Gossamer Naturalist

Tag: life

  • Sit Spots

    Sit Spots

    A full year after my mentor, Joe Walewski, gave my cohort of naturalists an assignment I am finally getting a round to actually doing it. It may not end up exactly as he assigned, or even close to that. However I am doing it. Today is my 14th day sitting in the same spot at Corny Beach for at least an hour each day. I have a routine here. Take a picture, sit and watch the waves of Gitchi Gumee and note their intensity (soft, but not still today), read by book (Schools that Heal by ___________), dive into the Lake, then read again as I dry out, switching to my novel (Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time today). I expect I’ll continue this trend for another week or so until I have to travel for a few days.

    Sitting this way, collecting snapshots in time and watching changes every day or week or month is called a sit spot. I don’t know the origin of this practice, someone can hopefully give me a history, but I hope that contemplatively inclined humans have been doing this since the dawn of consciousness. It’s the practice of the Buddha, sitting under the tree and finding enlightenment. It’s the practice of __________. Sometimes we humans are drawn to a place, and we sit there many times in our lives. It’s a practice I have always been pretty bad at until the past two weeks.

    My sit spot at Corny Beach as it is today.

    Through sit spots we can see the world shift between weather and seasons, noting who is doing what and when. Here at Corny Beach, I’ve observed how tourists react to the weather and day of the week. There’s the obvious, with there being fewer folks on a blustery wavey weekend than a bright and warm one. But there’s the not so obvious, like there being so few people here on a perfect and sunny Wednesday. Today I noticed a high number of bee flies swarming about, harmless flies which have evolved to appear like the more painful and more bountiful bee. I notice that the way the Lake moves is changing between the summer and the fall, and the ways various levels of siche effect change the structure of the beach. Maybe tomorrow I will notice the smaller plants and animals at my spot. Having a spot, and visiting it everyday, gives me joy in the knowledge of my place. Here I hold space only for me, give myself a chance to become steady, and just breathe. Even living so close to Lake Superior, sometimes in the details of life it becomes easy to forget she’s there. Making these visits part of my life everyday has made it impossible to forget that the Lake is right there, ready to support me.

    If you’re like me, a digital native born in a time of stimulation and content, it can be difficult to just sit in the same spot and observe. Don’t try. Please do have those moments of wonder in which the content washes away, but don’t force it. Don’t force your sit spot either. As you begin this practice just walk around, find yourself somewhere. Sit someday, maybe years from now, maybe tomorrow by the swamp or on that bridge you like. Then, as you find that place for the moment, take out your content whether that’s a book or a journal or crocheting, and let your conscious mind focus on that. The rest of your mind will make observations of the world around it, and give you curiosities to follow as you will. And then, the next, find yourself craving to return to the same spot, and go.

    Corny Beach Day 1: Fog over Roman’s Point and perfect sunshine just a mile away.
  • Place

    Place

    Place changes us fundamentally as people. People change as their place changes. Our habits, our emotions, our ways of knowing, all have roots in our biome and social geography. I’ve thrown myself into the waters of Gitchi Gumee each day for the past ten days, and those days have changed my mental space. More on this to come, hopefully on Wednesday. For now, enjoy your place….

    The Lake is whimsy…
  • The Beats of Continuing On

    The Beats of Continuing On

    The Lakes Shore we once paddled continues to breathe-
    In and Out. 
    The siche folds its layers over itself in fractal waves
          Like percussion beats.
    The beats of your breath, have ceased. Is life
    Like a butterfly? 
    Beating its wings, effecting change
    Half a world away.
    Is it the change you fought 
    So hard for in the world. Or is it
    Just the incessant beat of the world marching on?
    You once told me you were afraid
    To imagine the change we marched for-
    	       Side by side lifting a banner in the streets of St. Paul.
    You lived it and where is it now. Here, Now. 
    With the Lake and the rainforests of Panama. 
    	Forever impermanently interwined with reality.

    “Where ever you go, there you are.” He once told me. 
    We had taken such different paths to that same Canadian Beach.
    And the waves of Mother Superior went on 
    With the beating wings of a quail. 
    We walked together from Hattie Cover to the distant point of rock
    And we laughed until the sun set over that glistening Lake.
    And we wept.

    	The waves continue
    	From us to thee
    	Forever impermantently intertwined
    	While we are apart
    	One from the other.

    A Frost’s Amanita I found growing on my driveway this morning.
  • Woodstove Dreams

    Woodstove Dreams

    The South Shore is chilly today, with the jet stream pushing cold polar air southward across the Lake. A sublime Autumn chill may hang out with us all week long, as our bodies still crave the celebration of August, time spent sunning on the beach or working in relationship with still growing food. Instead, yesterday I lit my woodstove in the afternoon, retreating inwards toward myself and my fire while I let my cat be fascinated by the mother deer with two fawns, and by the hummingbird who visited my feeder for some rest. Yesterday, I needed to give my curiosity a break to recover it again for the week ahead.

