Full Harvest

Happy Halloween!  Samhain, ancient evening to remember those who have come before us, who have passed through the ecstasies and the shadows of this human condition, whose knowledge and power is available.  A reminder to witness and harness that power. Ohm.  

On this day I tire of endless conversations regarding the shadow.  I rest in light. Soaking up peace, where truth and harmony are wound as sheepswool in the yarn of our story where 'everything is all right, everything is just fine'.  Remembering Ecuador, where dirt roads full of potholes lead to wild untamed beauty and broken flower pots produce glorious flowers.  

Explication dissolves.  Here, some beautiful photos from my neighbourhood at the end of summer, as fall presses herself into the bosom of the earth...  

Peace~

Suns in August

Last weekend we slept on the roof in order to watch the Perseid meteor shower. Banks of fog hung in the sky, and so we had a small fire in the garden, burning paper trash and dried branches of garden trimmings, incense.  We found that if you take dried lilac blossoms and throw them on the fire they are a beautiful beautiful incense :)  On the roof, snuggled under duvets with the sound of many winds whispering in the trees, we looked at the sky.  As we watched the clear sky directly above us widened.  More stars appeared and the fog stayed in patches on the left and right.  As we lay there six large meteors streaked across the heavens!!  Wow. They were either luminous hot white or bold orange with neon yellow edges and they were HUGE.  Each spark lasted only a moment and yet the after wave lasted minutes as the energy surged through our vision and bodies.  Waking up in the morning, bright sun on the face, eyes in the blue, was delightful.

The Perseid meteor shower comes from the constellation Perseus.  A continual stream of comets surges from his heart, and it is at this time of year, when we rotate past his field, that we can observe the Perseids.  This time of year is a special time for the sun, and some of the oldest cultures on the earth date circa 1,000 BC as a time when the sun became prominent in our spiritual ways and means.  

  

Sunday night last I sat in contemplation and the crown on my head opened so that a large funnel of light rays began to flow in.  The were bright and expansive, as if it were the sun itself, and I  momentarily took a moment to let  my brain register this was happening.  Then I let go into the experience and just allowed the sun to wash through me, brightening my entire system until I too shone from the inside with the rays of light pouring into me.  It was spectacular!  The energy which followed lasted several days, and I was just very very zingy, even to point of drinking chamomile tea and remaining alert as ever - no coffee was needed for these couple of days!

The Dakini Sinhamukha
from 'The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation'

I contemplate at this time of year, I remember in my imagination and senses and pauses, the time as it cycles through humanity.  I think on the time when we began to domesticate animals, when women walked with lions, when the horse civilisations began to emerge, when the people of the red road gathered across Asia and walked across the Bering Straight into their new world.  I think on the times when the great temples and structures rose up across the earth, when the push and thrust of the sun directed us in our upward and organisational impulses.  I think of the rise of sun worship and the agricultural turn, our love and dependence on RA shaping our cosmologies and life ways.  And further back, I think on a time when the world was very young and we were not committed as souls to one form yet.  The glory and beauty of changing from an eagle to a tortoise to a rock to a water molecule as Gaia groaned and pushed to create her environment and its inhabitants!  And even then the tiny section of time all this is, the smallness of our own story, the vastness and endlessness of the unfolding mulitverses.  Wow.  

Solar Flare near Tekapo, New Zealnad July 2012

So in August, when the light is softening and the solar flares are strong in our visions, take time to rest and appreciate nature.  Remember the vastness of time and how the one split into the many so that events could unfold at their own frequencies.  Trust your remembering.

Sun!!!  

For last years post on the sun see: Sunshine

Hafiz

digital print "Provenance" artist unknown

It Felt Love                                                 
How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its
Beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too 
Frightened.

photographic print "Under the Clear Sky" artist unknown

Please                                                  
We are at
The Nile's End.
We are carrying particles
From every continent, creature, and age.
It has been raining on the plains
Of our vision for millions of years
And our senses
Are so muddy compared to Yours-dear God,
But I only hear these words from You
Where we are all trying to embrace
The Clear Sky-Ocean,
"Dear one - come.
 Please,
 My dear ones,
 Come."

from "The Tale of the Four Dervishes" artist unknown

This Union                                                  
This 
Union you want
With the earth and sky,
This union we all need with love,  (well ;-))
A golden wing from God's heart just
Touched the ground,
Now
Step upon it
With your brave 
sun-vows
And help our eyes
To 
Dance!

