Forest Ice Cleaning

The ice storm seems so gentle and quiet. The tiny raindrops fall so softly in the freezing fog, such tender little drizzle. But the branches I see on the tree outside my window begin to shine with a coating of ice. It is a quarter inch thick at first, soon a half an inch. 

 

It is so peaceful and lovely. The silent beauty of it all sends me into a reverie. I watch the trees. They glisten and sparkle. But eventually the ice begins to weigh them down. Their gentle movements and subtle quiverings cease. Long branches grow heavy and hang down close to their trunks. 

 

More ice is forming now. The forest trees fidget and shift. Something is wrong! Now they are so weighed down that they remind me of a huge crowd of winter refugees who are each wearing three overcoats and trudging along carrying more bags than they can hold, trying not to collapse. The trees sway now, each one moving not to a shared breeze, but staggering dizzily in place to keep its own balance. I wonder if they will fall down from the weight. 

 

As I watch, fascinated, the silent forest suddenly transforms before my eyes. The trees are at full capacity. They cannot bear any more ice. A sharp crack splits the silent fog. And so it begins. The whole forest erupts with pops and crashes all at once. The forest is groaning under the load of ice. 

 

All of this happens more quickly than I realize. At first I wonder who is shooting off guns in this weather. At this point it dawns on me that we will probably lose electricity soon. 

 

We live in the forest. All roads to our house are lined with a forest of second growth Doug Fir logged seventy years ago. The biggest trees are seven or eight stories tall at this age, and perhaps three feet across at the base of the trunk. Small for Doug Fir, but pretty big when it comes to falling on power lines, cars, and houses.

 

Before I can even fill the bathtub with water for flushing, bink! The power winks off. It does not return for four days and nights of f-f-f-freezing cold weather. We huddle by the fireplace.

 

The forest continues to pop and crack, constantly, every few seconds, punctuated by an occasional thunderous crash. The cacophony is to go on unabated for the next five days. 

Each kind of tree deals with the ice in its own way. Some trees hardly accumulate much ice at all, due to their leaf/branch/or needle structure. With hundreds of trees down all around, our four story tall Sequoia didn't hold much ice, and did not loose a branch!

 

(Before:)

 

(After:)

 

Many trees I had planted for ornamental reasons fell, giving me a new appreciation of the wisely adapted native tree.

 

Overall, the native Doug Firs do fine, much to my surprise. Their ice strategy reveals itself to be the dropping of lots of branches for the big trees, and for the little ones, the top snapping off. Kinda reminds me of some kinds of crustaceans which can lose appendages, survive, and grow new ones later. 

 

I learn to decode the Doug Fir ice status by observing their treetops. Most of the icy treetops are bent over and pointing toward the ground at the five, six, or seven o'clock positions. 

 

They stay like that for days until warmer rain comes and thawing begins. I monitor the situation from inside the house as the tree top indicator needle points crawl to eight, nine, and then ten o'clock. Now most of them once again point skyward.

 

On day five, I venture out into the road to check it all out. But softball sized and even baseball bat sized chunks of ice, loosened by rain, are still sliding off the tall trees and crashing to the ground. Ice is rocks, I remind myself, and this is a hard hat zone, so I scurry back inside. Oddly, the roads remain pretty much dry and ice free for the duration.

 

(See how this willow popped right back up when the ice melted!):

For months I have worried about the damage the long west coast drought was causing. You have to be aware of fire hazards when you have lots of dried out, stressed, and dead trees around. The forest here has looked unwell for the last year to me. With global warming, climate change in this place feels inexorable. 

The forest will change out the Doug Firs and replace them with the more dry tolerant pines. It is only a matter of when and how. We forest dwellers hope it will not be by fire; at least not in this part of the forest.

 

I had been keeping an eye on two disturbing newly occuring dead zones in my area coinciding with these dry years, one down the street, and one, just below us, down the hill. They look like brown spots on the sattelite views I find online. The dead zone down the street gets noticed, and last month the neighbor cuts down almost all of the trees there. 

But the not the dead zone just below us. So it is revelation to me now, as I listen the the sound of the forest cleaning itself up! More pops and crashes are coming from the brown area than elsewhere around the neighborhood. Now, after the ice is gone, I see a lot more of the sky in that direction. I see how ice is a tool my forest uses, just like fire.

So yeah, there is now a huge mess to clear from streets and so on, but to me it is still a relief. I still live in a self healing, alive and hanging in there ecosystem.

