Day 9, part 2: Grand Indeed

Catching up now, since we have safely landed at Pleasant Hill, here is the:

Grand Canyon report from Day 9

We considered passing the Canyon by in order to save time, and dismissed that idea within seconds. Our hearts were clear. I wanted to see Flagstaff, to satisfy a nostalgic itch I was having, so we fueled up at Starbucks and also put gas in the car. What a sweet western town, plenty of hippie vibes, and that mountain pine scent in the air.

We chose the more scenic route that took us across the shoulders of the San Francisco Peaks through the Coconino and Kaibab national forests, and were well rewarded with towering pines and views of the mountain turning blue-violet in the afternoon. Lo and behold the engine light came on again once we passed 7,000 feet in altitude. This time we knew why.

San Francisco Peaks

We arrived at the park gates to find three lanes of visitors, checked in (thank you Senior Park Pass!) and were guided to a particular lot. Steps from our car was the storied abyss, glorious in late afternoon light. I oogled, I snapped pics, walked, then sat and filled myself with canyon beauty.

When I sat and allowed the scene to fill me with color and light and space and beautiful air, I began to “see” things. My mind embellished the natural patterns with order that was unlikely to be there: Tibetan monasteries, stupas, temples,  arches and windows. There was even a pyramid!

It’s true, the pictures just don’t do it justice. Maybe it’s the lack of vertigo?

I felt like I was an instrument being played by the landscape. It was sublime, splendid, spectacular, and special, and I will commence a plan to return with the time to contemplate, to paint, and to invite the Grand Canyon to make music with me.

The Josephine Report:

Grand Canyon, Take One

How many beautiful calendar pictures of the Grand Canyon have I ingested in my lifetime?  Cliche # 2: no picture captures the overwhelming “whatness” you’re reaching for as you approach the experience itself.

I think I expected a straight-down-from-the-rim-to-the-bottom visual, and what I discovered was a complex system of canyons stretching over many hundreds of twisty square miles. Looking down, I could barely discern the Colorado River (and only a tiny glimpse from one vantage point) that created this majesty. Looking across, the other world of the North Rim was unimaginable, and the Painted Desert beyond, unfathomable.

I’m so accustomed to be able to focus and that’s just what this landscape refuses. Here’s what friend Glee Bartlett has to say about that:

“I remember painting at the canyon. I spent the day at it, but the canyon kept changing — every I’d time I’d look up I’d lose my focal point. So, I also painted — in great detail — the large green fly that lit on my easel and rested a for a longggg time. I love that painting.”

The distances, colors and perspectives were constantly evolving as the late afternoon light and our position changed. Distances? The faraway to the North Rim is just that, until I read the placard saying it’s 9 miles away. And  the Painted Desert behind THAT — the same desert we’d visited (admittedly in a different part) several hours earlier. There is definitely something mind-bending going on here.

Glee, I remain in gratitude to your large green fly, who helps to ground us,

Josephine

Solar Flare: Spring, and Creativity Surge!

This awe-inspiring video made my day. I was mesmerized by the slo-mo rain of fire and hypnotic music. What a universe we live in!

Beyond the inescapable awe of contemplating such a life-giving solar furnace in action, and it’s profound beauty, I see a visualization of the creative spirit. There is something inside us, something powerful, seething, churning and growing, that eventually has to burst forth.

This engine of spirit, this passion to create burns within all of us, and emerges when we flow with spirit and create from the heart. How awesome is that? You are made of star stuff. You are magic.

Spring brings friends out of hibernation

I’m waiting for spring. And I’m dreading it.

(click to listen to peepers)

I’m eager for song: choir, bird, frog. And blossoms: those first wild daffodils push a silly grin up from my belly. A forecast of snow, cause for joy last week, makes me angry today. I want to frolic by the river with dogs, and laugh with friends on the deck.

But then, the spider walks across my bedroom floor and there’s a tick on the dog.

It’s not that I don’t like bugs; I am appreciative of all sentient beings, and my definition of sentience is broad. But I still have a lingering horror of arachnids. Creepy wolf spiders and those Lymes-spreading deer ticks can all just DIE, my karma be damned.

Of course, strictly speaking, neither ticks nor spiders are true bugs. ‘True bugs’ are of the order Hemiptera, comprising around 50,000–80,000 species of critters like cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, shield bugs, and more.  That distinction gets lost in the common speech, however. The word bug comes from bogge, the Low German word for goblin. Clearly the word implies a pest, if not a monster.

