A Summer Evening in the Suburbs

Summer Solstice

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Suburban neighborhoods come alive when the sun goes down in the high summer. In the hot, bright days everyone is hiding, trying to keep cool. Closed blinds, buzzing AC and blaring daytime TV keeps any evidence of the outside world out along with the heat and the sun. But come 9:30, as that bright yellow sun turns neon orange and sinks below the western horizon, the neighborhood seems to emerge like a night flower. Slowly and tentatively, but surely in that fleeting time between sunset and full dark.

Walking around the block there are neighbors to talk to. Catch up on neighborhood news, how's the baby, are the kids enjoying summer camp? The old man and his old dog teeter down the street, encouraging and supporting each other on their twice daily circumnavigation of the block. Doors and window have been thrown open giving you a rare glance into the inner sanctum of the split level ranch, the faux tudor, the tiny bungalow. It looks so much like yours, but the details make you morbidly curious - that lamp, that art, that bookshelf. A window frames the sweaty woman and her daughter doing dishes together. Another window shows a glimpse of the Jewish family enjoying a late late sabbath dinner. Children eating ice cream on the stoop, bare footed and bare armed. The man watering his roses.  The girl on her phone, on her back, on the grass. A cat stares from under a hydrangea in full bloom.

Todd Petit

Turn onto the open street again and see two bright stars in the sky. They are planets, Venus and Jupiter. They are close, close enough that your outstretched two fingers, like a blessing, would cover them both. These bright lights, the Lover and the King, look close but, like the woman with the dishes and the man with his roses, have great distance between them. The planets' distance is measured in hundreds of millions of kilometers, mind boggling numbers that stretch across a solar system. The neighbors, though, what unit of measurement shows strangers who live next door? People who know each others' cars, landscaping and faces, but don't know each other. Have never shared what excites them, what scares them. It might be a bigger distance, really, between the neighbors than between the planets.

Brigit

February First

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February First has come and gone. I didn't make Red Soup. I didn't go for a walk around the neighborhood. Things are busy and complicated again this spring. But good. Really good.

I offer you a repost of my most favorite story on this blog. The story of Lovely Luz and Sweet Brigit. I originally wrote this in February of 2010 and I still love it. I hope you do too.

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Once upon a time there was a little girl named Luz who lived with her sickly mother in a small cabin near the woods. Her mother had been weak for a long time and Luz had to take care of herself and her mother. Luz cleaned the houses of other families in their village, collected firewood and tended a small flock of chickens and two pretty nanny goats in the yard behind the cabin, so there was always something to put on the table but never much extra.

In the autumn, as the leaves were falling and the days were getting shorter, Luz’s mother helped her light a candle in a little glass lantern. Her mother was able to come to the door and watch Luz as she paraded around the yard singing songs to the nanny goats and chickens. “Remember,” her mother said “as the light of the sun fades in the autumn, we can keep the light in our lantern through the winter.”

Photo by calynde

Winter was always hard for Luz and her mother. The days were cold and snowy but Luz needed to go out most days to collect more firewood. The nanny goats stopped giving milk and eventually even the chickens stopped laying eggs, but the cold left Luz and her mother hungry for those nourishing foods. There was one wonderful thing that happened in the winter, though. Every evening, after the wood had been stacked by the fireplace and the chickens had been shut in their coops, the goats had been given fresh hay and the dinner dishes washed and put away, Luz’s mother would tell her stories about the beautiful Goddess Brigit. Brigit was always good to the poor and people who were like her always had good things happen to them.

One day just before Christmas, Luz was out along the edge of the forest by her cabin collecting firewood. She had a good armload and was about to turn back seeing as it was getting dark when she saw a man huddled around a tiny campfire. Despite the cold air he was dressed in rags, working hard to warm his fingers which were turning blue. Luz remembered the story her mother told the night before where Brigit gave away a precious silver necklace to a poor woman in need. Brigit’s sisters were angry, but the next day they found a sliver necklace to replace the one given away. Well, Luz thought, whether she found another pile of wood or not, this man needs my firewood, as well as the hardboiled egg and small wedge of cheese my mother sent with me, more than I do.

“Here you go, sir.” Said Luz, setting her gifts down near him. “I don’t have much, but you need it more.”

“Thank you, child.” He said. “I am almost home, and your gifts and kindness will warm me until I get there. Bless you, child, bless you.”

Luz hurried home, for it was getting dark, but just as she reached the path back to her own cabin she came across a large pile of dry, good firewood. She picked it up and hurried home.