 

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” 

-Lao Tzu

Planet Earth Mothers Milk Smoothie

  

 

"Earth's crammed with heaven." Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Most humans don't need milk of other animals after they, the baby humans that is, are weaned. Many adult humans have trouble digesting dairy, but we all were born to want milk. Oh, we sure do love to drink milk! Think of all those kinds of boxed milk alternatives around now.

We are so smart and capable nowadays that we don't need animals to make our milk for us after weaning. We can make our own!

I love my blender drink. A delicious blend of raw plant foods, It is complex and sweet like chocolate milk. I find new yummy things to throw into it, and also keep drinking my favorite things day to day. I may have a favorite fruit of the moment, perhaps the fruit star of the season in my area, or even some exotic dried or sustainably harvested wild plant or fruit or nut.

Oh and I go nuts for nuts! Soaked and redehydrated walnuts are my current mainstay, but all of the nuts and seeds I can get find their way into my smoothie.

Coconut and I get along really well at the moment. Coconut is plant based saturated fat, same as our brains are made of. Seasons change and so do my preferences. One nut may not seem as good to as it used to, so I find another kind. 

The basic recipe is something juicy, something fat, plus superfoods and seasonal or frozen saved fruits. I throw in some minerals too. 

Some people really like some veggies, or green powders and bitters in their smoothies.  Avocado, tomato, and cucumbers, would they be fruit or veggie? Even spicy medicinals when needed, can be nice, like onion, and fresh herbs. I call that odd glopping. (See recipe for glop in previous blogs)  That's fine if you like it. But all whole foods please, and always avoid processed foods and "products".

I love to drink my Planet Earth Mothers Milk smoothie all day long. The fat in the nuts and seeds gives the fruit sugar a nice time release aspect, smooth and mellow. I feel so happy and lucky.  In my mind I imagine sitting under the trees that grow my nuts and fruits, drinking mylk in the arms of the Mother Earth. 

 

The trees in my imaginary garden are filled with happy animals and birds because it is an organic garden fairly close to where I live, a breadbasket sort of area. I have orange and avocado trees, olive groves, and hazelnut, walnut, almond, and macadamia nut trees, and coconut and date palms as well. Ocean breezes blow in from the west, enriching the air, water, and soil. The vegetable garden also has many colorful fragrant flowers and herbs, cocoa, coffee, and papaya. The meadows and forest here are bursting with berries of many kinds.

But how can lots of people practically live on such a diet? And who has a garden as magnificent as mine? The answer is all of us, potentially, at least. It is the garden we share, and the more of these good things we eat that are produced sustainably, the more we "order" from our garden! In this way, we could feed all of the people while healing the environment by planting trees and organic small scale gardens. So support these with your investment. In breakfast.

"The groves were God's first temples."  

-  William Cullen Bryant

We are the Butterfly

"Forgive them, for they believe that the customs of their tribe are the laws of nature." 

-George Bernard Shaw

 

(From the Flower Child's Garden Planet:)

Elizabeth Satoris says we humans of the Earth are currently in a stage like a butterfly forming in a cocoon. The cocoon contains all of today's apparent chaos even as the caterpillar is taking itself apart and reassembling all of its pieces into the butterfly. 

The previous ways of this world of caterpillarness served us until now, but will no longer do. And as we realize how precious and limited our cocoon-planet actually is, we begin to seek to transform our outmoded habits of voracious consumption of natural resources into more uplifting, elegant and beautiful structures and systems. 

Natural systems don't grow exponentially forever, but our money system assumes that it can. As Charles Eisenstein (author of Sacred Economics ) points out, proud parents relish the rapid growth of the baby, but when the child is grown, imagine if it continued to double its weight after that! You would have a monster. Or cancer.

So earth civilization is nearing a maturation point now. The chaos and stress of this stage is sure present. The kind of economics dependent upon the destruction of our environment for infinite growth is already obsolete. But even as the caterpillar is dismantled, we commence to build the butterfly.

 

We're starting to feel cramped and crowded. We dream of the sky and reach toward the sun. We begin to turn within for our growth. We long for simplicity. We begin to imagine and so create different structures.

Somehow amid the construction and the mess, life goes on. I wonder what the new emerging form will look like when the cocoon falls away.

(Disclaimer:) Of course there is no guarantee that this particular planet-cocoon will succeed. They don't all make it past this stage.

"Wandering, wondering, 

lost in time

Even before God was born

When the universe was packed into a small blue egg

And we were falling 

into the endless night;

Falling, falling.." -Omni, from Ant on a Sandwich

 

Flying Cat!