open source :)

From "The Gift: Poems By Hafiz The Great Sufi Master" translations by Daniel Ladinsky 1999 Penguin Compass  (highly recommended)



with love~ 

Chocolatey Stars

Tonight I am awake with the earth.  Her winds blow across my courtyard and through the wide open doors and windows.  Her stars shine down upon me in a glittery canopy of chaos and peace.  Her plants whisper their night secrets.  Incense burns and candles flicker in the few hours of darkness between the gloamings.  I am awake.  And in the moment I lounge about on my favourite chair listing to good music, doing a bit of laundry, sewing and hemming a favourite costume, and baking a cake.  Time has spiralled into the new moon energy of July, and I fly between the slips into - space - for everything.


Long ago when I dwelled in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina I cooked everything I ate, with gentleness, sprouted in the sun...  It was then I learned about the sattva of food preparation: the beauty of going slow, attending to every detail with love, savouring the moments of no time when waiting for gee to boil, milk to clot, sprout tips to turn green.  Tonight I wake up to the sense memory of this and once again, I bake, and rest, and nourish the woman who loves endlessness.  


Here is tonights version:

~PMS~ Cake

2 cups flour

1/4 cup moong dahl or fava bean flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 tablespoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup oil

3 eggs

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vinegar

5 ounces raw or bakers chocolate

boiling water

fresh or frozen berries (drain the frozen ones when you thaw them)

some seeds

jam

fresh or dried berries

mix the dry ingredients

grate the chocolate

add the vinegar to the milk 

add boiling water a little at a time to 4 ounces of the grated chocolate

mix desired amount of seeds and the rest of the chocolate into the dry mix

wait for the milk to clot 

add the wet ingredients to the dry mix

mix in the melty chocolate and the fresh or frozen berries

pour into two or three oiled pans

bake at 180c for 20 minutes

wait for the cake to cool

take out of the pans

layer on a plate cake, jam, berries; cake, jam berries; cake, jam, berries

eat a huge portion :)

share the blessing with your friends and give them some cake :)

Mmmmmmmmmmm

Big Heart

Bright Red!  Love opens in me.  Spiraling back to places I have been before, from new vantage points.  The quiet peace of my home in Cambridge, the flowering of Spring, stillness, it reminds me of all the lovely spring evenings I've sat in quiet stillness just staring into nothing, being a faery at peace.  And the moments they accumulate and I am an infant knowing peace, and an ancient grandmother knowing peace, and a woman right now knowing peace, and the greatness of it breaks my heart.  

I am speaking this moment of surrender.  Surrender to the flowing tide of life, the friends who we love so deeply, the moments which can not be captured again, but are eternal in their happening, and the love which is all of us, so huge that to hold it is ridiculous, surrender to it as it passes through.  I sometimes wish that all the people I love all over the planet, in the Americas north and south, in the middle east, in Africa, in Europe, those I have not yet met, could all just be in one space for a moment, to just shower with glory and share.  And I miss all of you, and I love all of you, and I am, in my aloneness this moment, deeply connected to each of you, and the greatness of it slices through my heart and I bleed for you, I love you in my blood.  

There is this uncertainty, and a momentum which comes with it, and a flowering open which we rarely see from the moment, and the dailyness, and it mixes and montages and collages of everywhere every moment flood the web of life and it spins, zingy pulsing ripples, and we are the ocean of love manifest in form.  

There is much to write about, many drafts on techniques and contemplations are started, sustainability and community, and yet, today, all I wish is to send my eyes to you and to shower you with the love flowing through me.  May this be my purpose, to love completely and freely and abundantly.  May we all be blessed.

paintings by Elizabeth Lyle

ManWomanAlchemy

In the last few days I have come up to a lot of references about inner alchemy, the union of our male and female halves inside of us.  I've written about this before: skeleton woman , but let's talk about if from a different angel today. 

