(from my window some weeks ago)

"Dawn and sunset are the mystical moments
of the diurnal cycle, 
the moments when the numinous dimension of the universe reveals itself with special intimacy. 
Individually and in their relations with each other 
these are moments when the high meaning of existence is experienced." 

~Thomas Berry, The Great Work, 18

February reflection from the Center for education, imagination, and the natural world https://www.beholdnature.org/

Yesterday the sun rose bright, direct, in an absolutely clear sky. At one point near the start of its day, it shone straight through the eastern window and the kitchen door and into the next room, where I sat working at the computer, facing north. The brilliance coming at a right angle bothered my vision, but I didn’t want to shut the blinds. At one point, I glanced west to get away from the insistent light, to rest my eyes.

After a few moments, my logical mind spoke — explaining to my enchanted child-self that it was probably the slant of the sun through the beveled edge of a clear glass window-hanging.

Time passed. I glanced again. The rainbow had moved and grown.

Logical explanations not withstanding, there is something magical about being bedecked, clad in rainbows– not just the impact of bright colors against a shadow, but even more the movement, the change, the fleeting yet intimate embrace by elemental forces.

This morning the sky was cloudy, the sun muted as it rose. A different kind of gift, a different kind of blessing.

THE OPENING OF EYES
David Whyte

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing of light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out.
I knew then as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been,
nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting
to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground

As the sun shifts north, as warm days become more common and flowers leap into life, I’ve been thinking about the ways we humans have looked at and integrated ourselves with the seasons of this Earth to which we belong. On Friday, I learned that the Japanese have — with the same careful, subtle gaze as in Haiku — divided the year in 72 micro-seasons. Yesterday I learned that the name of this time (the 7th micro-season, March 6-10) is

“Hibernating Creatures Open Their Doors”


The words resonated within me like a large, deep gong: 
 a summons, 
a challenge,
an invitation to step out into the light,
to take part in the ever-changing world.

During the last months, I have spent far too many days curled up in my den — filled with anxiety, grief, anger, fear, and despair as I learn more & more about both the increasing human destruction of Earth and the rise of authoritarianism around the world. Here in the U.S., the latter is a real & increasing threat as one man holds us and our government hostage to his megalomania, offering “divine salvation” to his followers and violence to those who dare to question him.

As many of you know, I lived for 5 years under a dictatorship. I went to Tripoli, Libya, to teach in an American school in 1969 — arriving just a couple weeks before the coup that put Muammar Gaddafi into power. Indeed, as I stepped out the door on Monday, September 1, ready for the first day on school, my neighbor called over the wall: “No school today. There’s a revolution.” I laughed and said, “I’ll bet you always say that to first year teachers.” But no — it was true.

I won’t go into all the details here. Let me just say that when Trump was elected in 2016, I began to suffer from PTSD as my body remembered the kinds of things that happen under a dictatorship, the things that had happened to me personally and the more general things such as, by government degree, spending hours with a black marker crossing out every mention of or reference to Israel in our teaching materials. (You can, I am sure, imagine my reaction to the banning of books that is currently happening in some parts of this country.)

I am not saying that these past months have been without light. The metaphorical den I dug was not without windows. The beauties of the more-than-human continued to give me joy & relief — the dawn behind the bare-boned filigree of winter trees, the deer that came to graze below our house on one of my most difficult days, and always the birds, the birds, the birds. And the human world, too, reached out to me in many ways, even when my back was turned — Synchronicities kept calling me home to myself with increasing frequency.

As John O’Donohue says so beautifully in To Bless the Space Between Us:

“Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.

The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it.

Change arrives in nature when time has ripened.”

[O’Donohue also says…]

“But change is difficult for us. So often we opt to continue the old pattern, rather than risking the danger of difference. We are also often surprised by change that seems to arrive out of nowhere.

We find ourselves crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated. Like spring secretly at work within the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in fermentation. We never suspect a thing. Then when the grip of some long-enduring winter mentality begins to loosen, we find ourselves vulnerable to a flourish of possibility and we are suddenly negotiating the challenge of a threshold.”

So here I am at a threshold, deciding to emulate both the plants and my fellow hibernating animals, to open the door, to emerge — hungry and ready to grow, ready to create once again.

