• Category Archives Great Work
  • Sins of Emission. No, Onan, Not You.

    Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

    Tuesday gratefuls: Rental Camry. Snow today. Rain overnight. Thunder yesterday afternoon. Seasonal transition. Still late Winter here. Or very early Spring. Shadow, who needs her space. My wu wei teacher. My Lodgepole companion. Aspen catkins. Lodgepole male and female cones. Grass, greening. Good sleeping. Dependable organic alarm clock. Learning about Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Shema. Mah Tovu. My mezuzahs.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Lord and the Lady

    Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

    One brief shining: Drove down the hill yesterday to Stevinson Toyota, Ruby needing IV fluids for her transmission, her differential, her brakes, and her motor oil so I had to leave her at the clinic, take a rental to drive back up into the Mountains.

     

    Chatgpt favors symmetry over all. It left out the seventh sin: Oligarchy

    Each time I have work done on my infernal combustion engine, I have a strong anachronistic feeling. Like a guy sitting in the buggy repair shop getting a broken spoke repaired, or split tongue. Perhaps having the buggy whip replaited.

    Sins of commission and emission. All those miles over 62 years of driving. All those rush hours. All those times with the car idling to keep the interior warm. Trips in and out of gas stations. In and out of repair shops. Until not so long ago, ordinary, venal we might say. Now one of the seven deadly ones, maybe the deadliest in a literal sense.

    Perhaps Hell is perennial eye watering smog, acid rain, Phoenix in summer heat, and everyone in MHGA hats. With red ties so long everybody trips, falls in the polluted mud.

    Hoping the Snow holds off long enough for me to pick up Ruby before it gets heavy. She has Snow tires. The Camry does not.

    This morning I have to vote in the Elk Creek Fire board election, keep the libertarian trolls under their bridges. Then scoot over to Evergreen, to Rich’s law offices to sign what I hope is the last communication about Ruth’s 529.

    I-70 down to Hwy. 6 to liberate Ruby from the clinic. After paying her hefty bill of course. Worth it. Her transmission, differential, and brakes work extra hard during Mountain driving.

     

    Dog journal: Shadow requires wide open doors. Then she feels safe coming in. Some times. A new learning on my part. She knew it all along.

    Even when she refused to come inside-most of yesterday-if I went outside, she ran to me tail-wagging, play bowing, happy I was outside. Some trauma runs deep in her doggy psyche. Post-traumatic stress, I’d say.

    She’s come so far from her days of hiding under the bed.

     

    Just a moment: Fog among the Lodgepoles this morning. Reminds me of red tie guy’s flood the zone strategy. Raised an obscuring fog as DOGE dug their precocious hacking fingers deep into the entrails of U.S. payment systems. As ICE agents in plain clothes hustled foreign students into vans for a free trip to Louisiana. As Trump Tarrific played his anti-globalist cards here, there, then everywhere. As judge’s orders went unheeded. As retribution against his enemies gained steam, using the powers of his office.

    Oh, America. My heart weeps for thee.

     

     


  • The Great Work

    Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

    Monday gratefuls: Stevinson’s Toyota. Snow and rain. Now 8 or 9″. All moisture accepted and appreciated. My son. Shadow, the regresser. Her 15 minutes on the treat (shh. Leash.). Common Ground. Heal the soil. The Great Work: create a sustainable presence for humans on Mother Earth.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Rain and Snow

    Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

    One brief shining: A cold rain has fallen; on its cool breath came a good night’s sleep, up at 5 am with a lick of Shadow’s tongue, a deep whine, unusual for her, so I moved as creaky quick as possible to get her outside.

     

    The coming Snow. Leaving her Snow shoes on. Ruby will still get her 60,000 mile service with all fluids replaced. Means I will sit. Wait. Not easy, but necessary. Keep Ruby on the road. She’s already been built. I’ve gotten at least 250,000 miles on the Toyota’s I’ve driven. Probably my last car. Now seven years old.

    A devil’s bargain I didn’t know I made back in 1963 when I got my first driver’s license. A carbon footprint, cabrón. All those years on the road. Helping send carbon up, up, up. Insulate Mother Earth.

    The freedom of driving carrying such a high cost, higher even than Dead Man’s Curve or Teen Angel. Back then car wrecks were the worst we could imagine. Now: each car a tiny Chicxulub meteor. Death by a thousand infernal combustion engines.