In the indigenous ways a woman is revered as a vessel of life.  The hesitancy to use birth control means large families, and the whole community looks after the children.  Many of my younger female friends speak of their hesitancy to have children in this system, and I totally agree.  The need for prams, carseats, paid babysitters, enrichment activities, etc. confines us.  Reliance on the nuclear family model can be damaging to the highest growth for all, and is also the least positive way we could be configuring the raising of our children.  I believe that a return to community is what is necessary for us to have children and feel truly wonderful about the life environment we are gifting them.  It used to be, in times past, that the people bonded together to share different perspectives with the kids, to teach them different skills, to collectively aid their growth into gentle and powerful human beings.  Well, we can do it again.  And when we do, the feminine will be freed to embody both her essential nature and her lion power.  

I realise there are many debates across the phases of feminism that cry out against essentialism, however, many of my friends and collaborators/dancers feel that our hearts have been left out of feminism, that a better balance can be found.  When I contemplate feminism personally I think of Luce Irigaray  some of her works and her powerful "essentialised" argument for the passion of womans' expression.

painting by Marlynn Longston

There is a poem by Lisa Citore which appears every so often on the internet.  It is a powerful poem, if not slightly traditional, however I take several perspectives when viewing it. "If You Want to Love a Woman" First, I see the woman we must first love as the woman inside of ourselves, gender aside.  We all have the essential, the lion, side by side, and in schools of alchemy the marriage of the inner male and female is the highest order. Second, I realise the woman we must love as the earth herself.  We currently have a global culture of masculine action, and to balance that, to return to the female body of the earth, we must necessarily embrace a polar balance. Finally, I contemplate the tantric traditions and the potent symbolism for both physical unions between two persons, and for the individual as completed union themselves.  In personal alchemical union we are able to approach union with another as two wholes, birthing entire universes of light together.  

Krishna and Radha 

There is something about acceptance here, of all our aspects, dark and light, deviant and pure, holy and human, not as opposites, but as fields of charge seeking a bond, a union and a purification.  The song below was created in response to the Hindu teaching of Ardhanarishwara. Shiva - Lord and Lady 

I bow before you

You who are both

Male and Female

Two gods in one

You whose female half has the vivid colour

Of a Champak flower

And whose make half has the pallid colour

Of the camphor flower

The female half jingles

With golden arm bracelets

The male half is adorned

With bracelets of serpents

The female half has love-eyes

The male half meditation-eyes

The female half has

A garland of almond flowers

The masculine half has

A garland of skulls

Dressed in dazzling clothes

is the female half

Nude, the male half

The female half is capable

Of all creation

The male half is capable

Of all destruction

I turn to you

Linked to the God Shiva

Your wife

I turn to you

Linked to the Goddess Shiva

Your husband

*Sanjukta Panigrahi*

One of my favourite movies, which touches me deeply concerning the union of male and female, is Farewell My Concubine. OV Guide It expands questions of inner alchemy beyond the biology of male and female and heightens the entire discourse surrounding it to a new level.  I feel that as we reconfigure our life ways on the planet we will come to accept (in time) our biology as a starting point, our children as all of our children, whole persons married to themselves - free in love.  

light bodies in the world tree

For some resources on tantra check out Phil Hines reflections, David Deida the enlightened sex manual, or Osho sex matters. Happiness, 

Peace In

Saturday the 31st of March there was a massive peace in at Trafalgar Square London. Thousands of people crowded the square, sitting on matts and blankets and rucksacks which filled the square itself, the steps, and the top piazza.  People stood and leaned on the fountains and spilled out to the very edges of the space.  We gathered quietly and chatted ever so nicely to those around us, squishing together and making room for all.  It was a beautiful vibe, and our leader was the venerable Thich Nhat Hanh.  


It began with 30 minutes of silence punctuated by a sparse playing of a giant gong. Many of us closed our eyes and all of us sank deep within.  I sat with my mantra and warmth flooded my body even in the freezing weather.  Thich then began to speak. He gave a teaching on relationships which sums up into four main points.  We say these to ourselves, to our lovers, and peace then flows.


1.  I am here with you, like a beautiful flower opening.
2.  You are here with me, and I am so happy.
3.  You are suffering, and I am here with you.
4.  I am suffering, please be here with me.


