Don't Judge the Fern by the Fiddlehead

Despite the rain this Saturday, we went in search of a trillium experience.  We were not disappointed.  The rain, it turned out, was warm and the misty air created a sense of mystery as we followed the well worn trail through the mixed hardwood bush.  We walked past the dark green heart shaped leaves of Wild Ginger and the bluish green foliage of Blue Cohosh.  Past the Wild Leeks and Wild Garlic until we found them. Thousands of White Trilliums spread out beneath the trees as far as the eye could see.  We breathed them in like a tonic after a long winter.  They had returned, a little later than usual, but in full force.  Our hearts were filled and our spirits lifted by the sea of white and green.

We kept walking, taking in their beauty and finally paying attention to the other plants as well.  Just beside the path, I saw a little fern unfurling.  It wasn’t the fiddlehead of an ostrich fern and I had trouble identifying it in it’s infant stage.  It was probably a Sensitive Fern judging by the thick middle part of the frond.  It was kind of gangly and misshapen, not the lovely graceful shape of the adult fern.

This reminded my partner of the baby robins in the backyard.  They have indeed hatched and he has been taking pictures of their fuzzy , big beaked, closed eyed heads projecting out of the nest, waiting for regurgitated worms from their parents.  They look nothing like the adult robins who hatched them.

Baby Robin emerging from underneath its mother.

Well, this got me thinking of a video I had watched recently on a new economic idea of circular economics.  You can watch it here. In this two minute video clip, Economist Kate Raworth uses a piece of hose she found in her garden shed to explain how we can work with and within the cycles of the living world to create a circular regenerative economy.  So, check out the video.  If you can’t picture what this might look like when it is all fleshed out, then remember the little fern and the baby robin.  Imagine that this idea could become something concrete and beautiful and don’t judge the fern by the fiddlehead.

Supporting Creativity is Building the Future

A Robin is sitting on her nest just under the eaves of our greenhouse in the backyard.  Since the clothes line goes right past her nesting spot, we have temporarily stopped hanging laundry on the line until the eggs have hatched and the nestlings have fledged.  Otherwise, clothes whizzing past her might scare her away and then the baby birds could be lost.  It is a small and easy thing for us to do to support the new life emerging in the yard.  Two chickadees have taken up residence in a bird box on the front lawn and two House Wrens are building a nest in the nesting box attached to the far side of the greenhouse. We really enjoy watching the bird parents work so diligently to bring new life into the world.  We do what we can to support them and not frighten them as they go about their sacred duties.

Last weekend, I attended a fundraiser for Sistema Huronia which is an organization that provides free music lessons for children who would otherwise not be able to afford them.  Sistema was started in Latin America and has now spread to many more countries.  Its focus is on having children learn to play violin, viola, cello or double bass to play together as a way of enriching the children and also to create community.  It was really wonderful to hear the children from Midland perform simple and more complex pieces together. The concert also included a senior’s yukele orchestra from the area as well as folk musicians from a local Coffee House called Good Vibes.  Here we all were on a Saturday afternoon celebrating the musical offerings of young and old alike.  The Board of Directors for Sistema is made up of four seniors who must fundraise to keep the program going.  Sistema Huronia is now five years old.  It was so  good to see the seniors from the Board and the musical groups working so diligently to support the children of the community and creating community as they did it.

Later on this past week, I attended a play called Empty Regalia. This play was written by Ziigwen  Mixemong, a young Indigenous woman from the area about Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women.  The proceeds from the single performance of the  play all went to Greehaven, the local women’s shelter.  Ziigwen opened the play dressed in her Jingle Dress Regalia, dancing to the Strong Woman Song.  The short play showed four different scenarios in which an Indigenous woman was lost.  After each scenario, the woman donned a blank mask and then hung up her regalia on the black backdrop and disappeared.  By the end of the play, there were four brilliant regalia suspended against the black speaking loudly of the brilliance and beauty that was lost along with these women.

In the final scene, Ziigwen returned in her regalia and swept the area clean with her Eagle Feather as she danced suggesting hope for a new future.  The other actors were her friends who agreed to help her stage this play in a very short period of time.  The Orillia Opera House was well attended for this performance and the audience gave the actors a standing ovation.  After the play, there was a chance to ask the cast and crew questions to keep the dialogue going.  Once again, adults had come out to support young people who are trying to make a difference in the world and listened to what they had to say.  There are no easy solutions, but as Ziigwen said, How cool is it that we can shape the future?

My own children are all grown up now and the parenting role has changed but I still have a commitment to the young ones in the world and in my community.  Be they baby birds, young musicians or creative young people, they all need our support to grow and find their places in this world.  Indeed, they are building our future as well as their own and we would be wise to care for them well.

Sacred Symphony of Spring

We were just about to back the car out of the driveway when my partner noticed an orb spider web that hung between the passenger side mirror and the door of the car.  The heavy clouds had left beautiful drops of dew at all the intersection points of the web and it glistened in the pale morning light.  The spider must have spun its web during the night or early morning since it hadn’t been there the day before.  It probably seemed like a great place to create this intricate insect trap.

As we drove down the street, the web shook in the breeze but held up rather well.  Once on the highway, the super strong silk was no match for the wind and the web was swept away.  I hoped that the spider was hiding behind the mirror, safe from the wind.

The web felt like a metaphor for the times we are living in.  We build structures, social webs, ways of being that seem like good ideas at the time.  We think we are building on rock and that things will never change.  But suddenly, the ground begins to move.  Up is down and down is up.  Our structures seem to fall apart before our very eyes.  What we knew can be swept away in a moment.  My sadness at seeing the web destroyed was really sadness for my own sense of loss in these rapidly changing times.

But then I remembered the spider.  Once the car stops, she can swing down on a silken thread and find a better place to build her web. Or maybe she left before the car moved and is already spinning a new one.    She can make all the silk that she needs in her spinnerets and build a new web.  She is the ultimate symbol of creation.  In fact, in West African creation stories, Anansi the spider creates the world.  In Hopi stories, Spider Woman creates the first people with Tawa, the Sun god.  Many cultures have stories about spiders involving weaving and creating.

Spider reminded me that we are creators as well.  We can form new structures, new relationships, new ways of doing things.  Perhaps we have to examine if we want to recreate things as they were before, or if they need some changes and some new ideas.  Although it can seem as though our webs are being destroyed by the speed of change, in fact we are still connected to everything in a web that is part of the structure of the universe whether it is visible to us or not.

Coltsfoot Flowers

After driving for a while, we came to the Wye Marsh and went for a walk, in search of a seemingly elusive spring.  Even in the cold misty air, spring was evident.  The fiddleheads of the Ostrich Ferns and the Blue Cohosh stems were rising magically from the leaf littered forest floor.  The Coltsfoot flowers that look like miniatures suns were closed tightly waiting for the Sun to open them.  The Marsh Marigolds had yellow buds on them that were in the same holding pattern.  We found several cracked Canada Goose eggs that had been licked clean by some hungry mother raccoon or otter. 

Blue Cohosh

At the side of one of the ponds we found dozens of Tree Swallows dipping and diving as they ate insects.  It was time to stop and take in this amazing sight.  A Leopard Frog began to croak and the Canada Geese were honking as they do.  The Swallows were calling out in their shrill way as they flew past.  And then a bell began to ring from the Martyr’s Shrine across the highway, a reminder of the sacred calling people to worship in a church.  The tolling bell, the frog, the geese and the swallows created a kind of Sacred Spring Symphony as we watched the birds carve twisting arcs through the sky.  For me, they were all visible evidence of the web that connects us, a reminder of what is eternal and a call to keep on creating within that web.