the space, plants like shrubs and wildflowers. the environment grows gradually into more complexity, more perennials, and eventually, trees are able to take root. When an environment has enough moisture, it will naturally succeed towards a sort of forest ecosystem. Plants begin to mature as they get older and become the guides and protectors for the younger, more delicate plants. Essentially the ecosystem is maturing, growing, becoming more complex and diverse. This is the natural tendency of the land. What is happening in gardens is that people are trying to keep their ecosystem in that first stage of succession. Mostly annual, very young plants that aren’t allowed to mature, when weeds come in to nurture and enhance the ecosystem they are quickly eradicated and the garden is kept in a sort of unsatisfactory loop. It requires a lot of work to maintain such an unnatural state. Here comes the plows, the fertilizers, the pesticides, the bare soil and rows of sameness. This sort of gardening, although may appear to provide high yields and an abundance of food, it is lacking true life. True nourishment. True habitat for other creatures we share the land with. The innate diversity and complexity of a thriving ecosystem. And the true ease that can be our relationship with the land and our communion with the things that we grow. 

This sort of gardening creates a desert where other species cannot thrive and are forced to find their food and habitat somewhere else. With already a ridiculous amount of bare lawns and gardens lining rows and rows of houses and condos, they quickly run out of options - especially in an urban environment. 

Many of the practices that we hear now like permaculture and ecological gardening, are moving with the intention to do as we see the land do. Watch and learn and mimic. Planting more perennial plants that will be allowed to mature into foundational plants within their ecosystem. Planting flowers for the essential health of bugs and pollinators. Providing cover crops that protect the soil - when do you ever see exposed soil in an undisturbed healthy wild place? Creating habits for the other inhabitants of the space. This way is reflecting the complexity that we want to bring into the space, and allowing it all to take root in a natural unfolding, into intentional wild food gardens and forests. The more we allow the environment to be naturally what it desires, the less energy we need to put in to keep it under control, it will naturally find its harmony. It becomes a closed loop that is able to sustain itself. All nourishment is recycled back into the land rather than leached out like in traditional gardening. 

It creates a deeply nourishing reciprocal relationship that isn’t back-breaking work but easeful presence and occasional maintenance. This is the sort of gardening that takes US out of the central focus. The only purpose mainstream gardening serves is solely to provide food for humans by any means necessary. Instead, through an ecological gardening framework we are invited to expand our purpose for showing up in a garden space. Expanding our service beyond growing food for ourselves to providing sustenance for our kin. Creating a healthy habitat for our relatives. Creating a space that is alive and bursting with life rather than a land equivalent to being on IV drops. 

Over the last few months I have been exploring the realm of natural gardening that creates healthy living ecosystems we all may be nourished by, and I'm excited to share with you all the different elements that go into it. It perhaps sounds daunting, hard and misunderstood. My hope is to make this knowledge accessible and understood in a way that makes it easy to implement. It is not hard, just different than so much of what we have been taught about gardening. It is a sort of unravelling of old information and reweaving another way. This folks, is how we reclaim our individual responsibility for our actions and the way we are in relationship with the land. How we tend to healthy ecosystems instead of desolate landscapes. Devote of life. Deserts in what could be thriving ecosystems.

It is a journey of wild gardening. Of taking care of our relatives. Being truly responsible in our role as gardeners. As we weave ourselves as a part of a wild land, we grow deeper into our wild selves. This nourishment radiates out and out through our hands, our hearts, to touch all things. The land rejoices. The spirits sing. Our animal kin are led back to their rightful homes and celebrated. Life is full. 

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P.S. My book ‘The Mythic Womb’ is officially published on amazon. I talked a bit about this soul gift in my last post. It is with big pleasure and joy that I share it with you all now. Find it in the link below. As always, thank you truly madly deeply for all the support and presence you offer to this space.

Buy The Mythic Womb <3

I write this outside under a pair of youthful cedar trees, the birds call above and the wind blows the soft callings of spring and it feels like a good time to birth creation upon the land.

I am sharing with you the first chapter of ‘The Mythic Womb’ to get a taste of what is to come, and to open your hearts to receive its medicine. It is a book calling upon the stories of the land and the womb. A forever interwoven dance of lovers that pulses through us. At the time I started writing this book, I was deep within the temple of the womb. Being initiated into her wisdom and the ways she parallels eternally with the land we walk upon. As my communion with the divinity of life and my womanhood grew, shifted, shedded and blossomed this book was a journey for my own innerstanding. A way to tie together these threads I see connecting everything living and dying. Everything that we are - and are a part of. It is my ode to these threads, that of the soul, the womb, the land. Within its pages are prayers of remembrance and connection. Prayers of the wild self that roams the uncharted territory of the heart. Prayers for the songs our souls sing. Prayers to hear their melody and remember the steps we may dance in tune. It is one song, after all.

*Keep your eyes open for the mythic womb being released on APRIL 8TH*

With love, welcome into The Mythic Womb.