"I have lived with several zen masters, all of them cats."-Eckart Tolle

 

My kitten can fly  He does not know that cats cannot fly, so he launches himself off of just about any high place, apparently assuming he will go where he wishes. And he usually does! 

 

Wilbur is light and muscular and seems to be threaded with elastic and rubber. He leaps without hesitation or regard to what is below, but only toward the object of his desire. 

 

He kind of spreads out flat in midair, as if for aerodynamic effect. He slides, does rolling landings, and then skitters straight up objects as if they were horizontal! 

 

He comes flying into the room, up the wall, across the air, bounces off the chair, and out of the room again, before you can even look up.

 

He can leap and catch the ball I throw in midair. The whole body, the whole being, shoots gracefully through the air, as one, unified missile of purpose. He can leap so effortlessly over the dog that he appears to float for a moment and land as if he had no weight at all. 

 

I watch admiringly and learn, from this cat person, of the power of coherent intention and pure concentration.

 

"There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person."

-Dan Greenberg

  

The End of Politics

The universe is not a hierarchy. It is a jungle-wild fractal swirliarchy. - Omni

 

(From the Book of Unitics, From Politics to Unitics, The End of Politics:)

Tired of politics? Play the Unitics Game!

When I love you, and myself, and all of us, when I take all of us into consideration when I do something, and when you do this as well, and enough others do too, we can decide about community things in cooperation, without disputation, because we all care about each one of us. Politics withers away.

The process is personal as well as political, from the task at hand, the success of the feminist revolution, all the way on into the cocreation of a new collaborative love based society. This will be the stage in which society has managed to transcend politics, and has graduated to deciding public policy together, by means of Unitics.

 

Sounds good in theory, but how does unitics work in real life? How does it look? 

Perhaps it starts with one's own outlook. 

Appreciating all of the gifts we have received from others. 

Perhaps a realization that we absolutely need each other. 

Maybe an assumption that the other person means well and what they are doing makes sense to them.

 Just walking around intending general goodwill.

 Noticing when we are "othering" someone.

It is simply a matter of loving intention, leading to good faith communication, leading to trusting one another to have the other person's highest good paramount, and everyone really taking this to heart.

 

We can do this well already in small groups, such as the couple, or in some family relationships, in true friendships, perhaps some creative or monastic groups, but the larger the group, the trickier it can be. Fortunately, the information revolution makes communication easy, so we can know more about, and connect with, people who seem different from us. 

When we get to know others, we will feel more able to widen that kinship and love relationship circle to all people, all beings, and all life. This is the common ground of unitics. As we disarm our psychic barriers we will remember this is also the most natural and ancient way to live together.

 

When a critical mass of people routinely make each and every decision, from the ordinary everyday ones, to the most profound life changing ones, based on their most sincere awareness of what is in the highest good of all life everywhere forever, we can awaken to a society that is ready to govern itself with Unitics.

 

Until then, we shall be saddled with politics, the contending for power between perceived separate interests, and thus the need to win the feminist revolution. Politics is hectic, painful and pathetic, but it will be with us until the end of the age. Even now, though, unitics consciousness is emerging and eventually will replace politics. So why not start now, because as soon as you want to, you can join in our evolution.

And remember this is a fun game. Everyone is already a winner, and all must have prizes! Because until everyone is self actualized, we are still in process toward even a really good glimpse of our collective or synergistic potential. I wonder what a world of considerate, happy, harmonious, creative, self actualized people would be like.

 

"I often say jokingly that a truly selfish person must be altruistic!

 You have to take care of others, of their well-being, by helping them and serving them, to have even more friends and make more smiles blossom. The result? When you yourself need help, you will find all you need! On the other hand, if you neglect others’ happiness, you will be the loser in the long run."

-The Dalai Lama

Vegan Eggs?

"There are 3 inescapable problems we all face:

1. How to win food and shelter

2.  How to get along with others.

3.  How to relate to the total scheme of things.

If we deal with the 3rd one first, the other two get answered." -Houston Smith

 

I try to make lifestyle choices that cause as little harm to other beings as possible. This is veganishness.  I realize that it's impossible to live on Earth without causing any harm at all. 

 

The very roads we travel cause habitat loss, the walls and paint of the houses we live in contain dead animal products, even this computer I write on has an impact. If you even breathe, you kill microbes.. 

But to proceed in a veganish way through the world, I take into account the whole picture at each choice point. 

 

Let's consider the backyard chicken. Some people don't think eggs can even be a vegan food, but they can be a veganish food if done right. Nobody has to die to make eggs. Here is my definition: 

First, chickens live fifteen years, but only lay eggs daily for about three years. So there must be a commitment to the chickens' well being for their whole life, and their living conditions must be happy and healthy for them.