He explained how we are often able to state one or two of these and this is a good thing.  When we are not able to state all four of them however a relationship disintegrates, looses its depth, wanders away from itself.  
When I contemplate these four mantras I realise that the teachings enfold within them a profound commitment to honesty, vulnerability, and sharing.  As new love emerges within new earth we must necessarily learn to navigate fantastic intimacies.  These dances between our dense selves, the lives and bodies we inhabit in this momentary form, are ever so delicate and intricate.  As we fill out our evolutionary make up we dance also with more subtle energies, connecting to our lovers across dimensions.  Without a grounding in simple communications which reflect the fragility of the human heart how can we possibly go to these spaces in total harmony?  


In the Mevlevi tradition lovers are all beings who appreciate the practice.  The semazens themselves whirl for peace, for illumination and a massive cracking open. Those who come to feel the love and power, who witness and share, give energy, are the lovers.  We say that the hearts of lovers are never truly separated.  Time space distance death, none of this can act upon the united hearts of lovers.  
The bible states that love is not jealous, not covetous, unbound...love is gentle, love is kind...love never dies.  Universal love, the breath of life from source creation, is possible inside our intimacies.  Indeed, the movement of universal love inside of our lives is what we all desire, even if we are too small to go ahead and admit it, the goodies and the baddies alike.  


Love is our human birthright...and as Thich Nhat Hanh so eloquently stated, our responsibility.  This all leads me to conclude that Love is not something one possesses....we can only open to it, like a beautiful flower, and be present to it, in all of its filth and glory. Immense gratitude and thanksgiving to all of you who love and share intimacy with me in so many joyous ways!  Bouncing it right back to you in a fluid wave of grace :) 


And in a final thought, this was indeed a pro-test.  An action against the hostile way consumerism has taught us to "love" and a proposal for new love which can flourish within the systems we now seek to create.  Peace is possible.....

The monks sang to us the mantras after the teaching, in flowering ripples of beauty.. 

Dreams

Since I've been back there are these moments, moments when I am for a breath once again in Ecuador, looking through my eyes onto the places and people there.  These moments disconcert me, for they help me to realise how fast we forget, how in-the-now we can be in the spaces we inhabit.  Looking at photographs, this does not bring me back viscerally to the teachings and the qualities and the senses of my being-as-it-was there.  The photographs of my trip, while beautiful, just don't capture the realness, the liveness of any of it.  It is smells and conversations and ruptures in space which take me away, only to wake up here again 15 seconds later in a state of shock.  I am finding that the integration is coming in waves of rhythm.  

dervish abstraction 1

My relationship to sound and music has completely changed, new music is finding its way into my home and coming into my dreams.  The musical patterns flow through my brain and my body differently, I can see them as well as feel them, and I cannot stop dancing.  Music is all the time!  It is everything, the birds, the wind, voices, chimes, bells, bass lines, these are my favourite musics.  Party music too, funk and soul and swing and jazz and so much great techno too.  The rhythms of my life as well....quiet grounding pure high energy at my home in Cambridge and then I go into London and experience the waves of the city in ever expanding and sometimes harsh bursts.  
Last week as I was sitting in a cafe studying, wave upon wave of emotion swept through me.  Another girl was studying at the table with me, a drama student, and we were just angels for each other, talking about our fields and life in London and sharing amazement at the activities of the space....people suffering and needing help, like passing out on the floor and coming in with blood running down their face and stuff, and beautiful people there sharing intimate conversation and being real and heavenly.  

dervish abstraction 2

I've painted and done charcoal drawings and spent days in the library since I've been back in the Uk, and there is lots of artistic drive present.  I'm also just now getting tired a bit.  The beauty of being back, of having good public transportation and public swimming pools and food from every corner of the planet, of finding home and friends again, it is unravelling at the edges now and I am faced once again with myself, a little star in the midst of all that is.  
I begin to wonder things like, where do we find meaning in our lives, which moments are the ones which imprint and stick with us the most, who am I resonating toward and how best to navigate these new rivers of relationships, what do I ever really have to do, where is the most powerful witness?  I don't feel like dividing into paragraphs, laying out thoughts classified and organised by topic, or getting anywhere particularly fast.  I do feel like running joyfully for the hell of it, streaming thought and inspiration through any artistic formats available to me, loving deeply freely and abundantly.  I know the intimacy of myself as a woman now too.  Ayahuasca has that effect.  It is not my biology, it is the way I perceive and sense and respond to the world within me.  It is just womanly.  

dervish abstraction 3

I titled this post dreams, because I've been trying to write about dreaming for two weeks now.  I have several draft posts, and they just don't come out right.  So, I'm leaving the title, knowing all of this reality is a beautiful dream, and that somehow tonight I must have communicated something.  If it helps you or inspires you or causes you to reflect in any way then it is a worthwhile post.  I leave you in peace dear brothers and sisters, and go off to the kitchen to make some yummy cheese toast now.  Selam!

dervish abstraction 1...