September. The birds are busy at the feeder. It has been fun to watch the young ones grow up this summer. Gradually the young finches, cardinals, and bluebirds are coming into their adult colors. Every day, a stronger patch of red, another blue feather…. And now some of the birds seem to be taking note of the turning season. The red-bellied woodpecker visits often, taking his mouthful of seeds straight to Old Oak, where he hides them in deep crevasses of the bark.

September. Even though it has been dry here, mushrooms are springing up in their multitudes — Deer are gathering in larger groups again — and though the hot days are not yet done with us, the nights are cooling down, promises of the new season ahead.

Having been tuned into school schedules for much of my life, September has always brought me feelings not of endings but of new beginnings, new possibilities, new vistas opening up. This year that sense of anticipation is somewhat muted, but just typing down the preceding sentence — a memory of that feeling, a reminder to myself — is helping lift my spirits and clear my vision a bit. Now my curiosity kicks in — What next?

The morning of September 1st brought to my mailbox two wonderful quotes and an exquisite photo in a friend’s substack. They are so beautiful and so true to my thinking/feeling that I must share them with you.

The first quote is the monthly Reflection from the Center for Education, Imagination, and the Natural World , an organization dear to my heart:

September Reflection

"One of the great achievements of humanity during the early period of awakened consciousness was its capacity for subjective communion with the totality of things and with each particular thing. 

Each fragment of matter had it own subjectivity, its own interiority, its own spirit presence. 

It was to this spirit presence that humans addressed themselves. 

So with the trees and flowers, birds and animals, so with the wind and the sea and the stars, 
so with the sun and the moon. 

In all things there was a self, a subjectivity, a center; humans communed with this center with a profound intimacy." 

~ Thomas Berry, “Contemplation and World Order”

And then the Word for the Day from https://grateful.org/ :

"Our sense of enchantment is not triggered only by grand things; 
the sublime is not hiding in distant landscapes. 
The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. 
It is transformed by our deliberate attention.
KATHERINE MAY

Sensing the Seasons and Cycles and Spirals of Being enriches my life.  
But I don't want to forget that my awareness of & participation in Life are made up of Moments, of Nows -- 
each encompassing both beginnings and endings, each a threshold new possibilities.  
I would like to become more attentive to each moment & to the myriad beings that companion me along the way..... 

Yesterday a friend and I went to have tea at a favorite tea house, only to find it closed for summer vacation. I was surprised to find that a coffee house had recently opened next door. We checked it out and found they had, in addition to all the usual coffee concoctions, a wonderful selection of teas. When we wondered about moving outside, they showed us the patio behind — mossy & walled like a magical secret garden. And, next to that, a space filled with trees & ferns — shadier & more open to the breeze that was gentling the morning’s heat. An enchanted oasis, hidden behind a row of shops on a fairly serene commercial street.

No one else was there. Surprised & captivated, we dried off two chairs — still wet from the previous day’s very brief but very welcome rain — and sat down. We drank our tea (mine, mango-peach mixed with strawberry-lemonade – yum!) and shared an almond cookie. It was a calm and quiet time… exploring, as always when we get together, the thoughts, feelings, and discoveries that had emerged since our last conversation. Among other things, we talked about the hawk that had bumped my house and been briefly grounded.

As we were nearing the end of our time together, my friend looked behind me and exclaimed, “What is that?! It’s the biggest insect I’ve ever seen — big enough to be a mammal!” I turned & looked — crawling across the flagstones was what appeared to be a very large black beetle. I went closer to look. It was a mammal — a bat — injured or ill — slowly dragging himself along on his hooked hands (elbows?), his wings only slightly flared along his body…. He hobbled slowly but with determination — heading always to the south, as if he had a destination in mind. He showed no signs of the devastating white-nose syndrome, but something was deeply wrong. I was swept up in what felt like a tsunami of compassion as I watched. Poor bat, I found myself repeating, poor little bat…. I watched for a time — not only seeing but feeling the pain of his small progress — immobilized by and drowning in love and sorrow.

My first impulse was to take him to a wildlife rehabilitation center for evaluation, but my time as a volunteer at the Wildlife Center of Virginia had taught me that bats were not on the list of welcome guests. So I did nothing.

The bat had, in spite of his infirmity & hobbled gait, a profound dignity. I think I hoped he could drag himself to the corner of the “secret garden” so he could recover or die in privacy, as peacefully as possible.

We went into the coffee house to report the bat so they could call animal control. Numb, I didn’t wait to see what happened…… I wish I had.

