Worlds Within Worlds Along the Trail

I have replaced my usual trail hiking supplies of paper and pen with my cell phone. I can take photos that are amazing to me in detail as well as send myself a text with ideas like flower names or story lines or something philosophical I wish to remember.

Today my text was first filled with the names of flowers I wanted to remember for a wild flower hike website I maintain with my husband: It went something like this: Wood's rose paintbrush blanket flower sun flower twin flower harebell bedstraw.

The next text noted "scolded by red squirrel!"

I added more flowers: bedstraw, clover, bluebell, campion, one-sided wintergreen, pyrola, green orchid (look up name), striped corralroot, cow parsnip.

I hiked along South Cottonwood trail to the first creek crossing and took a video of the creek.

Note: "I'm sitting on a piece of tree trunk at the edge of the creek. I wear my rain jacket to keep off flies that are heckling me while I munch on cashews and craisins. I watch bikers cross the log bridge, some walking their bikes, one riding his. Most hikers and some bikers have dogs who enjoy a splash and drink in the creek. I am transfixed by creek sound of water running over rocks--clacking, thunking, clucking...water sound sounds like slurping. Light glances off moving water...reflections of trees are stirred. Ripples create shadows. Shadows move over brass and copper-colored rock. There are mosses on the parts of boulders that are out of the water. I pick up a stone and turn it over, insect specks dart across the wet surface. The air is scented with resin."

On my way back to my car I stop to take another photo of twin flowers. Two bikers stop to see what I'm doing. We have a conversation about wildflowers in the woods. I give them a card: wildflowerhikesmontana.com

I send pictures and notes to friends far away and my husband at home.

When I reach the parking lot I notice a bag full of soda cans, cups, a plant hanger, piece of dead petunia, straw and more. I take it home to throw it in my trash. I think about what annoys me on local trails: dog poop in the middle of the trail and cigarette smoke. I think I saw one person who was smoking. I think back to all the flowers I saw, the Swainson's thrush I heard, the beauty of the moving water. Beauty outweighs annoyances. Outside news does not intrude during my wild time in the woods.

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Worlds Within Worlds Along the Trail:

Super sight: Dragonflies can detect up to 30 different vision pigments according to scientists. Wow. And all I remembered was a type of kaleidoscope which has 24 facets to the lens called a "dragonfly eye." 

Which makes me wonder what this dragonfly saw when I peered at it and took its picture. Was I dazzling in colors I can't imagine? Was it even looking at me? 

In addition to being able to detect up to 30 different vision pigments, I read that they have 30,000 lenses in their bulging eyes. 

Does it remember its life in the water where it lived for several years? How long will this one live on land? 

I believe that "Dragonfly" is one of my totems. 

All of which is to say that while I research the science, it doesn't explain for me why I am drawn to dragonflies or why they show up so often in my life--from an 18th century garden in Annapolis, Maryland to the Colorado River to a fishing trip on the Yellowstone River and today in my garden.

I leave you with this...let yourself discover something miraculous in the gifts from Nature in your life.

Mother Nature

This Mother's Day I write my mother. She passed on almost four years ago. And I miss her.
So I thumb through photo albums and as I look at her as a young girl, young woman, and mother, I wonder what she sees through my eyes.

And I "thumb" through the stories she told me in her 90s for the ones I would like to place
in my garden of memories on Mother's Day. Why a garden? For many years she sent me a check for Mother's Day to use to purchase plants for my garden. "I was never a gardener," she'd often
say, "but I liked to arrange our supper on plates to look like a garden."

Dear Mom,
I see you sitting at the dinner table in Concord, Massachusetts and New Canaan, Connecticut.
You've changed for dinner out of the dresses you wore all day. Lit candles are reflected in the shine of the dining table that belonged to your mother. Over the years you used different china patterns. You loved the blue and yellow design on the Stangl Ware dishes Dad bought you.
I loved the dishes from Grandmalyn with the tiny lavender all-over fern design and brightly-colored birds. The dinner plates painted with Audubon bird designs are in my cupboard along side
Grandmalyn's china. But who presided at the head of the table?

