Category Archives: Mountains

Colorado, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains

249 Years

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon II

4th of July gratefuls: Cousin Donald. Hyper Masculinity. The Commander’s Cup. Seoah. Murdoch. Songtan. The United (?) States of America. Oklahoma. Indiana. Wisconsin. Minnesota. Colorado. Judy. Raeone. Kate, always. Shadow. Her chewed leash. Work yet to do. Planting. Seat cushion for Ruby. CBE Men’s group. Suffering. Luke. Rebecca. Leo. Tara. Eleanor.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Long time friends

Year Kavannah: Wu Wei. Find the flow of life’s force, follow it

Week Kavannah: Savlanut. Patience.

One brief shining: Walked up the slight rise past the wonderful Ponderosa and the jagged Granite Boulder, pre-schooler rendered chalk drawings on the sidewalk, and pressed the doorbell necessitated by the oldest hatred to join my friends discussing the mussar virtue of self-confidence.

The 4th of July. On the 249th birthday of this country I sit on Shadow Mountain, in purple Mountain majesty above the fruited plains. Somewhere below amber waves of Grain ripple in a morning Breeze.

Meanwhile, faraway in the land of broken toys a mean-spirited tyrant and his too loyal minions prepare concentration camps for immigrants who came here seeking a better life: ICE prepares detention blitz with historic $45 billion in funding.

The Elk Cow and her Calf that crossed the road in front of me Wednesday night do not know this. Their world continues, following a thread of ongoing life rooted millions of years in the past, honed to the ways of Mountain life, to seasonal change, to knowing the ways of predators.

Nor does Shadow know. As we work out our life together, a struggle and a joy for both of us, she too follows a path begun thousands of years ago when friendly Wolves joined human encampments for shelter, food, and joint protection.

How I wish I could be a non-human animal, wild or domesticated. I could live according to the ancient rules of nature. Eat. Reproduce. Play. Rest. Die. Not live according to the cruel rules of human society, the unnatural ways of my often thoughtful, loving, compassionate species.

The Elk do not shun their own, round them up and move them out. Sure, animals may contend over territory for survival, but we humans contend over territory for power and for purposes driven by fear and hatred.

This fourth of July I join many Americans who no longer find great pride in their country. National Pride in the U.S. Sees Dramatic Decline. Or maybe not quite.

The Mountains and the Plains. The fertile fields of the Midwest. The great Boreal Forests. The Atlantic Coast and the Pacific Coast. Redwoods. Sequoias. Bristle Cone Pine. Wolves and Grizzlies. Wolverines and Lynx. Squirrels and Marmots. Fishers and Pine Martens. Rabbits and Chipmunks. All the Wild Neighbors. I take great joy and, yes, pride in living among and with all of these. America the Beautiful.

I also stand with all the humans, all of them, who live here with love, justice, and compassion in their hearts. Who know that the word neighbor has no color, no gender, no religion, no national origin. Who know that the warm and beating heart of this historic experiment in self-governance cannot be stilled by the cold dead hands of those without mercy.

Dogs, Memories, Mountains, Politics, US History, World History

He could not resist

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Summer and the Greenhouse Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Gabe. Shabbat. The Morning Service. The Bird of Dawn. Shadow, my sweet girl. Kate, always, Kate. Getting up every hour for movement. We’re made to move and to rest. Halle. Motion is lotion. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Great Sol. The Monsoons. Dead Mice. Derek. Chorkies. (Chihuahua and Yorkie mix) British Columbia. Writing. The Ancient Brothers.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Mountains

Week Kavannah:  Roeh et hanalod. Foresight. Knowing what will be needed in the future.

One brief shining: Talking over the fence with Derek as neighbors do his new Chorkie running around with his older Sheltie, Shadow watching with interest, a too hot Mountain day headed for  a cooler evening and night, a light wind blowing through the Lodgepoles, setting the Aspen leaves aquiver.

 

Hot. Not humid though. 90’s! Unusual for the Mountains. Did. Not. Like. It. Ran the mini-splits for air conditioning for a while. Shadow stayed in the shade while outside. A Shadow in the shade.

Found Ruth’s wallet here yesterday afternoon. Texted her. She went rafting on the Arkansas River through Royal Gorge. Canon City. Where Tom and I rode the train a couple of years ago. When I reached her, we agreed to meet at the Fort Restaurant, down the hill outside of Morrison so she could retrieve her things.