******

This morning the local newspaper reported that a bat from another part of town had tested positive for rabies — the 9th rabid animal in the county this year.

At that point, I began to wonder why we hadn’t just called animal control ourselves. ….I think I’d forgotten that I even had a phone with me — as if the ache of compassion had temporarily shut down my rational brain, made me as helpless as the bat.

And it wasn’t until I started to type this that it occurred to me that I could have gotten lots of photos of the bat. The thought never entered my mind as I watched him — and anyway, why would I take a photo of another being’s misery? Of course, I know that such photos have ignited a larger awareness of crisis situations & wrongs committed, have led to positive action — to healing and change. But somehow this bat’s suffering did not feel emblematic of some larger story. It felt to me as if a recording of his plight would be an invasion of his right to privacy. ….. I still don’t know what was happening in me, what his presence provoked…..

Unlike so many others, I was neither revolted nor frightened by the bat’s presence. I have always found bats fascinating and, as I’ve learned & experienced more, that fascination has grown into a deep fondness and respect. Now I cannot shake loose the vision of that little bat, limping fiercely forward.

As always, Life leaves me with questions rather than answers. Obviously, I have much to learn about my odd response to this encounter, my lack of direct action. And now I am left with more wonderings: Two encounters with winged beings who have been grounded — the hawk briefly; the bat no doubt permanently. These were living individuals, each with his own unique awareness of being. And yet, how easily my mind seizes them, transforms them to metaphors with larger meanings….. to stories that can only be told in their fullness in fairy tales or poems….

BEN OKRI writes:

"Which brings the question: what is reality?
Everyone's reality is different.  For different perceptions of reality
we need a different language.
We like to think that the world is rational and precise and 
exactly as we see it, but
something erupts in our reality which makes us sense that
there's more to the fabric of life.
I'm fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives."

And this morning from https://grateful.org/ :

Word for the Day

"This is a time for straying, 
for losing one’s way, 
for asking new questions. 
A sacred activism. 
A slowing down that knows 
enchantment is not in short supply."

— Bayo Akomolafe

August 22, 2023

After my last post, I thought I might leap back in to blogging, but each time I sit down to write, I find myself wondering about whether to continue the blog — and, if so, how?
In her book Cacophony of Bone, Kerri ní Dochartaigh quotes an unnamed person as saying: ‘What are you ready to share? To speak into being? … Can you allow whatever has been on your heart to come forward?’ Then she repeats the questioning : “Well can I? I have no idea if I can, or how I would even begin.”

………..

Just NOW, as I was typing the last words above, I heard a loud bump on the window. There was a young red-shouldered hawk sitting on the ground, below the bird feeder placed close to the house. I saw him look around, re-orienting himself. Imagining that he had tried to seize a tasty feast of finch or wren, I watched to be sure he was alright. The sight of that splendid bird, grounded, filled me with such awe that I could do nothing but stand there, taking his beautiful being into my heart. At last it occurred to me that I might take a picture to show you. It took me a moment to get the phone ready to go. I paused to zoom in, to get it the shot “perfect.”
Suddenly, my foolish concerns were brushed aside as he spread his great wings and erupted into flight, returning to the element from which he came. Startled, I pressed the button as I staggered back. Focusing on the making of an image, I missed the reality of seeing the full majesty of his flight & his disappearance into the woods.

I was left with this….

Some things are perhaps, like Trickster, not meant to be captured ….

He was a hawk, living as hawks do, searching for nourishment. And I am a human, living as humans do, searching for nourishment of a different kind, searching for meaning. Was it merely coincidence? My mind comes up hard against the synchronicity, knocking me down as surely as the collision with house knocked the hawk to the ground. My heart wants to spin meaning, to weave tapestries of meaning. Was this sudden happening the answer to my questions? Or was it another question? Or something else entirely?
The way in which I choose to tell myself the story will create the path — or the crossroads — that I discern, the next step I choose to take….

August 23, 2023

And again today, coincidence continues….

I randomly picked up a book from one of my piles to read at lunch — What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? When I opened it, again randomly, I found myself reading a lovely essay by Gavin Van Horn — a meditation on his relationship with Lake Michigan and with the ocean. In it, he doesn’t answer the title’s question directly but seems to follow Emily Dickenson’s advice: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

Nearing the end of his essay, Van Horn tells of his encounter with a gull:

“Can you expect answers from water? …… A gull pondered me, a quizzical look in his red-rimmed eyes, wondering if there were crackers in my backpack. I had none. He tacked left, then right, faced me again. I thought he might have a message to deliver from the ocean.

