Category: Nature

Over the past week, I have watched my five-year-old granddaughter defy gravity hundreds of times. In the pool, she has learned how to move her arms and legs to keep herself afloat and swim from Papa to Mama to Grandma Martha to me. On roller skates, she can keep her four-wheeled feet beneath her and …

Photo by Egor Kamelev We connect underground with myriad others like and unlike ourselves. Through our vast, branching webs, we communicate with and support each other. If danger approaches, we warn each other in ways that may not be perceptible to others. Who are we? Aboveground, our environment both feeds and challenges us. We stand …

Many of us have been asking the question, “How do we meet these times?” Guidance often comes to me in dreams. I had the following dreams on March 11 about how to respond to conflict, confrontation, and dangerous threats. I believe their guidance needs to be shared. So here they are. Two opposing groups are …

I love dahlias. I love their wild rainbow hues, their spiky petals, their generous size, their heft, their persistence into late fall. I’m willing to work for them, to earn the joy I get from watching them grow and flourish. I have seasonal dahlia rituals. In spring, I separate and plant the tubers next to …

Love is the antidote for trauma. I’m not talking about the kind of love that requires us to blunt our awareness of the terrible events we experience and hear about. I’m talking about awake love: love that takes in everything and holds us with beauty and joy in the midst of it. But trauma often …

Photo by Linda Gisbrecht Most of us who now consider ourselves able-bodied will eventually experience one or more disabilities, if we live long enough. Some people use the phrase “temporarily able-bodied” as a reminder of this fact. As I age and my body structures show seven decades of wear and tear, I feel this truth …

Bealtaine, celebrated on May 1 or May Day, is a sacred time honoring our connection with the Earth. We relish the beauty, sensuality, and fertility of the Earth and our earthly bodies. On April 21, I dreamed: I am looking out over a vast, flat, open vista of land with large antlers projecting upward from …

  February 1 is Imbolc, a time for us to sweep out whatever in our homes and lives is completed or no longer useful and open our bellies, hearts, minds, and souls to new callings, new currents, new commitments. Given what is going on in our communities, nation, and world, how can we leap into …

In pagan traditions, Samhain is the New Year, the time when the old year dies away. We move into a period of darkness and rest before spring’s rebirth. Death is all around us. Leaves, first brilliant red, orange, and yellow, lie brown and rotting on the ground. Stalks of summer’s yellow sunchokes turn black, signaling …

Nurse log, Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, California, April 2021 What does it mean to know? Where does knowledge reside in the body? Who or what has knowledge? How is knowledge transmitted and received? The answers to these questions go to the root of relationships among humans and between humans and the more-than-human world. Those …