Opening into the Medicine of the Spiral

In the beginning, there was darkness. In this darkness expanded a total and complete nothingness. Until suddenly, whether it was after a moment or after an eternity ~no one really knows~ there was a spark of sound. And with it came the light. This left its mark upon the ancient emptiness with the Song of Creation. With every thump and boom, every moan and sigh, a new spark of life emerged into light. Through this song, our first stars were born. And from the stars, planets came, and from the planets came new and even more intricate life. Until it reached the point that is us. Through the primordial, eternal darkness, life was birthed. This song has been beating steadily ever since its first sound. It is the song that weaves through all things. We all move to the rhythm of this Uni Verse ~ this One Song. If we choose to listen, we may hear its vibration and dance joyously to its beat and remember where we all come from.

Welcome then, to this song. May we learn of it together and remember its guidance. May we come back to the wisdom of the ancient ones. Those who have lived since the beginning, whose lessons continue to be whispered within the subliminal spaces of our lives. The spirits of the winds and waters, the sun and soil. The archetypes that are present within each cycle of creation. Echoing throughout all of life. Through the seasons, the waning of the moon, and through our own inner wheels that turn. This frame is what everything fits into. It is the imprint that is left upon all of us, the roots from which we grow. As we begin to look to it for support, we learn of the ways it unravels and weaves together the stories of existence. And in doing so, we may step back into the Sacred Spiral that holds us and all our relatives. In tune with all that is meant for us. In harmony with our inner cycles and these grand rhythms that move us. No longer is a life lived in victimhood, but instead, as creator. Re-membering with the ways that we weave together our own stories. How we make up all the pieces of our lives. In this way, we take the responsibility for all that is being woven through our lives in each moment. For we are the ones that, in one way or another, bring it forth. When there is a complete presence within the inner workings of the soul, one can move from that space of centeredness and wholehearted authenticity to bring deeper love and joy into life. It is a choice to no longer live in fear. Continuously unfolding within a space of wholeness. As we have been told again and again in ancient scripture.

Do not be afraid; There is nothing to fear.

May this offering call us back to these ways, that are rooted within the teachings of the sacred Spiral. To the ancient knowledge that rests within us. As we flow through remembering, we are brought back to the ways of our mothers, those who came before. Carried back to our true womanhood, that holds for us this great wisdom. The medicine that we have the potential to witness and embody. May this offering serve to remind you of this power you carry. It expresses itself through the energy of your womb. As we flow within this continuous Spiral dance throughout our lives, we learn the lessons it offers us. The medicine it serves us. The ways its presence blesses us. May this offering serve as a gift, for you to once again embody the bountiful blessings that your cycle is meant to share with you. When you take the time to sit with her, get to know her, she shares with you her secrets. Your soul’s mysteries.  And through this presence, you learn about yourself in your multidimensional beingness. You have the tools you need to live an embodied and full life in alignment with your nature, and your truth. 

Here we will flow through this cycle of the womb and see how it ties us so intimately to all cycles, that expand to touch all things, when we pay attention. We will refine our sight to see those threads pulsating everywhere. We will learn about the ways it is all the same cycle, the same song, rhythmically ringing throughout all of life. Echoing melodies for us to hear. These cycles are what nurture all processes. In witnessing this, we begin to see our place as part of the grand rhythms of this existence. Re-membering with all that it asks of us. All the ways that it moves through us. We are an aspect of something so much greater, that is reflected within us, and expands out and out, to touch everything. 

Our body is a temple, a place of worship. A holy cathedral upon which our life is laid out for us to pray upon. It carries so much spirit, so much intricately woven wisdom. It is a little universe of its own, that, like a hologram, expresses itself in the same ways as what it is made of ~ everything around. May this offering serve as an ode to its complexity. A form of worship we may bow to, and pray with. As we expand out from this body to greater perspectives, we see the same blueprint reflected within all things. The growth of plants, the flowing of our moon, our earth, and the spirits of the elements, all are woven by these threads. The same threads weave together in our womb. We see their stories reflected in us. And through this, we may stand humbly at their feet, and receive their teachings. They may be our guides, showing us the ways of this unfolding. The ways of reciprocity with our divinity and our physicality, the sacredness that is life incarnate.

In this offering, we explore these dimensions that we live in, that are intimately, deeply, eternally tied together. So complex is their weaving that one thread cannot exist without the other, nor even desires to. For all these layers come together to create this tapestry upon which we all dwell and are blessed by. We begin to dismantle the ways of focusing more and more on one piece. One thread. Trying to understand something by taking it apart and examining it. Instead, we remember wholeness. To see how all these little parts that we’ve been trying to understand are nothing without the whole perspective of their existence. The integrity of their wisdom lies within a wholistic understanding of all the parts that weave this living organism. We will step back, to see the grand picture. All that we are, and all that we are a part of. 