    My woodstove gives me the most lovely warmth, while it burns away years of history. Each piece of wood I burn is a record of an individual history, full of years of bounty and years of withering. What did the trees of this fire dream of before now? How did they perceive the world? I sit, I wonder, and I listen to the crackle of the fire as history heats my heart. I’m thinking I will post poetry on Sundays and essays on Wednesdays for now until my big move in November. We’ll see how it goes.

    What season is it?? Who knows.
    In the flame of the woodstove
    Witness the dreams of the universe
    As embers weave their way through the air before 
    Revealing themselves like stars
    Just more delicate
    Fewer parts of hydrogen to fuel 
    Your heart.
    They are multitude and small
    Simple as a hallucination
    The one that tells you that you turned off your
    Alarm Clock, that morning the sun had not yet peaked through 
    The window to your naked body. 
    Your alarm clock still sang
    The sound of waves crashing, even though 
    Those same waves are frozen now.

    The same waves that made rainbows in the mists of the sea caves
    The same waves where we kissed and first began to dream
    Of things like windows, things like orchards, things like birch trees
    Those same waves who are frozen now
    And without motion are they still waves?

    The universes hallucinations, as
    Vast as the love between all the people
    When it shrinks and cracks between two, 
    Rekindles between others
    And healing must take place.
    Healing as though humans were stars
    Or embers
    With a constant spark,
    Meant to be bright,
    To transcend without a wisp or a name.
    Yet to be the material of us all.
    A staggering bend between Aspen trees and sandstone cliffs
    The dream of a spark
    And little more
    Along your beaten path
    To those waves between us.


    Listen to the crackling of the woodstove,
    As it boasts the story of 20, 30 years of life,
    A crackle as 1999 burns

  • Learning in Time & Place

    Today, now, yesterday, and tomorrow, I sit at my little corner, with my salt lamp, record player, a friends lovely plants, over looking Gitchi Gumee, now bluer than the sky itself. The narrows of Wolf Lake stretch out before me, the space between mountains three.

    It was through these narrows the other day that I lead a class of seventh graders, snowshoeing to the cedar grove where it all simply stands still. They were unimpressed. However, it wasn’t for that day that I sought to impress them in this place, nor for today about a week later. Maybe tomorrow it was for? The cedars and the chaga in the birches takes their time to work their way into our hearts, but inevitably they eventually do.

    Yesterday was a very different adventure. A walkabout alone, through the melting network of ski trails along the Baptism River. I could hear the rushing waters of the Spring melt in this day before the equinox, but could see down the hill stood on. Between myself and the Baptism, a forest of spruce and fir and endless wet and sharp snow. A less interesting venture than a jaunt up the hill, towards a section of birch and the possibility of early buds. There were none, but many grouse and mystery birds abound.

    Learning in place is learning by existing and questioning. Why does this birch bend differently from all the others? Who is making that mysterious call (it was a blue jay)? Will this sunflower seed pop like corn or wild rice (nope)? In the past few years I’ve struggled with finding my own way of asking questions. But yesterday, standing at the deep snowed trail beside the hidden Baptism, I realized that I was asking these questions all the time, but wasn’t taking the time to notice them. As I welcome the Spring equinox today, I create this intention for the next three months; To take the time to notice the questions I’ve been asking myself all along.

    Quacking Aspen buds how do you prepare for the warmth of the sun? Can I do the same?.

  • Gravity Holds

    Gravity Holds

    Every step we find ourselves in dreams-
    Of the moment the snow fled from the freshly covered
    Winter boughs
    Towards the ground that holds us so tight
    The gravity of Gaia pulls so much 
    Softer on each crystalline snowflake
    Than she pulls upon our aging imaginations.
    So trapped by Moloch as they are
    Encased in screens and responsibilities.

    Our minds soar like forming hail
    Down through the clouds, then up again,
    Then down again, and so on until 
    We have so much icy weight that to the ground our mind returns.
    Falling and falling in 
    And within the winds. Towards
    The withered stream, held by toxic soil.

    Gravity holds me tighter than your touch
    Folding and unfolding both on the level of the strings 
    That make the universe
    The strands which weave us together
    For only a stitch or two,
    Before splitting apart into new patterns 
    And old.

    I meant to post this yesterday, or the day before. But each time I thought about what to say to accompany it, adventure pulled me away. A ski at Tettegouche, where my Mother’s ashes rest. An unexpected opportunity to teach. Each bringing to a space of new discovery outside the realm of everyday gravity. I want to use this blog space to share my work regularly, predictably, in the grounds of the everyday routine, the gravity which holds us to our lives. That gravity isn’t a negative energy. It’s just that I cant let it control me while I live a space so magical as this.

    That’s what this piece is about. Holding that gravity as a friend, rather than a prison guard. And letting the orbits that are our relationships to others run their course naturally. That is something I am still learning. In Love I hold and hold those with whom our orbits meet only briefly, and try to force the gravity of our lives to stay orbiting together when they would’ve naturally drifted apart. When do we hold on? When do we let go?

    Lake Superior in the Late Autumn