Abuelita

Hello. I write this from Quito, the capital city. We are here for several days on our way out of Ecuador. What an amazing journey this has been! The deep deep healing for myself, my children, and my family line is worth about 10 years in therapy and I am so incredibly thankful for it. Then the visions, so astounding in their embodied colour and vibration and light, so rich in organising this life's purpose, so enormous in seeing the dreams of our new earth! It will take some time to integrate and share them - poco a poco - little by little they will bubble forth from the interior. Two of the lessons I would like to share tonight.

volcano goddess Pele Honu

The first is that of the love of the father. Miguel, in his teachings during ceremony, spoke often of the love of the father. Ayahuasca is known by many names including Natem and the vine of death, and it is also known as the father. We have many ideas about fathers, and what a fathers love can or should be, which vary widely culturally. In our present time many people also refer to concepts of god as a heavenly father. And for my little family father issues have been huge of late. With the passing of my dad 1.5 years ago and the reorganisation of my marital status 2 years ago we've had alot of soil to till so that fresh seeds could be planted. My father was not the most present nor the most kind person in my younger years, and it was in his later life when he came into his own deep healing and sought to change the inheritance he left his children. He became terminally ill in 2002 and this was his ultimate salvation. Freed from work and other responsibilities he began to volunteer in the community and set portions of his life enrgetically right. This included work memorialising fallen Vietnam soldiers and deepening his relationship to his faith through taking an active role in his church. It was also at this time that he began to meditate, going on long deep personal journeys, and to speak on the power of forgiveness. Involved in my own upheaval and managing two young children, I didn't have the space to listen to him deeply then, but I did take note. And now, today, I begin to understand his late obsession with forgiveness.

When we have gratitude for the life we have been given all that was once seen as negative becomes a blessing. Gratitude is the alchemical intervention which shifts us out of the script we were handed and allows us to take full responsibility for our lives-thus becoming co creators. We see that our very own soul has been guiding us all along. The love of the father is a gift of thankfulness which both protects and strengthens us so we may live in freedom. As my own children now begin to address their own concerns with their father the best gift I can give them is to be thankful for their lives, their curiosity, their incredible resilience and love. As I become the mother-father figure I am called to be I find the strength of all my fathers, both mortal and spiritual, there to lift me up, to raise me on eagle's wings so that the curses of generations past become blessings for generations now onward. In my recent jungle quest I find the father to be a steady speaker of truth, a giver of wisdom and grace, and a massive hug from every direction. It's not as cozy as a mothers nurturance, yet in this love I can stand up tall and do everything I need to do.

Andean women

The second lesson is the love of the mother. Here in the jungle I experience her and I become abuelita. Abuelita is the one who looks sideways down..faceless..without ego. She is the one walks out of the picture frame with flowing grace..who holds baskets of fruits and vegetables while quietly singing to the mountains. She has seen the horrors and the wonders of the world dancing together in harmony, and she surrenders. Like the great she who is Latin America, she gives an enormous amount of abundance and passion, and she expects an honest heart in return. She will not save you from life's pain, she will ask rather that you let it wash through you, adding a deeper resonance to the song which is your being. She will want to hear your song with all her heart and will quietly wait for the day in which it springs from your heart unique and fully formed. She accepts nothing nothing less than your authenticity shrouded in a shawl of humble glory. She embodies peace.

In my journeys with abuelita this summer here in Ecuador I lay down by the river and weep. I sing out a strange pentatonic song and find that it becomes the chorus of angels. I let go of my own bones and become a vessel of earth, a vase upon a spinning wheel painted with quiet power and the bright colours of earths people at work and play. After a long while in stillness, I dance through my new bones, she dances me.

an abuelita

May the love of the mother-father fill your lungs with grace, your feet with assurance, and your eyes with clarity. I wish this blessing for each one of you, for this life which is me, and for my children. I wish this blessing for all beings on the planet. Inside such a structure - peace and happiness have room to play. Thus is beauty born.

