Category: Nature

Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash I started learning to negotiate the ocean when I could barely walk. Every summer, my parents rented a cottage for our family on the South Jersey shore for two weeks. We stayed in a little town called Avalon, which is also the name of a magical, mystical island in …

Samhain is the gateway to the darkest three months of the year, in the physical world and the world of spirit. Between now and Winter Solstice, we notice and feel the days shorten and the nights lengthen. If we follow the rhythm of the seasons, we hunker down, stay warm, spend more time indoors. If …

I’m a night owl. In summer, I rarely see the sun rise. At Winter Solstice in the Pacific Northwest, it’s easy, even for me. Yesterday morning, just after eight, I sat looking east out of our living room windows. Four floor-to-ceiling panels of ten small panes each, with the original glass from when the house …

Forty-one years ago this past June, my mother died of metastatic breast cancer two days before her 67th birthday. She died between the births of our two sons; our older son was two and a half years old, and our younger son was conceived eight months later. As my mother was dying, I was acutely …

Sitting here in limbo Waiting for the dice to roll Yeah, now, sitting here in limbo Got some time to search my soul Well, they’re putting up a resistance But I know that my faith will lead me on —Jimmy Cliff, “Sitting in Limbo” on Another Cycle and The Harder They Come A week ago, …

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 …