The Miles We Walk

We are well within reach of our 75 mile hiking goal for the month of March and it's our tether....to our physical bodies, to our spiritual bodies, to the much larger than us natural, whole world. We are grateful for the opportunity to be in this world and so we walk and we observe. Sometimes we try to capture our joy in selfies and usually it goes awry. For one...

and then the other...

So, we forget about looking at us and walk anyways. We admire the beauty in the world outside of us, tempering overthinking inside of us. 

Because of our nonconventional schedule, folks sometimes think we don't work, but we do. Steve is the primary money maker as a soil scientist doing soil investigations for septic systems. This boy knows soil and his ability to read the land is beautiful. If you think you know something about soil because you've read a lot or worked a garden, you probably don't. Take it from me, someone learning from someone in tune with his environment and observing soil for many decades, it's a wild ride of learning and unlearning. To make the best use of fossil fuels on far flung jobs and to take advantage of different hiking opportunities, I sometimes go along and watch birds or write while Steve operates his one man gig.

He walks far, he bores holes deep, shallow and often in slop, in all sorts of weather, with all sorts of landowners and is more often challenged than not. Here we visited the Darby Plains not intact at this private residence, but at Battelle Darby where we walked after, large acreages of land are protected and feeling the love and goodness of restoration. 

The farming practices that make homogenous landscapes like the one above also fuel us. We make homemade granola aware of our oats and pepitas and what pecan orchards look like. We buy the best we can with what's available to us, ever aware that our food purchases directly impact the biodiversity of the land surrounding us all. Will our food growing practices continue to improve? We believe so, if enough of us say yes.

On our many miles walked, funded by Steve, fueled by Mother Earth, we observe the simplicity and the resourcefulness of the lives around us. I wonder what the ridges and valleys of tree bark might feel like to Winter Fireflies seeking warmth and protection from cold wind? 

Spring Treetop Flasher Fireflies join the Winter Fireflies in this ridge and valley landscape we have become so enamored with. 

In an almost unbelievable moment of bark exploration, Steve found a Harvester butterfly chrysalis. We find these fascinating butterflies (who live in relationship with aphids and ants in this forest), but this is our first find of their pupation chamber, where enzymes turn the insides to goo and a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. There is magic in miles walked and observations made when the self-mind turns quiet and the awe-mind turns on.

These tree bark landscapes are so like the landscapes we walk.

Rattlesnake Plantain...

and Wild Sedum and moss also find shelter amongst these trees...in the leaves, on the roots, on the bark.

Shelter is critical for survival for all of us. I wonder about human shelter, in my critical thinking, sometimes overthinking mind. Why is it so extravagant? Why is it so big? Why is it not appropriate for weather without complex systems of heating and cooling? I am keenly aware of the multiplicity of over-the-top shelters Steve and I have. I marvel at the shelters created in our waste. 

We reconnect with our Earth ancestry in our walking. We mull over important and hard decisions and sometimes they spill out with clarity:

These four walls cannot contain me and yet they do. They warm me, they dry me, they offer me refuge. We've painted the walls joyful colors and filled the rooms with inspired, treasured handcraft. What we didn't prepare for in our nesting is the care that is necessary for all these things and the cost to our spirits in the care. You see, our spirits run with the coyotes. They soar with the turkey vultures. They stand sturdy as the oak. Our spirits crave sun, rain, wind, barefootedness, contact with soil. Our spirits ask at what cost are we accepting comfort? Our spirits tell us, it is too high. Change. Move your legs. Touch the tree bark and smell the scented gray-headed coneflower seeds. Drink in the richness of the sky and the marvel of a functioning ecosystem. Remember. Rejoin. These four walls cannot contain you, but they will if you let them. Get less comfortable. Be more free. Rediscover where you came from. Nourish your spirits. Nourish the fireflies. Nourish the opossums. Nourish the forests. Nourish the wetlands, the rivers, the deserts, the mountains. Nourish the Earth. Find you again. Howl at the moon. Never forget. 

And so we walk and we restore land. We are cognizant that this planet is not ours for the taking, that our spirits require nourishment. The future is bright. Tough choices will be made. The spicy sweetness of the spring blooming Witchhazel envelops us, bringing us home once more.

