Category Archives: Great Wheel

Aging, Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Becoming Vishnu

July 27, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Vishnu is the Hindu god of stability, the preserver and protector. When I look at the Hindu pantheon, my eye has always gone to Shiva, the god of creation and destruction, the whirling vibrant energy of the universe. Were I Hindu, I would be a Shaivite. But as we’ve aged, as we’ve become the members of our family and, for that matter, of our generation, at the edge of extinction, it has become clear to me that Vishnu defines us better.

When we stand, as we do, between life and death, life itself takes on a different color, a different valence. That’s not to say that we don’t always stand between life and death, life is fragile and death, in its entropic way, more natural. But as we veer past the mid-60’s, the path from birth to death has grown long and its terminus closer.

We stand, too, at the end of our ancientrail, able to look back over the days and years with gathered wisdom. At least sometimes. Shiva forces are at work in our children’s lives and especially in the lives of our grandchildren, creating careers, destroying dreams, unfolding the future. Our reach now extends into those lives as a somewhat distant, but sometimes intimate force, offering stability and protection. We have become the avatars of Vishnu.

The role is unnatural for me, having been more of a bomb thrower in my youth and in my middle-age, too. The Vaishnavite forces, always there, for we are a mix of all these fundamental powers, have gradually strengthened, gained more purchase. It’s possible, I suppose, to see Shiva as the radical, willing to take apart received wisdom, to burn institutions to the ground, to start over and over and over, and Vishnu as the conservative, or at least conservator, the solid, steady hand needed when Shiva’s work has gone too far.

The Hindu trinity of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, the God of origins, the creator force who lives now distant from the work of his creation, constitutes, like the Christian trinity, an expression of the one god in three manifestations. Like the Great Wheel it is a poetic, a metaphorical expression of the nature of reality. You may choose to believe that these gods are real and I wouldn’t argue the choice, but in my maturing understanding of religious belief, all the world’s religion are artistic renderings of the subtle and not-so subtle forces set in motion at the big bang. No, they are not all the same, hardly; but they are all attempts to give expression and coherence to the context of this temporary, wonderful miracle we call life.

So, it’s not surprising to me that in this third phase of my life, I find a purpose defined by a Hindu god. We arrive at this moment shaped and pulled by the paths we have chosen. Our ancietrail is now more experience than future. As Vishnu rises in our lives, that experience becomes his form, the vital energy that allows us to serve as anchor for our family, for our community, for the world we’re passing on to our children and grandchildren.

I said above that the Vishnu role is unnatural to me. Perhaps I should say that it was unnatural to the younger me. Now, it seems natural, necessary, good. The maintainer and protector.

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Politics, Science, US History, World History

Not Quite Yet

July 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

“We’re in grave danger”

“The lineup of speakers presented a United States in danger, threatened from abroad and from within, a once-proud nation on the very brink of chaos and dystopia.” NYT, GOP Convention, Day 1

My post about Mutual Homicide might give you the impression that I agree with this analysis of the immediate future. Nope. Standard and Poor’s and the DOW have both reached record highs in the last couple of days. There are signs that the climate change movement has begun to get traction. The Cubs are winning. Von Miller finally signed with the Broncos. US demographics portend an increasingly diverse nation, with contributions from many cultures strengthening our common life. We’ve just had two full terms of an African-American president and are probably near our first woman president. LGBT rights have increased as has an understanding of transgender individuals. Women have entered more and more careers, have more real power. We are not spiraling into the earth. Not yet.

My mutual homicide conclusion, a dark one, possibly too dark, comes not from the near term, but from a very long term view of the way we humans are acting. We have in place an economic system that does not account for externals, the costs to the public good of private profit seeking. This fact, by itself, is enough to explain the dire distant future I imagine. When the engines of our ingenuity (to borrow the title of an NPR feature) rely on diminishing natural resources and cost-free toxification of the air, the land and our water, then economic advance (like the records for the DOW and Standard and Poor’s) is really a blinking red light. A stop sign. But together we choose, over and over again, to run the light imagining that there is no truck marked CO2 concentration barreling through the intersection.