     

    Kate used to talk about an adrenal squeeze. Saw in my USPS advance notice I had a letter from Traveler’s Insurance, carrier for my home, auto, and personal liability. Stamped on the outside of the envelope: IMPORTANT INSURANCE INFORMATION.

    Was it my turn to scramble for another carrier? The envelope didn’t show up that day. I checked online. Found nothing. It came the next day.

    Conditional renewal. I have to accept a $5,000 deductible for Hail and Wind damage. Well, all right. I can do that. I’d read that insurers for Colorado homes see our hail threat as much more dire than Wildfire. Here’s proof.

     

    Just a moment: Do all people deserve due process? I don’t know, said our President. It might mean, he went on, one million, two million, three million trials. What was that oath again?

    Perhaps he thought then, right at that moment. What if I could be Pope? Hey, let’s get AI to see how I’d look. Tone deaf doesn’t even begin to describe that. It’s the religious equivalent of saying if you’re famous you can grab them by the pussy.

     

    On a more upbeat note. I watched, at Tom’s suggestion, Common Ground. A documentary on Prime Video. I felt tears well up often at the savage rending of our most important resource: top soil.

    Joy with the clips of regenerative farmers growing corn in fields with legume cover crops. With the 7,000 acre farm in Williamsport, Indiana. Disturbing the soil with cattle grazing, mimicking the buffalo. Turning a profit by not feeding Monsanto, Bayer, John Deere. Lower input costs. Higher return on investment. This is the way.


  • They Call it Puppy Love

    Imbolc and the full Snow Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits. Shadow. Ginny and Janice. Luna and Annie. Leo. Gracie. My Lodgepole companion. The crooked Aspen outside my bedroom. The Mountain Lion family near Morrison. Black Bears. Soon. Mule Deer and Elk. Fox. Abert’s Squirrels. Red Squirrels. Rabbits. Voles. Mice. Marmots.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild Neighbors

    Week Kavannah:  Yirah. Awe.

    One brief shining: Tis an odd season this with taxes due next month, the wearing of the green celebrating St. Patrick who took Irish Wolfhounds to the Pope, big Snows covering basketball tourney roads, and hints of Spring with resurrection and liberation waiting to manifest.

     

    Always of two desires in these months. Crack wind, Winter blow, Snow. Stay longer. Fire in the fireplace. A good book. Cold nights for sleeping. Yes.

    Open vistas. Clear Skies. Mountain Wildflowers. Aspen Catkins. Lodgepole Anthers. Rabbit families. Chipmunks. Greening Willows and Dogwood. Mountain Streams in full voice, tumbling and turning. A sense of possibility strong in the Air. Yes.

    Dog journal: If you’ve never had a skittish puppy lay at your feet, head rested on your slipper. If you’ve never had a puppy wriggle up the side of your leg and look you in the eye with, yes, puppy love. If you’ve never had a puppy. I wish you had.

    Shadow incarnates love. Adoration. Companionship. Even the struggles and the outright exhaustion. All part of the joy.

    Puppies, like Wildflowers and Spring, remind us of the Great Wheel, Maiden-Mother-Crone, life begetting life. Old age and youth running next to each other in partnership. With love.

    Shadow. A small streak of black fur bounding through Snow drifts, racing around the perimeter, the fence line, all young muscle and limber movement, all newness. A potion to ease the aching joints and rigidity of 78 year old bones.

     

    Just a moment: I keep finding Seeds. Books about Seeds. Seed-Keepers. Seed Savers Exchange Catalogue. Seeds. The Seed Vault in Svalbard. Chapters in the Light-Eaters. Lectures in online botany classes.

    Recalling the spiny nubbin of a Beet Seed. The delicate Carrot Seed. The thick Pea. The Soil in an Andover raised bed leavened with compost and top soil, organic chemicals. Pressing the Seeds into the Soil. Feeling a frisson of future salads, side dishes.

    In remembering these things a sort of strange hope rises. That we, the faded flowers, now the Seed heads of yesterday’s generational garden will leave our Seeds of love, justice, and compassion to grow in the rich Earth of this once and future nation.

