Earth Day is a Chance for Reciprocity

 

Earth Day was celebrated for the 51^st time last week.  Since some our ancestors lost their cultural celebrations of earth, water, sun and moon hundreds of years ago, we tend to honour Earth on this one day of the year by keeping her free of litter.  Or, to say it less formally, we pick up other people’s garbage and then send it to a landfill site.  It’s ironic if you think about it but it’s a start.

It’s all we have come up with so far so it’s what we do.  My partner picks up garbage everywhere, on most days, as an act of reciprocity to Earth.  He recycles what he can and green bags the rest.  So, it was fairly normal for us on a lovely sunny Saturday morning to join our neighbours in a town wide Earth Day clean up, socially distanced of course.  My partner and I chose to clean up the wooded area beside the post office.  We have noticed that no one seems to care about the wooded areas that have no human residents and bits of plastic and drink cans somehow end up in there. 

This particular wooded area is important to us because it is where we pick fiddleheads in the spring.  So, our act of reciprocity to Earth for the fabulous fiddleheads is to remove the toxic plastic and discarded metal that have ended up on top of the Ostrich Fern mounds and around the tree trunks.  At the side of the road under the sand that was spread in the winter I found a small bag of household garbage.  Maybe a snowplow was responsible? Surely no one would throw that out of their car window.  However, judging by the plastic and paper cups at the side of the road, this part of town is roughly the distance from the take out restaurants at the gas station that it takes a walking person to drink an Ice Cap, a coffee or a can of pop.

On the evening before the big garbage clean up day, we had tackled the little secluded beach that the teenagers frequent.  We had previously noticed a huge piece of foam rubber embedded in the sand.  I guess teens like to be comfy in their seclusion.  We came prepared with a wheelbarrow, shovel and picaroon (lumbering tool).  We dug around the edge of the foam and tugged, dug some more and tugged some more but the thing was anchored somehow.  More digging and tugging plus some huffing and puffing revealed a tree root the diameter of a large carrot that had grown through the sturdy mesh around the foam.  Chopping the root with the shovel in a few places eventually freed the waterlogged foam which we manhandled into the wheelbarrow.  My partner wheeled that barrow over sand, through the parking lot and up the hill to the garbage can by the trail where we left it for the Township pick-up the next day.

On our way to the drop off point we had noticed lots of bottles and cans floating in a large flooded area.  Since my partner had worn his Wellies, in he went with a bag to pick up the recycling.  I used another bag to pick up garbage from the edge and eventually the area was back to earth, water, mud and stones.  Lovely.  I get very little satisfaction from cleaning my home but seeing nature returned to beauty feels really good.

After two bouts of roadside pick-up on Saturday, we went to the water’s edge to relax.  Our neighbours there, also in a spring cleaning kind of mood were burning garbage in very smoky fires.  The smell was unpleasant, so we decided to take the canoe out for a paddle since the calm water was inviting and blessedly smoke free.  We had reached the other side of the bay when my partner spied, you guessed it, more garbage.  A huge piece of plastic which was half of a dock floatation device was at the edge of the water.  Using the boat hook, he dragged it over to the canoe and propped it on the bow while I shifted my weight to counterbalance the effort.

We paddled back to town and stopped at the Government Dock where there is a public garbage can where my partner planned to leave the big piece of black plastic.  We beached the canoe and he dragged it up the steep slope to the public area.  It took a while for him to come back to the canoe so I knew that there was a story there.  It turns out that a man who was fishing off of the dock told him he couldn’t leave the plastic there.  My partner told him that it was clean up day in Waubaushene and that the township was picking up the garbage.  “Well,” said the man, “I work for the township and they won’t want to pick that up.  You can’t leave your garbage there!”   My partner explained that it wasn’t his garbage and that he had pulled it out of the water.  “Do you want me to put it back in the water?”  asked my partner.  The man decided to back down and said that he was only kidding.  My partner returned to the canoe shaking his head.  “You don’t expect to get yelled at for cleaning up,” he said.