“From ancient Greece to Tibet, India to Polynesia, birds are messengers, flying like dreams between our earth-bound existence and the realm of the sky. Augury: the practice of looking to birds to know the will of the gods, from which comes the word auspicious. We take the auspices, grope for indications of benevolence.

“Even within the cosmologies that feature more anthropomorphic deities, the messenger birds persist — or parts of them do — in the guise of angels. Real birds, however, possess the advantage of being more visible than most angels, and therefore more consistently available for interpretation.
[…….]

“All of us… need assurance from somewhere, a favorable nod in our direction, an indication that we are on the right track. Think of augury as ethology with benefits.”

“Do you have a message for me? I ventured cautiously to the gull. I don’t need to fight a war or plant a field. I just want to know how to mend what feels as though it is breaking.

“The bird paced between me and the ocean, paused, offered a slight turn of his head. I waited. The ocean murmured. The gull remained silent. Last chance I said, daring the bird.

“Soon it became clear I’d get no magic. Gulls have their own business to attend to, their own company to keep. I wanted answers — from the gods, the earth, nature, our animal kin — some backing, some revelation from outside to quell the doubt within.

“I instead received a different message: The world might indeed speak, but it doesn’t speak to me alone. The gull is full of its own gullness. If that’s not enough for me, I’m asking the wrong questions.

“So, we looked at each other, the gull and I. We shared the beach and contemplated the briny smell of the wind together. The ocean murmured. I exhaled. This is enough. Why ask for more when so much is given? “

–by Gavin Van Horn from his essay “The City Bleeds Out (Reflections on Lake Michigan)” in What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?

August 24, 2023

And here I am. Still curious. Still filled with awe and wonder.
Perhaps, in all this pondering, I have not found “answers”
to the questions with which I began this post.
But I do feel more open it whatever may come.

I give thanks to the writers I have quoted here and,
most of all, to the hawk.
May he fly free!

**********

And, finally, a poem by Garcia Lorca for this season (inner & outer):

“August.

The opposing

of peach and sugar,

and the sun inside the afternoon

like the stone inside the fruit.

The ear of corn keeps

its laughter intact, yellow and firm.

August.

The little boys eat

brown bread and delicious moon.

                                   by GARCIA LORCA

I am always thinking about or — much more accurately — feeling into the relationships among all Earth’s creatures — what scientists call ecology and old stories call kinship. I am struck by all of the different inter-species interactions. There is, of course, the relationship of eating/feeding each other & the behaviors that elicits. A couple of weeks ago I watched a high circling hawk suddenly fold his wings & plunge to earth. I could not see the final outcome but I might guess. A dinner of rabbit perhaps, or squirrel… I often see crows mobbing hawks ( at our last house, it was owls), loudly cawing their own version of “We see you! Go away, bully, or else…”

Several days ago, as I was watching the local herd of 12 deer grazing in the grassy area below our house, I saw a different sort of interaction: A doe roused a pair of mallards who had been hidden in the long grass at the edge of the mown meadow. The deer alerted, ears up & then resumed grazing. But as the ducks waddled off down the length of the meadow two of the younger deer were fascinated & followed them — not chasing, just curious. And the ducks waddled on. At last, having drawn their observers quite a distance from their hiding place, the ducks flew away. So much to wonder about. Were the ducks nesting? It was an odd place for them…. But mostly I was left with a smile at the gentle way [from my perspective though not, perhaps, the ducks?] the interaction unfolded.

And then, too, I ponder — much less happily — the various ways that those human animals who are members of the capitalist/extractive/consumer culture interact with other-than-human beings.

Of course, when any of us focuses Attention & Intention on something, all sorts of related things seem to pop into one’s field of vision/sensation! The quotes & the story below are some of those gifts that have recently arrived here — a flood of pondering by kindred spirits.

As a result of that flood, I have just kept adding more & more, and this post has gotten very (probably “too”) long. I do hope you’ll at least read the story of The Fox & the Girl at the end.

This post is very long. I just keep adding more & more. But I suddenly realized that today is Earth Day & I should stop now and just post it! I hope you’ll at least read the story of the Fox & The Girl at the end.