“Oh mama!” she cried. “I left the wood I had gathered with a poor man near the forest, but look! There’s a pile of dry, good firewood here!”

“What a lovely girl you are, Luz.” Her mother said. “Just like Brigit you give more than what you can spare. But look, Brigit left this wood for you as a gift. Those who keep the sun’s light strong and care for others are always taken care of.”

A few weeks later a neighbor had taken Luz’s mother on a visit to a friend’s house in the village and Luz was home alone, tending the chickens and nanny goats. Luz went out and collected the last few eggs the chickens would lay that winter and went inside to make a small lunch for herself. Just then an old woman walked up the path by their house and asked if Luz had any bread to spare. The woman looked like she needed more than just a slice of bread to get her home and Luz remembered the story of the old woman who gave Brigit shelter one cold night. The woman tore down a piece of her house and killed her only calf to feed and warm Brigit, but in the morning her cow had another calf and her house was whole and warm. Well, thought, Luz, I don’t have to tear down our cabin to give this woman a warm lunch so she invited her in.

Luz prepared the last of the eggs with the last of the goat milk and a few slices of bread to make a warm meal for the woman, and let her sit by the warm fire for as long as she needed.

“Thank you, child.” she said. “I am on my way to visit my daughter, and your gifts and kindness will warm me until I get there. Bless you, child, bless you.”

When Luz’s mother came home Luz rushed to find the last food in the cupboard to make her dinner, but instead of a crust of bread she found a full egg basket and two whole wheels of cheese.

“Oh mama!” she cried. “I fed a poor woman the last of our eggs this afternoon, but look! There’s a dozen eggs here!”

“What a lovely girl you are, Luz.” Her mother said. “Just like Brigit you give more than what you can spare. But look, Brigit left those eggs for you as a gift. Those who keep the sun’s light strong and care for others are always taken care of.”

Late in the winter, after Christmas but while the days are still dark and cold Luz’s mother, who had always been weak, got terribly sick. Luz was so worried, especially when her mother couldn’t even get out of bed. She kept her mother warm and the fire strong, and prayed to Brigit for help.

After three nights of this, when it felt like winter will never end and her mother would never be well, Luz fell asleep by the fire. She dreamed she heard an old woman walking by the window of their little cabin chanting.

Moving rightways with the sun
My blessings weave and bend
Weave and bend

All winter you did keep the light
Spring blessing soon will rise
Soon will rise

Luz rose from her seat by the fire and wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. She grabbed her Martinmas lantern and headed out to follow the sound. Ahead of her she saw a woman dressed all in black, with hair white as the snow and a face dark like old wood walking slowly through the woods. Luz followed her quietly, sure the old woman must know she’s there, but the old woman never turned around or stopped chanting. She just kept walking into the woods. Luz followed the woman further into the woods than she had ever been before but she wasn’t afraid, the old woman seemed to have a light and warmth that made Luz feel safe.

Moving rightways with the sun
My blessings weave and bend
Weave and bend

All winter you did keep the light
Spring blessing soon will rise
Soon will rise

Eventually, as the sky started to lighten in the east, the old woman, with Luz following behind, came to a clearing with an old stone well in it. The old woman stood by the well and finally spoke, “Come closer child. Do you know who I am?” Luz shook her head, too afraid to say what she knew must be true.

“I know I don’t look like the beautiful woman in the stories your mother tells you, but I am her, I am Brigit. This night is my night, this morning my dawn. You carry with you the light you have nurtured all winter with good deeds and warm stories. Because you have done so well at caring for that light through the long dark winter you may have a wish. What do you wish for, child?”

“I wish for my Mother to be well again.. and.. and for this winter to be over! I am so sick of it being cold all the time.”

Brigit laughed, “Granted one wish and you ask for two. No matter, it can be arranged.”

Just then, the first morning bird sang out, and the first ray of dawn’s light broke over the horizon. The old crone Brigit pulled the bucket out of the well, dipped her hands into the cold, clear water, and splashed her face. Her robes instantly turned to red, and her hair to a speckled grey and black, and her face to that of a matronly woman of middle age. In just another moment, the disk of the sun broke above the horizon, spilling full sunlight into the clearing with the well. The mother Brigit dipped her hands into the bucket again, and once more splashed a handful of water onto her face. In the blink of an eye her robes turned to pure white, her hair to a deep auburn red and her face fair as that of a young maiden.

