Where Have All the Fishes Gone?

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Deborah

My mind meanders as I drive home fast on slick highways in the raining dark, bedazzled by rubies ahead of me and diamonds racing toward me on the other side of the median strip. This dazzling world of shifting forms reminds me of the salmon stream reflecting sunlight, shadow, the forms and colors above and below the surface of the water. Both environments mesmerize me.

I decide as I drive that I will write a post about the group’s experience with Ecstatic Wisdom Postures this past weekend. Potent stuff those postures! But I’ll add it to the page on Postures that is part of this blog site. I will start posting there as well.

But here this minute I want to catch you up on the salmon…Two of us scout the stream this morning. Here’s a photo from the exact same place where there appeared to be those few salmon last week. Nada today!

I keep wondering how I missed those fish last week and send gratitude to the camera gods for revealing them. Suddenly while showering on Friday I remembered what actually happened. Just as I finished snapping the mist photo, Eleanor came running back to me with that look of gleeful discovery on her face and beckoned me to come with her. I remember my right foot lingering on the bank where I was, as if that leg knew I was missing something – I remember feeling disconcerted by the rootedness of the right side of me but my logical brain couldn’t articulate why quickly enough, so my body followed my left foot back up the trail…funny how the body’s mind can think polyvalently ( I might have made up that word but I like it.)

BUTT, I never thought to return and finish my scouting job!

I think there’s a lesson there!

Today’s biggest excitement – a racoon high up in a tree.

I’m just sure that racoon has been surveying the stream for fishy critters and knows a whole lot more than we do about their whereabouts. I think maybe we’ll find bits and pieces of fish near the perimeter of the tree.

We don’t.

Nor do we find any evidence of the carcass from last week. Absolutely NOTHING!

The forest sure knows how to clean up after herself. We would do well to emulate her!

On another note – I’ll tell you about those Goddesses tomorrow.

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Building Curiosity

Posted on November 7, 2010 by Deborah

As I prepare this note, I’m sitting at my keyboard at my desk in my living room at home…How wyrd and wonderful that I’m imagining myself three days ahead when I’ll be barreling down the highway headed back home…that’s the same time this will appear in your mailbox, if you subscribe anyway, by the magic of electronic scheduling. Crazy. Yes?

And because I know some of the topics that wait to be brought forth here, I’m going to tease you with a photo or two snapped today. Connections, context, meaning will all be articulated on Monday!

My favorite Goddesses were downtown today…I’ll call them Briana, Rhiannon, Epona, and Brighid.

These are the fruits of their labors.

Hope your curious what they’re doing and why.

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Holding Fast

Posted on November 6, 2010 by Deborah

Given that the first day of the workshop is now over, I bet anything the title of this next poem and picture is perfect!

Meeting the Unexpected

A young executive, stressed by the frenzied pace of his e-market world,
seeks solace by paddling on a small placid pond.

What to his wondering eyes should appear
but
the crack between worlds.

No one prepared him for this.

His dog offers no defense
having seen it all before.

 

What’s a young man to do?
He can’t ignore his experience.

Nor should you. . .

 

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Place Holder Too

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Deborah

Epona Weaves the Worlds

Ancient Europeans revered the horse
as the goddess, Epona,
who wed the fertility of the land to the fertility of the people,
who carried the sun across the sky
and the warrior on her back.

The faint memory of our reverence for the horse goddesslives today in our familiar word, pony.

No wonder so many of us are horse crazy,
whether we ride or not.

 

 

 

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Place Holder

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Deborah

I’m heading North tomorrow, Friday, to teach an Introduction to Ecstatic Wisdom Postures for the weekend. You can read more about Ecstatic Postures right here on this blog site. Note the page with that name on the header right above in the black bar?? Click there.

I’m imagining that I will be totally caught up in the excitement of sharing this practice that I love so much and may not be able to access the internet from where I’ll be…The latter part of that statement is probably a lie, since I’ll not be in the boonies but near an urban center. The more honest reason that I’m preparing not to post “live” is that I’m afraid I will forget, that I’ll be tired, that there won’t be enough time, and that I won’t want to be distracted from what’s happening right then and there.

So, because I care about the momentum that’s building, I thought I’d leave you with a poem and image each day from my personal archives. Hope you enjoy.

Oh by the way, I went back to the salmon stream and those four “logs” were gone…Sure makes me wonder what the camera saw that my eyes did not.

Fish Food

Our ancestors knew
reciprocity was necessary for the spirit of the land to thrive,
giving and receiving an endless cycle of exchange.

Modern scientists know that the life cycles
of plants and animals
are
inextricably, exquisitely and intricately
intertwined.

May we all remember
finally
we are the fishes’ food.