    Maybe we could create a Seed Catalogue for our nieces and nephews, our grandchildren. Even a Seed Savers Exchange for the ideas and actions that still hold the promise of a victory garden for diversity, for equality, for shared wealth and opportunity.

    Or a nation in exile limned in a new Whole Earth catalogue for those of us who hold fast to the notion that rapaciousness, cruelty, mockery, and misogyny have no place in America’s fields and beds. Plant these instead, these seeds of liberty and freedom with their attendant responsibilities.

    Plant this seed of love and that one of compassion. Fertilize with chi, illuminate with ohr, moisten with joy.


  • A Day in the Life

    Imbolc and the Birthday Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: Torah study. Luke and Leo. Joanne. Ron and the Purim spiel. Shadow. Her wiggly, happy self. My son and Seoah safely back in Korea. Barb’s service today. Family. Of choice. All ways, always. Big problems to solve. Ancient brothers. Raising a puppy. Sarcopenia. Workouts.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Shadow

    Week kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.

    One brief shining: Grappel pelted down, small pellets of snow, fog shrouded the route between Evergreen and Conifer, driving on and out of it on my way to the Happy Camper, more joint relief edibles for night time.

     

    After sleeping through the leaving of my son, Seoah, and Gabe, I got up to a happy Shadow. We played a bit. Wrote Ancientrails, fed her, then got ready for Torah study.

    Eleven people. A minyan. A lively and learned discussion. The tests of the Israelites on their way in the wilderness. Our family history. Also a family of choice for me. Lots of new voices.

    Afterward, I drove to Bailey and picked up edibles for sleeping. Stopped at Buster’s and got a 12 pound bag of Natural Balance puppy food. Found even that bag heavy. I mean. Geez. Gotta get that resistance work back. Gassed up Ruby in a windy storm of grappel, then back home.

    More cold weather. 10 when I got up. Not Minnesota cold but still… After 10 years of Coloradification, cold to me.

    My son and Seoah spent 2 years plus in Hawai’i and a year in Singapore. They prefer the moderate heat of Hawai’i. Korea has its share of cold, snowy weather in a maritime climate. Tougher.

     

    This last week, with Shadow and visiting family and my birthday. Exhilarating. Filled with love. Also exhausting.

    I have decided to skip my son’s promotion ceremony in May. I will focus my energy and resources on the Jang family visit in late June or early July.

    Seoah’s mom and dad, her brother, and her sister, possibly her sister’s husband, and three kids coming to the Rockies, to Conifer.

    A once in a lifetime trip for them. I’m excited for them to be here. Seoah’s dad, in particular, loves Mountains. 8-10 days

     

    Just a moment: The Ancient brothers theme this morning-what big question would we like answered. I have two.

    How do we restore the flawed, yet wonderful government and culture we had only a month ago? What are the things that I can do to make that happen? Who are my allies?

    How do we continue the work necessary for a sustainable human presence on Mother Earth? With climate deniers in the ascendancy around the world, at this critical juncture for global warming.

    A second part of the topic responds to this Mike Nichol’s quote: “The only safe thing to do is take a chance. Play safe and you’re dead.” When did we last take chance?

    Adopting Shadow is this year’s main chance. Can I do it? Will I be good for her? Can we create a life together?

     

     

     

     


  • Blunted Dagger Rattling

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Rich Levine. Marilyn. Dr. Whited. Tom. Paul. Alan. Cold, single digits. Vince, plowed driveway. Rabbi Jamie. Writing. Kavannahs. Ukraine. Iran. Iraq. Turkey. Israel. Palestinians. Syria. Jordan. Egypt. Yemen. Saudi Arabia. Lebanon. China. Russia. South and North Korea. Japan. Taiwan.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Aortic Artery

    Kavannah for 2025:  Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 8th life: Foresight   (roeh et hanalod)

    One brief shining: Aortic artery aneurysm they say, spreading, mom’s brain aneurysm, a visit today to a cardiac surgeon, the past coming forward to haunt me, not as a synaptic engraved memory, but as a body recapitulating my mother’s, weakened arterial walls threatening to let my blood run free.

     

    Yeah. Keeping the world of doctors, nurses, technicians, phlebotomists, and billing departments in a steady flow of the green blood which runs through their veins. That’s me. Today’s contribution will go to Dr. William Whited, a cardiac surgeon, who will reveal to me the amount of danger I’m in from a slowly thinning aortic artery. A new issue for a new year. Yay.