“Come, bring your lamp here,” said the maiden Brigit and Luz did as she was asked. Brigit took the lantern from her hands and blew the candle out, but the light didn’t go away. It seemed to Luz that the light from the candle, instead of being kept inside the small lantern, spread throughout the whole forest. The morning dew sparkled on swelling buds and the sun seemed even brighter than it had been the day before. The snow was still deep and the air cold, but Luz could tell spring would be on its way soon.

The maiden Brigit pulled a small tin cup out of her cloak and filled it with water from the well. “Take this to your Mother and have her drink it. She will be well soon, and spring is on its way. Keep my memory alive, Luz, tell stories about my good deeds and live them out in your own life. Blessed be.”

Photo by dawn m. armfield

Luz took the cup and her lantern and hurried home, as quickly as she could, but careful to not spill a drop of the precious water Brigit pulled from the sacred well.

“Oh mama!” she cried, when she got home. “I met sweet Brigit at the well and she gave me this magic water to make you well! Oh, mama! You will be well again!”

“What a lovely girl you are, Luz.” Her mother said. “Brigit found you who are so like herself and has blessed us all. Those who keep the sun’s light strong and care for others are always taken care of.”

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February First 2009: February the First

February First 2010: Lovely Luz and Sweet Bridgit This happens to be my all time favorite post from all two plus years of blogging. Please go check it out. 

Feburary First 2011: Brigid - The Goddess of Poetry

February First 2012: Brigid's Red Soup and Magic

Solstice Celebration

Winter Solstice

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One year, the wind blew down the mountain fiercer than it ever had before. The wind screamed so loud sometimes that Lucia could not hear her mother humming as she rocked the baby by the fire. Frost covered the nail heads in the walls, and the wind that sneaked in through the cracks tossed the last of the flour in the barrel around, so that it seemed to snow inside the house as well as out.

One day, the sun did not rise over the mountaintop. And the next day and the next and the next, not a glimmer of sun shown, no matter how long Lucia watched for sunrise. Dark roosted on the land.

"Where has the light gone?" Lucia asked.

"I don't know," her mother replied. "Even the oldest tales never told of this darkness." She wrapped Lucia in her arms. "We will be each others' sun until the real sun returns," she said.

Today is Winter Solstice, the day with the shortest sunlight hours here in the Northern Hemisphere. It is the height of winter, the darkest time of the dark season. Starting tomorrow, the sun will stay in the sky just a little longer. And that is more than enough reason to celebrate.

I spent the day at the Nature Park doing a day off camp with elementary school aged kids. We spent the morning reading the wonderful story Lucia and the Light by Phyllis Root, which I have exerpted here, hiking in the woods and seeing what was growing and what was not out there. We found some awesome newts and an amazing fungus forest, with six or seven varieties growing out of a single pile of logs. Of course, we sent arms full of leaves and twigs over the railing of the bridge and down the swollen Beaverton Creek, an all time favorite activity for kids of every age. 

In the afternoon we made lanterns to celebrate the returning of the sun. We talked about the science of the solstice and how the days will begin to get stronger with each passing day and then provided them with colored tissue paper and plastic lantern forms. As the dusk came on we lit them with electric tea lights and paraded around the office building, welcoming back the sun. Later, ask evening came on for real, the kids asked if we could turn off the lights in the room and they proceeded to leap over their lit lanterns. Screams of laughter greeted the gathering darkness.

Sunlight followed Lucia through the front door and poured across the floor, warm and sweet as honey. A fire blazed and the hearth and the baby cooed and clapped to see Lucia.

"I thought I had lost you," her mother cried, sweeping Lucia into a hug."and then the sun came up, and I knew you would come home. My brave child!"

Lucia's mother held her close. "My sunshine," she whispered. "Light of my heart."

How do you celebrate the darkest day of the year? How did you welcome the dark, or greet the growing light? When was the last time you heard children howling and screaming with laughter? Happy Solstice!

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Winter Solstice 2008: Good Morning Sun! and also Solstice Creche

Winter Solstice 2009: Christmas and Advent, Awaiting the Birth

Winter Solstice 2010: Christmas, 2010, Solstice Story, and The Dark of the Dark  

Winter Solstice 2011: Advent and The Long Nights of Winter and It's Christmas

Winter Solstice 2012: City and Sky Advent

Mushroom Season

Full Death Moon

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It is distinctly winter here in Portland. I spent these weeks around Thanksgiving dog sitting for a number of families and have been very busy getting a whole pack of dogs tired, work that means hiking in the woods and fields every day. The days have been cold and wet, but some more cold and more wet than others. Some even sunny lately. They say if you don't like the weather in Oregon just wait a few minutes. With about five weeks of rainy weather behind us, the ground is getting saturated and the trails are starting to get muddy - muddy trail season is a distinct time of year in my lived calendar. The days are short with the sun coming up just after 7 and it being quite dark by 5pm but my "work" has had me outside about as much as I want each day, a real luxury this time of year. 