 

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To Be or Not

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Deborah

Salmon, salmon, salmon. Where are they? Out in the Sound, how many struggle to find their way home to these tiny creeks?

We’ve had rain in the past week. The stream bed flows with more water and a faster current. The surge may not last long, but today there are new tributaries overflowing the banks, shining waterfalls and sun shafts in mist since the water is warmer than the air.

We find a dead one, today. A big deal actually since we haven’t seen any signs of fish in the creek. Eleanor, our team leader, has given me the clip board and pencil to record the facts. She’s ahead of me on the trail and comes running back to find me, her face alight with excitement. She’s stumbled on a headless body. Shimmering silver lies smack dab in the middle of the trail. As we investigate it, we realize we need our “kit.” Eleanor runs back to the car to get it. So convinced are we that we won’t see any salmon that we haven’t brought the tape measure, the knife, the plastic bags, or the most important item…the identifier…Six fish pictures are laminated on stiff cardstock, three on each side. We flip back and forth, thinking that surely this will be a Chum, since that is more common. After thorough scrutiny we are convinced we have a wild, female, adult Coho salmon in our hands, literally. What a miracle.

We ruminate on who took the head. If we were in wilder territory, I’d think wolf. Here we consider coyote, raccoon, weasel or mink. I don’t think it’s our dog friend, who finds us again today and travels with us the whole time. She sniffs the fish but seems uninterested in mouthing it.

We cut off the tail. Yup that’s one of the uses for the knife. Reason? When we come to monitor again, this fish might still be around but dragged to another spot. By cutting off the tail, we’ll recognize that carcass as one we’ve already counted.

We study the adipose fin at length. Those fins are cut off hatchery fish. Though the tip is either bitten or rubbed off, this salmon appears to have the adipose fin intact. That’s why we surmise this is a wild Coho.

As we continue along the trail, an anomaly catches my eye. Something light in color floats about eight inches under the water’s surface…almost resting on the bottom. oh my golly, it’s the head! There it is, intact but for the end of the nose which has been nibbled.

We’re both so excited about the possibility of salmon returning, that we wish we had time to monitor every day.

I take a number of photos during this session. We begin early today – air is brisk and water warm…mist rises as does the sun. Shafts of light drift through the forest and I snap a photo. When I download it into my computer, here’s what I see.

Do you see what I see?

I swear I see four salmon in the lower right corner in the dark water there. Right at my feet when I took the photo. I am so focused on looking up and out, I don’t see what’s below and close in.

Or maybe those salmon are an illusion, induced by my yearning for their abundant return. Maybe. I’ll let you know.

I’ll let you know.

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Touched by the Unexpected

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Deborah

My last post, oh so long ago on the 27th of October, shares the vagaries that ordinary life plays on us from time to time, or maybe moment to moment. And that theme has continued since.

Later that same day, I join my two partners for monitoring the salmon stream. I turn off the engine of my car and as my foot hits the ground, a very large, very galumphing German shepherd dog drops a rock on it.

What the…?

One of the women yells, “ Isn’t she, or he, something? He’s been bringing us rocks and wants us to throw them…Don’t know where he, or she, came from. Seems friendly enough, though.”

The dog is large, gangly, comedic, and boisterous.

We determine it’s a she, but there is no collar, so we have no name. She follows us down the trail to the stream. Uh oh, this could be trouble…

and

it

is.

We reach the stream and she’s ankle deep immediately, shoving her nose under the water, stirring up the gravel and mud, rooting up to her eyeballs as she searches for three inch cobbles to place on the bank by our feet. If there were any salmon they’d be gone in a gulp.

Betsy heaves stone after stone into the thorny tangle of bushes lining the banks hoping the dog will get lost as she hunts for the cobble. But no, she’s back in a few bounds.

Eleanor and I do the monitoring work while Betsy occupies the dog as well as she can, but it really is wasted effort. The dog is too quick and too rambunctious with no compunctions or civility. She would have pleased a clear cutter as she does her best to tear the saplings down which border the stream. Leaping high up their trunks, she grabs trees in her huge mouth and wrestles them to the ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This dog is a home wrecker. Water is her toy, a sparkling, moving thing which she can pounce on, slurp up and slosh through. Doesn’t occur to her that it’s home for eggs, fish, frogs, salmanders and skatebugs. But it occurs to all three of us and we do our best to shoo her away, but she’s having too much fun.

She helps us cross the stream at one point where we sort of have to jump. She shreds the foam that has gathered after the recent rain storm. She makes sure no other varmints are around, not realizing she’s a varmint to us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, after we detect no salmon and are heading back, the dog suddenly discovers the perfect “log” that she has to extricate from the vines and rocks and woody litter trapping it beside the trail. Hoisting and heaving, she emerges victorious.