Did that. Drove down there around 7 pm with Great Sol still blazing above the Front Range Foothills, occasionally making Sun blindness a thing even with Raybans. Since I rarely drive down the hill at that time of day, I saw the Mountains in a new perspective, shade falling from the West. The green of a wet Spring making them look fresh, vital in the twilight.

When driving in the Mountains at twilight or dawn, we all have to pay special attention. Critters of all sorts move around then, sometimes choosing to cross the road in front of you. Requires care.

 

Just a moment: I was off by a day. He could not resist. It was too big a moment in the spotlight, potentially in the history books. MOPing up after Israel, eh?

Admit to conflicted feelings. Just before a Saudi Arabian peace deal seemed likely, Hamas invaded Israel. Just before negotiations with Iran were to have begun, Israel stole that idea and invaded Iran.

As a child of the Cold War era, nuclear weapons scare the bejesus out of me. No need to wait for climate change. We can eliminate humanity all by ourselves. Right now.

So. Bombing Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities? I get it. As I wrote a day or two ago, one atomic bomb could level Jerusalem. If I was a radical Islamist with my back against the wall and I had one available to me? I’d probably use it.

Can you say chain reaction? Genie out of the bottle? Thank you 1001 Nights. The world would never be the same. India v. Pakistan. Israel v. the Arab world. US v Russia, v China. Radioactive dominoes falling, falling, falling. Not right away. No. But each time a crisis arose with nuclear armed powers contending theater nuclear weapons would have a precedent.

Having said that. No. It will not stop Iran from building nuclear weapons. Delayed, yes. Stop? No. Regime change? Maybe. To a better regime for Middle East peace? Doubtful.

Trump the warrior. Oh, god no.

Asia, Colorado, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel

A Dog. A Family.

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Beltane and the Greenhouse Moon

Monday gratefuls: Less back pain. Morning darkness. A Shadow next to me when I woke up. Tara and Eleanor. Alan. Ginny and Janice. Luke. My son. Seoah. The Jangs. Colorado. The Rockies. The Shaggy Sheep. Guanella Pass. Georgetown. Georgetown Loop Rail Road. Pikes Peak Cog Railway. A world class location.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

Week Kavannah: Gratitude. Hakarot Hatov. (recognizing the good)    “Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their own portion.” Perkei Avot: 4:1

One brief shining: The Rocky Mountains rise in Southern Colorado, extending north well into Canada, a spinal column for the American West, filled with Mountains and Valleys, hotsprings and wild neighbors, remnants of indigenous peoples, ski towns and mining towns, rugged wilderness, high Mountain Lakes, and Glaciers all near to my home here on Shadow Mountain.

 

Dog Journal: Woke up this morning to find Shadow curled up next to my head. Don’t know when she got up there, but it made my heart go pit a pat. Another bit of good news in a half year that has needed some.

The whole Shadow experience has been an exercise in humility. There were times when I didn’t think I could handle her. That I’d made a mistake. Perhaps been unethical. Adopting a puppy at 78? With cancer and a bad back. What was I thinking?

Yet now. Now that she played all afternoon with Tara’s Eleanor. Now that twice unbidden she has chosen to sleep in my bed. Now that she’s close to accepting the leash. Now. So sweet.

The ethical question. Competing goods. Little Shadow needed a home where she could be loved. I needed a companion, or at least badly wanted one.

However. Shadow will live into her teens most likely. I don’t know how much time I’ve got, but I imagine it’s less than that. Cattle dogs bond to one person. Also, her energy level far, far exceeds my own. Does she get enough stimulation here?

It was not, all in all, a perfect decision. It may have been, may be a selfish decision. I hope our mutual journey towards and with each other will compensate. Most relationships are imperfect in some way. I do have that codicil in my will that ensures her care in a new home if that becomes necessary.

 

The Jangs: The plane tickets have been purchased. An air BnB booked. Plans for excursions being tossed about. Between August 1st and 7th Seoah’s mom and dad, her brother, her sister and her husband, and their two kids will join my son and Seoah on a trip to the Colorado Rockies.

The air BnB is in Evergreen. I haven’t seen it. My son and Seoah chose it. I’m looking forward to their visit especially since I haven’t seen my son since his promotion or in person since February.

Also, I’ve been to the Jang’s home in Okgwa twice. Returning the favor is a family thing. I’m happy to help make it happen.

