fairies and roses in the garden

Walking through the rose garden and harvesting flowers for the kitchen is an exercise in ecstasy.   The fairies one sees in the rose garden are no less beautiful and no less sirenic than the mythical green fairy of absinthe benders gone past.

One rose, one color, one scent.  And then a second.  And then A third.  

And then Somehwere along the way—the fifth rose?  The ninth rose?  The dozenth?  The point of true takeoff is hard to triangulate—but somewhere along the way you find yourself spinning drunk, intoxicated by the heavy tones, suffocating in pleasure.  Suffocating with the force of two hands choked around your neck, gripping you with total pleasure. 

it’s as if the normal air wave that generally passes through your sinuses and fills your lungs with breath was somehow inflated a thousand times its’ normal density.  The smells are almost too thick to pass through, but somehow it manages.  Once through the noseway it expands through to the back of your head, filling your head, and consuming your entire sensory experience.  It smells so strong you can hear, feel, and taste it. 

We were hoisted off the ground by two shimmering fairies each, dangling from our shirt’s shoulders like laundry on the line—gently inches off the ground--and we were carried in a twirl and a spin from rose to rose to rose to rose to rose.

Bumping into one rose we noticed it contained at least fifteen raindrops sitting in its lilac colored womb from the rain storm ten days prior.  Sun distilled rose water, sitting in its mother’s womb.  And so we did what anyone would do in such a place-- we crawled on the ground and drank milk from the mother rose like infants.  A true highlight. 

After Harvesting several hundred roses, making way for new blooms to come, she took the harvest inside to distill into a rose water hydrosol.  Sunshine and roses, on demand, and in bottle.  blessings be counted.  

“THE WILD ROSE” – BY WENDELL BERRY

Sometimes, hidden from me in daily custom and in ritual 
I live by you unaware, as if by the beating of my heart.  

Suddenly you flare again in my sight

A wild rose at the edge of the thicket where yesterday there was only
 shade

And I am blessed and choose again,
 That which I chose before.

an april later

The early anxious pushes of first spring have crescendoed from wood, to bud, to leaf, to enlightenment.  Full expression—unabashed and righteous—everywhere! 

At first spring, the pale baby blue rosemary blossoms stood alone amongst the greenery, and the bees were quick to notice.   An April later, and the heavy, heavy rosemary note is just one of many wafting through the air, strumming melodically at my heart.  Lilac, and lavender, and rose, and fir all billow their inviting scents as I work in the garden while she harvests our salad for dinner.  The smells of this evening have saturated me.  Ribbons of aroma tangle around me and through me, Their scents become emotions and memories that snake up from the ground around my ankles, up my body, and straight to the hairs on the tip of my nose until I find myself swaying softly, side to side, comforted by memories past that are not necessarily my own, yet birthrights to us each none the less—the garden rocks me gently, and I feel grateful as I whistle a song I’ve never heard.  

As I stand still and breathe, the air is overwhelming. 

the bee, the hummingbird and she are all three drunk on the colors of the day—spinning like tops in the garden outside.  Spring fever has struck the area hard, and the days of rosemary’s lone reign are all but forgotten. 

Uninterested in the warm blooded frenzy in the garden out front, the rattlesnake on the rock out back sits tightly coiled away from me as I approach his rocky nest.  We watch each other, suspicious both. 

Finding a rattlesnake nest just feet away from the house is a conflict.  To find one in nature is awe-inspiring.  To find one outside your house usually carries with it prompt recommendations of removal and elimination of the nest.  We are still weighing how to handle this new discovery.  My heart and my gut tell me to have reverence for them, and to respect their space, but my mind can’t help play the tape in my head of a rattlesnake attacking my unknowing dog or visiting friend who is out for a stroll. 