Hoyt Arboretum Mushrooms

The cool and wet weather is bringing out a special kind of wildlife in the woods of Western Oregon - the mushroom. Every walk this last week has brought me strange and amazing visions of the fungal world. Tall and skinny mushrooms, fat little toadstools, shelf fungus firm, frilly, white and brown, entire logs covered in mushrooms and mushrooms shooting out of the leaf litter under the trees. Some logs have patches of fungus growing on them that seem to ooze a deep red liquid and others collect drops of water like a jeweled crown. The diversity of forms is really mind blowing even just in the small areas and single ecosystem I have been exploring.

What we call mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungus that live in soil, rotting wood or some other substrate. Fungus is one of the five major categories of life (the others being bacteria, protists, plants and animals) and despite their outward similarity with plants, they are actually more closely related to animals in many ways. Mushrooms, a specific kind of fungus, can be found in an astonishing array of habitats and are vitally important parts of their ecosystems. They are decomposers, breaking down plant and animal material to get at the nutrients inside and in the process release those nutrients back into the environment for other plants and animals to use. The mushrooms we see sprouting out of logs and forest duff are actually just a tiny part of a huge organism that impregnates the wood or soil. The mycelium, the internal filament like structure of the fungus, spreads out and eats away at the material the fungus is growing in and only creates the fruiting body for a couple days or a couple weeks at most. 

Shelf Fungus in Forest Park

Mushrooms fascinate me. They are mysterious and unlike other living creatures I know in really fundamental ways. Many of the websites I've checked out recently to learn about them use the word cryptic to discuss their life cycle and habits. They inhabit the deep part of the forest but create these amazing and beautiful bodies that push out into the light and they do that so quickly that the English language uses their name, mushroom, to describe something that multiplies almost too fast to be measured. They are an important part of cleaning up the detritus of a forest, making sure nutrients are recycled for reuse and many are eaten by other forest creatures. Some species are even eaten by humans while others are important medicines, some are so poisonous they kill almost instantly and some do other crazy things to our brain chemistry. They are deep, dark forest magic. Not like us at all, but vital members of their communities.

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Mushrooms Berkeley 

A classic recipe from the Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. Described as such "The mushrooms and peppers will be very dark and evil looking, but irresistible in flavor and aroma."

1 lb mushrooms, halved
1 medium bell peppers, cut in 1-inch squares
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1/2 c butter

Sauce
2 T Dijon mustard
2 T Worcestershire sauce
1/2 c brown sugar (or less)
3/4 c mellow red table wine
Fresh ground black pepper
Seasoned salt

Melt butter and saute onions till clear.

While sauteing make sauce. Mix together mustard, brown sugar, and Worcestershire sauce till perfectly smooth. Add the wine, season with lots of fresh ground pepper, seasoned salt to taste. Stir well

When onion is clear, add the mushrooms and peppers and saute. As the mushrooms begin to brown and reduce in size, add the sauce.

Now simmer at medium for about 45 minutes or till sauce is reduced and thickened. Serve over steak, polenta, pasta or as a vegetable side dish. 

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Mushrooms remind us of the hidden and dark parts of life. They grow in the dark, sometimes literally but always the figurative dark of wet forests and short days. The mycelium remind me that even when things look dead, like the spongy rotting logs that litter my beloved temperate rain forests, there is often much going on under the surface. The fruit will pop up only when it is ready and then it might just "mushroom" out, being so prolific we can't even believe that was just a pile of dry leaves three weeks ago. Mushrooms have completely unusual and fantastical shapes, colors, uses and jobs. They are, in short, simply unexpected and simply amazing. 

Forest Park Mushrooms

What unexpected and amazing things are popping up in your life right now? Are there mushrooms sprouting in your yard or some other neat natural growth in these dark days of winter? Do you have a favorite mushroom recipe or do you generally stay away from the fungus? Is this a time of hidden growth deep inside the rotting log of your life or are ideas or projects ready to mushroom out? Happy winter!