But, it wasn’t all bad.  Earlier in the week, spying a small shiny piece of plastic in the ditch, my partner had clambered down the bank to retrieve it.  He was surprised to find that it was a plastic twenty dollar bill!  Reciprocity of a kind I suppose.  He also found a sturdy steel pole from someone’s dock.  We’re not sure how it got to the side of the highway but we can repurpose it none the less.

I have had quite a lot of time to think about picking up garbage recently.  I do it out of respect for Earth and as a form of reciprocity for all she gives to us.  And it seems to me that it sends out a message.  If garbage is left lying around I think it attracts more garbage.  It sends a signal that it is okay to “clean out your car” at the side of the road.  I know that some people pride themselves on having very clean yards and cars and then I see them throwing garbage elsewhere.  Perhaps it is the disconnect that they have with Earth – it is not their responsibility and it is certainly not their mother.  They only identify with their yard, car and house, their private property.  The worldview of the individual has separated and isolated them.  They don’t feel responsible for common space.

As we strode along the streets with our green garbage bag and clear recycling bag, one woman called to us from her yard.  “Thank you,” she sang out.  That felt good to be thanked.  It felt perplexing to be yelled at later.  And when we took our last bag to the growing pile of bags at the pick up point we felt we had been a part of something good.  We had been part of a community of people who did care about common space and were willing to put that into action.  They extended their idea of community to the Earth and its other-than-human life.  All in all, we had a very happy Earth Day.

Weaving the Broken into the Whole

 

Chaos.  Destruction.  I could feel it in my body.  My skin tightened and my heart hurt.  I had been warned and was somewhat prepared.  But, when I walked through the forest that had been “thinned” by the county loggers, I felt my shields, my protective energy trying to rise around my whole body, especially my eyes.  I felt physical pain in my body as I looked around me at the broken trunks, limbs and branches that lay strewn on the forest floor as if a giant had clumped through the trees.

What was left behind by the loggers as "waste".

My colonized brain broke in with rationality.  This forest is owned by the county and in fact was planted by the county one hundred years ago to repair the total deforestation that the earlier settlers “accomplished.”  The animals left and many of the people left when the sandy soil that was no good for farming, started to blow away.  Then, the largest urban forest in Ontario was re-planted in the 1920's to mitigate the harm.  Some might call it a plantation as many of the Red and White Pine trees are planted in furrowed rows like a battalion of soldiers.  But over time, it has become a forest.

This Simcoe County Forest still logs the scattered plots to pay for more land purchases.  And the Ash trees in the mixed hardwood area of the Sturgeon River Forest where I walk, has been infected with the Emerald Ash Borer.  This introduced insect will kill the Ash trees and they will fall over eventually.  So, it looks like the county cut them down to sell the wood before the trees died.  And the old Poplars which they also cut would probably die soon and fall over.  So says my left brain, my rational brain, my colonized brain.

Neatly stacked Ash logs waiting for pick-up.

Hundreds of logs are stacked at the forest entrance, near the road, for easy pick-up by log transport trucks.  The logs are stacked neatly, with precision.  After all, they are valuable to the county which makes over a million dollars every year from “timber sales”. From my pandemic weary perspective, from my right brain, they look like bodies stacked up.  I think of the seniors that died by the dozens in a local nursing home.  I try not to think of the bodies from countries that ran out of resources to handle the virus.

The county cut the trees down in February when the land was still frozen and the spring plants that would later emerge were still safely tucked under the surface of the forest floor.  The logging area was cordoned off so we couldn’t see what was going on.  We stayed away for six weeks and only ventured back recently.  The yellow caution tape and the “No Entry” signs were gone so we walked into the “Logging Zone” with trepidation.  We knew that the canopy of still bare branches would be punched through with space.  The new sunlight will afford excellent growing conditions for the Balsam Fir, Beech and Maple saplings down below.  We knew that the crew wouldn’t take the smaller branches out, but would leave them on the forest floor to eventually become humus again, returning their nutrients to their source.  But, what we didn’t expect were large logs, thick branches and small trunks with torn, ragged edges.  “War zone,” were the words that came to my mind.  I wanted to close my eyes, to run away, to pretend it wasn’t there.  But instead, we walked through.  My colonized left brain tried to make it okay.  But, my intuitive right brain screamed, “What is the matter with humans?”