Can we agree to change course? In theory, yes. In practice, with the state of anarchy that exists among nation-states, it will be very difficult. We need not just one but many statesmen and stateswomen to move into leadership. And unfortunately this is not the trend around the world. No, the world has begun to move toward more and more nativist politics. The Han chinese. The Hindu nationalists. Brexit. The increasing strength of far-right parties in Europe, especially Austria, France and Germany. Donald Trump.

I know, after writing this and the mutual homicide post, that I owe you all a strategy, a path to a future where we do learn to live sustainably on our planet. I’m thinking. I’m thinking.

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

Mutual Homicide

July 16, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Park County Fair Moon

Up here on Mt. Ararat, aka Shadow Mountain, our small ark has come to rest. Or at least so it seems at times. The rising waters of hate, fear, violence, guns, neglect lap, muddy and turgid, not far below. We keep sending the dove of peace out from the ship. It quickly returns, finding nowhere to rest in a world rent by pain. Doves can read the headlines.

Under the headlines a friend faces death from lung cancer. Jon and Jen fight. The wildfire season is underway on the Front Range, a Russian roulette moment until the rains return. The Trumpet blasts ignorance and xenophobia.

Yet. The lodgepoles blanketed us with their yellow pollen. I watched bees, native and honey, crawl in and out of pale blue Penstemon. Stacked and neatly trimmed lenticular clouds form over Black Mountain, Mt. Evans. Cub Creek and Bear Creek and Deer Creek carry water stored higher in the mountains by late winter snows, feeding trout and willows along the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The mule deer and elk come to our yard for grass and other small plants, show up on Black Mountain Drive as we drive home from dinner. A great horned owl flies above the pines, hunting for prey.

All this human turmoil happens as the Great Wheel turns, as it turned long before humans emerged from the evolutionary struggle and as it will turn long after our mean spirit has scrubbed us from the planet. We may live on beyond this wonder, this earth, but our fate here seems one of mutual homicide. Could we only take the lesson of the Great Wheel and learn to live with our kind as part of rather than against each other and the natural world.

Garden, Great Wheel, Holidays, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Summer Solstice 2016

June 20, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice

redagainstwhite cropped — Fairplay, South Park

Light to dark. A continuum and a dialectic. Our inner lives fall, always, somewhere along this line. Our life might be bright, cheery, goals and actions easy to see, our days bouncy and their weight upon us like a feather. Or, our lives might be dark, intense, solemn, our next moves difficult to imagine, our days heavy, weighing upon us like a great rock.

But the Great Wheel shows us a yet deeper truth. Light to dark and dark back to light is the way of life on this earth. In the temperate latitudes this truth is at its most nuanced and its most fruitful. Quite literally. In temperate latitudes, as the Solstices mark out, we go from the Summer victory of light to the Winter victory of darkness.

Though darkness seems to be the dialectical opposite of light-winter the antithesis of summer-in fact darkness gives plant life a time to rest, rejuvenate, prepare for the rigors of another growing season. The light, when it begins to bear down upon the fields and forests, encourages and feeds them, preparing them for the harvest. In the places where the seasons are more extreme, like the tropics where daylight remains equal to night all year round and at the poles where night and day extend for months exuberant plant life can overtake whole regions. Or, at the poles ice can become so thick and vast that it covers hundreds, thousands, of square miles.

The Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice then are not opposed to each other. The transitions from light to dark and dark to light for which they are the zenith are necessary engines for the well-being of all of us who call this planet home.

Thus we might consider the transitions from light to dark in our psyche, in our soul, as variations necessary for a full and rich life. Of course we need the sunshine of children, of love, of hope, of success. The times in our lives when those can dominate are like the summer, the growing season. Yet, grief and failure are part of our soul’s turning, part of our reaction to and integration of life’s darkness. Also, those practices which can take us deep into our inner life are like the fallow times of fall and winter providing rest and rejuvenation to us.

Today we celebrate the solar equivalent of our live’s growing season. Mark out those matters in your life that flourish, that bring joy and love, that encourage your fulfillment. But, know as well that even events like divorce, like the death of a loved one, like the failure of a dream can enrich the soil of your life, must enrich the soil of your life or else we pretend that the Great Wheel does not turn, but rather stops and becomes one season, to the eventual death of all we know.