     

    After about a five hour break from that last paragraph I can write off my aorta as an issue. At my age, Dr. Whited said, most likely will never be a problem. I liked him a lot though I admit I’ll like not seeing him again even better. I’ll need a CT scan in the next few weeks, just to make sure measurements are up to his standards, but he expects no trouble. Would that cancer and my back held such casual futures for me.

     

    From a geopolitical point of view I can see a certain logic in Trump’s desire for Greenland. Warming of the Arctic. The great northern passage opening up. Rare Earth elements. Sure, as a parlor game. Like, say imagining Canada as our 51st state. When we consider a rules base global order, maybe our NATO treaty for example, it’s not only flat out bonkers but a reflection of the Trump doctrine: keep your friends at arms length and your enemies close to the Oval office. Do favors for your enemies and take what you want from your friends.

    Of course, as one commentator noted, this blunted dagger rattling has a bread and  circuses appeal to his followers. Watch me stand up to Denmark and Canada. What a strong guy am I. All the while his real work will be cutting taxes for billionaires, expanding his family’s net wealth, and punishing all who dared to stand against him.

    Gonna be a long four years. And they haven’t even started yet.

     

    Just a moment: Apocalypse Now. I love the smell of wildfires in the morning. I feel for all those whose lives, whose homes, whose work places may have to yield to the fury of a Mother Earth grieving for her finely tuned climate.

    One way to reach the Great Work, a sustainable presence for humans on this Earth, lies in disaster after disaster until a more reasonable population size is left.


  • Noble? failures

    Yule and the Quarter Century Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Mini-splits. Elements and Elementals. The abyss. Sisyphus’ rock. Nietzsche. Whitehead. Plato. Socrates. Democritus. Diogenes. Thales. Xeno. Even Descartes. Kant. Maimonides. The Talmud. The Mishnah. The Torah. Coleridge. Wordsworth. Keats. Lao Tze. Chuang-tzu. Moses. Israel. Joseph. Miriam.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Our core story

    Kavannah for 2025: Creativity

    Kavannah for this January 3rd life: Joy

    One brief shining: Went to Stinker’s Sinclair yesterday to buy some milk, but there were no quart containers available, so I took four of the 16 ounce plastic bottles to the checkout where the clerk offered to make sure there were not any quarts in the back; while he did that, I looked across the counter to the other clerk, a thin guy with slightly long dark hair, maybe early twenties, and noticed that he carried an empty holster on his hip, tied to his right leg with a carefully knotted strand of leather.

     

    I’ve had a quiet week. Spoken to a few friends. Breakfast with Tara and with Alan this morning. Otherwise getting well back into a new workout routine, this time ensuring I do two full body resistance sessions a week and still aiming for the 150 minutes of moderate cardio. Not all the way there yet, but I can feel it coming.

    Reading. Finished the Tao of Pooh and ready to start the Te of Piglet, Hanukkah gifts from Ruth and Gabe. Von Bek, stalled in the story of the second Von Bek, The City in the Autumn Stars. Parsha in Bereshit (Genesis). Commentaries. The NYT. The Washington Post.

    Watching The Outpost, Seal Team, and Archer. Hawai’i 5-0 when I workout.

    Listening to Mozart quartets.

    Exchanging e-mails here and there.

     

    Listening to the voices of my past as they continue to bubble up. Wondering why I tend to focus on the noble failures more than the successes. At least I see them as noble.

    An example. We (odd, but I don’t who recall who “we” were.) heard one of the last remaining local seed companies, Northrup King, had entered into negotiations with Sandoz, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant. This purchase followed a trend of Big Pharma and Big Ag Chemical companies buying the smaller companies who sold seeds to farmers for each year’s new crop.

    Why? The smaller companies owned patents on the seeds. When there were many local seed companies, the hybridization processes were sensitive to regional and even local variations in soil, weather, pests, and other variables important to good crop production.

    The companies buying up the patents wanted two things (at least): control over the seed patents for crucial crops like corn, wheat, soy beans, and rice. Corn, wheat, and rice provide about 50% of the world’s calories according to chabotgpt. That control was step one. After they gathered (harvested?) these patents, these companies could centralize hybridization and begin the process of working on their genomes. This was in the mid-1980’s, when genetic manipulation was still in its infancy.