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Around my neck of the woods, the hunters have been quietly treading out into the forest, guns slung over their backs and a sense of duty looming above them. Tracking pawed footprints on the muddy earth. Looking out for blurs of grey-brown furred ones in the murky landscape. Listening for rustling of leaves and placing of steps. They are on the hunt. Not for sustenance, but for slaughter. You see, the coyotes of this land have gained the unfortunate and often deadly title of an inconvenience. Too troublesome. Too much of a pest. And as so often is the case, the solution we have found is to extinguish. Their actions are cloaked in secrecy, trying to fly under the radar of prying and questioning eyes. I find it interesting how these behaviours often want to go unseen. They don’t like questions, which immediately tells me that deep inside them there is something that feels faulty about dismantling delicate ecosystems. Why hide yourself behind guns and secret trails if you are firm in the trueness of it? Perhaps the wild coyote within their hearts howls and shrieks for the wrongness of it all. But they go about their business anyway in the name of order and balance. Usually in the name of protecting their farm animals. We have seen this countless times before, the killing of one animal for another. The decimation of a population because of inconvenience. Hunting for mere shits and giggles and to claim the coat of a wild beast. A truly twisted carcass of a once sacred and honourable practice. 

Coyotes were/are seen as sacred spirits of the land, bestowing wisdom as well as playing mischievous tricks. They were revered, for they were thought to bring havoc and chaos if mistreated. Now they are seen as pests. Because they get in the way of other people's profit and livelihood. It is a nuanced topic as many things are, especially when weaving wild animals and wild places in tamed civilization. But regardless of who is justifying the killing of this creature or that, there is grief. Hunting is a beautiful and ancestral practice that delivers to a family and community countless resources and sustenance. Yet what about when a life is taken and left to rot on the forest floor? Just for the sake of extermination. What about when no mouths are fed or resources gained, but simply lost, forgotten? What about when a hunter is arrogant and self-righteous?

There is no longer that very vital key that all hunters must have had in our ancestral practices that makes it a sustainable one. When there isn’t this awareness of the natural world around us, a deep respect and reverence for what we are taking, an understanding of our role in the harmony of our ecosystems, all of it comes undone and turns into savage amusement. I see many hunters these days heading out with their big guns and even bigger egos, off to find some game. I don’t see them humbled by the life they just took. I don’t see them hold that body in awareness and compassion but rough and rushed duties. Thoughtless acts. It is a shame, because this lack of awareness is what leads to animals being overhunted, and suddenly disappearing from a region. Now, it is partly the natural way of things for one species to go extinct, for another to take its place, for the web to be shaped and reshaped by all of our hands. But I also see the mindless, blind hunting of coyote kin and grieve at the thought that they are only seen as a disturbance that must be snuffed. That is not how we are meant to be in relationship with our relatives. That is sad. The disrespect is blatant. 

Something I love about Native American mythology is how it is so interwoven with the land. There is a creation story for countless different medicine plants, every animal they know holds personality and legend around it. The natural world comes alive in a way that one can easily connect with. When these stories are told again and again, when they are passed down and held dear, one is taught how to be in right relationship with the land. It is woven into life and in community. It teaches one how to behave. These stories are told and retold and sung and passed on to one another. They are collected and kept safe. They serve as the wisdom of a community. They serve to teach us about the land we walk upon, and how one may relate to it all. They aren’t meant to be literal perhaps as much as mythic. When one hears coyote as the trickster creature, the teacher, the wisdom keeper, coyote isn’t anymore just an animal, they are a respected elder. This feels like what is missing to me in our modern world. The guidance of storytelling as a whole, but specifically the stories that are told about how we may be in relationship with the land. How to relate to other beings. Stories of the creatures we see around us. Stories that weave us as a part of something sacred. Stories that teach us true respect and balance. Without them, people go on rampages, they clear-cut ancient forests and slaughter entire populations, without even a flinch. 

We have started to play god in such an intricately interwoven ecosystem that we don’t even fully understand, instead of being the CHILDREN of god, children of the earth. Now we destroy one to protect another. The split between mine and yours. This idea of ownership. We don’t see this anywhere in the natural world to the extent that we have taken it. Firmly believing that we own the world is a hierarchical paradigm that makes one stand above another, and that is not natural law but human order. Natural law is expressed without judgment or ownership. It is expressed as borrowed time, borrowed resources and deeply interwoven kinship. In these actions of hunters - but really this topic stretches out into so many different areas of life - we are missing the bigger picture of what we are all a part of. Many say it is the natural order of things to die to feed another. To become extinct so another may emerge. AND our land and animals ask for respect and reverence. That is the key distinction here. It is found in the intention of the action. Yes, it is inevitable for things to change, to melt into each other, for a thread to break and another to be mended. Trying to maintain sameness isn’t it either, but treating the land as a dispensable dead thing that we can pillage and abuse at our own convenience is a huge disconnection from our true ancestral practices that highlighted US as a PART of a WHOLE. The land that feeds and sustains us. And our responsibility to take care of what takes care of us. 

Not merely maintaining order at all costs.