I sat with the snake, and it spoke to me of transformation, of skin shedding, of seasons shifting, and of being reborn.  The snake medicine is pure source medicine, and Their shedding applies to us all.  It is the sacred covenant that all life agreed on at the beginning of time:  everything should always be changing.

hawk

“the sky is the realm of the hawk.  Through its flight it communicates with humans and with the great creator spirit.  It awakens our vision and inspires us to a creative life purpose…those who have the red tail hawk as a totem will be working with the kundalini…it may pop up as a totem at that point in your life when you begin to move toward your soul purpose more dynamically…the red tail hawk is usually a permanent resident in an area, although occasionally it might migrate.  This permanency reflects that as a totem, this hawk will be with you permanently once it shows up.”  Ted Andrews, Animal Speak

It started a week ago, and now we spend a few minutes together every day--The red tail hawk that lives in our garden.  She is surprisingly tolerant of our presence here; in fact, I would say she has been pretty outgoing about it.  The red tail only appearing on full-grown adults, the hawk has many years of residency on this land prior to our arrival. 

Encounters with wild animals have long been interpreted for their spiritual and other worldly meanings.  Particular details about the encounter can color this interpretation.  Was the animal soaring over head or perched on a fence post?  Did it come from the direction of the east—inspiration?  Or did it come from the west—creativity?  Or perhaps from our collective ancestral elders to the north?

ever since the hawk presented itself for the first time last week she has displayed flights in and from all of the cardinal directions, as well as directly overhead—stimulating our conversations and imaginations to a higher level of excited consciousness.  As the introductory quote suggests, hawk has arrived in our lives at a guttural heave-ho forward as we are finally prepared to engage with the regulatory and permitting aspects of achieving our goals towards developing a sustainable land based business on our new land. 

It’s hard to believe that it has been nine full months of preparing for this application.  Although we did not officially purchase our land until October, our process of due diligence began way back in July.  From that day forward we have been involved in a relatively constant research and development stage preparing for this week—applying for our county permits. 

It is certainly the end of one phase and the beginning of another, as we now prepare for their responses, conditions, and highly anticipated approval.  This is all likely to take an additional six to nine months, during which we will prepare for how to actually implement our plans when the approval finally comes.

One big element of this process is introducing ourselves to our neighbors—one by one—face to face—meeting them, letting them get a feel for who we are as people, and introducing them to our vision and future goals on the property.     So far this has been a highly rewarding process filled with genuine support, bottles of wine, gifts of handmade pottery, and extremely helpful local advice.  We are extremely grateful that this has been the case.

our area is so sparsely populated that some of our neighbors actually live across a pretty large canyon.  Here we are at their vineyard pointing to our home.  Can you see the tiny white speck in between my fingers?

And here is a shot of their land from our garden:

if you look to the very left (above our fruit trees, and above the firs on our side of the mountain) you can see a clearing in the forest on the next mountain over--this is a portion of their ridgetop vineyard.  I only show this to point out the relative distance to some of our "neighbors" in the "area".  here is a shot from within their vineyard: 

our process of design and preparation has been and continues to be constant.  The trick for us has been mastering the timeline and schedule in as stress-free of a manner as possible.  Occasional sleepless nights and wakeless days have resulted from poor mastery in this field, however, the trend is improving. 

I hope this small update finds you all well, and I hope to get back into writing more frequently. 

Nine months after finding this land we find ourselves having birthed an official Use Permit application.  We have put it out into the universe, now, and with any luck, it will soon take life.

raven song

what i have noticed, ever since December twenty first, the universal realignment from which blooms the next evolution of the human race, is that i have been noticing---well, that’s it really, just noticing.  People’s sensitivities are firing on all cylinders—it’s in the air, so to speak.  These weeks have brought a flurry of new reading material across my path (thanks to cross continental family visits and several interesting new people coming into our lives), and all roads continue to lead to me devouring any and all information on land based mythologies from indigenous peoples, shamanic healing, and the medicine of being in tune with nature. 

Now, I do recognize that perhaps my own interests and perspective have shifted having myself moved into a wilderness environment, and therefore now everything appears to be seen with those colored glasses—BUT—that possibility aside, i have more recently been focusing on the simple fact that some sort of shift in consciousness, or sub consciousness, or unconsciousness, has occurred amongst us humans—whether one has recognized it yet or not.  i don’t specifically ever ask for or seek interaction amongst readers of this site, although on this topic I would be very interested to hear your thoughts or experiences of late that might resonate or contrast this idea.