    We organized. Tried to form a local co-op to purchase Northrup-King and keep them out of Sandoz’s hands. We protested at the Northrup-King building which is now a wonderful space for artists. I met a person from the General Accounting Office of the Federal Government and tried to get her interested. We looked for a local buyer.

    This was prior to the internet so I subscribed to a company, a clipping service, that would provide relevant information published in magazines and newspapers throughout the U.S. We developed crude information packets for local media.

    All this over the course of 9 months to a year, as I recall. We were way out of our league. Barely had an effect on a process more critically handled in the world of finance than of local radical politics.

    In my mind a noble failure. We did, for a while, raise consciousness of the issue. We discovered novel ways to fight big corporations and their capitalist driven desire to dominate markets by any means necessary. Still, in the end, Northrup-King disappeared into the world of chemists and genetic engineers, their seed patents with them.

     


  • Blindness

    Samain and the Yule Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: For all the ways we learn and express ourselves. The Ancient Brothers on Gardener’s 8 intelligences. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch. Coming in January. Going to Korea in May. Maybe with Ruth. Snow. Mary. Mark. My family spread along an Asian crescent from Korea to K.L. to Brisbane. Far from Rocky Mountain high.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Learning

    Kavannah: Enthusiasm (Zerizut) and Joy (Simcha)

    One brief shining: Lit the candle yesterday, wrote 500 words on a why/how to celebrate Yule essay, starting with my personal journey this year, intending to produce 8 essays, one for each of the Great Wheel’s holidays, using stuff I’ve written and collected over the years.

     

    Spent yesterday in conversation over zoom with my son and Seoah in Songtan, Korea and Mary in Brisbane. Separate calls. Wrote to brother Mark in K.L. A bit weird. Sitting here on top of Shadow Mountain, in the Colorado Rockies, speaking directly to Korea and Australia. No latency. Clear pictures. Sound good. Pandemic tech and habits, a changed reality. Amazing to this small town Hoosier boy.

    Shadow Mountain Home as imagined by chatbotgpt

    Want to give a big shout out to Zöe Schlanger. An amazing intellect. Intrepid and careful reporting. The Light-Eaters. So many good quotes. Here’s an example. “I think of plants as primary and humans as secondary. Plants can do without us. We can’t do without plants.” Thank you, photosynthesis.

    Reminded me of the Iroquois medicine man I’ve often talked about. He delivered a prayer for the Soil and the Rocks, the Trees and the Mountains and the Oceans, those who swim in the Water and fly in the Sky but never mentioned humans. Why? Because, he said, humans are the most fragile and vulnerable of all creation. Without all the Plants and Animals and Water and Soil, humans can’t exist.

    In so many ways, so many obvious ways, we receive this message every day. Did you eat breakfast? Where did it come from? What was it? It was either a Plant or an Animal fed by a Plant. Did Night and Great Sol emerge this morning where you are? Imagine if Mother Earth decided to stop turning. How about the Water to fill up your Water bottle, the Water you used for that shower, or to wash your clothes and your dishes?

    We humans consider ourselves agents nonpareil, yet we could not accomplish basic tasks without an assist from Mother Earth. Thankfully, she is on our side. Even when we are not on hers. Nor could we continue above ground and taking nourishment without her and her gifts. Why are we blind to this?

     

    Just a moment: 45/47 continues to play tiddly winks with appointments to powerful positions. Now Patel, a man committed to gutting the FBI, nominated to head it. This is a revolution of the ill informed, driven by intentional ignorance and malevolence. Will the Senate do its job? Its advice and most critically consent role has never been more important.

    Have any good will left over from Thanksgiving? Time to access it now.


  • A Victory Garden

    Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

    Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Arjean. Tom. Diane. Paul. Workouts. Diet. Conifer Cafe. Aspen Perks. Primo’s. Dandelion. Parkside. Wild Flower. Bread Lounge. Breakfast. Still an important meal out for me. Mussar. Veronica. Mineral Water. 8,800 feet. Mountains.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Visits

    Kavannah: Perseverance Netzach  נֵצַח tenacity, grit; literally “to last”

    One brief shining: Above the fold and a dagger to the heart, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Republicans take the House, wish I’d built that bunker oh so long ago, a Rip Van Winkle place where I could lie down in a futuristic pod, go gently to sleep, and wake up when this is all over, but no, being a Seed-Keeper is more important than ever.