I live pretty close to cities. what is happening here is that unfortunate thing that happens when what was once forests, wild lands, and small farms get paid out for the expansion of the city’s industries. what is left here is really just a small fraction of what once was. All that space for the wild lands and the wild creatures has been bulldozed and in their place has gone big ugly grey buildings for this or that or other. Where coyote once had land expanding out for kilometres to hunt, now has been confined to a few. And without any of their usual wild prey, they feed on cows, pigs and sheep. Whatever they can find waiting for them in easily accessible and reliable pens. When their natural food source has disappeared, they will find another, they are scrappy like that. Farmers and other folk don't really like these wild and unpredictable creatures stepping in on their turf, they would really prefer to keep things all nice and clean and orderly. They want to protect their livelihood, so that means, goodbye coyote. It is a rippling of so many different layers of life right now that weave these results. That’s what makes it so complex. 

Yet I grieve coyote. I miss their magnificent howls that herald in the night. I miss hearing their swift footsteps pass by my home on their way to a hunt. I miss their ethereal visitations when the night is still held in the dawn and I see them out in the distance heading back to their dens, watchful and still. There is an emptiness upon the land now. A thread has gone missing. A presence has disappeared. A dear friend is gone. The land grieves.

I wonder if the hunters feel their absence too?

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Some other reads by HedgeWise:

February awakens and is suddenly over. It flowed in like the first winds of spring and left like the crisp breeze of winter. The calls of the mother are whispered upon the land, in the buds that bulge, in the bellies that swell, in the leaves that soften and grow vibrantly green in a brown landscape. The green of the grasses and moss feel more energized, as though colour is returning to the land. When I put my head close to the ground, I can hear it crackling and popping with the rising waters of winter rains. Life rising up again. The days are blooming in a newly emerged golden light of dawn. The sun peaks more from the clouds and kisses my face like the sweetest touch from a lover. My skin laps at his rays, wanting more and more. Savouring every droplet of light. We are expanding into longer sighs and breaths of laughter. The sun shows up in the sky like the chariot of a resurrected angel. We are luminous. Our bodies shake out of winter's hibernation, we crawl out of the den lit only by candles and finally see rays of sunlight, after all this time. Our bodies stretch deliciously, move, run. Our lungs fill a little deeper. Life awakens.

February is a doorway. 

A cool wind blows suddenly, catching the tips of the trees and swaying them in an attempt to dance the last of the winter waltz. The air holds a subtle crispness to it, as though snow is only a breath away from you. Any moment it may come cascading down onto the ground and caress your awaiting skin. Yet it holds. And the buds continue to grow and the birds still sing and the wind still blows.

Out in the distance, among the hawthorn and under the linden, I notice an arched stone pass, marked with the shaping of time. Moss grows vibrantly green along the cracks in between the crumbled mortar. Vines have latched on in the ways a beloved does upon that which he loves most. There is a sense of something old looming. Around this arch birds swirl in spirals upon the gentle breeze. The buds are full and succulent as they burst from the trees, the land appears as though it has just softened after a long frost. The smell of it wafts in the air and catches me34-’

[]] by surprise. That fragrant scent of rich, black soil.

I realize this is what it feels like. As though I am witnessing the passing off of the chalice between winter and spring. I see them in front of me, exchanging something between hands. Held together in an embrace of friends that don’t often meet, but when they do, feet sink a little deeper into fertile ground. Around them swirls the enchanting songs of newborn life. Spring is in the air, they say. And winter slowly drifts away from us. My lungs fill with newly made air. My eyes are kissed with sunlight. My feet walk bare on sopping wet earth. I feel it awaken my body as the plants awaken around me. We emerge.

February comes and goes as a passing of hands. Folding into something new.

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They say that a leap year is a year of…well…leaping. The extra day in February opens as a portal through which one may jump into different realities. The path opens and the next step is like a supersonic button that launches you ahead. Oh, wouldn’t that be sweet.

Would it though?

I know I get caught up in all those places I desire to reach in my life. Landing on my own property, caring for a homestead, having babies and raising a family, being financially free and well-resourced. It’s easy to think ahead to all those places and wanna just jump ahead to them. Can’t I just get there already? It would be faster, easier, but would it be better for me? Would I have grown into the person I need to be to hold all of that? Would I have experienced what is needed to be able to fully arrive in those realities?

I’ve been reminded again and again in my life that the journey is not just getting to a place, but it is the process of getting there. The journey prepares you for where you are going. It cannot and should not be skipped, bypassed or rushed. That process is an alchemy of the heart and soul that moulds and shapes one into the person living in those realities. It is the process of growing into. The transformation that naturally takes place through our experiences, each one leading us closer and closer to all the things we are moving toward. It is making of you what is needed. Often times I can see a series of events that need to happen before I can really arrive in that which I ultimately desire. Sometimes it doesn’t logically make sense even. It is simply a clarity that guides. Steps that need to be taken. Things that are asking to happen before that thing. I can see it all as a chronological order of sorts. One thing leads into the next. One version of me grows into the next and the next until I am that person who can arrive where I ultimately desire to be. That is the process. 