But back to those arachnids. They are pretty much on my hate list. The purported source of my arachnophobia is a story of my young parent’s ill-fated trip to Arkansas in 1956, where upon I was traumatized by the sight of my mother being chased from the shower by a tarantula. The legend continues to describe the horrors of southern life for these innocent Michiganders: coral snakes on the patio, 300 ticks on the dog, and my favorite: baby Patty playing with a scorpion in her bath.

As symbols go, the Scorpion has a mixed message: fearless and resilient, but with a sting. I am indeed proudly November born, and astrologers have been known to apologize to me when they see my chart. Scorpio Sun, Moon, Mercury with Saturn sitting on my natal sun. Saturn, the task master. But that is a post for another day. Suffice to say that I’m well acquainted with the celestial Scorpion.

So I think the dance of fear with my arachnid cousins is significant. Scorpio is said to have a dual nature:

Scorpios are known for their impenetrable defences, and for their ability to beguile opponents into underestimating both their resilience, and the fixidity of purpose that fuels their interminable self-will.   [snip]

Transcendence from the crawling scorpion to the soaring eagle, still predatory, still conveying the essence of patience and penetration, but capable of flight and height, brings together the theme of destruction and renewal …- supports the view that in this respect the eagle is representing the ‘Scorpionic myth’ of the phoenix.

from skyscript.co.uk/scorpio.

 

So much rings true here; I have always been intense, moody, charming, resilient, determined. I have passions that run deep. Unchecked, they can get obsessive, stalker-ish. I’ve been known to get fanatic about what’s ‘true’, and I can spin mystery and imagination into new truths that I uphold as realities unseen.

I certainly rekindle myself out of the ashes of the past. My life has been a series of reinventions, and with each one I’m a bit more trusting that this isn’t a malfunction, it’s my fate, my truth.  Live, soar, fall, get up, dust off and rise again.
I saw the eagle this week; they are awakening for spring as well, and this one, splendid whhite head and spread tail, was diving for a squirrel in the road. Whenever I have to ask: “Was that an eagle?” I know it isn’t, for when I see the real thing I am always stunned by how big they are. Unmistakably grand, beautiful and fierce.

Fortunately scorpions do not inhabit the forests of Southern Maryland. However, should I migrate to the south west, which on occasion I have threatened to do, I will have them to contend with. In the meantime, I have the spiders and the ticks, and most frightening of all, I have my own peculiar nature to contend with.

Setting Sail into the Storm

One hundred years ago and only the old watermen would have known: a great storm is approaching. So late in the year, the lowering sky and restless wind could be chalked up to October’s moods. But now, the Weather Channel blares drama from every flatscreen.

OK, I’ll confess: I’m right there with them, those eager meteorologists. This is their moment, and it’s the best reality show on TV, stealing the ratings from not only Real Housewives and Storage Wars, but the last gasps of the Presidential election. There’s good old Jim Cantore, knee-deep in surf, gamely reporting at the risk of his own dry socks.

I love this stuff. I grew up with a northern fresh-water version of bad weather, doing homework by lantern light and cooking on the fireplace though fierce winter storms. You can’t scare me. So although my hotel is closing at five tonight due to a mandatory evacuation of low-lying St. George Island, I don’t want to go.

I’ve planned this trip for months! It’s my reward for soldiering through the grueling house dissolution project. Not the parental home this time, but my own. And along comes the Perfect Storm, just in time to derail my get-away. I want to curl up here in this hotel, in my nest of white comforters and pillows, TV remote in hand and watch the river rage from my room, perched high and dry above the waves.

The wind has slowly built its strength over the last three days, and now is an insistent presence. At first I was disappointed to get a room on the west side of the building, until I visited a friend this morning. There on the sunrise side, with its nice view of bay and dock, what met me was a rude and pushy wind, cold enough to make you want to shut the windows. So now I am glad to be back on my leeward side.

When the storm gets nearer the wind will turn and make a nasty onshore assault, but at the moment I’m enjoying the shelter of the building at my back, hot tea in my hands, while I watch the small trees toss their manes and marsh grasses bow. The arc of each gust pushes a crescent of riffles across the slate gray surface.

I should be packing. I don’t want to go. I like my high perch, a good view and well away from any big trees that might decide to fly around. Somehow I think the hotel will be better at keeping its lights on than my home. And without my dogs, home is cold comfort indeed.

