Imbolc New Life Moon
Life still trickling by. A bit of snow over the last few days, colder now, in the Colorado measure of that term. So relative. Saw a facebook meme with Texans in parkas at 70 degrees. Could have countered that with a Minnesotan in shorts at ten below. Meanwhile 11, last night, felt pretty cold after three years here. These gross physical acclimatizations are easy to spot, but what about the more subtle mental adjustments?
How does the mind change, for example, when it goes up and down mountains, around curves into canyons, rather than coasting across the flat lands of the Midwest? Or, what about looking up and seeing ovular lenticular clouds, high flying cirrus against blue sky? When fall comes and the changes are only in the aspen, a mass of gold variations, what happens to the heart used to deciduous colors?
Political colorations are different here, too. That thick vein of let me alone libertarianism too often gets mined for political results that would make even conservative Minnesotans cringe. Immigrants to the state, like Kate and me, drag along with us expectations that government should be of, by and most of all, for the people. This is a far from universal sentiment in the West. We’re adding new strata to the political geography, but the whole still feels very alien to me.
This is all by way of becoming native to this place, a key element in my pagan creed borrowed from Wes Jackson at the Land Institute. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? That’s why I love it, the challenging notion that we can be of a new place in a very old, intimate way, through what Rabbi Jamie would call Torah study, close attention, close attention to details and to our own inner world, compassionate attention willing to be shaped by what we find.
Kate and I did it on the Great Anoka Sand Plain. Over the Andover years we listened to the soil, to the rhythms of the growing season. We stuck our hands in the soil, partnered with it. We planted trees and fruit bearing shrubs. There was the open prairie we cultivated on either sides of the more traditional suburban lawn carpet. Bees, with whom we partnered, for honey. Dogs who used the woods as their home and hunting ground. By the time we left we were native to that place. Its rhythms shaped our own and together we created a place to live.
It’s happening here, too. A long and nuanced process, still in its early days, but one that has promise for the Great Work, creating a sustainable presence for humans on this planet.
Sort of feeling crummy yesterday, Kate, too. Not sure whether last month’s illness lingers. Or what. Kate said, “Maybe the radon mitigation system’s not working.” Oh. Well. Damn. “I’ll go check.” The radon mitigation system has a fan that disperses radioactive particles, blowing them up and out of the house. If it’s on and the barrier’s intact, the system’s working.
Going into the crawl space is a bit like opening the closet to go to Narnia. The makeshift door to the crawl space is in a closet and opens to the world beneath our house. However, even before I removed the door, I reached up to switch on the light. By god, right there, beside the crawl space light switch was another switch. It said, fan. Oh. Could it be this simple? It was. I hit the switch, which was in the off position, then went back outside to listen to the fan. On.
The first, perhaps the simpler, has been about how to describe our environment in the most economical way possible. I know, I didn’t say it was deep, just persistent. I’ve come to these nouns: sky, evergreens, slope, rock, streams. Yes, it leaves out houses and wildlife, roads and cars. But. The context for life up here can be described using those five words.
If the present is all we ever have, and it is, then the journeys we take, no matter how mundane, are also the present at the time we are on them. There is no future. We only imagine it. There is no past, it is a memory. There is only this moment, keys clacking, letters and words appearing on the screen, a car going by, Black Mountain and blue sky out the window.
The Imbolc moon has had its night in earth’s shadow, its night as super and blue and red. Hey, up in the sky, it’s Supermoon! And last night it was wonderful again. High, full, behind a faint veil of clouds. Orion and the moon. My two favorite celestial objects. Well, ok, the sun, too, but I can never look at it.
Last night I went back to Beth Evergreen, more kabbalah. Studying the kabbalah at night, especially under a full moon. Yes. Learning about more double letters: Pey, Caph, Reish, Tav.
Being part of the tribe? No. Not for me. Walking along with the tribe as it wends its way through this moment in time? Yes.
Instead of watching the state of the union Kate and I participated in a presentation on green burial and the possibility of creating a green cemetery. Beth Evergreen has been moving, slowly, toward a Jewish cemetery over the last six years, but Bonnie Houghton, a rabbi in training and former long time Forest Service employee has accelerated the process through her own efforts. In her current work with the Mountain Land Trust she sees properties presented for conservation easements. Some don’t qualify for that purpose, but would work well for green cemeteries, where burials eschew vaults, fancy caskets and backhoes for hand-dug graves, wicker/pine/cardboard/shroud coverings for the corpse, and small, usually flush with the ground grave markers.
I found this conversation oddly energizing. Something about the cliched final resting place has more resonance as I move toward my 71st birthday. Having a cemetery which celebrates the natural order of life and death with decay rather than chemicals, concrete, and metal makes so much sense to me. Having a tree planted over my cremains, or in them, feels right. Too, we could bury the remains of our many dogs with us. That would make for a unique family plot.
Well. Finally. A real snow storm. The white stuff started falling around midnight on Saturday and continued through the day Sunday. Maybe 10 to 12 inches. Ted of All Trades plowed us out in the afternoon. I cleared our deck and the path to garage 5 times as the snow fell. It’s easier to clear it before it builds up too much bulk.