 

Soundtrack: Jackie Venson, I will Find a Way

Recommended Podcast (and Book): Dacher Keltner, The Thrilling New Science of Awe

Forest Advocacy NEEDED for this beautiful place: 

Beauty, Light and Joy - Happy Winter Solstice

Winter is almost officially here and we will soon start to add daylight back into our days. This is an event we look forward to every year, in the same way we eagerly anticipate hearing the first American woodcock after returning from warmer lands and singing wood frogs recently thawed and fully awake and present in the warming rains. These events mark our calendar, our hearts, and our assurance of sanity and a return to abundant sunshine, insects, singing birds and of course - greening, growing plants.

Winter is part of our lives and we work ever so hard to enjoy each day. Notice, I said work. Sometimes it's effortless, but a lot of times in this season, it is work for us.

Adventures with towering trees,

forests, rocks, and new snow,

and very loved friends,

make our hearts happy and make this work of winter easier. (Thanks N for the photo of us below.) Steve and his two t-shirt method for staying warm clearly works for him, but me? I'll take the puffy coat, snow pants, long johns, winter hat and snow boots.

Steve's nicknamed me Photon, though it could also be his nickname, because in this season of dark we savor each brilliant moment of sunlight. The warm colors of our house capture this light and brighten our spirits and make us ever grateful for the bold palette inspired by nature.

Our leaning, but cheerful and almost sunbathing little Norfolk Island Pine holds Christmas ornaments I made with my family as a kid. We keep nurturing this little tree and another upstairs who we hope will someday recover from the root prune the nursery gave them because we just can't give up. I mean, life is LIFE - the brilliant, beautiful, sacred, wonder of it all.

Thunderstorms in December ushered in sunshine and a magnificent double rainbow. Standing on the porch in my barefoot, I found tears of joy trickling down my face. What beauty is in this world!

This most certainly includes a loaf of fresh baked bread...

and the continuation of our persimmon adventures. This is their shining moment in the fruit world and so we celebrate them joyfully. Below are Asian hachiya persimmons from Saraga, an international grocery store, in Columbus. They are ripe when they feel like water balloons and so delicious. I bonded with a non-English speaker over these persimmons because he had a bag of 10 or more and he held it up laughing and nodding yes to me and I did the same in reciprocity. Beauty in people bonded over persimmons makes me smile even as I type.

Another dear friend tipped us off to fruiting American persimmons west of Columbus at the Union Co. fairgrounds so we traveled to see them and were thrilled to see the abundance these branches held, even at the beginning of December.

The fruits ornamented several trees and were all over the ground as well. They tasted delicious and divinely sweet so we gathered a big container and savored every last one raw or in our morning millet bowl. We have quite an abundance of seeds so we plan to grow more again next year. Fruits that ripen in late fall and winter in the Midwest and stay ripe and delicious on the trees in freezing weather, must, must, must be shared.

We planted a lot of the bareroot trees we grew in our experimental airprune bed, right here on this mighty 3.5 acres at the beginning of December. We've planted thousands of herbaceous plants here and hundreds and hundreds of woodies. Don't be scared, just plant, plant, plant. Some plants won't make it and then you will be happy you planted more than you ever thought you should, because you want the plants to have friends: for their own benefit and connectivity for the benefit of all those lives they host and support. The left side of the bin below holds pawpaws and the right side, the persimmons. Note the black roots of persimmon...that is due to their membership in the ebony family.

We moved our high tunnel out of the portion of the garden we are rewilding to the plant nursery for a future shade house.

This next growing season, we are taking a big break from many plants as we adventure into the world more in 2020, but everything is set for when we are ready to return. Thanks to Steve's handyman skills at moving and repair, this structure is sound and will last.

The loss of leaves in the fall and winter offers sight of leaf-hidden life, which we love to watch for as we tour around the trails here. We were thrilled to find this polyphemus moth cocoon on the rough-leaf dogwood, one of their host plants. We've not yet documented this silkmoth here and were more than pleased to know, they are here and the right plants are growing to host their hungry caterpillars that metamorphose into an almost 6" wide moth!

The clear emergence hole and rather intact nature of the cocoon indicates to me this moth most likely emerged this past summer. Where oh where did he or she go? You know we will be monitoring very closely this coming year.

The evergreen bagworms the eastern red cedars host sometimes, also lived on the silky dogwood this year. We were captivated by the attachment of dogwood fruits to the cocoon.

This gem of a silkmoth did not grow here on this 3.5 acres, but rather at Mohican State Park. Any guesses?