(posted-sent from my beautiful hostel via cellular phone.) Xx

Hummingbirds

Jan 30th


In the mornings of the natem ceremonies we were sometimes asked to share our experiences.  With experiences so rich, so deep in their cleansing, so powerfully visual and visceral, how does one even begin to speak?  Thus enters symbolism and archetypes.  The human journey is mythical, we are all the creators of our lives, of this shared life on the planet - in the cosmos -.  Story upon story has been written, we are the gods of Olympus, of Ephesus, the oracles of Delphi.  We are the ones walking the road to Santiago, sitting in the temples of the sky.  We spin the wheels of fortune, zoom through stardust, rock babies, harvest vegetables, dream, laugh, sing, cry, and make love.  On the first morning I was asked to share, the story that came forth went something like this:

Once there was a family, who lived in the garden of eden.  
The feel of the wind against their cheeks, the sun on their bones, the water as if fell from the sky, and the colour of the world around them was so beautiful that it hurt like a knife.  They walked in harmony and trust-love, practising fearlessness, dreaming.  
Then one of the people began to feel that they were better than another.  They hurt one of themselves, and a surge of power rushed through them.  Mistaking this power for courage and strength, they hurt again, and again.  Thus a cycle of hurt and pain was established that has carried through time.  
This family is now healing the wounds of that hurt, purging the pain and violence.  They can correct the misunderstanding, they can dream a new way through love.  The power of the heart, our glorious inner fire, can generate in every action kindness strength and understanding.  
This is how we fly in the light of beauty, this is how we become the hummingbirds.

There is a wonderful book that speaks simply and clearly about the archetypal portion of the ayahuasca journey.  The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepeers by Alberto Villoldo.  I highly recommend it.  ~with love~

Trees

Today is an ode to trees.  As the pace of change increases in both personal and societal transitions it is very important to take time to ground and recharge.  Trees can be a valuable resource for this.  Lately I have been taking time to climb a special tree near my home, sitting in its various grooves, touching the bark, listening to the silence of wind across the bare branches, observing the patterns of its roots, smelling the humus of its leaves upon the winter ground.  When not at my climbing tree I can simply look at a tree anywhere in the city, pause for a moment and hug it, smell it, kiss it, and receive its grounding.  Sleeping  on the earth at the occupation, I can tune into the roots of trees below me, feel their embrace, and let them lull me to sleep with their ancient songs.  In this a memory is waking of how we used to live, before stone and wood boxes became our homes, returning to the elements. 

roots on the campus of Roehampton University

We used to live in trees, long ago, and some communities still do.  It is only a few thousand years since we came out of the forest, the blood memory of our relationship to trees is still vital.  As we grow new sociological roots a synergistic relationship to the forest is once again possible.  I have dreams of planting hundreds of oaks and other sacred trees in  spiral patterns on the land, much as our ancestors raised stone circles and pyramids, in order to form gateways that will be prescient and potent in about 200 years time.  

In Celtic lore the oak is a symbol for the world tree.  In India it is the banyan tree.  The world tree functions to connect the inner earth to the cosmos, and many shamans travel via the world tree to various lower and upper dimensions of realities.  We are nourished by the world tree and she nourishes us.  In my experience, it is the world tree which infuses the planet with etheric currents which cause the plants to grow.  These same currents connect us to gravity and provide a ground for the electromagnetic impulses of our pineal gland.  We  nourish her through observation of her beauty, in meditation and dance, and through sacred sexuality.  When she is strong in us our sexual feeling is strong and much creative power is available for all types of thinking and being.

American Oak

The Banyan Tree

Some of my favourite trees are the giant redwoods of northern California. They  are protected in groves along the pacific coast from Humbolt county up to southern Oregon, and they are majestic!  Walking among them one simply feels quiet, ancient, still.  They soar to the heavens, fog blankets their legs in a haze of swirling skirts, sunbeams penetrate the fog with gentle opalescence.  In spring the rhododendrons bloom, in summer campers fill the valleys.  Wide blue rivers run through the national parks, the smell of the sea hangs in the distance.  One of the eight natural wonders of the world, I am lucky to have grown up around them, and to return to their ancient faery-like magical awe in the recesses of my sleep.  As Joyce Kilmer wrote: 

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Sequoias of Humbolt County