Springtime Morning Ramblings…
I awoke in joy this morning. As I changed the diaper of my son, watching his blue eyes take in the surroundings of our room, the light coming in through the curtains, the rustle of blankets and the contrasting colors of the hanging cloths and silks along the wall, I heard the rapturous song of birds outside our window.
I am a newcomer to this land, a guest here in these lands and waters. I grew up mainly within the Alder and Maple, Cedar and Scotchbroom laden forests of the Pacific Northwest. We moved to Buffalo New York, ancestral lands of the Seneca Tribe, as winter wrapped around the Northern lands of the world, the leaves already fallen and being consumed by mushrooms, the cold snapping at your neck and drinking warmth from the cracks underneath your doors and windows.
I have no idea who these birds are, nor many of the trees, who’s buds are swelling in such pleasurable potency each day. These birds have just recently arrived back from where they migrated from, as their songs have not been a part of the ecology through the late fall and winter. I feel the eyes of a child awakening in me, the beginner’s mind preparing the soils of discovery and illumination, relationship building, communion.
I have an intention to go about learning the details of the plants and animals differently as I engage with and build relationships with these ecologies. In my past, I eagerly consumed information regarding the uses, technical characteristics, and utility of the flora and fauna within the ecosystems I inhabited as I grew in my understanding that in repairing my relationship to the living world I would become more resilient as a human, still operating from a colonized framework of utility and efficiency.
As I learn and awaken with the trees as warm weather and moist rains return to the forests and waterways of the Great Lakes region, I will first bare witness, as I have done throughout the winter, noticing the bark patterns and the dizzying variations of browns and greens, lichens and mosses, textures and healed over wounds, bodies twisting through barbed wire to rise above the city streets and shade an alleyway in the heat of summer.
I love our Mother.
I laid on our bed this morning, feeling the coolness of a small puddle of infant spit-up underneath me, gazing at the sleeping two month old human being next to me. Sunlight glowed through the linen curtains that his mother made early on in our inhabitation of this home.
The temperature dropped through the gales of ice and snow which flowed in on the wings of winds moving swiftly off the lake. We felt them as we walked to the co-op through neighborhoods awash with melting snow creating cold water pools filled with old lotto tickets and the lost hair combs of young girls, old cd’s and diamond rings…maybe.
We smelled and tasted the humid warm air rising off of the now visible soggy grasses and plant-life mixing with the frozen force of winter still calling the shots in this dance between weather patterns. They embraced and swirled, creating small currents and mini-tornadoes which flung your jacket open like a lover after a night of tango dancing if it wasn’t buttoned all the way.
We read the winter weather advisory aloud, feeling the caution in the author’s voice as the roads turned from wet and slush filled streets to ice laden passageways complete with snow flurries “creating low visibility conditions for drivers during the evening commute.
Be advised.”
Blessings on the seasonal turnings.
