What if . . .

we were only willing to accept water the color and clarity it is at its source?

It's there for the taking each day

Mother Nature teaches us to add an exclamation point to our morning with a magic moment to set a positive intention for the day . . . 

. . . and in the evening an electric moment to be grateful for the blessings we received.

Law of the land

There's a sign on the way out of the Molokai airport that warns tourists to slow down. Indeed the only place I see people move fast is in one of the grocery stores where customers and employees crowd the isles, half of them filling their carts, the other half filling the shelves behind them. The chatter among them reveals relationships are monumentally more important than the transactions going on. Outside you find only moseying. No one is in a hurry here, and it doesn't matter how much of a hurry you want to impose, the law of he land says you go Molokai speed.

Presence on the prairie, act II

How long has it been since you dragged yourself from your warm bed before daybreak, pulled on boots and hiked along a rocky ridge to a perch on top of your world, just to witness the Sun’s optimistic rise . . .

felt the curve of the Earth beneath your sit bones, sat quiet and still on the dirt, savored the evening’s perfect light . . .

stumbled over a mound of bunch grass, flushed a sparrow from its nest and investigated, just for the joy of laying eyes on the hand-crafted basket and two tawny bundles inside . . .

spent a week sleeping on the ground, in the company of coyotes singing to the moon, nestled in the cradle of your Mother’s arms?

What Pachamama knew all along

Suzanne Simard is professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia where she has studied the forests for the past 30 years. Her work reveals complex, symbiotic networks under our forests that mimic our own neural and social networks. Dispelling the idea that nature competes for survival, she discovered that trees use underground fungi networks to communicate and share resources. Not to be missed is her TED Talk urging a revolution in forest practices.

Listening to healing sirens from Mother Earth

I was the only aging suburbanite in the group of six urban dwellers, sitting on a pillow on the floor of the 2nd story, the woody smell of coffee infusing the space from the shop below. The rest were 20-somethings, engaged in banter with our teacher like they were old friends. I was the rookie in a collective who had come to study song and singing, how to lead others in song, and how to connect song to the Earth.

Following the call

I cannot resist a call on the wind from Camp Creek Canyon, urging me to bring my gear.

I squish along on curious boots, tripod balanced on my right shoulder, Nikon and extra lenses strapped in a pack on my back. The hot dusty smell I remember from my visit a year earlier is replaced with a damp perfume of penstemon and lupine, lush with unseasonable rain on this sacred ground once home to the Nez Pearce. Out here on the Zumwalt Prairie, where scientists count and plant and monitor, there are mysteries that cannot be explained.