We continued into the slashed area.  This was not a clear cut.  Selected trees (Ash and Poplar) had been “harvested.”  I could only tell where the trees had stood by looking at the hole in the canopy and by looking at the stumps on the ground and by looking at the piles of logs and branches that could not be sold and were therefore “of no value”.  This area of the forest has a rich and thriving understory.  In the spring, these forest floor dwellers pop up from under the leaf litter.  Wild Leeks, Trilliums, Trout Lilies, Sharp-lobed Hepatica, Giant Blue Cohosh are the plants that I identified there last spring.  How are they going to grow through thick logs that may take decades to decompose?  Since we have an early spring this year, the Wild Leeks were there to greet us, in small green patches between the logs and branches.  We moved wood off of the more obvious patches like a rescue crew after an earthquake.  But the job was too big for two seniors with no tools.

My friend from Tree Sisters who I speak with on-line, had recently been inspired to ask the other Tree Sisters to create ceremonies to ask trees for forgiveness.  Not only for how we treat them, but for making weapons of war out of their tree bodies.  I like this idea and it was most timely as I surveyed the chaos before my eyes.  I sat on a stump and did just this, asked the trees to forgive humans for being so blind.  Why, I wondered, did the forest crew not think about the forest floor?  Perhaps they have never been there in the spring and the snow that covered the Earth while they were cutting blinded them to what lay beneath.

I continued to wrestle with these ideas on subsequent visits to the forest.  I felt under it all, helpless.  I knew that with the lockdowns, people are doing more home projects and the demand and price for lumber has gone up.  Where were these trees headed?  What would they become?  But, my rational mind did not convince my intuitive mind and my body that this was all okay.  It still felt “wrong” to my skin which tightened when I entered the zone.  It felt disrespectful.  A worldview that advised one to not waste any part of a being that gives its life to you was not evident before my eyes.  It was like shooting a deer and taking just the legs, said my right brain.  What would a worldview that respected the lives given or taken suggest?  Perhaps firewood for people who heat their homes with wood, perhaps wood chips for mulch.  I struggled with the notion.

Some of the piles of branches and logs will no doubt provide homes for small creatures like rabbits, said my left brain.  Yes, nature will figure this out in time but what was my responsibility as a human who loved this forest?  If there was no pandemic, I could easily walk elsewhere and ignore this zone.  But, the other trails are full of people from the city who are automatically suspect due to their lack of social distancing.  And, we did not want to abandon the forest just because it was painful for us.

I was on a call for Liberating Our Creative Voices for Earth, a course from Tree Sisters and was still pondering this situation.  As the leader guided us through a meditation, an idea began to emerge.  What if the wood was respected and used to create something else?  We don’t have the equipment to turn it into firewood and haul it out.  What if we rearranged it to create in situ?  As a writer, I imagined turning the logs into letters and writing a message such as “LOVE” or “RESPECT” or “PEACE” or "ASH WAS HERE".  Or perhaps, a symbol, I thought, still with a two dimension mind set.  A peace sign, a heart?  As the meditation was nearing an end, the 3D image of a huge basket woven from branches emerged.  Yes, that was it. 

The axe is in the stump that was part of the base

The image of a woven basket has been an important one to me recently.  As I open space for people to co-create, I imagine a basket being woven with all the interactions, the interconnections.  This helps me to see every comment and response as roots and branches in the basket that is the invisible container for co-creative energy.  Some sort of container seems to be critical to curb our individualistic tendencies that are a critical part of a colonizing worldview.  This worldview allows us to take whatever we need for ourselves and to take more than we need to amass wealth.  It teaches us to compete and to “go it alone” if the “going gets tough.”  Instead of finding ways to work together, we are more likely to break ties and turn our backs on people that have different ideas from us.  And so, creating a visible basket seemed to be a good symbol for the co-creative energy that needs to be learned and practiced by humans.

We started off with 7 upright staves.