The Summer Solstice begins the gradual victory of dark over light, the one we celebrate at the Winter Solstice. Light and dark are not opposite, but parts of a whole, parts of your soul and its ancientrail toward death.

Bees, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Summer Begins

May 31, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creek Moon

So. A rookie takes the Indy 500. The Warriors outlast the Thunder to make the NBA finals a second year in a row. School has begun to wind down. The rhythm of our national life slips into summer, a season forever shaped by the farm, the growing season, even though the number of family farms has continued to sink since the middle of the last century. The kids get out of school to work on the farm, at least they used to. Now most school kids have probably never been on a farm, perhaps find them as foreign as they find the North Woods or the Rocky Mountains.

Here, so far, we’ve had a wet May and forecasters think that may extend into mid-to-late summer. The deeper into the fire season the moisture remains the better off we are. With one exception. All that rain encourages the grasses, shrubs and smaller plants. They in turn can become the fuel that advances a fire.

The fire mitigation process has the flavor of seasonal work in that it needs to finish before the mountains dry out. Hard physical labor in the early summer fits the mood. Here in the mountains the mornings remain cool, pleasant for working outside.

A couple of days ago I noticed an odd newcomer in the mountain meadow the cattle company uses to grass feed some of its stock. A beehive. A single beehive surrounded by metal posts with both barbed wire (I think. From the road it’s hard to tell.) and electric fencing. It intrigued me, looked like a simple set up. Sort of rejiggered the beekeeper in me. Hey, maybe I can do that. I’m going into the meadow someday this week and check out the setup.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Water. Psyche.

May 8, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Went into Evergreen yesterday hunting for truffles-no, not nose to the ground, nose to the display case-and a bottle of Chardonnay. On the way down Shadow Mountain and whatever other mountains I descend on highway 78 (Shadow Mountain Drive, Black Forest Drive and Brook Forest Drive) Maxwell Creek tumbled down its narrow bed toward the rocks of Upper, then Lower Maxwell Falls. Further down Cub Creek came crashing down the mountain, headed toward a rendezvous with Maxwell. This time I realized that the creek going over the concrete spillway further on down 78 was neither Maxwell nor Cub, but a third creek coming down and out of Shadow Mountain like Maxwell. This one hits either Cub Creek or Maxwell somewhere, I couldn’t find the spot, but in any case all three join below Lower Maxwell Falls parking lot and speed toward Evergreen.

Not so long ago, I think it was 2012, these same three creeks overwhelmed Evergreen, causing considerable flooding. That was the same year that Golden and Manitou Springs and Boulder had flood problems, too. This is not that kind of year, but the amount of energy in these creeks impresses me.

The stolid, deeply moored mountain shows its power to create movement, the opposite of its apparent nature. Which might say something about us, about what we perceive as permanent and unchanging in our Selves. Look for what movement it creates, perhaps unknown to us until we look.

Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Running Creeks Moon

May 5, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane New (Running Creeks) Moon

Shadow Brook, Forest Brook, Maxwell Creek, Deer Creek, the mountains streams I see regularly, are full. The snow melt obeys the law of gravity, following the twists in spacetime toward lower points. They boil at rock beds and turns, often muddy water capped with white foam.

With all the recent snow fields have begun to green and our aspens have leaf buds. The lodgepoles look healthy. That 10 inch snow last weekend has already melted and the snow drifts even in our north facing back yard have begun to diminish. Time to get back to I’m a lumberjack, yes I am.

Wildlife is more in evidence, too. On the day of Vega’s death Kate saw a red fox on the roadside, as if Vega’s spirit were saying the good-bye we didn’t get in person. We’ve several small herds of mule deer and Kate saw four elk does yesterday. Pinecam.com, source for all things local, has had mountain lion photos and reports of hungry bears causing mischief. The Denver Post reported a bear rummaging through a man’s refrigerator in his second floor apartment.

The bicyclists also return with the clearing roads, joggers, too. Crankshafts of motorcyclists also begin to appear. And that seasonal bird, the tourist, begins to clog highway 285, racing around curves and down the 7% inclines. There are grumbles on Pinecam.com. Here in Conifer 285 is still four lane, but south (really west) of us about seven or eight miles it goes down to two lanes. That’s the direction the tourists head and it makes for dangerous driving in the summer months.