Besides, the gulls seem unconcerned. They sail the wind as if it were a summer breeze, so perfectly formed for gliding, their long tapered wings only moving when they head into the wind. Look: they are busy now diving and fishing. There are hundreds of birds, all over the river. The more I look, the more I see. I want to join them, these small darts hanging on the wind.

I feel a sweet breath of calm between wind gusts, but they are getting shorter. The next blast follows on the heels of the one, nipping, chasing, hurrying to join the storm.

I love bad weather. You can’t scare me, most of the time. Last hurricane, though, it got to me. In the howling night of Irene, at home in the swamp forest, the grinding shriek of the wind came in whirling thrusts and woke me in time to hear a massive oak smack down just outside my bedroom window. I grabbed my big dog in a bear hug and burrowed beneath the quilts, shaking like a leaf.

A storm is an engine: heat and moisture help set it into motion, then its low pressure center becomes a black hole, hoovering everything into itself. This ravening wind churns along ocean currents, sucking sand, devouring islands, hurling trees about like toothpicks. It’s nothing personal; we are but grains of sand to rearrange.

Sandy’s pull is strong now. I see clouds racing to meet her. Leaves are pulled loose and sprayed across the water. They call up from downstairs and want to know when I am leaving. I eye the water, beginning to creep across the road. The pressure is dropping and the pressure is on: I need to leave before it is no longer an option.

The day grows darker and it’s time to go. The thought of setting sail in my car frightens me. Where will I feel this safe again? When I admit that I am afraid, I don’t know who I am.

I pulled up anchor on my life, this year. I walked a path that would have either saved or sold my house, and it sold. Clearing out all my possessions, I felt the ache of loss as I weighed each thing in my hand, as I chose again and again to let go and say goodbye to objects I thought I’d have forever.

I’ve found a new lightness, imagining I’m as free as those gulls gliding on the wind, but now it’s time to leave the earth, to allow my feet to lift, to feel that infinitesimal space between me and solid earth. It feels like an enormous gulf, and I flail wildly for a sense of up and down.

I love bad weather, I tell my self. I want to set sail, ride the wind. But now that the time is here, my heart is in my mouth.

Right There, or Everyday Miracles

It’s right there, just outside your window: an incredible world filled with (magic, love, science, energy, mystery, god, light, LIFE). A world where the smallest thing is vital, integral to the whole. Where your breath is as necessary as air, where angels really do dance on the head of a pin.

Just step outside and let the modern din, as alluring as it is, fade back. Listen: bird, plane, crickets, another bird, grasses waving. Look: sky filled with clouds like wings, deepening from white to cream to gold in the lengthening light.

© Kerry Wixted

It can be so easy to miss, these things, what with all the worries in your world: hurry, money, late, bills, gallop through your day, always reaching further than you fear you can reach. No room for the moment when a Damsel Fly (some call them darners) lands on your hand. She chooses you as the stable place to unfurl new wings. To accustom her new body to air before lifting off.

See the rainbows in her stained-glass wings. See the green-gold scales, irridescent armour protecting her beating heart. See the bulbous insect eyes, comically large, that see your world through a kaleidescope. She’s tender, pulsing, driven by hunger, born to move in the world, alive. She lifts off your hand, ready to fly.

© Maryland Sierra Club

I met her while kayaking earlier this week on the Mattawoman River. Considered one of the last pristine rivers in Maryland, it’s a major nursery for sport fish and other wildlife.

Just a little ways away, right now, lotuses are furling for the night, their generous cups closing until dawn. Their velvet green leaves, big as dinner-plates, ripple, floating. Droplets of water beading like mercury. beads and rolls off the rich . The water is warm silk, the boat parts the way through the lotus forest, somehow not an intruder. Green frog with satisfied grin watches from a floating leaf island. His tiny cousin climbs aboard. Small as a fingernail and perfectly froggy in every way; his orange eyes blink, unafraid.

Froggy rides with us further upriver. This creature that swam below the surface just days ago now sails through the upper world. He lost his swimmer’s tail ashe grew strong legs, preparing to begin a new life above the mirror’s surface. Now he’s on the prow of our craft. vivid green-apple green, skin patterned with leaf-llke veins, fading to cool lemon-white on his belly, punctuated toes ready to grasp or release; dead useful.