We headed into the forest with hand tools; axe, loppers and saw.  We cut small trunks into four-foot lengths and sharpened one end before driving them into the forest floor in a circle that encompassed a large fresh stump.  These became the basket’s staves.  Then we used the lopper and the saw to cut long branches that were somewhat flexible to weave around the staves.  Ash wood is strong and flexible.  It is used for gunwales on boats.  Indigenous people used and still use Black Ash wood to weave baskets.

After a while, the forest floor around the staves became clear as we cut branches and weaved them between the staves.  The basket grew taller.  We had to add some more staves to strengthen it.  The wood was teaching us how to work with it.  Once the horizontal weaving was complete, many thin, short branches were inserted in a vertical fashion at the rim of the finished basket, an echo of how their parent trees stood in the forest. 

Less than one day after seeing the image in my imagination, the finished basket sat before us.  Looking at it, changed how I felt, besides being tired.  The curving sides, the “empty space” within, the base formed by the top of the stump all spoke to my right brain.  It felt respectful to reshape these broken pieces into something whole.  A space for co-creativity was made co-creatively with two humans weaving and the trees advising.  It felt like a small act of asking for forgiveness, of penitence.

We returned to the basket the next day with a socially distanced friend.  As we got close to it on the path, our eyes searched the piles of discarded wood for the round shape.  Our hearts leapt when our eyes identified it from afar and our steps quickened.  Our eyes now focused on the curve of the woven branches, on the way that many had become one.  The basket was a magnet, a symbol of hope, and a non-verbal message that we can create beauty.  Ugliness is not a given and we should not get good at living with ugliness.  Not when we are creatives that can enact creation over and over again.

Slab of wood in front of the basket.  What does it look like to you?

Now, my eyes are scanning other piles, soft focused and open for another possibility to “appear” in my mind’s eyes.  My partner found thin slabs of trunks and leaned them against the bottom of the basket like shields. In the grain of the wood and stained patterns I saw birds and faces.  What if I brought water based paints and added colour?  On the round sawed off ends of three logs, I suddenly saw the images of Monarch butterflies getting smaller as the logs were successively farther away from the viewer.

The logged forest looks like our world these days.  Things are missing, things look broken and other things are growing.  And yet, here we are in the midst of it all, trying to make sense of it, searching for a response.  What can we create from what is left?  How can we create beauty and healing?  And how can we do this together, co-creating our future world? I do know that we will learn how to do this as we begin and that there is good advise to be had from our other than human relations.

 

Forest Gratitude Spot Creates Community

 “Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass. “Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm.” (p. 249)  Kimmerer goes on to say that no doubt there were ceremonies for the land that existed in the countries that the settlers came from but they seem to have become lost and now our ceremonies are all for humans, such as birthdays, anniversaries and graduations.  She encourages us to create new ceremonies to honour the land and reclaim this part of ourselves.

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer
Indigenous Botanist, University Professor and Author

Inspired by Kimmerer’s words, I wondered what a ceremony could look like for the forest that has been a sanctuary for me during the pandemic.  There are many people  that we see over and over again as we walk the forest trails.  I know many of them only by their dogs or children.  I imagine that they may feel the same way that I do.

A question came to me.  How could we share our gratitude to the forest while being socially distanced?  What might that look like?  The idea of a “Forest Gratitude Spot” came to me.  My partner built a little wooden box with a hinged door to hang on a tree.  I put a small notebook inside with a pencil and invited people to share their gratitude.  It is right beside the river so immediate hand washing is possible.

I wrote on the first two pages of the notebook:  “Over this past year the forest has been a sanctuary for many of us.  We have been free to walk among the trees and beside the river that keeps us healthy.  So, perhaps you would like to take a moment and feel grateful and share that here with all of us in this little notebook.  Gratitude is great for your health too!”

And then, to seed the gratitude, I wrote, “I am grateful for the peacefulness of this forest.  I can hear the Grouse drumming and the Ravens groaking high above.  I forget all my troubles when I am here.”

Then we hung the box on the broken limb of a Grandmother Eastern White Cedar on the bank of the Sturgeon River and waited.