 

Garden, Great Wheel, Mountains, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Talmud, Torah, Wild Neighbors

Artemis: A Riff on Tactile Spirituality

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

A Tactile Spirituality

“I live at 8,800 feet in zip code 80433. I’m having a greenhouse built in my backyard. What vegetables will grow well in it. Look for heirloom varieties. Include recommended planting dates. Mostly I want salad ingredients and greens. Tomatoes.”

This is the prompt I gave chatgpt for a quick assist in knowing what to plant. I got back 21 pages of detailed recommendations, including specific heirloom varieties of Tomatoes, Lettuce, Radishes, Carrots, Beets, Onions, and Herbs.

Spirituality has the curse of the three-story universe, René Descartes, and destructive deconstruction. That is, Abrahamic prayer and devotional practice has historically “aimed” its prayers up toward the heavens and away from the corruptions of the flesh. Descartes’s dramatic division of the mind from the body reinforced a religious path focused on the immaterial mind, released from the body. And, in turn, Mother Earth. While deconstruction did unveil the power dynamics involved in how our agriculture works, how choice of books for a syllabus reflected white privilege, and the patriarchal symbolism of the three-story universe, it also made demythologizing a knee jerk way of removing mystery and grace.

As a result a tactile spirituality seems, at first look, an oxymoron. The mind. The heavens. Transcendence. Those are the domain of spirit. Not the soil. Not the forests. Not the feet or the hands. Not the world of this reality, this busy, noisy, fussy, often bloody and violent reality. How can we gain the peace, the calm, the centeredness where spiders crawl, illness ravages, and death dominates?

That’s where Artemis Greenhouses comes in. About as down and dirty a human activity, or I should say, human aided activity as I can imagine. Soil (no, not dirt) under the fingernails. Nurturing small plants. Beets. Spinach. Lettuce. Radishes. Plucking off predating insects. Blocking out Deer and Elk. Harvesting the red and white Radish. The red Beet. Rainbow colored Chard. Green Kale and Spinach. Eating them.

Fuel for the body. That most inelegant of spiritual residences, the body. Full of blood and waste, nutrients and foreign matter. Under some understandings only a vessel for the soul, a way to keep the mind alive.

No. Souls are us. Our living flesh ensouled. Sacred. Hardly ordinary unless you call, as I do, the ordinary sacred. What we touch feels the hand of a god, the god. What we embrace knows the warmth of a god, the god. The soil in which we plant seeds quickens when we work it.

The Mule Deer Doe who feeds her newborn fawn feeds a divine presence, a unique and precious never to be repeated instance of god made flesh. Maxwell Creek filled with Spring Rain pulls bits of Rock and Earth from its bank as the god-in-water, returning the Rocky Mountains to the World Ocean.

Sure. The Torah. Yes. Talmud Torah. The hands of living gods have written it and the minds of living Jews finds god within, upon its pages, in its stories. It teaches us. Yet, it teaches the same message as Maxwell Creek. That god rushes to the Sea. That god fills every molecule of Water.

I read the scripture written in the bark of my Lodgepole companion. I see the yellow Flame of the Aspen Catkin against the blue Flame of a Colorado Sky and read of life’s elegant and graceful re-emergence in this, the wet season.

In my world all spirituality is tactile. In Shadow jumping on my legs. In turning the pages of a Torah commentary. In hearing the voice of Luke or Ginny or Janice. In tasting a bit of Lettuce, an Onion, a fresh heirloom Tomato. All of the tactile is spiritual.

Family, Fourth Phase, Mountains, Park County

Mary’s Visit

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Sunday gratefuls: Sibling talk. Memories of home. Seeing my son, Seoah, Murdoch after his prize-winning day. Rich’s response. Ruth. At the airport, waiting on her flight to Incheon. Korea. Side-dishes. Songtan. That fried Fish place. The Chicken in a pot place. The French Bakery. Melbourne. Sidney. Brisbane. K.L. Al Kharj. My far flung family.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sisters and brothers

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: An Asian restaurant, the menu read, welcoming us to Golden Stix, me a Mountain dweller, and Mary, a near constant citizen of Southeast Asia since 1985, now an Auzzie in training while, I, unlike either of my siblings remain rooted in the auld soil even now during the reign of his fauxness, the one with the bottle blonde hair, and the long red tie.

 

Mary and I have had a good visit, following the adventures of Mark in Saudi again, my son and his ceremony, Guru in Indiana with Gill who’s dating our first cousin, twice removed, Chantel. Ruth at the airport waiting on her first international flight. Shadow, who prefers women, took to Mary and Mary to Shadow. Sweet to see.

