One thing I have in common with osprey is that we’re
both beachcombers. There’s a special bond among us who roam the beach. There
are those that search for sea glass and have been doing this for as long as
glass bottles have been plentiful. Blue glass reminds me of images of roaming
rivers that curl like a blue dragon, the bends as soft as the curves of the
glass smoothed by the ocean’s tumble. Blue beach glass is at the apex of a
beachcomber’s world. But the apex is actually a plateau that derives its
character from the frame of mind you enter the beachcombing. When locked in the
house all winter with work and chores, the first day in February that I go to
the beach, just to be there, feels like a vacation even when it’s cold and
damp. I am soon drawn toward the necklace at the water’s edge. My mind unfurls
and without even trying, my body relaxes.
Perhaps red glass is more rare than blue. It does not matter. I wander
the beach, finding this smooth shell, broken but beautiful, and without realizing it I am moving like a water dragon. I
move up where the tide crested, but where the water recedes, there is a
downward curve, and I move down closer to the water. As I follow the wrack line the beachcombing
has now become the ocean’s labyrinth walk. I match the mindless mindfulness
of the labyrinth but hug the boundary of the sea. So, it has been said and so
my mentor, who I have decided to simply call Mentor, roams the beaches of Sandy
Hook frequently. She will tell you that you cannot artificially cook glass and
find it to have the same qualities as glass that’s gone from boil to simmer and
back to boil again at the water’s edge in the salty sea. And you cannot expect
your mind to uncurl without letting go of the intention to do so. There are
standards and there are practices.
Mentor told me that these same standards apply to
miso. ‘Why miso, why now?’ I wondered to myself. Although, my mentor’s
mention of the blue glass had my mind hop to blue dragons, and that had a deep
resonance with me. And then I realized
it’s because it reminded me of the dragon who was curled inside my head. I sometimes wondered
if it was the one speaking to me and I only thought my little Skunk osprey
friend was talking. I also wondered why
the dragon curled inside my head had not paid me a visit since that first time.
But the infrequent opportunity to walk with my mentor brought me back to her
words. Time is precious and she is like blue sea glass.
I am sorry
to say that I missed the start of her thoughts on this topic because my mind
drifted again thinking about the Crow Women and Virg. Was
there something Virg was trying to tell me when she poked her head through the
wind column? When I resumed
listening, Mentor was saying, “Because all of life is about tastes and smells, seeing
beauty, the discoveries, the sense of fullness that wonder brings, the making
it what it is or helping it along to be what it can be. We sometimes get set in
the direction and more oftentimes are bumped off course.”
Again, my keppe was open to wandering thoughts. ‘Maybe this is why rivers and bees do the viggle vaggle? Or is there a greater purpose in all the turns and curves?’ I could not stop my mind from taking a few turns. Maybe my mentor was hypnotizing me? Some have said that the sex of a fish depends upon how many twists and turns its mother took back to the spawning area. For one creature, a turn or bend in the road just provides a different view, for another it can be as profound as changing the course of its life’s story. Even changing the course of another creature, because all stories in nature are related.
miso walk is a chapter in bird dreams, riding hope, - sometimes a fable, weaving our connections to birds, meandering rivers and dragons, fermenting miso and consciousness,
wetlands,
our extended kin and ancestors, our mentors, and Wisdom.
Inspired
by actual events and a sense of place and belonging by a woman who addresses
the reader on behalf of the earth
Here’s my links for more writing and copies of my
books
No comments:
Post a Comment