A Second Spring

The heart of our woods, formerly an idyllic tree-lined hollow, is now something like a lunar landscape due to a small forest fire. But a recent ramble revealed a translucent pale green fern frond, rising from the blackened forest floor, unfolding in a slightly unusual pattern... perhaps the heat of the fire disrupted the pre-programmed spiral form? 

No matter, it was such a welcome sight. The first herald of the year's second spring for us. A symbol of life pushing back against destruction. Of rebirth and renewal. Or maybe it's not really all that simple, not that "black and white"as the phrase goes? Maybe life and growth partner with death and destruction, the black and the green, in collusion... "in cahoots" as the old folks say with a wink. In cahoots. 

I ponder the upcoming 2010 Earth Day as I walk. Recalling the devastation of the earthquake in Haiti last January, and the primeval power of volcanoes at work in Iceland this week. I consider that Earth Day isn't just planting trees, hanging laundry out on the line and recycling. Clearly, the uncontrolled and barely-understood forces of nature on this earth are relentlessly at work in the world, creating and destroying, giving and taking away. Not exactly the gentle Mother. The grand and the minute spirals of life and death, always spinning, from the sub atomic to the galactic. Same laws, different scales. How do you fit a whole planet into a day? And do you just ignore the scary parts? I am thinking that if Earth Day were an ancient holiday, there'd have been plenty of sacrifices made.

I wonder about the fern's altered form. 

(And I bet horses don't worry about this sort of stuff, except possibly the part about green stuff growing). 

Hope is a Horse

Some days you venture out into the world simply because business calls. But when you show up, it is life in all its serendipitous glory that is waiting for you. 


Today I had my HORSE-TRIBE booth at an area stable for an open house event. But selling jewelry was just a small part of the journey...


I met a little orphaned foal today, the one I wrote about in a recent blog entry. She is healthy-looking and beautiful, all long legs and long ears and wavy tufts of fur... all dusky-colored and a single star on her forehead, she is the very picture of hope and trust. 

And I had a casual conversation that took an unexpected and delightful turn - I was given the happy ending to a story that I thought was forever going to haunt me. 


A couple years ago a friend called and said she saw a horse loose in an open area next to a big Costco parking lot. She pulled over, but without a halter and rope (doesn't everyone carry one in their vehicle?) she was not able to help. She communed briefly with the horse, saying it was a lovely, gentle being. 


The cops came - without a rope and halter - and they left again saying they'd contacted animal control...  and my friend had to leave the horse. She did so with a heavy heart. Many times we have wondered aloud about the fate of this poor creature. Today I met the woman whose kids brought a rope and halter after spotting the horse. And the horse is living happily with their family. The person who dumped the horse was caught and prosecuted.    


Some days it seems like hope is a horse.

Rising from the Ashes

Easter Sunday. The first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox... 
a day that is rich with symbolism, both ancient and modern. Easter, as we observe it, is a complicated and strained marriage of pre-historic pagan celebrations and Christian mysticism at its most deep and poignant. The common theme winding its way through all the stories, of course, is one of the spiraling cycles of death and resurrection, and the belief in the eternal nature of the soul. 


Fire is often associated with sacred and seasonal celebrations - a wild and barely contained force of nature as in the ancient bonfires, or a carefully controlled servant in ceremonies in the form of candles and fuming censors inside the hallowed walls of churches and temples. Fire is seen as a purifying agent, a powerful elemental agent of release, destruction and new growth. In some cultures, burning is a way to send prayers or spirits to the sacred realms. 


We witnessed the primeval power of fire firsthand this week on our twenty acre haven of woods and fields. It's been unseasonably warm and dry here, and that day there was a strong wind from the southeast, setting the stage for a potential disaster. 

Looking back, I recite a list of "things I am grateful for" like a mantra, to protect me from thinking about the list of haunting "what ifs":


We were home, we smelled and saw smoke as it was carried fast and furiously on the wild wind. 
Our horse lives down the road "a piece", so she was safe. 
It wasn't the dark of night. 
Or the dead of winter. 
Our neighbors came to investigate on atvs, with shovels and water. 
The volunteer firefighters came fast, worked fast and worked smart. 
The flames were put out before spreading to any homes, barns or pastures.
And there were no dead bodies, human or animal.


The fire spread alarmingly fast, but was contained and subdued in a matter of hours. The fire's path of charred trees and blackened ground originated in what we consider the 'heart' of our woods, a vortex marked by a huge flattened boulder that is a resting place during rambles, and the offering place for treasures found along those journeys - feathers and fragments of bird eggs, gnarled twigs or wildflower blossoms, delicate bones or fallen nests. 


The sense of violation is potent, the evidence of interlopers was clear - someone was burning something in an old bullet-pocked metal bowl on top of the heart-boulder. My intuition is that it was an accident, probably just kids. I can't even consider that the fire was intentionally set. I'd like to think that a lovesick teenager, sensing the inherent sacredness of this spot, came to burn love notes in the quiet embrace of the surrounding pine trees... 
admittedly, I am a hopeless romantic.


The next day dawned sooty grey, and got darker as the morning progressed, culminating in a lovely soaking rain. The burned woods, cleansed. In between outbursts of birdsong, you can almost hear new green shoots pushing their way up through the ashes. 


(Spring is bitter/sweet). 

Postscript:
It seems 'Spring is Ironic' in a cosmic sort of way as well... a tattered Mourning Cloak butterfly was the only sign of life I saw today, three days after the fire, as I walked the untouched margins of the woods. In fact, its presence was impossible to miss, as it buzzed me repeatedly and so closely that I could hear the rush of its beating wings.   

Spring is Bitter/Sweet

The moon of spring waxes full, and round-bellied mares, feeling the lengthening daylight hours and the pull of the tides, bring forth their foals.

But spring is bitter/sweet.

At a friend's barn, a mare gives birth to a beautiful, healthy foal, gives her the precious colostrum-laden first milk, and then the mare falls to the ground, dead. Meanwhile, just a few miles away at the barn of a friend of this friend, a mare loses its newborn foal. Humans intervene to try to bring this mare and the orphaned foal together. If all goes well, these strangers will help each other to move forward in a patchwork of loss and need, of longing and fulfillment.

Spring, if you buy into the perennial hype of retailers and marketeers, is an orgy of joy and newness, of all things green and growing. All for your purchasing pleasure. But spring has its own price. There must be a balance, and the shadow of spring is sacrifice and surrender. Mother Nature invented recycling.

But spring is bitter/sweet. 

The full moon of spring brings an abundance of roadkill and tree frog songs. I get a phone call. A dear friend's cancer has returned with a vengeance. Though spring's promise of renewal feels hollow, hope for a miracle could take root in the fertile, dark earth of this, the  bitter/sweet season... 

I want to go to see my horse and breathe in her sweet, warm living fragrance.