A Visitor

Today I heard a rustling outside of the open window of my little cabin.  I climbed down from my lofted bed and whatever had been there disappeared in a burst of blue and black.  My mind told me Steller's jay.  I waited at the window for a few seconds and it returned.  A beautiful big male, his black crest stretching high on top of his head as though he were the king of the whole world.  It is so easy to forget how large a bird can be until you see it up close.  The branch he perched on bowed under the weight of him, he pulled two leaves free with his beak, and then dropped them to the ground.  He moved on to another branch, chirped five or six times, and then vanished back into the forest.

I am grateful for the times when I am reminded that there is so much beauty in the world.  Try as we might, humans just can't snuff out the creative impulse that the world brings to fruition through life.

Happy Summer Solstice!

I am feeling particularly underwhelmed by life at the moment, but felt the need to do something to acknowledge the importance of the day.  For four of the last five years, I have had a fire for 24 hours in recognition of the Solstice.  Over each of these years, it has been somewhat different.  At times it was more like a party, other times it was a more introspective affair.  Usually, it was some sort of hybrid of the two.

For the last 9 months, I have been living in Olympia.  I moved here to go back to school and the cost of doing so was near total loss of my social life.  So, this Solstice I am at home alone with no one to celebrate with.  I am, perhaps, the loneliest that I have ever been in my life.  It is hard to muster the energy of celebration.

That said, the Solstice is still something worthy of celebration and I hope everyone out there who cares about such things is doing something special.  It is thundering and lightning here; a rare treat. As the sun went down this evening, the fast moving clouds seemed to catch fire, the whole sky varying shades of orange and pink.  There was even a rainbow.  For the first time since 1967 and the last time until 2062, the Solstice moon is full.  A special treat.  It is also the strawberry moon, which is the Algonquin name for June's full moon.  It is the height of strawberry harvesting time.

I will take this as a sign, that things are growing ripe in my life and should be bursting with sweetness soon!  If anyone happens to read this, I hope this prediction applies to you too.

Happy Summer Solstice.

!!!!!!gET TURNt-------gET WOKe!!!!!!

More from Mr. Watts.

a dawn chorus

It is June 8th, 2016.  It is 4:34 AM.  It is still dark but the birds are already welcoming the day.  Such optimism.  The Sun has yet to rise but the birds are singing their hearts out; a daily ritual of faith.  Not faith in god but faith that the earth will continue on its long established course. Faith that the Earth will continue to provide refuge from the cold expanse that surrounds us all.

Eloquent words on death.

For the last few years of my life, death has been a subject of great interest to me.  The ways in which we are taught (or not taught) to think of death in Western culture is, at least in my opinion, unhealthy. I came across these wonderful videos of lectures given by Alan Watts on the subject of death.  These words speak to my own feelings but I am not yet eloquent enough in my philosophy to express myself as well as Mr. Watts does.  Death is natural.  Death is right.  Death is liberation.

The Reintroduction of Wolves into Olympic National Park

For the last 6 months I have been enrolled in an Introduction to Environmental Studies program at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA.  As part of a research paper we created posters about a specific environmental problem and what could be done to fix it.  My research paper and poster focused on the feasibility of reintroducing wolves into Olympic National Park and the benefits this would have for the ecosystems found within that park.  Here is the poster that I made.  If anyone out there who looks at this has any interest in reading my paper, let me know.

2/26/16

"Trust God and do the next thing."-from a bumper sticker I saw today.

The spiders are laying eggs in the corners of my room.  If I leave them to hatch, my room will
be infested with spiders come Spring.  If I move them, they will likely die.  This, for me, is a moral
dilemma.  I truly respect spiders and try my best to treat them right; for me they carry mythological weight.

As I write this there is a very pissed off hornet somewhere in my room.  I'll admit that stinging insects
scare me a little.  It is February 26th and the flying insects shouldn't be out and active right now.  The weather conditions should not be right this early in the year but they are and here are the winged insects.  The world is changing right in front of us and most people are afraid to look.

Sometimes at night I hear coyotes chirping, sometimes the deer circle my room grazing.  A few days ago, I stumbled from my room in the middle of the day and startled two yearlings chomping on the grass.  One exploded into the woods, the other started, stopped and stared back at me.

I am quite lonely and under a lot of stress but luckily I have my little cabin to keep me safe.