Life in close circles where everyone matters. Loved, loving. Friends like Deb in Eau Claire. Robin. Sheila. Friends new and old. Rich. Tom. Alan. Bill. Irv. Paul. Luke and Leo.

She flies back to Minneapolis today. We saw my son and Seoah on zoom last night. She’ll see both of them on the 26th, the day before my son’s ceremony. Ruth will see them both tomorrow. Bon voyage to Ruth whose plane leaves in an hour. My clan may be small, but it is well-traveled.

 

Mary and I drove up Guanella Pass yesterday, an instance of National Forest wildness reachable by car. We saw Geneva Creek rushing down its narrow valley between Mt. Bierstadt and Square Top Mountain.

(Header photograph by Tom Crane at the top of Guanella Pass.)

Gabe at the same spot, September 2024

At a pulloff we got out and watched, listened to Geneva Creek as its late Spring filled Water crashed over Boulders, around fallen Trees, seeking the South Fork of the North Platte on its literal analogy to Nietzsche’s myth of eternal return. Waters fall toward the World Ocean, get absorbed, rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall. Without the cleansing of this cycle we would all die.

Near the top of the pass, where the ongoing road to Georgetown remains closed, were the Abyss and Burning Bear trailheads. Love the names out here in the U.S. West.

We also saw four yearling Bighorn Sheep, one with the first curls of what will be an adult male’s 30 pounds or so of horn. Not far from where Guanella Pass starts off Hwy. 285 is the Shaggy Sheep Cafe, an excellent breakfast spot.

 

 

Just a moment: Mary’s friend refers to the Secretary of Defense as Hogsbreath. I’m stealing that one for future writing.

Hogsbreath has waged a too successful campaign against books in base libraries, exercising his emphasis on lethality by ridding military libraries of books focused, in his definition, on diversity, inclusiveness, and equity. All shibboleths of a woke right.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Hawai'i, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Paganism

Another Place I Could Be Happy

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Friday gratefuls: New, piercing pain. Left hip and leg. Shadow. Natalie. Alan and Joanne. Dandelion. Donyce. Rich. Ruth’s 529. Now available. Lifealert. New fob. Diane. Jogging again. Living with aging bodies and alert minds. Halle. New physical therapist. Mary, coming today. My son. Seoah. Murdoch.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth and her first international trip

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zerizut.

One brief shining: A busy, physical week of doctors, long drives, filling out forms for the cancer support trial, Amy, two zoom classes, that would have been a decade ago a light week, the difference pain can make.

 

All I can say is, damn it! Now the left hip, so painful. Wasn’t sure I could get down five stairs holding onto the rail and a cup of coffee. That’s beginning to get in the way of daily life.

Sorry. Don’t mean to leave a trail of agony on these pages, yet honest reporting requires acknowledgment of what’s going on. After seeing Buphati, I’m left wondering if both hips might have metastatic cancer. Sure hope not.

We’ll know soon. Next P.E.T. scan June 3rd. Not yet scheduled for my open-sided MRI. But in the next week or two.

This cancer/pain path I’m on demands a lot. Got accepted into a Sloan-Kettering trial to determine the better of two therapeutic protocols for cancer patients over the age of 70. Filled out pages and pages of a survey about anxiety and depression, other mental health matters. I’ll have eight phone therapy sessions with somebody. Then, booster sessions after that for four months.

There are nuances to managing my mental health and my spiritual health (which I see as more important than either physical or mental health). I look forward to discussing them with someone paid to listen to me.

Why is spiritual health most important? Because it contains the broader context in which both mental and physical health reside. Being one with the Tao, allowing the wu wei of physical illness and pain to run their course without stiff-arming them. Experiencing the occasional fear and dread as part of my inner work, work strengthened by mussar, by being part of two sacred communities. Taking the solace of Shadow Mountain, its Lodgepoles and Mule Deer and Aspen and late season Snow as it offers itself to me. Seeing the whole sacred world as my home.

With those as context neither pain nor death can have permanent control of my psyche. Because pain and death are momentary, passing, but my location in the sacred unity of all things will remain.

 

Just a moment: I find myself watching TV shows set on Islands. Death in Paradise. Hawai’i 50. Deadly Tropics. Moana and Moana 2, movies. I know, low brow in the extreme. Yet I love the combination of lightly considered mystery and the sights and sounds of Islands.

Something about Island life calls to me. Not over against Mountain life which I also love, but as another place I could be happy. Why Hawai’i itself reached out to me not so long ago.

Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Quotes, Seed Keepers, Shadow Mountain, US History, Weather +Climate

The Great Work

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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.

Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

On the Way to Breakfast

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Shabbat gratefuls: Talmud Torah. Shadow. So early. Morning, early early Morning. Back and leg pain. Exquisite. Teeth gritting. PSA. OK. Medical care moving closer. Subway. Cookunity. Dandelion. Alan. Driving down the hill to Evergreen. Green green Grass. Trees waking from their Winter slumber. The Bears are out. A sure sign of a Mountain Spring. Snow overnight yesterday. Melted and gone.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Knee replacement

Week Kavannah: Enthusiasm. Zeal. Zerizut

One brief shining: Opening Sefaria means stepping into the long, disputative history of Jewish thought where a thousand flowers of interpretation and commentary and imaginative flourishes thrive, feeding off each other, sparking new insights, all in the service of living today.

 

Out with a right turn toward Evergreen. Ruby’s snowshoes hissing a bit on dry pavement even though 2 inches of Snow lay in my backyard and the temperature hovered in the mid-twenties. Downshifting, brake preserving. These curves as well known as my own body’s, when to brake, when to accelerate learned over ten years. Concentration focused on the roadside for Mule Deer, Elk. Respect for the Wild Neighbors.

Great Sol had driven off the Snow on south facing Lodgepoles, but on the right, the north side of Black Mountain Drive, Winter Trees stood with white, drooping branches. Higher up on Black Mountain its now distinctive ski runs held on to the Snow even though facing south.

Maxwell Creek ran free of Ice, its rushing waters from earlier Snow melt now calm. Full. Eager. When I passed the Upper Maxwell Creek trailhead, I began talking to Kate. Telling her about Ruth’s decision to go to medical school. About Gabe waking up. Shadow waking me up. How much I missed her knowledge and wisdom, her love. About my back pain and how I now understand from the inside her own struggles with it.

Passing Kate’s Valley and Kate’s Creek, my attention turned to the clock. Oh. I was a half hour early. Hmm. Get a car wash? Why not.

Lake Evergreen and its views of Bear Mountain, Great Sol glinting off light Wind raised ripples, blue as the Colorado Sky. The gray Rock of the roadside a somber contrast. No Elk grazing this morning.

The car wash’s robotic voice said: the car wash is closed. Oh. Decided to take a look at Elk Run assisted living. I need to look at a couple of these places in case circumstances change. Still haven’t done it.

This place sits walking distance (for most people) from CBE. After passing the Life Center of Evergreen, Bergen Bark Inn, Mt. Evan’s Hospice,  and the section 8 housing where Anne lives, I realized this was a social service neighborhood.

Past it was the Tanoa Way residential area with dead ends and no outlets and mansions with the Mountain equivalent of Widow’s Watches, high windows facing a view of nearby Mountains.

After I had visited spots I’d wanted to see, but had never driven to, I turned toward the Dandelion and a breakfast with my friend Alan.

 

Great Wheel, Mountains, Paganism, Plants, Weather +Climate, Wild Neighbors

It’s the Merry, Merry Month of May

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Beltane and the Wu Wei Moon II

Thursday gratefuls: Mary coming to visit. Beltane. Snow. 32 degrees. Gnawer of Bones. Slow to trust. Shadow. Roxann who knows. Tom. Tramadol and two acetaminophens. Helps. Fantastic Four. Adam and Eve. Mordecai Kaplan. Abraham Joshua Heschel. Learning. Staying mentally sharp.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Amy

Week Kavannah: Persistence and grit. Netzach.

One brief shining: We float sometimes above our life, hovering over it like some household God, hoping to change directions or circumstances with a twist of the divine hand, a twirl of the sacred finger but we know all along that only our body bound to the earth can achieve miracles.

 

Beltane. When those crazy Scots and those blue-eyed Swedes take off their clothes and dance naked around a bonfire. Enacting the magic of sympathy for Mother Earth as she takes in seeds, embraces them in her fertile womb, and kisses them into growth. Why not? She provides for us. Sustains us. Gives us water to drink and gravity to keep us grounded.

I’ve not written many Great Wheel posts in the last few years. Like Taoism and now Judaism though, the pagan in me never sleeps. I stay alive to these seasonal changes, to their meaning for our daily lives. Even if we get Snow and freezing temperatures here on Shadow Mountain. I know the Lodgepole catkins, the Aspen leaflets, fawns, calves, kits, bunnies will emerge, small flags of life’s own Great Wheel waving the colors of renewal.