*******

According to Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letter from an American,” nearly 60 years ago the amazing scientist and writer Rachel Carson (considered by many to be the Mother of Earth Day) wrote:

“Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself. [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”  

Science has continued to show us the ways in which our actions are destroying Life’s Web, of which we are a part, but it has not been able to motivate a critical mass of people to make the changes necessary to stop the tsunami of damage. Indeed, as we keep relying on technological “solutions,” we are often creating further rips in the Web. Some of the “solutions” being considered (e.g. “geo-engineering”) are absolutely terrifying!

Traditional science is based on the strange myth that a scientist is a “Neutral Observer,” totally disconnected from what she or he is observing. Both ecology and quantum physics have shown this to be an error, but that new awareness has not percolated through the “over-culture” & the stories it tells itself. Can other Stories help us find deeper understanding & knowing? New tellings such as Journey of the Universe by Brian Thomas Swimme & Evelyn Tucker or Swimme’s book The Universe is a Green Dragon translate scientific findings into Story. And, of course, ancient Stories remind of what we have forgotten.

“According to the mythtellers, we are part of the living music of the Earth, her dancing story, and our capacity to participate in the music and move with the rhythms was a gift from our animal helpers.

Evolutionary biology also tells us that we inherited from our animal forbears, but evolutionary biology does not tell us how to honor this connection nor how to communicate with it, let alone within it. Myth, born within the participation of honoring and communicating, speaks a different language from science. The original mythtellers were not trying to conceptually “explain” how the world works, to scientifically contain it for management. Those stories, told communally around a fire at night or inside a lodge to young people transitioning to adulthood, were repositories of an ecology of knowing, they held the “parts” of the local Web-of-Life in a living dance of relationships wherein no life was separated from the sacred pattern of familial connection. ….Each telling of a story was active participation in the living landscape, knowledge as intimacy.“

— John Shackleton,”Languages closer Than Words”

The following story in Orion ( https://orionmagazine.org/article/winter-snow-sacred-season/ ) by Chickasaw novelist, essayist, and environmentalist Linda Hogan arrived via the internet not long before John Shackleton’s words above surfaced in one of my piles of papers :

“MY LIFE IS ONE ENRICHED BY ANIMALS: cats, dogs, the birds at the raptor rehabilitation center where I volunteer after teaching, and all the wild animals that pass by my little cabin, which sits in a wildlife corridor, bears, wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, foxes, deer, bugling elk.I have heard a Pueblo emergence story about a man being sent from the world beneath the earth level to see if his people might ascend there to live in harmony. He climbs a reed and, upon reaching the surface, he first meets the animals. To his surprise, he is wounded by them, but after the wounding, after they have shown him their powers, they heal him. In this way he is taught methods of healing — with plants, with songs, with minerals. When he is whole and has seen this world of richness and beauty, he returns beneath the ground and tells his people, “We have been accepted.” It is a story not only of human mythology, but of animal powers, the teaching of respect for them all. As I stand with the horses beneath the black, wintry sky, watching the elder one eat, her warm, dark eyes looking grateful for food as she chews and concentrates, the wild horse leans against me gently, and I think: I have been accepted. Perhaps she still holds the consciousness of a herd, and for her, I have become a part of it. So often, I have observed that being accepted by animals is something most human beings want and need.“

Linda Hogan,”snow”

With Linda Hogan, I believe that “being accepted by animals is something most human beings want and need,” something intrinsic to our own nature as fellow animals, as kin.

Although we humans in the “over-culture” have been tamed and domesticated, I believe there is, in each of us, a wildness that longs to connect with the different wildnesses of our other-than-human relations, that knows we are all kin. Perhaps that is partly why people flock to zoos, why so many of us have pets. And I suspect that many of you have had that magical experience of feeling accepted by a wild animal. A feral cat finally trusting you enough to share your home and your love. The doe that looks at you long & long and then returns, relaxed, to her grazing. The phoebe that nests on the porch and goes happily about her busy-ness as you come and go. I think especially of the coyote — one of several that denned on the hill behind our house on the farm — who deliberately stepped out of the woods and onto the path just in front of me. He stopped…. He gazed at me for minutes/hours/eternity — seeing deep into me — and then, apparently satisfied, disappeared calmly back into the woods.