     

    The waning years of my fourth phase have climate change and a MAGAnified country. Not what I wanted for Christmas or Hanukah. So let’s look again at the Seed Keeper idea. I finished the novel which inspired this thought. Recalled after reading the acknowledgments (what an odd word, I just realized) that Kate and I had lived a Seed-Keeper life. We used only heirloom Seeds from the Seed Saver’s Exchange, planted our Orchard in the permaculture way, kept Bees, gathered Wild Grapes and Morels from our land. Loved all our Wild Neighbors and all our Dogs. It is a beautiful way to live.

    I no longer have the oomph or the desire to resist what’s coming. I will write about it, will talk about it, sure, how could I not? But my focus will be on loving and supporting those younger than me. Helping them remember why loving the neighbor still makes sense. Why no one left behind should not be a slogan only for the military. Why equality before the law remains an essential American value. Why a nation of laws dedicated to the lives of all its citizens has not vanished as an ideal. A nation of laws that guide us toward love, justice, and compassion. Why those values are not only worth dying for, they’re also worth living for.

    These are the three sisters of our country: the Corn, Beans, and Squash out of which a new nation dedicated to old propositions can grow. You and I are the Soil to mound and out of which the strong Corn stalk can push toward the Sky, the Bean Tendrils can clasp that strong stalk for support, while the bountiful Squash with its huge leaves grow over the Ground.

    We will plant a Victory garden.

     

     


  • The WHI: the Wildlife Human Interface

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Friday gratefuls: Ruth. Rich. The Colorado Supreme Court. UC Boulder. Wolf Hall. Elephants. All of our Wild Neighbors around the world. Doug’s Diner. Being a student. Jamie. Luke. Woolly Mammoths. Driving to Boulder in the early morning as Great Sol gradually lit the Hogbacks, the Meadows in their russets and greengolds, the lower down deciduous Trees aflame with reds and oranges and yellow. Getting out and about.

    Sparks of joy and awe: Non-Human Rights

    Kavannah: Kavod  Honor

    One brief shining: Sitting next to Ruth, I watched the mock courtroom of Wolf Hall fill up with law students dressed in their student variety from jeans and backpacks to a black dress and pearls, the conversation subdued since the presence of black robed Colorado Supreme Court Justices would soon transform the mock courtroom into a real court, one about to hear a pleading that Elephants fit the definition of person for the purpose of a writ of habeas corpus*.

     

    I want to back into this topic. A story I’ve told and retold. Almost exactly ten years. October 31, 2014 I stood in what would soon be my back yard staring into the soft black eyes of three Mule Deer Bucks. Seemed like a long time though probably no more than a minute. When they decided we were done, I felt as if I’d been granted permission to live here among them, a message delivered by these spirit beings of the Mountains. Yes, you can say I overlaid on those three Bucks my own interpretation. Finding in that encounter a blessing I hadn’t known I’d sought.

    In 2019. June. The day I began 35 sessions of radiation for my unhappily returned prostate cancer three Bull Elks jumped over our five foot fence with great ease and proceeded to eat the blooming Dandelions. One of them had only one antler. They would come again and again.

    A year ago on a rainy July night I drove up Black Mountain Drive not far past the Upper Maxwell Fall’s trail head and encountered a Bull Elk staring at me as I passed by, his bulk hidden by the Aspen stand, but his antlers and face clear in the momentary flash of my headlights.

    Yesterday morning I got up at 6 am, got dressed, drank some coffee, gathered the items I needed, put on my black Grateful Dead hat with the colorful dancing Bears and began the hour long drive down the hill, then north to Boulder. Along Hwy 285, still well into the foothills I saw a black shape along the side of the road. Since many people have metal cutouts of various Wild Neighbors as lawn decor, I imagined at first that this object was one of those. Until it looked at my oncoming car, turned quickly around, and scuttled in that soft clumsy-appearing Black Bear amble back into the Forest.