It’s easy to want to rush through it all… to just get there. Trust me, I know. But being halfway through the journey to it, no matter how hard you try, you still can’t jump ahead. You shouldn’t either, because probably you haven’t built up the capacity to fully receive it. That’s why you aren’t there yet, after all. It is a process. In this day and age especially there is such a RUSH for everything. It is overwhelming really how fast people are going. How much they try to speed up these processes. And hey, maybe you find a way to reach that vision fast and efficiently, yet the question really is are you able to hold it when it arrives? Really hold it, in complete presence and stability. It can be easy to say yes, but then find yourself in burnout and overwhelm. 

I know in many manifestation circles people often talk about jumping ahead to that person who already has or is that thing. And yes, I agree that holding the vision and really feeling it living already in the depths of you is where the seed is planted and takes root, yet I notice people forgetting that it will still take time, energy, commitment and love to unfold in the right way. A lot of talk now about this topic makes it sound as though once the vision is held the rest should happen very fast. Again, that is really the constitution of the western world rearing its ugly head. Always rushing rushing rushing. Always on the move. Sometimes when a vision is clarified and the steps towards it are taken it can happen very fast, it’s true. When that is your path, it unfolds. Yet I feel a lot of the time, it doesn’t happen that way. But still, people go on criticizing themselves and each other for not having reached it in a timely manner. 

When you plant a seed, do you expect the flower to appear the next day? Some plants grown from seed need more than one season even to strengthen enough to bloom. Even when they do bloom in their first season, it often will be only a fraction of how much they bloom as a fully matured plant. It will reach its full bloom potential likely in a few years when it is more established and strong. When you plant a sapling, do you expect it to fruit the next year? Most saplings need many many years to eventually bear fruit and even more so to fruit abundantly and sweetly. So why are we expecting ourselves to launch ahead at the speed of light when nature is constantly telling us that good things take time. 

It cannot be rushed. We all arrive where we ultimately desire and are needed. That is an innate truth of our soul’s plan. The visions we hold come forth in the soils of patience and persistence. You cannot hurry the blooming of a flower. Nature again is our guide here. As I’ve said many times in this publication, we are nature. Hello, hi, yes you, you are an animal of the earth tribe. The land is our elder that guides us in the ways we may act and be in the world. When we witness nature, we see the other animals mimicking the rhythms of the earth, we see the plants falling in tune with her song, we see the land swaying to this melody. So why don’t we? Human thought has convinced us that we always need to be sprinting to the finish line. What if I don’t wanna sprint? I wanna frolic. I wanna dance in the breeze and smell the flowers and even lie down in the grass. Oh, and what if there isn’t even a finish line? What happens then? The path unfolds anyway. 

Now there are nuances in these spaces, as there is in everything. Life doesn’t ask you to be just a passive participant either. Letting life happen to you in whatever way is surrendering your choice in the matter. Surrendering your choice is leaning into the chaos of the world. Yet life also doesn’t ask you to run and run and run and never stop. It simply asks you to notice. To listen. To be led AND to lead. To let life happen and to make life happen. To hear the songs your heart sings and follow in their melody. To gaze upon the land and remember how you are so irrevocably held and taken care of by life. To trust without a doubt the process of your unfolding. That is our innate nature of CO-CREATOR. Honouring the creative process. Letting it be what it is, while directing its energy. 

As with everything upon the earth, we move in phases. There is time for planting, for tending, for blooming, for wilting. Another layer of aligning with one's journey is being aware of what phase you are in. You cannot expect the same results from the wilting and blooming phase. Far from it. Many of us try to bloom when really we need to be planting. Many of us try to plant when we need to let ourselves wilt first. It is this misalignment with one's true place in their eternal now that hinders the potential of their unfolding. Fighting it really only serves to slow down what anyway will happen, because it NEEDS to. Attuning to it serves to accelerate the process. Perhaps that is what they mean when they say quantum leaping. When one is fully in alignment with what needs to happen in this moment, that process can be moved through much faster than if there was resistance. So, are you planting, blooming, or wilting? Do what you can to honour yourself in that space. It is as sacred as its counterparts expressed upon the earth. Do you criticize a tree for dropping all of its leaves in autumn? No, you marvel at the glorious display of colour they offer the land as they let go of what must be let go of. You are a masterpiece in every moment. In every phase. 

This is returning to our innate relationship with the natural world around us. This is reuniting with our own natures. This is returning to the holy lands of the heart and soul.

At the end of it all, we get wherever we are going and then another vision arrives in our mind's eye in the quiet of the night and we are called again on a quest of the soul. The path continues. May it be all that it is meant to be. 

What season are you in friend?

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With Love,

Marija

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If you made it this far, thank you. I appreciate all those who gaze upon my work with devotion and interest. Beyond this point is in service to those devotionally supporting Tales of the Hedgewise. You will find a medicinal monograph of sage as well as a recipe for working with her healing. If you feel like you got what you needed already, thank you for being here. If you feel like there is more still that desires to be explored from you in this space, consider entering the temple. We await you with love. <3

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Meat is murder….

