slow and low

Slow and low is how nature does things. Ever heard of these two tips for optimal food preparation? Cooking?

the sacred pine

Pine forests are a sacred place. These forests provide food, medicine and sanctuary. Pine forests represent family, above and below the surface.

nature’s intelligence

Wild reverence and reconnection restores. So how can we (re)story and share our nature based solutions?

Here is an excerpt from the Bioneers website for a deeper dive into nature’s intelligence:

“Are plants intelligent? If we knew their language what might they tell us? Potawatomi Indigenous ecologist and author Robin Kimmerer and evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano merge Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Western science for a surprising trip into the minds of mosses and chili seeds and the songs of corn. They agree what we really need today is a revolution in values, an “Honorable Harvest” of gratitude and reciprocity with our plant kin.”

Listen to the episode: Interviewing the Vegetable Mind

fall equinox

I love this expression of fall on Explore Deeply:

On the Fall Equinox you may want to honor all that you have in your life and shift your consciousness from one of lack to one of prosperity and gratitude in some way through a small ritual or ceremony. Such as lighting a candle, giving thanks, and speaking your gratitude for all that you are and all that you have.

A favorite ritual of mine is to take the 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after the precise moment of the equinox to sit quietly on the ground in thoughtfulness and meditation and open my mind and my senses to the intelligence of nature all around. In this time spent in thoughtfulness around the moment of equal light and equal dark, I acknowledge my personal growth cycle and ask for harmony and balance to be the fertilizer in the soil of my life's garden.

Fall is the time of year that we set up our internal space and make room for what’s to come in the next year. We create room for our greater visions to grow, by allowing the empty space and silence to take hold of our internal spaces. When we clear our internal ground in the fall, we go into dormancy and then rest in the cold and darkness of Winter. We go into hibernation and become creative, but not by doing. By becoming quiet and listening to what is trying to emerge from within us.

This is the time of year to go within and empty out space, composting our old ideas and using the energy they hold to make fertile soil for new creativity and matured visions.

harvest moon

September is known as a time of harvest. So it makes sense why farmers in the Northern Hemisphere associate this month’s full moon with the harvest.

As a wild curator, I often explore the ways we as humans can reconnect with the natural world.

Here is an excerpt from the Savory Institute that expresses the same idea in another way:

Laghum’ is an ancient Swedish word meaning “what works for everybody.” To make things Laghum is to address the distance between people and the land.

For 20 years, Jörgen Andersson has been the driving force behind Fjällbete, a farm in Undersåker, Sweden with a mission to close the gap between the land and its people. As the learning site for Holistic Management Sverige – the Savory Hub in Sweden – Fjällbete is facilitating a Nordic network for regenerative agriculture and helping people explore their “caring capacity” as farmers and community builders.

Check out this video featured on the Savory Institute to learn more: Fostering Community for Regenerative Capacity.

And for more information about the Savory Institute Founder, watch this Ted Talk by Allan Savory. Allan is a renowned regenerative farmer and scientist who created a scalable agricultural practice that restores natural ecosystems called Holistic Management.

sturgeon super moon

This super moon is one of four in a row! Super moons are simply closer to the earth, and this month is associated with the abundance of one of our most ancient of fish!

Sturgeon are known as living fossils, only reproduce every four years after females make it to 20 years of age and sometimes grow to be as big as cars! Learn more from the Oregon Wild.

nature’s masculine-feminine continuum

Ever imagined how the idea of “patriarchy” gained momentum? In this Bioneers episode: Busting the Myth of Primate Patriarchy: The Nature of Sex and Gender in Our Ape Relatives, “World-renowned primatologist Professor Frans de Waal explores the nature of sex and gender among our cousins the apes, and how gender diversity is a common and pervasive potential on nature’s masculine-feminine continuum. In the quest to overcome human gender inequality, he suggests that our focus needs to be on the inequality”.

full buck moon

When living in the Pacific Northwest, especially near and around old growth forests, it is common to see deer year round. They are a great guide for finding water resources in the middle of the woods!

Fun facts: These beautiful creatures loose their antlers due to biological changes which are important to understand when you call them neighbors. Antlers range in size and some female deer (caribou) even have them! Antler size is also connected to health.