    I don’t see many Bears. This is the third one I’ve seen since I’ve lived up here though they live all around us. A few years ago walking not far from my house a large Black Bear crossed the road not thirty feet from me. Last year I saw a Bear near the intersection of Brook Forest Drive and Hwy 73. That’s all of them.

    In each of these three instances the Bears turned away from me, hurrying into the shelter of their wild home, the Forests and Mountains.

    All this means I live in the WUI. The Wildlife Urban Interface. Again, yes, you can argue we shouldn’t be here. Maybe not. But we are. Even the cities outside which the WUI exists were once encroachments on Wild habitats, too. Like the Animals of the Mountains we too have to live somewhere.

    Not an apologetic. A statement of fact.

    My friend Marilyn Saltzman told of a safari she was on a few years back. Their guides took them to a Watering hole somewhere in the Bush. A herd of Elephants drank from it while a number of other Animals waited. Some Elephants left, then came back, others left. Not until the last Elephant had gone did the other Animals come to drink. As she told this story, I thought, who is the true monarch of the Jungle?

    Finally, you might say. Seated in the mock courtroom made real, like the Velveteen Rabbit, Ruth and I listened to two lawyers make oral arguments that the five elephants: Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo deserved release from their confinement in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Yes, that Cheyenne Mountain.

    The Non-Human Rights Project had entered a writ of habeas corpus claiming they did have that right under a writ. The Cheyenne Zoo had counsel as did the five Elephants. This article in Colorado Politics is an excellent summary of the proceedings.

    It was like watching yesterday and tomorrow. The gray haired, dismissive and at times arrogant attorney for the Zoo, represented the status quo. Basically: We’re a really, really good zoo. The younger, much younger lawyer for the Elephants represented the growing awareness of the blurry, blurry line separating us from our Wild Neighbors. Sure, Elephants. Big brain. Social. Emotional. Sensitive. Like Primates and Whales and Dolphins and other clearly intelligent animals, even Corvids, to mention another class of Animals, Elephants in zoos represent an obvious case of anthropocentrism used as a rationale to dominate, entrap, and enslave other Animals.

    Through the Rights of Nature movement, see my March 4 of this year post, not only Animals but Rivers and Forests have been granted legal rights and protections. Zoos and those defending them are on the wrong side of history. It will take years and many more legal proceedings but somewhere, sometime the thin edge of the wedge will hold open the door to a world where humans live as part of the Interdependent Web of all beings (defined as widely as you wish) on Mother Earth. When this happens, it will have Earth shattering, no let me amend that, Earth healing consequences.

    This Mabon morning in Colorado, yesterday, I saw one more track being laid down toward this too far off day.

     

     

    *Although there have been and are many varieties of the writ, the most important is that used to correct violations of personal liberty by directing judicial inquiry into the legality of a detentionBritannica


  • Shortie

    Mabon and the Sukkot Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Elephants. Non-human rights. The Nature rights legal movement. Tom. Diane in Uzbekistan. Mark and Mary in K.L. My son now 43. Songtan, South Korea. Murdoch. Seoah. Rich Levine. Ruth. Gabe. Colder weather. Red flag day. Insurance. Car. House. Yikes. Ruby. Ready to roll. Wolf Law. Boulder. Today. Colorado Supreme Court.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Wild Neighbors

    Kavannah: Justice Tzedek

    One brief shining: Ding-a-ling, ling ding-a-ling my hand reached across my pillow to find my offending phone, positioned near my right ear so I would not miss its call to action, yet when received I wanted it to stop ding-a-ling, where is the damned thing, ding-a-ling hear them ring soon it will be me on the road to Boulder. Ah. Found it.

     

    Yes. For those of you who might wonder about my getting up this Elephant’s rights morning. I did it. A bit bleary eyed maybe. Coffee made yesterday ready. English muffin. Peanut Butter. Honey. One celecoxib. I’ll leave in about ten minutes. Should get there around 8 am. An hour and a quarter ahead of the arguments. Ruth is going. We’ll have breakfast after. We’ll see Rich.

    Feels good to be doing this. Spontaneous decision Monday to go. Liking this. Renders the questions I raised yesterday to a more acute level.

     

    Brother Mark stuck in ESL desert, his departure for Saudi Arabia pushed back once again. Frustrating for him.

     

    Well. Time to pick up keys, wallet, and sunglasses. See you around the waterhole.