So they say 

Those words dripped from my very own mouth for years before I remembered the innate reciprocity between me and the land.

For the animals, they say 

So I said too before I embraced the natural law of ‘I eat you and you eat me’.

Meat is killing the earth, they say 

That ideology rang in me so thoroughly that I was convinced there was no other way, until the earth herself met me in a moment of embodiment and told me of her everlasting life.

Hi, I'm Marija, and I am a recovering vegan. 

Okay okay, not so much recovering. It was a really profound journey for me to re-embrace my innate, ancestral and fully nourished ways of eating that stepped out of toxic diet paradigms of health and wellness and deeper into true wholeness, nourishment and reverence for life. Coming back to the truth that sang its song inside of me, not something out. Not something someone told me to believe in, or convinced me was true, but what was fully felt, lived, and known within me. Ah yes, that inner wisdom. That tool they have taught us to ignore. Reclaiming it is our greatest strength. 

For many years I believed that by no longer eating meat I miraculously removed myself from the inevitable cycles of life and death that keep the earth replenished. The vitality bringing songs of the earth. As though these ancient cycles can be dissected and picked apart based on what is clean, kind and orderly to humans. As though one can take what is "good" and leave the rest. I thought that eating meat was some kind of spiritual sin that I rose above through my own awareness and discipline. lol. I thought I no longer participated in the killing of the earth - as though we mere mortals could kill such a magnanimous creature. There were many thoughts that swirled in my head about how I did better as a human due to my food choices. Veganism as a whole - now that I am no longer participating in its narratives and can hold a more expanded perspective of it - feels almost like a cult of those who think they are better, more spiritual, more loving, than these dirty hunters, carnivores and overall ignorant folk. 

Stay humble friends. 

I don't know if you caught that, but I noticed a few years ago a huge shift in consciousness on a global scale around our food and nourishment. I too was taken by its vibrating threads of wisdom and recalibrated to truth. It is beautiful how these shifts can and do happen in these greater planetary attunements. Many of those who once called themselves vegan, suddenly, weren't. 

Some months before I was visiting my sister in Serbia and she was telling me about the potent medicine of bone broth and raw beef liver. At this time I was a big no to all that, and I won’t lie that I internally judged her for it. Ah yes, I was indeed one of those judgemental vegan pricks, thinking my way was the best, no matter how much I said I wasn’t. There really was nothing she could do or say to me at that point that would convince me otherwise because I wore this identity like a badge of honour. I was not open to receive anything else. I was knee-deep in my saucy hyper clean eating phase. What I thought health looked like. Oh, how times have changed. 

Fast forward a few months, I'm living in Mexico and am noticing my body feeling depleted. Perhaps it was all those years of backpacking. Or perhaps it was my lack of true sustenance in my food sources that caught up with me. Both probably. Well anyway, my hair was falling out like mad and that really made me question everything. While that was happening a friend was talking to me about how she had started eating eggs again (she was also vegan) and now I found myself at a point where I felt open for change. I listened and felt intrigued. My body was guiding me really, because I felt like something was missing in my nourishment. I felt it so tangibly in my being that I could not ignore it. There was a pull from inside my belly - a sort of get inside of me right now feeling - at the thought of delicious, savoury eggs and I didn’t resist. And oh baby did it feel good. The lights that I didn’t notice had dimmed inside me suddenly switched on with fantastical colour. At the same time, I was learning through the beautiful World Wide Web of all those former vegans who were beginning to eat meat again. There was talk of true nourishment, ancestral eating, and general reality-crushing thoughts for my former vegan self. Where a few months before I was very much a no, this time I saw myself taken by it all as though my ripe loins finally surrendered to the pleas of a sweet lover at last. After all this time. 

At first, I started with just eating eggs again, until cheese greeted me like a forgotten friend and finally meat came galavanting in like a wise grandmother, reminding me of where I come from, and what I belong to. 

Finally being out of it, I saw my former lifestyle in a new light. After years deeply immersed in this way of thinking that had totally infiltrated my being without any room for questioning, I felt…….expanded. I felt alive with a sense of clarity. I felt fucking vibrant. My body was nourished in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. I realized how my body was communicating uneasiness to me all that time, I just couldn't read the signs. After coming back to a more natural way of eating for myself, I saw how my body recalibrated back to her fully nourished self. 