In “The First People” ( https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2020/05/keeping-the-world-alive.html ) Linda Hogan explains further:

“That we held, and still hold, treaties with the animals and plant species is a known part of tribal culture. The relationship between human people and animals is still alive and resonant in the world, the ancient tellings carried on by a constellation of stories, songs, and ceremonies, all shaped by lived knowledge of the world and its many interwoven, unending relationships. These stories and ceremonies keep open the bridge between one kind of intelligence and other, one species and other.“

What and where are our current stories and ceremonies to open this bridge? Foro

*******

What and where are our current stories and ceremonies 
to open this bridge?

[For one example, see the beautiful story Marti tells in response to my last post.]

*******

It has been said that we humans will never have peace with each other until we are at peace with and at home in the larger Earth community. Several weeks ago I was introduced to “The Curing Fox,” a story from the Cree Nation of North America. This story was gifted to Hugh Lupton and published in his book Tales of Wisdom and Wonder (Barefoot Books, 2006). It has been haunting me, showing this sacred connection among kin in a beautiful way.

Sometimes the telling of indigenous tales by people of European descent is fraught with the ugly history of those who stole & often destroyed the peoples and lands who gave birth to these stories. Sometimes there is, no doubt, a sort of “appropriation” by those of the dominating culture, a further theft, a further kind of colonization — a hunger to fill the emptiness of our current “over-culture.” But that is different from appreciation-of & learning-from the stories. The Land still speaks in Stories and those who live on it — especially those of us in the all-too-often deaf and deadly “over-culture” — must begin to listen to and heed the Land’s voice. Often the old stories tell us exactly what the Earth community needs for us to learn. Several weeks ago, I heard the botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer say that along with conservation and restoration of the land, we need to engage in its “re-Story-ation.” It is in that spirit of gratitude and humility that I offer these words.

This is my telling for today, with gratitude to the Cree storytellers who gave breath to this story & kept it alive and to Hugh Lupton was entrusted with the story & shared it with us. I don’t know if this is exactly how it happened, but I know that this Story is true:

This is my telling, based closely on Lupton’s version, and re-told with gratitude to him and to those who told him the story and to the whole community of Cree storytellers who kept the story alive. Re-telling indigenous stories is sometime fraught with the danger of “appropriation,” and this does sometimes occur. But there is a difference between “appropriation” and “appreciation” or “learning-from.” So, this story is told not only with appreciation but also deepest gratitude and humility. This is truly a story that we in the destructive “over-culture” need desperately to hear and to learn from at this time. I don’t know if this is exactly as it happened, but I know that it is true:

There was once a village in a forest clearing. In one lodge, near the edge, there lived a hunter, his wife, and their beloved daughter. She was a happy child — active, curious, always the one to find the ripest sweetest berries and most delicious mushrooms. When her chores were finished, she liked to slip in among the trees, listen to the birdsong, and dance among the shadows.

One day, as icy air from the north shivered into the village, the girl fell ill — struggling to breathe, barely able to stand. A cough shook her whole body and left her gasping.

Her parents placed her bed near the fire. They covered her with the warmest furs and offered her broth & sips of tea from the summer herbs she’d gathered & dried herself– but still the girl coughed and gasped for air, growing weaker and weaker. On the third day, her father went to ask the village healer, old Duck Egg, for help.

Duck Egg entered their lodge silently and went straight over the the girl. Still without speaking, Duck Egg lowered her ear to the girl’s chest. She listened carefully for a long time. “I hear a fox,” she said. “I hear a young she-fox struggling through the snow. I hear her sinking again & again through the icy crust of the deep, deep snow — khuh, khuh, khuh. Her paws have grown sore. It is so hard for her. She is hungry and growing weaker. We need to help that poor fox.”

After a moment, her father spoke. “I am a hunter. I will find the little fox.” Without further words he rose from the floor by his daughter’s bed and, after gathering together the things he would need for his journey, the father tied on his snowshoes and stepped out into the swirling snow and the bitter wind.

The hunter walked for a long, long time through the forest. He could see the tracks of deer and the trees where they had gnawed the small branches. He saw the skittering script left by snowshoe rabbits. But it was only as evening was falling that he saw the tracks of a fox. In one print there was a trace of blood from a worn paw. “This must be the poor little fox,” thought the hunter, and he followed the trail. Once, just up ahead, he glimpsed a flash of red between the broad trunks of the trees. A thin fox was forging her way ahead of him, struggling as she ran through the deep snow.