If you said cecropia, you are right! This cocoon is heavy and that tells me she or he is overwintering soundly and safely. What a gift to live in a world where silkmoths live. As a child, I found my first ever cecropia in my Dad's office at the factory where he worked. The lights of the factory no doubt brought this moth indoors where he or she died, but the huge size and magnificent coloring blew my mind. I still remember that office and that moth because my life grew so much bigger in that moment.

And so friends, let's end on more beauty...prairie rose (Rosa setigera) with hot pink petioles in December:

Camphorweed (Pluchea odorata) seed heads that are still pungently fragrant...

and the Clear Fork gorge...our local tether to wildness other than the rewilding 3.5 acres of Morrow County, OH we call home.

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Native Foods, Beauty and Generosity of Spirit

Hi friends,

Have we told you how much we appreciate you? Truly, we do. You make our lives so much richer for your existence and the mutual sharing of heartfelt experiences and joy. Thank you for joining us on this journey of meaning, compassion and gratitude.

As I write my eyes continually wander to the door bathed in sunlight. The sun wanes and the black walnut in my view holds the last of the rays. What am I doing inside? Sitting down indoors challenges me more with each passing day. I love the coziness of a wood-warmed house, but I feel constantly that I am missing the most important moment of my life. What is happening outside? Who is heading south? Is the blue wood aster still blooming?

Are the robins gathering and chatting in the top of the maple? Is there another American woodcock probing in the recently moistened Earth beneath the rough-leaved dogwoods?

The gift of persimmons sit on our table waiting: giving us great joy in their presence, in their delicious flesh and in their hope-filled seeds.

Our refrigerator houses baggies of these persimmon seeds from our second annual autumnal pilgrimage to our Indiana homeland, marking an important ritual to gather these delicious native fruits and to revere big trees, limestone-weathered Earth, good people doing good work and the ecology of the land.

George Donaldson: you are one of our heroes; please know you made a difference. You preserved a piece of Indiana that we very much needed to see and that gives us such hope.

Caterpillar lives continue to mingle noticeably with our lives and teach us almost daily that it truly is the greatest miracle that we are all alive and that we get to bear witness to other lives and gift one another with appreciation and love.

American Dagger on a long journey...

Virginia Ctenucha benefiting from the long fall...

Possible Tufted Thyatirin feeding on hazelnut...

Brown-hooded Owlet from aster...

Syncronicity of spirit or intuition? I am not sure which, but this box turtle reminded me to listen to what cannot be heard. A venture off trail to visit some pawpaws in search of any lingering fruit inspired me to tell Steve to make sure to watch for box turtles....a few minutes later look who we found.

The kitties tolerated our traveling and are learning to appreciate new lands and new experiences. It's a joy to not leave part of our family behind and to feel new opportunities opening in front of us.

Meeting Carolina Buckthorn and Seedbox again thrilled us. 

Spending time with old trees strenthened us and heartened us in ways that is as necessary as breath, but is as hard to understand as tides and moon cycles. 

Our travels out into the world always inspire such action on our little patch of Earth. They ignite something deep within and we get lit, I mean LIT, on fire. We come home and we visit the plants we share space with and we plant more and we dream about persimmons and learn about native foods and dream some more and then form plans.

American Chestnuts will rise again and we vow to support their rise. The local economy of native foods is so damn satisfying and we feel like there is giant bright spot before us, if we just open our eyes, look around and support others on their life paths doing meaningful, important and most certainly imperative work.

Winter hardy greens in a junk built lean-to cold house... 

and homegrown saffron...

offer nutrition and satisfaction. That's a key piece of life isn't it? To feel satisfied and proud of your life and at peace with what is and what is not.

We savor autumnal light like it might never return again. "Yes fence, we will continue removing you. First though, we must lay on Mother Earth (Mother Shelter, Mother Shelteress; thank you Anais Mitchell), feel her strength and soak up the rays." Weakening rays, but still our mightiest and most longed for winter friend.

Mother Shelteress, creator of perfect mud homes. There is much to admire here: beauty, builder, earth materials, innate know-how, protection of young...

remnants of what was and what will return once again to yes, Mother Earth, Mother Shelteress. We humans have much to learn.

We wish you joy, more and more "awake" moments and meaning-filled discoveries.

Hugs,

j and s

Find an extension of our travels and some more of our joy here.