And just like that, this stream of consciousness washed over me. Of all the things I couldn’t see before. All the things I didn’t let myself see, refused even to see. First of all how arrogant I was in thinking that my way was the best way of having a loving, nourishing and wholesome relationship with life. I sat my ass back down on the earth and kissed the feet of all those I claimed were devious misfits. My world was cracked open into the arms of my ancestors in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. Through my belly. Food became an altar to life through which I could commune with and pray to. It was no longer laced with judgements and criticism and dogmas, it became a sacred thing, each meal an act of communion with the world around me. It was no longer steeped in toxic diet culture of good food and bad food and restrictive eating, but softened, grew more compassionate even. For myself. For the food I consumed. The land that gave me sustenance. It was allowed to be what it was. Through all this I realized how tightly I was holding my body on a leash - again, based on the human’s concepts and not my body’s innate and ancestral nature. That is something that really rocked my boat, letting my body be an animal again. Letting my body rip into flesh and devour. That primal desire that was suppressed because I judged it as uncivilized was finally set free. And the floodgates opened. 

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I remembered this innate love I held inside of me for ALL of life. The animals that I overemphasized, yes, and also the crops, the trees, the rivers, the mud, the air. It all came alive with importance and memory. I remembered the aspects of life - which are all of them - that are fed through another’s death. That are born in the flames of another’s demise. That are killed so another may be nourished. The cycles of life/death/rebirth that I spoke about as a spiritual concept suddenly came alive as actual lived realities of life on earth. Rooted. Experienced. Here I was integrating myself as a part of it all again. I saw how my time as a vegan was me trying to remove myself from an inevitable, loving, and grounded cycle. From natural law. The spiral itself that gives life and takes it away. I was trying to remove myself from acts of harm - as though my food choices suddenly exempted me from any. As though I could be a participant here on earth without participating in death. As though I could pick and choose based on my human opinions of good and bad. I see now that those realities I thought I was living in were illusions of embodiment. The truth was that I wasn’t genuinely connected to the needs of my body.

It was in this reintegration with life that led me back into the embrace of wholeness. Stepping back into the spiral. Becoming a part of it all again - not that I was ever really, truly removed from it, but separated through my own detachment. 

One cannot remove themselves from this cycle of life and death, because it is the fabric from which we all live and breath

Now yes, does the mass production of animals in agriculture have its significant side effects? Yeah, sure. That is not the same connection to one's food source as what our ancestors had. Neither is any of the food we buy in our grocery stores btw. Life looks different now. And that's okay. Mass production as a whole is harmful, not just when it comes to animal farming, but for food crops too. For factories. For our clothes. For our cars. Our apartments. On and on. That is just life right now. One can always find something to complain about. In this web, there is always something that affects another. Yet claiming to not participate in this is an illusion. It would be to not live. To just sit on the ground and meditate your whole life. Maybe that is some people's journey here. It’s not mine. And it’s not the majority of beings here. Again, thinking you can step out of this just by refusing to eat meat is dilutional.

Maybe the point isn’t to “do no harm”, but to LIVE in WHOLENESS. To live as life is meant to be lived. In connection with the land. With our relatives. With our birthright of sustenance. To let yourself be taken care of by the earth, and in turn, take care of her. To step off that high horse and greet your kin back down here on the ground. 

My journey back to eating meat has led me to meet death in a way I have never known before. That is healing. To connect more deeply with my food sources. To live in reverence of what it takes for me to be nourished. And for the ways I may nourish others. It is reciprocity. To fully take my place as a creature upon the earth. It's okay to take up space dear love. You are here. Your presence affects others, that is inevitable.

What do I want now? I want to know it all. I want to fully participate in life's unfolding. To claim it as my own. To be the hands through which it may take root. I want to feel the blood on my skin, to see how a life has been given for my own. I want the soil in between my fingernails, to know what it takes to grow my food. I want to see the earth transform, to remember her aliveness and all the ways I am nourished upon her back. I want to be a part of life, rather than something separate or above. 

For me, it was a journey moving out of falsehood and deeper into truth. Veganism no longer felt like it was about the earth, the animals, or your health. It became another activist shouting on the street as though that is what creates change. It was another someone telling people what they should do, teaching them to bypass their own body autonomy and wisdom. It has become another something that people need to FIGHT for. People always need something to fight for huh. Well, I don’t wanna fight anymore. I just wanna LIVE, with my heart open and my belly full, my bare feet on the ground and my hands upon all that I love and cherish. 

May it be so. 

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We are currently residing on the southern coast of British Columbia, a new home that has held us sweetly during a transitioning time in our lives. Supposedly, winters are mild and wet here. Temperatures don’t normally drop below the negatives, and when they do, very rarely below -10. So imagine everybody’s surprise when it dipped below -15 last week. For someone who grew up in Ontario, that didn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary - there was even excitement - until I saw everybody scurrying about not quite sure what to do with themselves in preparation for this coming shift. Preparation is good. It is important. Yet when it comes, all you can do is let it. Witness. Be a part of its unfolding. 

And so it was, in this way, that the land froze over. 

The day before we could feel it in the air, it felt crisper than usual. As though it turned into ice gems in the lungs. As though we walked through living glaciers caught on the breeze. We prepared the animals, making sure they would be warm enough. To the surprise of everyone on the farm one of our hens carried into the world two little chicks. A big wow in the cold dark days of January. We tucked them into a little hutch and they seemed rather content to be safe and taken care of. We stocked up as much wood as we could by the stove, tucked ourselves into our own little hutch and hunkered down for the weekend. 