The next day, to my delight, someone had left a message.  It read, “Grateful for the lovely weather, the fish in the river, the sounds of the forest, my beautiful company and a couple of hounds, Louie and Kiba.”

The following day it was rainy but there was another message: “Grateful for the quiet and peaceful water.  We are grateful for our amazing friends and the wonderful memories we make here.”

Below this, I added “So grateful to see the Trilliums and Trout Lilies return again.”

The following words were shared in the little book over the next two days:

"Grateful to live so close to such a beautiful spot.  Grateful to be able to bring my dogs to the river for an off leash walk/swim.  Grateful for the person who showed me this special spot and for the memories it has held and has yet to bring. (Heart)

"It's a beautiful spot.  I love the sound of the river."

"Good trail.  Thumbs up."

I added.  "I am grateful for the strong roots that anchor the trees.  The forest anchors me as well."

So, that’s what has happened in the past five days.  I wonder if this qualifies as a community ceremony.  What actually happens when a person takes the time to be conscious about their gratitude for the forest?  We know from studies that that person will feel better and produce healthy hormones.  What happens when we witness someone else’s gratitude?  Mirror neuron science would suggest that it helps us to feel gratitude as well.  How does feeling grateful affect our actions?  Well, we tend to protect what we value so that could lead to political opinions and actions I suppose. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “To have agency in the world, ceremonies should be reciprocal co-creations, organic in nature, in which the community creates ceremony and the ceremony creates communities” (p. 250).  I like the idea that ceremony will create community.  I do feel connected to the other people who have written in the book.

 But what does the forest experience when we are grateful for it?  How does it experience this act of reciprocity?  To understand this requires a leap across a chasm for many non-Indigenous people.  Kimmerer writes, “…we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart.” (p. 248)  But, what if loving the land did have an energy that moved outside of ourselves? “Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm.  These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic.  These are ceremonies that magnify life,” writes Kimmerer (p. 249).  Magnifying life during a pandemic seems like a good idea.

I see this opening of co-creative space as a social experiment, to see what will happen.  I also see it as an art form and I am putting out a call to kindred spirits to co-create a gratitude spot.  It is a ridiculously simple art form in a high tech world but perhaps the medium is the message.  The forest so generously brings us life and health and we simply need to send back that generosity of spirit, that gratitude and dare we say it, our deep collective love for the land.

On the second day of the Forest Gratitude Spot, we met a young couple on the trail.  They asked us how to get to the river.  We told them where to find a trail down to the Sturgeon River from where we currently were.  "But," I added, "the best place in back in the direction that you came from."  They told me where they had parked and I showed them by pointing that they had turned left when they should have turned right.  It is an easy mistake.  They thanked us and continued to the closest path that we showed them first and we continued on our way.  After ten minutes, we were at the crossroads where they had gone the wrong way at the beginning of their walk.  Knowing that they would have to come back to this point to get to their car, I drew the word "RIVER" in the dirt path and added an arrow --> pointing the way.  

The next day, I was at the place of my message in the dirt on my way to the river (and the Forest Gratitude Spot) when I noticed new words scratched into the earth, just below my scratched "RIVER" reading, "THANK YOU!".  I burst out laughing because I knew it was the young couple who had read my message and were grateful.  I was surprised because I had not expected to be thanked.  I was just being a mother-at-large.  It makes me wonder if Mother Earth belly laughs when we show our gratitude to her.  Maybe that laughter is the sudden rustle of the leaves or a burst of bird song or a meadow of flowers.  Maybe that is how it is once we've jumped the chasm.

Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions.

Anamcara Surrounds Us

 

Ancient wisdom and knowledge encoded in the Celtic script of Ogham has intrigued me for a while now.  Since the Celtic New Year of Nov. 1^st, I have been studying the Ogham trees for each month and I have shared some of that information here in this blog.  The trees are mnemonic devices for this knowledge and I have become aware of how this is bringing a new awareness to me when I am in the woods.