And in the midst of this frolicking frustration, I am suddenly in touch with the loneliness of salmon. I’m reading a book called First Fish, First People edited by Judith Roche and Meg McHutchison. One of the statistics staggers me.” In 1995, having only 12,000 salmon passing the Bonneville Dam shocked Northwest communities, a drastic reduction from 2.5 million in 1993.” Relating those dwindling numbers to this tiny stream I know how very lucky we will be if we see one mating pair. I think about the vulnerability of those lonely fish traveling without clan. I think how this gamboling, innocent dog could easily snuff out hundreds of future salmon by grabbing that one fish mother. And I feel…I feel grief.

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Vagaries of this Morning

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Deborah

Two mornings a week I care for my almost two year old grandson. After twenty-eight years of living far away from most of my kids, this is a novel and rare privilege.

It’s important for me to arrive on time, and timeliness is not one of my virtues. But this morning I head out the door a little early. When I “bump” into the school bus turning in front of me onto the road I was about to turn on, I decide to go straight which is the long way round.

I’m traveling a meandering country road on a small island. I’ve been this way before. Getting lost never occurs to me. My passage, however, is halted abruptly by a large recycling truck. It’s yard waste day. At first I’m fascinated watching the technologically savvy machinations of this marvelous being of a truck. A large tooth grabs the handle of the gigantic plastic waste bin and turns it upside down. All kinds of twiggy green things fall into the maw and then a toothless gum, a slick slide of metal, drops down over the whole green and brown mess and gobbles itup, tucks it into the bowels.

Julia Butterfly Hill once asked provocatively, “Where is away?” Away, in this case, is a giant community compost pile which is great, good and dandy. This island is a hotbed of green thinking, which is also good and dandy. The recycling program is massive and puts Montana’s to shame. ( Remember I recently moved from Montana.) But each week, huge trucks also come by to pick up the garbage. Though it is less than it once was because of recycling, and it is appropriately smushed and condensed, garbage still mounts up. Where does it go? Where is away? I’m not sure. I see huge barges in Puget Sound carrying garbage south, toward the ocean. I worry that the sea might be considered “away”… but we’re learning that it isn’t.

Precious moments are passing as I snail my way forward. Narrow road, big truck, men intent on their work, me lost in billowing thought clouds. Yikes, I’ve got to get going. I see my opportunity. My small car can just squeeze between the truck and a hedge. I grab the eyes of the man nearest to me and pantomime my request for permission to pass. He nods a yes. I scoot by and begin racing at the 30 mph speed limit. I follow the edge of the island, water to my left, land to the right as it should be. I sail around a corner and realize I haven’t been here before. Euclid Ave NE says a sign. I turn left which must be right! Euclid Ave North…Oh my gosh, . . .just keep going. Euclid Ave. SW. oh noooooo. Should I stop and make a call on my cell? No keep going. Euclid Road South by NorthEast…no no no just keep going. Finally an intersection I recognize. I’m back on track.

I roar around the turn into my family’s street and my son’s car is still parked in their driveway. It should be at the Van Pool Lot, not here. Is he sick? No there he is, briefcase in hand, coming toward my car.

“Hi, Mom. I decided to take a later ferry today so I could say, “Hey.” I’ve been missing  you. I’ve got to run now though.”

Shucks. I missed a sweet opportunity. You just never know when going straight is going to throw you a curve. You know what I mean?

And I still don’t know about the destination of my garbage. Do you?

 

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Polyphony Revisited

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Deborah

The dogs and I scamper (well, I only kind of scamper – I mostly walk fast, throw a stick for Omi, and keep tabs on Taka. ) through a jabbering rain forest creaking and groaning against the wind. I suddenly realize the trees are demanding my attention. They’re taunting me for being totally immersed in thought, jangling me awake. I am not present with the forest, the smells, the trail below my feet, the briars and the few rotting blueberries that remain on spindly branches. ooooooops. I’m not present herenow but miles away in brainscape.

Where is my own alarm clock?

Turned off next to the computer – both the computer on my desk and the one in my brain.

How funny is this after my proclamation yesterday of wanting to be an alarm clock for my culture?

But, as I walk and ruminate, I experience a minor epiphany. A version of polyphony is filling my head with multiple trains of thought. I see how posting regularly creates a living being. Ten days ago I promised to tell you the story of what happened after I swore I would not give birth like THAT again. But salmon swished past my knees and I felt the need to take you to the Spirit Bear Territory first. There is a connection to the birthing story I know, there must be, but I don’t remember the relationship now. I could thread back and find it but I don’t want to take the time.

The bears and wolves and salmon oh my, move me into my rap about the web of life, reconnecting to the wisdom of being humble and recognizing how disconnected we are to all things not us, not the dominant culture in our country. . .