So a seasonal change is upon us, though a very different one from the flowering, leafing, sprouting spring of Andover.

Great Wheel, Holidays

Beltane, 2016

May 1, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Wedding Moon

This is the first day of the growing season, the time when the old Celtic calendar turned over from Samhain, or Summer’s End, to Beltane, the day that marks the end of the fallow time. At some point, too, the Celts began to observe the solar holidays, solstices and equinoxes. Their distinctive holidays fall between these 4 solar events and hence are known as cross quarter days. It was only later in the evolution of the Celtic calendar that two other cross quarter holidays, Imbolc on February 1st and Lughnasa on August 1st were added.

That we’re not living in Ireland is apparent today since we’ve just received around 10 inches or so of new snow. No start of the growing season on Shadow Mountain. We’re both far away from the oceans, Ireland has a maritime climate, and high above it’s mostly sea level altitude.

But, close enough. Soon the weather here will slip out of the fallow season’s cold and snow into the growing season’s warmth. Sort of. At altitude the nights are never as warm and the temperature averages not as high as they are at sea level. Too, here in the West the precipitation comes largely in the fallow time. That means the growing season here on Shadow mountain is both shorter and cooler as well as drier. That defines the montane ecosystem in which we live.

The market week and celebrations of Beltane included the Maypole, fire jumping (for fertility), driving cattle between two bonfires for health, and those who wanted making love in the fields to draw the fertility of the fields into themselves and add their own to the fields in return. It was known then that human life and the life of the fields and forests were one. This knowledge remains essential to the health of our species and is one reason a pagan outlook continues to nourish me.

The fallow time is a long time of inwardness, six months or so. If they’re perennials, plants die back above ground and focus on storage of energy in their root system. They also interact vigorously with the soil around them. The human spirit goes inward, too, evidenced in the felt need for the holidays of light that fill up the two months plus of holiseason. In that time we humans interact with our roots, family and friends and tradition, nourishing them and being nourished by them.

So, when the lambs are in the belly at Imbolc (in the belly), the ewes freshen and milk becomes available. Memories of lambs frolicing in the spring return. By Beltane the lambs have strengthened and the fields are ready for planting. In old Ireland, that is. Those in the farther northern and southern latitudes and in high altitudes can appreciate the sunburst of life without snow and cold, of life with the promise of fresh vegetables, grain crops, fattened animals, of relaxing outside on a warm evening.

This is a time to celebrate. Dig deep into your fallow time ruminations, seek out what needs the sun to flourish. Make sure it’s planted in the right soil and gets the nourishment it needs, then grab your loved ones and dance, dance, dance. (or, if you’re more Celtic and less northern European, reverse the order.)

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

The Goddess

March 8, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Maiden Moon

The goddess has moved back into her maiden form, having left the crone behind at Imbolc. She will remain a maid until Beltane when the earth becomes fecund. We are once again in the time of new beginnings, the temperate zones of mother earth readying themselves for a new growing season. This is a time to consider pruning those branches of your life that have died or no longer have the sort of energy you want to encourage.

While the antiquity of the triple goddess concept may be questioned, its archetypal power has moved it into a central position among contemporary pagans. Related both to the seasons of the year and the phases of the moon, the shifting from maiden to mother to crone offers us a regular opportunity to examine our life as a cyclical phenomenon of innocence, achievement and the gathering of wisdom.

Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Third Phase

Crossing the Shadow Line

December 31, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Christmas Moon

A Christmas cold came to me three days ago. Nice present. On its way to other hosts now, still causing a bit of havoc here. My first one since April of 2014. I will get that nice post-illness bump in energy and joy just as we cross the shadow line into New Years.

Of course, this book metaphor is true every day, but somehow it feels truer right now. I’m looking forward to 2016, lots of plans, important events.

We’ve had single digit, below zero temps and look to have them for a while. We’re also snow covered, including much of our solar panels. They’re not switched on yet, but today around noon they should be. Golden Solar is redoing some electrical and hooking up our monitoring device. We’ll be able to read the output of each panel on our own solar internet page.

Ancientrails turns 11 in 2016. And turns out to have been the great writing project of my life. See you on the trail next year.