Green Tribe of Belonging

 During these cold winter months, still in the throes of the pandemic, our usual ways of life are at least partly suspended. Especially for those of us who live alone, interaction with others has gotten curtailed, and touch is not much a part of our lives. Pets have become more important. I am so grateful to live with Shadow, my cat. She is all black except for a white patch under her chin, and she and I are at roughly the same time in our lives, late middle age. We limp around together (or I did until my recent surgery) and appreciate each other's presence. So when Shadow leaps up on my bed each morning to say hello, it is comforting to have her lie beside me while I pet her and she purrs. There seems to be an instinctual physical closeness especially between mothers and their young. You see it in our mammal cousins. We've all watched a mother dog licking her puppies, with them tumbling around her. And the gentle care of mother cats with her fuzzy kittens. I did a little resea...

 For at least the past week, I've been thinking about hibernation. I've even done some research on it. You would think that I would sit right down at my laptop and write a post. Yet it would seem that I myself am in a near hibernation state. It is freezing cold outside, the ground is covered with deep snow, and my new hip isn't really ready to navigate across icy surfaces. So I've been sitting in my comfortable recliner and listening to enthralling books on my Kindle. Hibernating. This morning in Friends Meeting, though, someone talked about how we all have passions. This thought pulled me enough out of my comfortable restful leisure to remember that indeed I have passions. And one of my passions is understanding and learning from the natural world. Now that I've woken up from my temporary hibernating state, I'm ready to write about hibernation, a phenomenon of the natural world which also affects us humans. Hibernation has been around a long time. It usually ha...

Here's another poetry group assignment, this one focused on birds, a category that has been sadly neglected by me. Until now. So I did some research, found out about the origins of birds, and got caught up in the interesting history of this fellow creature. Can you believe? They are descended from dinosaurs! (Maybe I'm the only one who didn't know that...)   Ode to Avian Life To those of us fettered on the ground by gravity, the sight of you flying creatures soaring past in the clear air, high above us, floating free can seem like a miracle. It does not even occur to us to spread our arms and try to copy you, running fast, pulling free of the earth. Our bodies are not made for the air. We are terrestrial animals and have made our peace with it. Yet once, millions of years ago, your pre-avian ancestors were also earthbound. These small dinosaurs walked along the ground in a vastly different world. And then a few feathers developed. At first these might have been only an allu...

  This week my poetry group had an assignment of writing a poem about "root vegetables". Parsnips, turnips, carrots, potatoes, all those yummy ingredients for a good soup. But somehow my mind went to my favorite roots instead: ones that heal us. On this New Year's Eve, I do wish I'd made myself a root vegetable stew to celebrate the turning of the year, but I do have this poem to share with you: Underground Medicine Long ago we began to find plants that healed, sometimes using leaves, sometimes fruits, often roots. Women the Nurturers became Women the Healers. They knew where to find, in field or forest, the right plant friend for each illness. They learned that often it was deep roots that gave strongest help, greatest relief. Digging down below ground,  these women healed their communities from whatever came along. They knew that Burdock root was a friend to our blood, that an unquiet stomach was eased by Marshmallow. They used Astragulus to help keep their group re...

 No matter where we turn to the media these days, we're confronted with discouraging facts. Even when I decide to watch nature programs, beautiful and inspiring views of forests, oceans, skies, I am confronted with warnings about the fragility of our environment and the need to restore balance. The truth is that as a species we are in trouble. As a planet, we are in trouble. And much of the trouble for our planet is because of our actions as a species. Looking at the political divisions within our country is one thing, the rigid lines in the sand, the dysfunction and antipathy that seem more important  than finding a way to peace. But that is only one small part of the difficulties. So many components of our earth are in the red zone, in a dangerous space that might ultimately contribute to our demise, or even of all life. The facts are so brutal that it is hard even to let them in. Climate change, loss of diversity, air pollution, desertification, the clearing of forests....,...

  Winter Solstice Starry night, windy and cold, bleak. Gazing from my window, it looks like just another such night, dark and closed in, spring far away, and I huddle near the heat.  In this age of separation, we spend our days indoors. Cosmic matters such as the tilting of the earth’s axis,  the changing of the year, get forgotten. Mostly we are unaware of the big things, the planets and stars, the movement of sea and land, our earth home moving toward the light as the world continues its yearly journey.  Yet the wheel of life turns, and we turn with it. This very night is the moment when long nights begin to grow shorter.  We’ll soon begin to bask in warm sunlight as slowly, slowly the earth creeps toward spring, then summer.  Ancient peoples celebrated this momentous event, and honored the forces that yet again moved them toward light and life.  This day when I have been so discouraged by our country’s mess, the hatred and intolerance rampant, the c...

 Carrying on with the question I raised in the last post, how do we know what healing plants can help us? What kind of communication best addresses this need for clarity? As you might have noticed, doctors these days usually scoff at the value of herbs, if not downright warning us to stay away from them. Yet since antiquity, healing herbs have been used with good effect. And they are in general much safer than drugs, mostly nourishing and gently tonifying. I have been fascinated with plants as medicine for many years, and my garden has more medicinal herbs than vegetables. I get such satisfaction in turning those plants into tinctures and teas that are available to people in my community as well as myself. And since winter is coming and most plants have succumbed to the freezing temperatures now, this is the time to make sure the medicine cabinet is full. But there is still the question: which herbs are good for any of us at a particular time?  I am coming up on a time when th...