How healthy are the deer in your nearest forests? Here is an interesting article that offers many insights about the subject: “A dozen (more) facts about antlers”.

interdependence

What would it be like to be raised on gratitude, to speak to the natural world as a member of the democracy of species, to raise a pledge of interdependence?

(Excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmer)

strawberry moon

In temperate ecoregion amount the Pacific Northwest, you can often see an abundance of wild strawberries. And there such a sweet treat for the coming summer break! These delightful fruits are also known to grow more abundantly when natural habitats are conserved around the field. Nature seeks nature to thrive! Check out this article for more information: Natural habitat around farms a win for strawberry growers, birds and consumers.

flower moon

Flowers as such marvelous teachers. In them we can see a diverse range of colors, shapes, structures and sizes! Flowers remind us to have healthy boundaries as they are experts when it comes to repelling and attracting other species as a matter of living in optimal co-thriving conditions.

And this year we celebrate a super flower moon and total lunar eclipse in North America at the same time! Some believe that a super flower (blood) moon is a time for inward discovery. This is especially powerful given during a total lunar eclipse. We are being supported to dive deeper into our shadows as a way of discovering and therefore illuminating our own colorful and fragrant offerings.

Jas

pink moon

The pink moon is named after one of the most common species of flora in North America, known as Phlox. This ground covering wildflower is often pink, although it also appears in shades of blue, violet and red and grows in diverse habitats. The word phlox has Greek origins, meaning flame!

bloom

A repost of Blossom by blossom by Team Positive

Dear friends,

Blossom by blossom, spring seeps in.

Daffodils show up unannounced, unperturbed, buoyant. Swelling buds and sprouting seedlings – yellow and green and pregnant with promise. Days get warmer. Nature gets fuller.

This is the irrepressible return of life in spring. 

Below 10°C, microbial life on the topsoil grinds to a halt – no longer recycling organic matter or feeding plants with nutrients. In March, as the temperature rises above 10°C, microbial activity stirs, and the soil breathes deeply once again. 

The deepest roots never doubted that spring would come. 

As it stays lighter for longer, birds know it is time to find a mate. They do this by singing to each other. In turn, baby birds learn to sing by hearing their species’ song all around. 

And so, however much coal we burn, however many trees we fell, however many bombs we drop – this force of life appears unquenchable. Nature does not ask permission.   

This irrepressible return of life in spring: such a routine event that we forget to be in perpetual astonishment. This spring, look twice at the blossom and listen twice to the birdsong.  

Be comforted, be humbled by the enormity of implausible healing and renewal all over the world. 

From apathy and despair, we move through hope, to collective reawakening after hibernation. Because there has always been another spring.

Yours in bloom,

Team Positive

spring

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ Wendell Berry

worm moon

Feeding The Worms

Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds
all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,
I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine
the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples
permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,
avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,
almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure
so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,
forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

~ Danusha Laméris

snow moon

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

- Emily Dickinson

wolf moon

Cheyenne Prayer for Peace

Let us know peace.

For as long as the

moon shall rise,

For as long as the rivers shall flow,

For as long as the

sun shall shine,

For as long as the grass shall grow,

Let us know peace.

cold moon

beyond

nestled somewhere in the northern hemisphere,

as the moon fills the sky with bright wintery flurries,

a subtlety arrises and sparks a new cycle of life,

deep below the surface.

~ Jas

beaver moon

Grow

take shelter,

breathe in,

the leaves, the dancing trees.

burn signals,

breathe out,

make peace with changing seasons.

allow silence,

expand and flow,

fill the empty time and spaces.

grow.

~ Jas Sage

hunters moon

Full moons are a time for expressing. Practicing ritual arts is a way of releasing unnecessary blockages and making room for conscious expansion through expression.

So how can we expand our awareness to include stories of interconnection between all living beings?

(Re)storing, or perhaps (re)storying our perennial wisdom, with reverence and reciprocity, is doable. From inner to outer landscapes, we can create space that accounts for optimal collaborative potential. We are, after all, participants in this ever expanding expressive reality.

One breath and heart thought at a time…

~ Jas