 The girl who grew up in Chicago.The fourteen year old of the Grand Tour in 1930 who told her diary how may laps she marched around the deck of the S.S. Hamburg and how late at night she danced with your brother. The young woman who cruised to Bermuda with a college girlfriend. The woman who was active in charity work during and after Northwestern University. The young mother who moved far away from her family to be with her husband, and the wife who vacationed "out west" and rode on horse-packing trips into the wilderness even though horses weren't your favorite mode of travel. You gave fly fishing a go. Thrilled over a trip to Kenya and wrote glowing reports of the wildlife you and Dad saw.

You're the mother who learned how to sew so she be  part of a 4-H club and teach my friends and I to sew some crafts--like covering a cigar box with calico to make a sewing box. The mother who took us climbing up Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. Who made sure I took piano lessons. The wife active in the League of Women Voters. An active member of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Concord and then the branch church in New Canaan,  Connecticut.

You moved away from the cottage you loved in  Concord when your husband started a new job in New York City. Endured a year of remodeling of your home, much of the time without a real kitchen.
You made friends of what I called the "older women" at church. Invited them for tea.

You taught me how to drive--a stick shift. Put up with many lurches while I practiced.

After Dad passed on you let me move you to Bozeman when you were 95. I'm only beginning to understand how hard that must have been for you!  But you squared your shoulders and soldiered on. When I suggested doing some things to have fun or that you might engage in some of the activities at the independent living facility where you had an apartment, you told me "I didn't move here to have fun, I moved here to have a purpose." You joined church. Attended concerts and lectures with us. Read more than one newspaper a day."I don't want to sit around and eat bon bons," you often said.

You were gracious, courageous, focused, determined. And you loved nature. I remember how much you loved to sit by our sliding door to the porch and watch the birds whenever you came over for lunch on Sundays.

The other day I held in my hand a quilt signed "Grandmother Keith," and dated May 6, 1917. She must have made it in time for your first birthday. I've don't recall seeing it before unpacking a box closed up since you moved. The next person to hold it will be the great, great, great, grandson of the woman who stitched childhood scenes in blue thread one hundred years ago.

Now I live "out west." I like to horseback ride, wade in streams, hike in wildflowers, write stories, take pictures. I often like to talk to you when I'm out in nature alone. In part I'm who I am because of you.

Happy Mother's Day!
Love, Carolyn

(Pictures-in order:
1932, 1941, 1944,
1945, 1951.

I find it a curiosity - rather like a curio shop - to be wandering through old poems and essays I have composed over the years. There is no dust to blow off the tops of books, no cat sitting beside a geranium in a shop window peering out at strangers scurrying by in the rain. No bell atop a door to let the wizened woman who owns the shop know when a curious stranger happens to enter seeking shelter from the storm or tempted by the sign that reads : "Browsers Welcome: Tea Shop and Books for Sale."

While wandering around my shelves of the topics hiding poems and stories I found this one and decided to share it with you. I have no idea when "yesterday" was. I don't think it matters.

JEWEL WEED

Yesterday I went for a walk along a trail nearby. Many bicycles with their riders passed by.

When I entered a part of the trail that went down beside and below an abandoned railroad track

I saw a tangle of brambles and weeds in all directions.  There were beer cans and bottles among them. My first thought was “How ugly! There aren’t any flowers and it’s all a mess. Why did I bring my camera? There’s nothing here to see.” Then something said as though in whisper “Look a little closer.” Jewel weed was growing in a small patch beneath a choke cherry bush. I am familiar with this plant having seen it in Connecticut. I didn’t expect to see it here. The orange flowers are like ¾ inch tiger lilies. The leaves are one of the jewels. If you draw them back and forth in the water they appear silver on one side and gold on the other. When they go to seed they form a case which will spring open if brushed against and the seed shoot out all around the plant.