© D Finnecy

We paddle against wind and current, a proud craft with figurehead on the prow. Somewhat later, scratching ashore on gravel bank, Froggy debarks into his uncertain future. Happy hunting, my friend.

Here in this water our life begins, our sustenance is generated, life arises again and again every moment. Sun spun to sugar, consumed by tiny creatures that feed the tadpole, destined to be frog. CO2 into oxygen, caterpillar to butterfly, jellied egg to trophy bass, muddy seed to transcendent lotus: the everyday miracles are countless, and everywhere you look.

© Mr. T in DC

Now the sun slips below and only the high wings of the sky still beam us light. Tree swallows begin their dusk ballet and we glide on the outgoing tide, motionless, while the birds fly low and fast over the water snatching their evening meal. They pass so close we hear the flap of feathery wings rustle, as if we were invisible to them.

The lifeblood of these creatures flows around us, buoying the boat, carrying food and messages, pulsing with a heartbeat of current and tide. What happens miles away will determine the story here.

One day when you mow your lawn and dump the clippings in that low spot behind the garage, you may notice a little water moving.The grass clippings, lush with fertilizer, send plant nutrients trickling down, from drain to ditch to creek to river and sea. En route, your contribution joins all the other small amounts of fertilizer and excrement ultimately fouling the River and Bay as they feed great green clots of algae that suck all the oxygen from the water, creating ‘dead zones’ where no fish or crabs can live.

It’s a messenger, the water. It carries your chemical story into their world, but returns a message as well. Listen: in that quiet little shimmer there’s a pulse, a movement not unlike your own. I’m heading to the sea, taking your messages with me. Don’t you want to come along?

River gets bigger, finally spreads out into shimmering marsh lands, whole worlds of wild rice, spatterdock, pickeralweed and lotus, where young bass grow up to be sport fish. Where green frogs grin and lotuses unfurl and soaring birds eat their fill of flying things over the sunset river. You belong here, too.

© G B Glide

Summer Happy Place

A friend of mine has been building her own water park in her back yard, one that includes among other things an outdoor shower and dog wash. I took both dogs for a lovely cedar massage bath and we talked about how summer heat meant seeking relief in the cool of the water.

I’ve been going to the water all my life. I love the rocky forest, adore the sky, dance around the fire, but my Element is irrevocably Water.

Ripples © by Alexander Kozlov

Yesterday the heat broke in the afternoon, a great whoosh of wind blew leaves, rattling and bone dry, and thunder rumbled, but not a drop of moisture fell. The thermometer dropped from 103f/39c to 88f/31c and the sense that I was imprisoned indoors lifted. My kayak was still on the car from Monday’s jaunt (more later) and I zipped over to the local launch ramp and managed to get both dogs in with me and go for a paddle. (No pics, alas, since my phone is so water-averse!)

Good Dog Pepper © by Paul Byrley

It was glorious, if a bit awkward getting sorted. Lily didn’t want to sit in her seat behind me. Seneca was confused and had trouble arranging her boney arthritic limbs. But eventually, with much splashing and a false start (white poodle swimming behind kayak) we were off. My old dog barked at the waves, my young dog leant against my back, too warm, but reassuring for both of us. I paddled without clobbering anyone. We pushed out against the incoming tide, aided by a breeze from the stern.

I was rewarded by an osprey rush-hour, each bird carrying their fish like a suitcase as they flew. A very large and splendidly marked bald eagle sat prettily in a tree. When I paddled too close, s/he flew out in a circle but returned, showing off the broad white tail, handsome walnut dark wings and snowy crown. Catfish like leviathans leapt near the boat, thrilling that is! What if one managed to flop IN the boat? It’s happened!

Blue Heron in Virginia © by David Pitts

A squadron of 21 white egrets flew overhead. We saw terns, tree swallows, geese, a green heron. I heard redwing blackbird, wood thrush and cardinal. Two very tall Great Blues flew in to find a roost, clearly a pair who wanted to be together. It looked tricky, all those long legs trying to perch in a tree.

Then the water breaks into rippled flowing colour of underwater and sky and three shades of each looping forth and back, I feel the most connected, I feel the flow, I feel at home.

Take me to the River.

all photos from Flickr posted with Creative Commons License

New Life arrives in Storm

We humans were warned to expect violent thunderstorms late this afternoon. The doe, if she knew of them, was too preoccupied to care. She found a safe-enough place in my woodlot to birth a tiny fawn.