Of course, these times of heightened spirituality and connectedness amongst us—of course this  comes with the devastation of contrast:  school shootings and deadly hurricanes ravage communities while at the same time unifying them, strengthening them, and realigning them to their core.   

So for me personally, inspired by this connectedness, and spirit, I have found myself researching and interacting with the nature around our new home in amazing ways.  Today as we stood watching out the window a beautiful raven swooped onto a now winter-barren golden delicious tree next to our house, hopped on the branch causing his target apple to fall, and then took off high into the sky with the golden apple shining from his mouth.  These experiences with nature are always enjoyable, and full of wonder, but what’s even more magical is the lessons it teaches just by being in our presence.  

And so I Thank you raven, great sprit, for giving me your vision, for allowing me to see my life from thousands of feet above and to soar with the wisdom of the winds.  To see that what problems might seem big to me in this human head are small to you with your raven’s perspective.  What a blessing you give me.  in your flight, raven, i can see the entire world.  
 
From the blackness of the raven, comes the light of the day.
from the dark womb of nightfall is born a new day. 
I honor you raven, as you honor me. 
I soar in the power of freedom,
And I thank you, teacher raven,
For your flight.

________

this entry was inspired directly by two great books I just finished: dreaming your world into being: the shaman's secrets to having the life you desire now, by jon rasmussen, and animal-speak: the spiritual and magical powers of creatures great and small, by ted andrews.  

The encounter with the raven came from a meditation I read about in animal-speak, and anyone reading this can try it starting at this very moment—city, country, northern hemisphere, southern…what animals do you see daily?  What animal do you see that always draws your attention? or encounters you in a funny or traumatic way? 

Anything like this, in regards to animals you see or hear, you can take and turn into an inspiration based on the archetype it represents.  In my example, the raven taught me the wisdom of vision.  In yours, an ant in the bathroom might teach you how to carry a heavy load, or a deer in the woods might teach you to move with ease.  A rat in the subway can teach you to be industrious and scrappy. 

whatever the animal, it has a unique quality you can learn from or relate to (even if your ego wants to dismiss it as lowly).  find whatever meaning you will, it is open for interpretaion.  at a minimum, if no omen or archetype presents itself, just being open to the process and cultivating the extra awareness will bring a few moments of joy and pleasure to your thought filled day!

on this day

We stood in a circle and chanted hymns of the universe, praising the presence of abundance abound.

Lying on the table, the feather rattled her to stillness, while feathers and flocks exploded outside overhead.  

The sounds of trumpets and bugles and lightning erupted into laughter as the pumping of the raven’s wings glided through the air like a ripple in the pond, melting my face to the grass.

Tears are streaming down our cheeks.

the sky purges sweet drops of rain to all the earth’s creatures, and here we are.  My feet anchored in the cold wet assurance of happening -I wiggle each one to make sure—and I float off to everywhere.

somehow both upwards, inwards, outwards, and downwards, verbally almost no words, continually onwards, both frontwards and backwards, the expansion finds itself with no source and no limit until awareness becomes aware of only awareness itself, leaving me for a moment to be the watcher of things.

rumi entered and said: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.  

and so like this, it is done, it is done, it is done. 

admiration through emulation

With my back pressed against her trunk, my gaze to the sky, and my feet kicked up onto her own, I said the only thing that I could think of to comfort us:

~it’s ok tree, I’m gonna die here too~

I closed my eyes and the back of my body, the back of my head, turned into a checkerboard of flesh and light and dissolved in an outward expansion, emanating from my core and disappearing into the land all at once. 

i will live here, and then i will die here, i thought--simplifying what feels like a complex world of personal journeys and endeavors and efforts and triumphs and challenges into a world of much more finite simplicity.  

if I could write my own demise it would surely be the casual lie down and the gentle break down exhibited by this tree.  What more grace could you ask after a life of such splendor?