Back in the village, old Duck Egg again placed her ear on the girl’s chest. She listened long and long. At last, she raised her head and said to her mother, “I hear the sound of your husband’s snowshoes and, nearby, the crunch-crunching as the fox’s paws fall through the crust — khuh, khuh, khuh.” She lowered her head again and listened. “He has seen the fox,” she said. “He has seen the poor little fox.”

At nightfall the hunter made his camp and kindled his fire. The flames leapt brightly. The little she-fox felt the warmth. She moved as close as she dared, hidden among the flickering shadows of the trees.

In the village, Duck Egg listened closely to the girl’s chest before speaking to her mother. “Your husband has built a hot fire and the fox feels the warmth. Tonight your daughter will be hot with fever.” And sure enough, though they laid cool cloths on the girl’s forehead, she sweated and glowed with fever all night long.

In the morning, the fox began to run once more, every step sinking through the icy crust with every step — khuh, khuh, khuh — slower and slower And, in the village, the girl shivered and coughed — khuh, khuh, khuh.

The hunter followed the fox and soon caught up with her. The frightened little she-fox stopped and turned towards the hunter. “Why have you been following me?” she asked in a shaky voice. “Go ahead and kill me. I am tired of running.”

The hunter looked at the fox. She was thin. Her copper coat was dull and rimed with frost. He reached down and picked her up. As he cradled her shivering body, he felt her heart beating quickly with terror. “I will not kill you, little fox,” he said. “I will help you. And perhaps my daughter will be well again.” The hunter turned toward home, the fox still trembling with terror in his arms.

In the village, the daughter began to shiver. Old Duck Egg listened to how wildly her heart was beating. To her mother she said, “Your husband has found the weary and frightened she-fox. He is holding her in his arms. They will soon be home.” The daughter gasped for air. Her heart struggled and each beat shook her thin bony chest. Her eyes began to dull. The girl’s mother sat weeping but Duck Egg was silent, listening to the girl’s heart, listening to the world.

After a day and a night, they heard the hunter’s snowshoes crunching towards their lodge. He pulled aside the deer hide that covered the door and stepped into the warmth, carrying the limp and nearly lifeless fox in his arms. Gently he laid her on the thick furs at the foot of his daughter’s bed.

“Bring meat,” commanded old Duck Egg, and the mother brought fresh meat to the fox. At first the fox was too weak and weary to do more than sniff and lick at the meat, but little by little she began to chew. And finally the fox ate it all. She closed her eyes, and went to sleep.

The girl, still coughing, slept beside the fox. Nestled in warm furs by the fire, they slept for a long time.

No one spoke. Then, at the very same moment, the fox and the girl opened their eyes. Duck Egg saw that their eyes were brighter now and she smiled. “Bring more meat,” she said.

Again the mother brought fresh meat She placed it beside the fox and, without any hesitation, the little fox ate every scrap. The fox stood up. She shook herself, fluffing out her bright copper coat.

Duck Egg nodded at the father.

Duck Egg raised the girl to sitting and held her so she could watch as her father pushed aside the deer hide. The fox watched too.

Then out the door the little she-fox trotted — strong and firm.

Duck Egg and the girl watched together as the fox gradually disappeared into the falling snow. When they could no longer see the fox, they listened to her footsteps, still strong and firm, moving away through the storm. The sounds grew fainter. Finally, they heard only silence. Inside the lodge, the girl’s cough stopped. She got up and walked to the door. Looking out at the forest and the snow, she smiled.

Old Duck Egg rose too. She nodded.

As so it was.

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Finally, I want to share with you some remarkable images to ponder. They are by Sarolta Ban http://canislupus101.blogspot.com/2015/02/images-from-surrealist-artist-sarolta.html . I am especially intrigued by the 3rd image down.

P.S. You might also enjoy checking out her video, “Fable of the Wolf,” and the brief clips of the howling wolves.

The beautiful Red Wolf you hear howling is indigenous to North Carolina and is nearing extinction. Currently only between 13 (collared) and 19 (estimated) are living freely in the coastal forests of NC wildlife refuges. Early efforts to re-wild captive-born red wolves were successful but ran into problems of politics, perception, and funding. New programs are being implemented. There is still hope that these magnificent beings may once again roam freely, taking part in all the interactions of the land where they evolved. Can we humans learn that we are not the sole “managers” of the land, that each kind of being is vital the creation of a complex & healthy web of Life? Can we learn what our role is?

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From the poet Gary Snyder:

“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”