Coming home from the CSA pickup run and snacking on fava beans, I see a deer cross the road, from the woods on one side to a field of tall grass on the other. Between road and field is a ditch, narrow, but rather deep.

newborn deer, about the size of a cat, with longer legs

As I drove closer, this tiny creature, like a cat with stilt-like legs, wobbled after her but was daunted by the ditch, and teetered there, afraid to continue. I backed up the car, put my flashers on. The fawn toddled along the roads edge toward my car. Moma waited nervously in the field, about 40 feet away.

A car approached, and I waved frantically for them to slow, stop. It was friends Grace & Patrick. Another car comes up behind me, and it’s Josephine! Hah, no coincidence that my neighborhood loved ones are all present for the big event. We form a blockade, and turn other traffic away.

Baby deer wobbles over to Grace’s Prius. Patrick gets out and tries to shoo the creature, and it comes to him like a puppy. He starts walking and the fawn is following him like he’s Moma. He leads the babe to a driveway where she can get off the road, but when he tries to go back to his car, guess who trots right at his heel!

At this point we’re all out of our cars, and gently waving and shooing Baby down the driveway adjacent to the field. She follows Patrick and he leads her a ways from the road and into the field. Again he tries to return to us, and Baby follows him. Looks like she wants to meet everyone. He waves us off, and we go back to open the roadblock. Grace waves at her husband: “I’ll pick you up tomorrow, honey!” He rolls his eyes and heads back into the field.

In a little while we see him calmly walking toward us, then running back to the human world. Welcome to the neighborhood, little one!

The River Flows to the Sea

Sad but Not Surprising

Two days after River Cleanup and the first bits of trash have already washed ashore.

It’s not  messy boaters and fishing folk who create all this litter, as some assume. The bulk of the trash is washed down from storm sewers all over the metro area. When you toss an empty package or bottle, even into a bin, odds are it can find it’s way to the river.

Before the Clean-Up

Washed into drains from all over DC, tennis balls are common enough on my beach for the dogs have learned to look for them.  I’m sure that boaters aren’t dumping buckets of balls overboard! But I am busy training my girls to fetch plastic bottles!

Good news about river trash!

Hundreds of volunteers showed up Saturday all up and down the Potomac watershed. I joined friends and neighbors at the National Colonial Farm across the river from historic Mount Vernon. We enjoyed the low tide and beautiful day that allowed us to clean miles of shoreline. Now hikers, fishing folk, blue herons, eagles and osprey can all enjoy the shoreline without trash. For a little while.

But I did notice some improvement while trash-picking Saturday morning ; there was much less foam trash than  in years past.  Alice Ferguson Foundation‘s Trash Free Potomac 2013 has taken a survey of common logos found in river trash and pressured the biggest offenders (this year McDonalds , Pepsi, Deer Park and Budweiser) to change their packaging to biodegradable materials, and it looks to me like this has helped!

The biggest scourge at the moment is plastic bags and bottles. Please make sure your plastics are properly recycled, and replace them when you can with reusable containers. All of us river dwellers thank you!

Spring Awakening

Fifteen years ago I climbed this hill, carrying only a bedroll, a sheet of plastic, some twine and a gallon jug of lemon-maple cayenne water to carry me through a three day fast. Today I am sitting on the rock that I slept on back in 1997, listening to spring awakening the mountains. Here a hawk, there a crow. Further down in a valley, an owl calls, a fox barks.

The wind comes, I hear it chasing along the ridge through bare branches, coming closer until it passes overhead like a wave. Last time I was here it was July, mountain summer sweet and green. I slept in the forest with no roof and no tent for the first time in my life. When the sky showed first light the air began to stir and the sound of birds began, like the wind is coming today, first faint from afar, then moving closer riding the edge of sunrise. Theoretically I knew about this everyday miracle:

Art from Nature class starts March 29

Drawing & Painting from Nature

Traditional and Expressive techniques

Here’s a fun class to gain experience and develop technique in drawing and painting using nature as our subject matter. Working in a variety of drawing media and watercolours we will explore technique, composition and colour working from, and with, Nature.

The natural form has a an inherent rhythm whether it’s sky, sand, leaves, fur, flames. You can capture that rhythm in your drawing and painting, by tuning in to what we and all creation have in common. Your charcoal is burnt wood, your brush is animal hair, your paper is cotton fibre, your paint is ground earth. The art is in letting the natural ways of our materials interact with your natural curiousity about the world.