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Death Moon 2011: The End of the Year, Favorites and Living in Relationship

Death Moon 2010: Night and Day , Wear it As Long as Thou Canst, and Doggy Heaven (still makes me cry years later) 

Death Moon 2009:  The Soldier and Death (one of my all time favorite posts!) and Moving From the Season of the Dead

Death Moon 2008: Full Moon in Taurus and Time is a Circle

The Year Ends

Old Sorting Moon

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I always like it when my human affairs line up nicely with natural cycles and seasonal change. There was a full moon on October 29th that marked the height of the Sorting Moon, the last month of the lunar year, and also happened to fall right at the end of my Outdoor School session. As the last week of the Sorting Moon came and went so did the last week of Outdoor School and right as I was packing and getting ready to leave the coast for the last time, winter showed up. I honestly felt like I left the coast in the autumn and arrived in Portland in the winter with cold air, cold rain and bare trees. 

Smith Lake during the last week of camp

Daylight savings that week made the transition all that much more abrupt. It is now the dark, cold, wet time of the year. 

The end of the Sorting Moon also the end of my fourth year of blogging at The Wheel and the Disk. Holy cow! Really, four years? As I look back over my work this year I see that the 2011-2012 lunar year was a busy (er, totally crazy) one, but there is a lot here that I am very proud of.

At the beginning of the year I was struggling heavily with my work as a student teacher. I struggled with that hard work and other hard work that came up over the winter. At the beginning of the lunar year, I set the goal of working with material from Jessica Prentice's book Full Moon Feast and some of my best writing this year came out of my engagement with that material. The posts about the Wolf Moon and the Sap Moon are shining examples of the kind of writing I do best - an eclectic mix of explanation, spiritual musing and connection making. In the deep winter I did some gwishing and set a theme for 2012 - Grabbing the Tiger By the Tail - which has manifested itself in all sorts of ways I didn't even imagine were possible. The craziness of the rest of the year was foreshadowed by my messing up on the naming of my moons in the winter and having to realign the posts and dates months later. As the spring waxed my focus shifted outward and my posts tended to get shorter, more full of poetry, and more full of pronoic epiphanies. It simply was not a season for digestion or self reflection. It was a time for adventures! In the summer I told you about my adventures in dogs, men, soccer and theme parties. Man, I sure had fun this summer. The fun didn't end, though, as I moved to Outdoor School and enjoyed autumn 

Wondering what tha?

on the Oregon coast. I may not have posted twice for each month, but I did post once for every moon and considering how much else got pushed aside this year I consider that an accomplishment. 

I'm not sure what I see in the future of this blog. It is clearly a very important tool for me in my self reflection and continued spiritual practice. I look forward to spending the winter really digesting the work (and play!) that I engaged in over this last warm season. I would like to continue to incorporate stories and poetry to help illuminate my findings as well as to highlight the science of the seasons as they come and go. I expect to have another very fruitful winter of blogging and hope that I can sustain that into the spring and summer next year. Again, I promise to post for every moon and every festival. That commitment keeps me on track in a very real way. 

I have been enjoying this change in the season and the beginnings of this season of dark. This soli-lunar calendar that I follow allows for a generous season of end before the birth of the new year and I have grown accustomed to using it for all it is worth. Reviewing, putting things to rest, sorting through and making ready to let go or spend the winter working of what needs to stay. It is a fruitful season for inner work and I need some of that brand of medicine right now. How is the year winding down for you? What have you accomplished since last fall? What of that is worth keeping and what of that is ready to be transformed into something worth keeping? How is winter beginning to show itself where you live?

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This post is labeled Old Sorting Moon because it was written so late in the month. Here are previous Full Sorting Moon posts. 

Full Sorting Moon 2011: Snow Moon: Connecting with our Food

Full Sorting Moon 2010: The Rains Have Come and Year Two Complete

Full Sorting Moon 2009: Full Sorting Moon

Outdoor School Harvests

Full Harvest Moon

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I'm falling behind again in my posting but this time because I am busy and working hard, not because I am off gallivanting. As my summer job came to a close I was lamenting my lack of employment for the fall and a friend suggested I apply for outdoor school. "You'd love it, and they'd hire you in a minute," she said. I sighed and agreed. "You're right, you're right... I know you're right."

Smith Lake, my office

For those of you who did not grow up in northwestern Oregon, a little background. Outdoor School is a residential environmental education program that started by the school districts in the counties around Portland in the late 1960s. It has grown into a beloved tradition for 6th graders to go to camp with their science classes and generations of high schoolers have come to outdoor school as counselor-teachers. Even with the budget cuts in recent years, the Outdoor School programs in the Portland area have survived and continue to give teenagers these really important and empowering experiences.