Except you and I both know we humans really do love the animals and would be bereft without them. We use their names for the things most important to us …our cars, sporting teams, micro brews and addresses. Haven’t you seen roads named Elk Meadows, Rabbit Run, Fox Farm Lane, Apache Avenue, Tecumsah Street, Lenape Hills? As we gobble up the habitat of the others who used to live there, both non-human animals and humans, we use their names as a kind of memoriam.  I used to live on Grizzly Mountain Road, named for the Momma grizzly and her cub who were living there when the neighborhood was carved out of her living room. Really. The only grizzly remaining there now is the name of the road.

This subject of usurping land bears much deeper scrutiny and I am surprised that it surfaced here now in this “cavalier” way. I am passionate about addressing these issues with care and compassion, but this post is not the time.

But I digress.

And that’s precisely my point.

Keeping a blog relates to living life. And life keeps unfolding, leading me to new ideas, additional experiences, and new relationships among subjects. Nothing stands still and writing about it makes that more obvious. Everything leads to everything. . . multiple threads, a variety of paths to explore. I know many of them spiral around the same center or will weave back onto themselves.

As the dogs scamper ahead of me and I trot to keep up with them, I actually think maybe I should have three blogs. Maybe that would keep the stories more untangled…But no, that would just multiply the confusing possibilities. Sometimes setting limits and curtailing options lead to more creative decisions and richer outcomes.

We’ll see.

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Alarm Clock

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Deborah



I’m climbing out on that proverbial limb. I’m changing the title of this blog. Look above. See???

I want to wake you up.

Instead of being the canary in the coal mine, I am an alarm clock, one of a growing number, thankfully, in our still slumbering culture. May I jangle your ordinary thinking and spur you to make intuitive leaps, walk the ledges and be brave enough to sail off in your own direction without a map.

Wisdom manifesting…Ahh, so THAT’S what my belly thinks, THAT’S WHAT my body knows. I’ve got to act on THAT! Ahhhhhh.

I’m asking myself right now, who am I to have this intention of waking up my culture – just who do I think I am? Not the first time I’ve posed that question to myself. And in the past I have had a hard time responding with confidence so I’d shrink out of sight again. Has that ever happened to you?  You absolutely know something is true, but when challenged you can’t muster the facts quickly enough to sound reasonably intelligent, literally and rationally analytic, audible to the opposition.

I’ve gotten tired of standing in the shadows whispering.

I have spent my life time waiting to speak up until I knew enough – even though in the 1970’s I knew I could never know enough…every fact I gleaned, even about a subject as basic as what to eat, had an opposing fact also statistically, scientifically supported. To eat eggs or not to eat eggs. To eat only the whites or the yolk, too? Those were ponderous questions in the ‘70’s for which there is/was no clear answer.

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but every issue is riddled with contradictions, paradoxes and ambiguity and even science can’t sort it out.

Every delicate, scented rose has thorns.

So here’s the deal. We might not know whether global warming is real or not, but in our bones we still know that our culture in particular, northern hemisphere cultures in general, ravage the world by over consumption.

In 1918 or so my uncle noticed the degradation of the Hudson River because of coal mining upstream. In 1953 or so, I witnessed my first clear cut – the wood contiguous with my own backyard – to make room for the first ticky-tacky neighborhood development in the suburbs of western Philadelphia. Multiply these personal observations by 3 billion people. ( I made that number up for shock value. I’ll give
you another.) Multiply those personal observations by a kazillion people and 100 years of rampaging progress and what do we have???  A planetary life support system on the brink of falling apart. We know this in our bones.

We humans have to wake up quickly and make some unprecedented choices. Many of us complain. “I’ve worked so hard all my life. I’ve earned my right to live as I do. Why should I sacrifice anything now?” As if to sacrifice is a bad thing. For me, sacrifice is the gift of making sacred, of choosing to curtail one thing in order to give to another which has even more value to me, to my world…such as wanting my grandchildren to live surrounded by beautiful, mysterious intact ecosystems which nourish both body and soul.

Here’s the real kicker! We need to change more than the practicalities of our lifestyles. We need to change our minds. Literally. The rest of unfolding history depends on human intelligence quickening NOW and that calls for the evolutionary human shift to developing and using a whole brain and an intact bodymind.

As Red Green says on that Canadian PBS show, which I think is hilarious now but which  had to grow on me “We’re ALL in this together”and “Keep your stick on the ice.”

Please use this blog as your stick on the ice, that third leg to support and inspire our teetering two. Tell me your stories of awakening to wisdom beyond knowing “the facts” and I’ll tell you more of mine. We ARE ALL, after all, in this together.

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