It came like a sweet sigh from the parted lips of a lover, as though the earth herself groaned a delectable release of pleasure. And then there was completeness. A sort of fulfillment of the land into winter's embrace. Finally arriving in her arms.

Oh sweet frozen land, I have been waiting for you. 

Walking out into this day felt as though all of life lay suspended within a held breath. The birds were silent, the squirrels hidden. The air itself was unmoving. No breeze dared to break the quietude. The only sound that passed through the land was ground crunching under boots, crackling in frozen eternity. Everything lay fastened to whatever it was closest to. The land was held in ice. 

The nights seem darker here, as though the cold allows a deepening space for the dark’s solitude. The stars too came out to play their heavenly melodies, this time, in absolute clarity. As though the stillness made it possible for them to be seen more clearly. They glow in the distant spaces to comfort the night. A reminder of the light that still lives upon the frozen land. You can see it reflected in the eyes of frozen lakes and ponds, where all of life may be reflected in their lucency. Creatures gaze up at the stars and remember their place in the world. I looked up at them in the crisp darkness and saw eternity expanding into the night’s nothingness. 

The next day the birds came out again, suddenly reawakened with a new spark of energy. Seizing the opportunity to forage, as seeds fall from the trees and land distinctly on frost. Seeing nourishment where others see barren land. I saw them twinkling about frosted branches and locked ground, joyous in their frolicking. Enjoying the solitude as other creatures lay still in their dens. The breeze ever so gently arrived again, softly caressing the trees, gentle in the ways he woke them from their glacial night. The land awakens again from the profundity of ancient ice. 

Ice is an old creature indeed. One that brings depth through suspension. Locked in an eternal stillness, yet moving in haunting dances across the land. Their moans and groans ghostly whispers of time long past. The pond outside our home froze seemingly solid and we took the opportunity to walk on what otherwise would be unavailable to us. That is something I love about ice and frozen lakes, you are walking on water in the most enchantingly wondrous ways. Held upon pure crystalline ground. Sometimes we would take a step and hear a deep, rolling moan in the ice. A kind of cracking and crocking, as though the ancient voice of first creature stirred in the depths. It is a low, grumbling sound. A crackling that touches the very same crystalline water that lives inside of you, and stirs it into gleaming icicles. 

I could see the detailed stands of ice that formed into a whole solid layer upon the ponds. Strand by strand, they expand into glorious patterns of starried treasures. The strands of god. A child of earth and heavenly intelligence. 

A moment laid still upon the land. The nights were held in a sort of tranquillity that only the freeze can bring. Things slow down the colder it gets. Time itself slows and halts in greeting. The true call of winter. Her bells ring. Her carriage clangs. Frost woman arrives. With each step, a frozen land is born. Oh, how I have missed this sort of depth. 

Then.....the snow comes 

Blanketing the land in the wings of the angels. 

I delight in the ways snow brings warmth. Insulation from the stars. The great arms of winter stretch open to hold close and warm all creatures. One of my favourite things in life is walking out on the land in the middle of a snowstorm. Oh, the enchantment! How it lights my heart so completely, I feel like I'm a few breaths off the ground in giddiness. As though a love spell is cast and you can't help but fall into it with everything you are. 

If you listen, the land gets quiet. But in a different sort of quiet than the freeze. Not as complete as frost, which is held in the placidity of the void. It is softer. The only sound heard is the soft sparkling of snow falling to the ground. Glimmers of lights. It lands in my hair and upon my eyelashes in greeting, and my heart sings. In a matter of moments, the land is transformed. Another world completely. One is transported into the realm of snow. 

Yet this snow comes and goes in a few days. The snowy crystal land doesn't last for too long until the rains come to wash it away. What's left is a soggy landscape that seems to enunciate the matter of living in the rainforest. The mist rolls in carrying dampness in the air. The ground squishes beneath boots and reels you into the sodden wet earth like a mischievous spirit wanting to play in the mud. There is no escaping their whims. It is a watery realm. No wonder this element is often associated with winter. The land is a rolling river of wet soil and moisture. Of crystalline water and adamantine frost.

I wonder what it feels like to be laid beneath the covering of snow. What is it like to feel the icy sensation on my body, yet not feel cold? To feel that frosted blade pierce straight into me, into all of me, embracing me so completely that I myself become ice. What would that feel like? How does the land relish in being taken by the heavens so perfectly? Do the lakes adore the ways they transform into something solid? Does the land remember her days of warm nakedness when she is cloaked with the coverings of snow and frost? 

I wonder how the land remains in this state sometimes all winter… that is something I have never felt the depth of. Land held so thoroughly by the snow. How scrumptious that would be. 

For now, the rains come to wash it all away, as though it never was. The people go back to their usual business. Not a trace is left. The recollection of it remains within the penitences of my heart, and the land’s microbial memory. 

Some other land musings ~

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