Recently, after a two month hiatus, I returned to the forest that has sustained me over the past year of the pandemic.  But humans are not the only ones that are suffering.  In February, the county logging crew cut down hundreds of Ash trees that have been damaged or killed by the Emerald Ash Borer.  The heart of the forest was blocked from visitors and the sounds of chainsaws and heavy machinery was hard to listen to, so we took a break from walking there until the logging was done.  Returning this week, we found the forest quiet once again and hundreds of Ash logs, stacked at the entrance, awaiting trucks, silently.

The soft spongy forest floor felt so good to my feet and legs.  We have been walking on a paved and gravel trail system during our forest hiatus.  But, now the earth in the forest seemed to rise to meet my footsteps.  Birch trees gleamed bright white in the sunshine and I thought, yes, Birch is the first tree of the Celtic year. “New beginnings,” it heralded as I looked around for spring tree buds. 

Pussywillows are everywhere with their silver-grey catkins shining in the sun. I stop to stroke them with my fingers and I rub them against my cheek like a cat.  I found two large cuttings that were lying at the base of one tree as if the tree were offering them to me or someone took so many that they easily forgot two lying on the ground.  I brought them home and put them into a jar of water.  Every spring, I root pussywillows this way as I renew my life long relationship with the willow, the tree of January.  The circle moves as I travel it and it is spring once again.  Willow, the Queen of the Water grows in the same places as Alder, King of the Water, in ditches and along the lakeshore.  The long male catkins of the Alders are everywhere as well.   I never knew what they were until this year when I learned about them in February.  And now they are everywhere I look, as plain as day, now that my eyes know what to look for.  Alder with its long male catkins and tiny female ones that are only now emerging at the tips of the branches right above the male ones that will fertilize them with pollen.  The renewal of life is just waiting there.  The balance between male and female is evident to my now knowing eyes.

Above, you can easily see the long male catkins on this Alder.  If you look carefully at the short branch at the top right corner of this photo,
you can see the small female catkins which will become cones after
fertilization.  They are in very close proximity to the male catkins to
make fertilization easily accomplished.  In the picture to the right, you can see how plentiful the catkins are.

While looking closely at one Alder, my eye moved upward, searching for female catkins when something large and white got my attention at the top of a nearby Poplar.  A huge white and brown bird was perched up high, turning only its regal head to direct its powerful eyesight in search of prey.  I later learned that it was an immature Red-Tailed Hawk.  Hawk, messenger from the ancestors, there, plain as day, once I looked up.  My Celtic ancestors believed that all of life had soul or anam and so spiritual guidance or anamcara  was all around us.  What was Hawk saying to me?  Pay attention, look carefully?

I came across a new Hawthorn as I walked.  This tree of April is setting buds.  Are they flowers or leaves?  It is too early to tell.  I will visit them repeatedly, waiting to be informed, to be shown.  I tie tiny bells with red wool onto each one I meet, to introduce myself.  Hawthorn’s medicine opens the heart.  Hawthorn’s protective thorns demand respect.  Hawthorn is a gateway into the imaginal realm.  I feel a close connection to this tree for some reason.  The Hawthorns where I live are small and often have a fungus that comes from the Juniper and turns the Hawthorn branches and leaves orange.  But things are not always what they seem, especially in the imaginal realm.  I put my thumb up against the tip of the thorns to feel its sharpness but I don’t draw blood.

Hawthorn thorns before the leaves and flowers emerge.

The tree for May will be Oak and I am already looking at these strong giants that grow in the park beside our home.  I watch them, waiting for their knowledge to be shared.

Our world of consumerism has taken a hit this past year.  Shopping is now somewhat dangerous instead of relaxing.  Only necessities are purchased.  This creates space for walking through the trees, space for imagination, space for learning, space for anam that is shared as anamcara.  My ancestors understood this.  It is in my bones, somewhere, waiting to live again.  Hawk shows me – pay attention!  The insanity diminishes in the forest and the trees speak and instruct as the land rises up to support my journey. 

It feels as though we have crossed some kind of threshold and are in a new world, well, some of us.  Some are waiting for the old to return but I fear they will be disappointed.  There is a kind of freedom in this newness, a freedom to embrace what is and has always been around us and to listen and pay attention.  Trees have been here much longer than humans.  They are our elders and our ancestors and they have wisdom to impart.  We just need to listen.