I went to Outdoor School as a middle schooler and counted the days until I could go back as a counselor, which I did 6 times before I graduated from high school and another time the fall after I graduated. I joke that I went to college to become a camp counselor and got my dream job working for the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's science camp and outdoor school. I worked at camp for a summer and a fall before I decided that I wanted a kitchen, a dog, and a home in town rather than camp life.

Sunset from Camp

Seven years later, after a circuitousness route of work and school, I'm back at outdoor school. It's all the magic I expected and more. Within two minutes of meeting my co-workers I knew we were going to hit it off great and have a really fun fall. The work these last two weeks has been physically exhausting, emotionally draining and absolutely mind blowingly awesomely fun. The high schoolers rise to our extraordinary high expectations and the sixth graders bring energy like you wouldn't believe to our camp community. We adults pull together to support each other while making each other laugh until we cry almost every day. I can not discount the awesomeness of spending all day every day in the woods by the ocean surrounded by squirrels, racoons, chickadees and gulls.

The Harvest Moon

A touch of cold in the Autumn night

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,
  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Coastal Huckleberries, the best part of camp.

Coming back to Outdoor School reminds me of the harvests I have reaped from my own past experiences and the harvests I hope I am sowing now. I come back to camp because being a part of a community that really works feels so warm and loving. A good camp community is one where every person is working to make sure that every other person is succeeding and growing. Camp is a community pressure cooker, where we go from strangers to bosom buddies in the matter of a few days and where life long relationships begin. As a teenager, I met caring adults at camp who were able to identify strengths I didn't know I had and grow towards a wholeness I wasn't sure I could achieve. As I looked back over the evaluations my supervisors wrote and felt both intense gratitude and awe at how insightful they were. 

As I complete this week's round of counselor evals I hope that I can be even half as helpful to the teenagers I am working with as my staff supervisors were. I hope that these teen counselors can see a vision of themselves as confident leaders and knowledgeable teachers. I want everyone at camp, the staff, the counselors, the students, the kitchen staff and the teachers to see what a functional community looks like and maybe be able to take that experience into their futures. I want the students and counselors to have good emotional experiences in the woods and beach so they can begin to build a conservationist ethic. I hope that my actions here, and my part of this community, can do what Mother Teresa's words (which are posted in every bathroom at my camp) ask of us:

"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile."

My camp name and red vest of power

The full Harvest moon found me and my camp co-workers out on the beach for a bonfire. We played tackle catch with a glow in the dark ball, talked about the week and laughed a lot. The tide was exceptionally high (it was a spring tide) and we ended up having to move our active camp fire with our bare hands. The Harvest Moon asks us questions about the fruits of our labors in the physical, emotional and spiritual realms. Coming back to Outdoor School has left me thinking about my harvests this fall, and my hopes for future harvests. I really feel like I am working to make the world a better place when I work at camp. Even when we are at our silliest... or maybe mostly when we are at our silliest.

What are your harvests this autumn? What future harvests are you sowing for? Did you get to go to Outdoor School or other camps as a kid or young adult? How is autumn shaping up where you live?

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Harvest Moon 2011: C.S. Lewis on Praise and An Ill Harvest

Harvest Moon 2010: Harvest Moon 

Harvest Moon 2009: The Harvest Moon is New and The Moon When Squirrels Throw Acorns at You (Inexplicably, my most viewed post. Ir has been viewed over 500 times, more than two hundred times more than my second most viewed post. Curiouser and curiouser.)

The Morning Swift Show

Autumn Equinox

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Some people think the most wonderful time of the year is Christmas but I know it is September. Gorgeous weather, cooler nights, the colors of autumn starting to show. I just love it.

The Morning Swift Show

I have a long standing tradition of waking up for the sunrise on the equinox and a separate tradition of viewing the Vaux's swifts at Chapman school in September but this year I finally combined them. For years, I've been wondering if the birds put on a show in the morning when they leave the roost so this year I combined my traditions and went to see the Morning Swift Show. September 20th was a windy morning and cool, but the sky was clear and it was evident that it was going to be a warm day. I arrived at the school about 10 minutes before the official sunrise time and there were three other intrepid souls waiting for the bird, a hipster couple wrapped in a mexican blanket and an older gentleman with a notebook and binoculars. Just after the published sunrise time the birds started to come out of the chimney, not in the swirling mass they go in with, but like a fountain dripping over the side. The birds would leap out and fall for a couple feet before flapping their wings and flying off into the new day. The Peregrine falcons, a regular visitor to the evening Swift Show, was there with a mate or a friend. Both were very successful in nabbing breakfast. As the sun rose above the clouds the rush of birds ended and I walked across the park to the dog park. Now I know what happens to the swifts in the morning, and it was fun to have the spectacle almost all to myself. 