 

Next, chickens lay eggs even when there are no roosters around, so these eggs amount to well, chicken menstruation. But even if you have roosters around fertilizing the eggs, if you simply don't allow them to be incubated to hatching out chicks, you can avoid ever having those extra roosters that farmers are temped to put into the soup pot. 

If you do want chicks, many people can tell pretty accurately which eggs contain male vs female chicks by the shape of the eggs. Female chicks come from rounder eggs; male chick eggs look more oblong. 

 

There is a really good reason for eating eggs if you generally do not eat any meat or dairy or fish, and that is to get those awesome omega 3's that are so good for your brain and all. It has been many decades since I had meat or fish and I don't want to get demented!

So in order to get our veganish omegas, we have just gotten chickens!! They have a chicken tractor. This is a mobile coop with egg laying boxes inside, and no floor. You pull it around on its wheels, across the land to fresh pastures each day, so the chickens can find fresh grass, herbs and bugs. 

 

Our chickens are out tractoring now, happily pecking, scratching, and making contented humming and clucking sounds. As for me, I like it that I can feed and move them in the middle of the day, because I'm not a crack of dawn person. 

 

They are safe and happy in their fresh and changing environment, and the big veganish dog notices the commotion if any predators come near. Out here in the country, the life force is strong. We have cougars, bears, raccoons, foxes, coyotes, and many kinds of hawks and eagles.

 

We feed our pet birds flax seeds and all organic feed and fruit and veggie treats. I'm planning their forage meadow garden, to be from a special plant seed mix that chickens like, for next year. I've heard you can even sprout their seeds for them. I sprinkle a happy chicken dried herb and flower mix in with the hay of the chicken coop. It smells nice in there. 

After only two days, they already are relaxed enough to eat out of my hand! And they have started to lay eggs!

I wonder if we will be having cake around here soon...

  

 

"whole system interliving"  -Jean Houston

Embracing the Grey

“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?” -Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

 

(From Omni's color collection, see other colors highlighted elsewhere:)

This day is grey. The future seems grey to me today also. My mood is grey, so I speak of this shade today. I set out to go about my day, but suddenly I stop.

 

 Autumn rains are soaking the forest around me now. Everything is cloaked in grey today, the sky, the trees, the air in between. The atmosphere swirls with water in many moods as well, ranging from rain, to windy almost-hail, to tiny gravity defying droplets gently suspended in the air, to being so completely encased in the cloud that all I can see at noon is an even, dismal, shade blanket between me and my remembered warm, bright, beloved daystar.

 

Grey reminds me of the level of our perception in which we use shadows to reveal the light, and light to reveal what is real. Grey is an acknowledgement of complexity, even an acceptance of a role for the dark in our path to understanding.

 

If you mix all of the colors together, as I found out as very young artist while mixing clay, you get grey. Grey does not bring clarity, it brings dimness. I ponder the presumed value of unclarity.

 

 I recently heard an old grey woman extolling the virtues of aging. She says forgetting can be a gift, making more room in one's attention for now. And she says her poor eyesight makes the world more beautiful because everything looks softer.

  

 If fall is a time of the warm colors of the harvest slowly fading, then the result would be brown turning to grey, the color that beckons the winter snow. This grey is a shadow that falls like a curtain upon the land, only to bring the glittering crystal snow beacon of the coming newborn solstice light. 

 

 

And so I sit here today enveloped in a comfortable modern cocoon, ensconced in a swirl of mostly symbolic grey, meditating on the apparent need for the color grey. 

 

 

Or the non color grey, because without color, grey is the very definition of the absence of color. But as an artist I know that the proverbial many shades of grey are often merely darkened colors, veiled with earthy duff and stuff. To make a shade, you darken a color. 

 

Anyway, if grey had no color, why do I get the blues when it's like this outside? So we nervous creatures feverishly pad our centrally heated cave this season and festoon it with lights, to chase away the menacing gloom. 

 

But first, I pause. I sit very still and ask what it is I really need to do. I listen deeply for that still and small voice. All around things are falling, dying. All of this returns to dust, I observe. 

 

 

I consider all of things we do, the things we make, accomplish, acquire. I ask why and if all of the things we run around chasing after all year long are so important. 

 

I sit just there in the grey, waiting for the inner guidance that I believe always comes whenever I ask, listen, and wait. I know that the moment when I get the inspiration, I will enthusiastically rise up and joyfully go do the next thing. I wonder...

 

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather. -Pema Chodron