To see the jewel inside, scrape off the seed covering. Each seed is the color of a robin’s egg.

They are edible too.

As I walked farther along the trail I began to notice the deep red, almost black choke cherries shining in the sunlight. They were sweet and had very little of the ingredient in them that causes the person looking for a casual snack to have his mouth go dry. Burdocks were bristling with purple, long-leaf cottonwoods were perfuming the air with spice. When two boys raced past us on their bicycles, dropped them and raced under the bridge I couldn’t imagine what they were up to. I saw a little while later smoking cigarettes. My first thought was “how awful!” Then I paused, wanting to think better of them. I don’t know them. I may never see them again. But do I want to identify anyone as useless or vagrant or unpleasant? They may be like the jewel weed whose jewel needs to be looked for carefully.

It’s easy to have a plan for a walk on a sunny day that includes discovering wild flowers or sitting on a bench beside the river. It takes more work to let in thoughts of beauty when things don’t go the way we planned.

April. Phoenix. Desert Botanical Garden.
A new discovery. Hills like sleeping and curled up dragons in shades of dusky mauves and purples, sculpted by wind, scattered with sage greens of prickly pear and cordone or saguaro. Columns drilled with holes by woodpeckers, cactus that form "boots" inside where the woodpecker hollowed out space safe above the ground for his nest. Violet shadows. Golden showers of palo verde blossoms.
A quail threads his way through vegetation on the ground, top not bouncing on his head. Hummingbirds darting among hot pinks, oranges and deep reds of spring blooms. A hawk watches over the throngs of Sunday garden visitors from his aerie atop a curled, dusty dragon. Light, shade. Hot, cool. Butterflies, dragonflies. Somewhere a roadrunner. I seek the sun. Slide into shade beside a pool. Strange bird songs. I feel as though I am in a boneyard, a sculpture garden, a nest.

Today I walked the paths around the ponds at Cherry River fishing access and sanctuary. The snow beneath my feet was packed slush. Overhead clouds were colors of faded denim, dusky lavender,
and violet-gray. The sky, where visible was a washed-thin cobalt overhead and pale lemon
near the horizon.

I didn't hear any song of returning birds. Not even a robin.

The honey, tawny, blonde and russet grasses are mashed by snow. Here and there stragglers, stems at odd angles, leaves curled and wet, wipe the frosted surface. When the sun shines through cloud, their shadows are violet. The old snow still sparkles.

Off in the distance rags of snow litter the mountains and hills.

Canada geese and mallards feed in the ponds' open areas. With each day above freezing, stained ice gives way to open water.

I find solace in walking there. A place to enter Nature's world and leave the cacophony of news behind.

Storm Surge

I've just returned from a conference at Asilomar Conference Grounds in Monterey, CA with poet David Whyte. In this beautiful setting by the sea, poetry, song, and fierce Pacific storm all came together to create a space of wild beauty--inside and out.

When we learned that two men were swept out to sea by the storm driven waves that rose higher than normal onto the land, we all joined for a few moments of silence to honor them.

"Half a Shade Braver" was the title of this conference for the weekend. We were all asked to contemplate ways in which, in our daily lives, we could be just a little bit more brave than before.
It's not required of us that we be super heroes or even change dramatically.

What one act can I take or make today to believe more in myself and my power to help a world
crying for love and peace?

I can begin with a poem:

My poem is an offering
to the pearls of rain
suspended
on soft green needles.
The fragrance perfumes sea air.
A gentle face
into a fierce storm
where waves unleash
their fury on the sand
and sweep the unwary
into their embrace.

These waters--
salt and fresh--
become one
as I breathe
how they join together

While I cannot speak,
in this silence
a fire warms my body,
music my heart.

My voice is here,
in the pines crooked branches
sheltering the hummingbird,
in the raven's call,
and gulls curved wings.

Last night
the wind knocked at my door
Who called me?
This morning
I will listen.