Steiner identified the archetypical festival of this season as Michaelmas, the celebration of the God's warrior overcoming a dragon or serpent. It is the time when we face our own fears and earn a spark from Michael's iron sword to light our lanterns through the winter. But first, we get to bask in the glory that is autumn. My favorite time of year.

What did you do to celebrate the equinox? What dragons are you facing? When was the last time you got up for the sunrise? How is autumn progressing where you are? Happy equinox!

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Autumn Equinox 2011: Michaelmas Season and Michaelmas Photos

Autumn Equinox 2010: Here Be Dragons and A Dragon Tale for Michaelmas 
 
Autumn Equinox 2009: The Autumnal Equinox and The Earth is Breathing its Soul Back In

The Grasshopper and the Ants

New Nesting Moon

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IN a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

“Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

“I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.”

“Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; “we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food, and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.

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Douglas Squirrel by Powerkey

Can you feel it? The change is in the air. The light is a bit thinner, a bit more golden and the sun is lower in the sky, shining right in my eyes for more of the afternoon. There are more leaves on the trails I walk every day. Mostly Indian plum and Big Leaf Maple, the early changers, but more leaves on the street trees are turning red and gold. Every stump and log in the park I work in is covered with the ripped apart Douglas fir cones left behind by the Chickaree squirrels. The coastal forest we hiked in today is chalk full of ripe red huckleberries and salal and a few acorns can be found on the ground in other forests. Mornings are cooler, despite warm afternoons, but the real signs of autumn include the winter flock of bushtits and the first wooly bear caterpillar sighting. 

With the first signs of autumn come the first inklings that my season of frolicking and play might need to come to an end. My summer job ends in a very short number of weeks and I have nothing lined up for the fall. As I analyze my complete and utter lack of taking responsibility for my career path since graduation, I am coming up against some big fears I will need to work on this dark season. It isn't the introspective season yet, but I see it coming.

via Dierken

In another version of the classic Aesop's fable, the grasshopper "perishing with famine, passed by and earnestly begged for a little food." When they learn that he did not store treasure in the summer, they deride him by saying "If you were foolish enough to sing all the summer, you must dance supperless to bed in the winter." I hope that the winter, and the ants I may run into, will be a bit more forgiving of my summer of singing than the ants in this tale. But I guess we'll have to burn that bridge when we get to it.

Have you been an ant or a grasshopper this summer? What signs of autumn are you seeing around you? What work do you see in front of you for the winter? What is your favorite part of summer that you will miss most?

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New Nesting Moon 2011: Golden Autumn and The Book of Nature

New Nesting Moon 2010: Ramadan 

New Nesting Moon 2009:  Breathe a Sigh of Relief  

Living on the Lip of Insanity

Father's Moon

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We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes

rise into the atmosphere,

and even if the whole world's harp

should burn up, there will still be

hidden instruments playing.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge

of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive

from a slow and powerful root

that we can't see.

Stop the words now.

Open the window in the center of your chest,

and let the spirits fly in and out.

Rumi

The father's Moon has come and gone and I was busy. It was Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for the world's 1.6 billion Muslims. In past years I marked this holy month strongly in my own calendar, but this year it mostly slipped me by. It was a hot, fun, crazy, big, exhausting month and much slipped me by. I was busy grabbing that tiger by the tail for all I am worth. You shoulda seen the other guy!

I have lived on the lip of insanity,

wanting to know the reasons, knocking on a door.

It opens.

I have been knocking from the inside!

Rumi

For my thoughts on the energies of the Father's Moon see past posts with this label as well as posts about August Eve, which is the solar festival so closely aligned with this lunar month's energies. I have a lot to say about this time of the year and the energies manifest here, so do go back and check out what I've written in the past. The blazing days of August and the blazing time of All That Is Manly and Good In the World are manifest these days. How are you seeing them? What does the Father's Moon mean to you? What were you up to this month?