Beltane honors the marriage of the Lord and the Lady. A maiden no more the Earth takes a lover who warms and quickens her. On Beltane ancient Celts would make love in the fields. Leap over small fires. Drive their cattle between bonfires. All to advance fertility.

Love realizes its biological imperative. Souls join as bodies dance together in the rites of Spring. Are we ever more than then? When our hearts fill with passion and our senses brighten to the other. The one who shares our oneness. As the One shares with us all. What an orgasm. Can you imagine how it feels to be Mother Earth in the Spring?

We cannot stay sad about death. Not when green shoots up from black Soil. As the Spring Ephemerals throw up their colorful flowers. As the Cherry and Plum offer their delicate blooms only to shed them in Snow like Storms so Fruit can grow. As the Honeybees leave their Winter Hives seeking Nectar and spreading Pollen, these matchmakers of the Sky. When Cutthroat and Rainbow Trout push out their Roe for the milky Semen’s discovery in cold Mountain Streams.

Death does not mark a finish, rather a continuation howsomever it might be. And Beltane marks Nature’s covenant that this is so.

We know not how it is. We mortal creatures. Beltane celebrates mortality with its promise of living abundantly. If only we care for ourselves and the land.

Get outside and visit the marks of this glorious, this wondrous, this most yes of seasons. You deserve the lift.

Art and Culture, Bees, Cinema and Television, Fungi, Garden, Mountains, Plants, Wild Neighbors

All. All of it. Sacred.

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Spring and the Wu Wei Moon

Ramses II. By Djehouty – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tuesday gratefuls: Needles into my spine. 11 am. Paul in Salt Lake City. Mary in Eau Claire. The wide world. The newly opened Grand Egyptian Museum. The National Museum in Taipei. The Frick’s renovation. The Isabella Stewart Gardener museum. The Phillip Johnson. The MIA. The Walker. Being a dramaturg.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: All the art in all the world

Week Kavannah:  Sensibility. Daat.

One brief shining: So many museums, the quiet time early in the morning before the crowds come, walking into the Bruegel room at the Kunsthistorisches, or the Botticelli room at the Uffizi, even walking with the crowd into the Sistine Chapel, the Sistine Chapel!, my favorite moment to spend time with the Dr. Arrieta by Goya at the MIA, there are raptures and revelations there for those who can see what they are looking at.

 

Imagine a street in any major city. Bangkok. Kuala Lumpur. NYC. A busy street filled with pedestrians on their way. Somewhere. Vehicles in the street. Bicycles. Taxis. Private cars. Delivery trucks. Businesses fronted on the sidewalk. With offices above them.

All those vast inner worlds. As vast your own. Never to be known. Not by you. Not by anyone else. Unless. Perhaps. A lover or therapist. Or, if one of them is an artist. Doesn’t matter what kind. Painter. Writer. Musician. Dancer. Playwright. Sculptor. Artisan. Any.

Artists need to, have to reveal themselves, their inner worlds. Can’t help it. It’s not quite the same as conversation between lovers, but it can be pretty damned close.

That Goya above? That’s the painter himself being treated. For what was apparently a not very serious ailment. Did he know that at the time of his treatment? Doesn’t look like it, does it? Vulnerable. Needy. Confident doctor.

Or, that statue of Ramses II. The sculptors, I imagine there were many, knew they had to give this work all the power and majesty they could find within themselves. Only then could it meet the demands of their God-King.

Doryphoros

I cherish those times when I can be with an artist and their work. Why? Because then like speaks to like. Inner worlds connect. Oh, yes. Anguish. Despair. Shame. Grief. Joy. Celebration. Deep contemplation. Reacting to surface beauty. Or, the lithe musculature of a Panther, the mystery of time caught forever in the Doryphoros as he steps forward.

Reading. Listening. Seeing. Tasting. The artistry of a well-made meal. What a wonder, the world of the arts.

And even so. My Lodgepole companion. My friends at CBE. Black Mountain after a heavy Snow. Maxwell Creek filled with Snow Melt. A bull Elk in the rain. Yes. These, too. Reveal the inner world of the whole wide world. In those moments before a painting or listening to an orchestra or sitting on a Rocky overhang in the Arapaho National Forest. When a newborn Fawn looks up from its first meals of tender new Grass. We get that jolt, that moment of knowing. Oh. Yes. It’s all sacred. I remember. I’ve known this all along. The press of life sometimes makes me forget. But I know it. Again. Now.