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Father's Moon 2011: Blessed Ramadan, Fathering, Missions and the Father's Moon, and Courage, Bullying and Ramadan

Father's Moon 2010: Fourth of July (one of my very favorite posts of all time) and Robin Hood

Father's Moon 2009: The New Father's Moon and The Aftermark of Almost Too Much Love (another of my all time favorite posts!)

Strung Out Summer

Summer Solstice

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Midsummer is upon us and past and I finally had my Summer Solstice celebration. Last weekend I went camping up on Mt. Hood with a large group of friends and the guys I met up with on Friday had spent the day collecting firewood for a bonfire of epic proportions. The night involved a lot of beer in red white and blue cans, conversations about adult topics and lots of hearty laughter around a fire that burned until well after dawn. A great way to celebrate the height of summer.

This time of year I always feel a bit strung out. I don't sleep well, I over schedule myself and act like I can just go go go without recharging. There is too much to do, too much fun to have, during this short window of long days and good weather. I've been working full time doing an environmental education day camp and still maintaining my busy social schedule. It's been lots of fun, but chronic sleep deprivation certainly colors your life in interesting ways. 

On Saturday of our camping trip we drove down to Trillium Lake, a popular day use site on the mountain. The lake is a bit less than pristine, but the view was fantastic, the sunshine pure and hot and it felt good to be immersed in the water. This is what summer is about; friends, sunshine, fresh air and feeling like you can't keep going but you can't stop either. 

How has your summer been going? Do you feel the solar power this time of year? How do you celebrate this surge in energy, light, heat and activity? Have you ever watched a campfire burn until sun up? Happy summer!

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Summer Solstice 2011: Wanting to be Up and Doing and Circle Cycles and Pulses: Pagan Values Blogging Month

Summer Solstice 2010: The Season of Light Nights

Summer Solstice 2009: Summer Solstice Fishing Extravaganza

The Dauntless Youth of the Year

 May Day

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Ode in May
 
What is so sweet and dear

As a prosperous morn in May,

The confident prime of the day,

And the dauntless youth of the year,

When nothing that asks for bliss,

Asking aright, is denied,

And half of the world a bridegroom is,

And half of the world a bride?

-William Watson, 1880

May Day by Nick Smarto

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May Day 2011: The Brook in the King's Garden and I Didn't See Fairies when I Was Little

May Day 2010: Glory Days

May Day 2009:  May Day

The Seed Moon

New Seed Moon 

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Oy, it's almost the full moon and I haven't written the New Seed Moon post. The energies have shifted, though, and I want to do a Full Moon Feast themed post this month. So, we move on.

Seed by The Yes Man

Spring is rocking and rolling in Portland, Oregon this week. The fruit trees have blossomed and some are even past their full flush. The streets are starting to look sprinkled with cherry and apple blossom petals. My morning activities are coinciding with the dawn chorus and that combined with the smell of flowers and wet earth can be overwhelming at 6am. There are even some robins who are singing all through the day and night, practicing, wooing, setting up camp for their ladies in waiting who are arriving. Trails in the parks are full of banana slugs, trilliums, wild lilies and so much more life just shooting out of the ground. The weather is still fluctuating back and forth between cold and wet, sunny and dry, icy and warm sometimes within mere minutes of each other. One of the wettest Marches on record has record has caused a number of trees to fall in my parks, but it has also caused some amazing sky shows. I was treated to some awesome wave form clouds over Mt. Hood the other morning at sunrise. Spring really is glorious!

Turkish Fig by Amanda Rudkin

The Seed Moon points us towards the things in our life, and in Life in general, that are contained as potential. Plant seeds and animal eggs contain all the information to become a fully formed organism, but are currently just the potential of that form. Seeds practically hum with their potential, and just like spring is humming now. Images that come to mind include the shuddering movement of time lapse video of frog eggs, the peeping of chicks as they hatch, the magical transformation of seeds to sprouts. Other images, more human, are evoked too of the sticky, bursting, shuddering lovemaking of new lovers. Spring is a time of potential, of what will grow but is only yet a sparkle in The Goddess' eye.

What is bursting, growing, springing to life around you? What seeds are still dormant, but will grow into something full and beautiful soon? What signs of spring are showing up in your neighborhood?

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New Seed Moon 2011: Johnny Appleseed (one of my all time favorite posts!)

New Seed Moon 2010: To Everything there is a Season

New Seed Moon 2009: The Seed Moon Is New (which includes one of my favorite poems of all time, Horses in the Spring by Connie Wanek)