The Wonder Log is an occasional missive sent to friends via email. It arises from listening to Gaia — connecting with the more-than-human world. To subscribe, use the contact link (please tell me your home place and a way that you connect with the living Earth). Spoken-word Wonder Logs are produced at KWMR-fm radio, You can listen along as you read this one (and enjoy Joyce Kouffman's music) by clicking on this audio file:
The Dark
At present I’m having a love affair with night. I am singing praise for the dark. I am here to suggest that we honor the season of dimming — November. For this darkening time of year is not widely loved by humans. Anything called “end of daylight savings time” will always struggle to be popular. However, it’s inevitable. And recurring — forever. In spite of our great love for summertime, the Sun as viewed from Earth, at our latitude, gradually… continually… sinks toward the south. Gradually… continually… our share of sunlight diminishes between now and winter solstice.
Nonetheless! There is cause for marvel and delight in early winter. (For I will posit to you that November marks the change of season in our hemisphere. That the Earth holiday coinciding with Halloween is in fact the beginning of winter. And that the December solstice — the shortest day in the North — must be winter’s mid-point, not its first day! Think about it!)
Now, the present seasonal shift has prompted a certain kind of noticing on my part. Such as… this little observation at my home place. On a soft morning, after some light rain, a scrap of blue sky comes whirling into view outside my window. Suddenly, on a low branch at the edge of a thicket, there’s an azure bird, holding an acorn in its beak. Alert and somewhat surreptitious, this California scrub jay scans left and right to be sure it’s alone for the moment. It then zips to the ground, tucks its prize into the soft soil, flips a bit of weedy camouflage, and hops back up to its look-out post. It then appears to be memorizing this single acorn’s location! Turning and cocking its head. Considering angles and distance and landmarks. The jay is storing data that will favor its chance of finding this morsel of food… in the uncharted future.
It will repeat this promising action many times during late-autumn-into-winter. Some of the goods will be recovered later. Others, not. But chances evidently favor the strategy!
For me there’s more than adaptive genius to this scrub jay story.
It’s also advice of sorts from the living world, for human beings. For those of us dwelling in the Northern Hemisphere, even in a fertile soft climate, this threshold of winter is slack time. It’s a sacred time of twilight, of mystery, and embarking on a recurring journey through death… into rebirth. Earth Instructions for this season include deep rest (hibernation) and dreams; a fire kept burning in the hearth all through the night; and for sustenance, drawing from the year’s harvest, carefully stored.
In certain ways, planet Earth is entering into a dark night, a global contraction on an imponderable scale. A wintry dying back for species and ecosystems; oceans, forests, ice. I ponder this, especially during this present season-shift. I aim my imagination into communion with our planet. Listening to Gaia.
What does our living world call for during this profound “great turning” (in the words of Joanna Macy)?
Along with actions and engagement in restorative change, what is the tiny acorn that I can tuck into the ground today? And leave behind, down in the rich dark soil… as a prayer that that all life can somehow persist and even thrive into the future?
Oddly enough, when I pose these questions to myself, answers arise. Instructions for the moment. Simple gestures, including gratitude for encounters with Earth beauty and wisdom.
What about you? Perhaps you have some insights, received from a monarch butterfly, an osprey, the lichen bedecking a buckeye tree. What small blessings into the future suggest themselves to you?
For me, praise for the sky-blue scrub jay is just this sort of prayer with no known outcome.
I suppose I’ll just continue noticing what I can find and glean and love… and then I’ll tuck little nuggets of praise into the ground… and leave them behind. Not knowing if they will nourish all life into the future, or sprout into new trees, or decompose into the soil and fortify the microbiome.
Little gifts into deep time. Not knowing the results. Yielding into winter’s rest… the dark of the year. Keeping a candle on the altar glowing bright.
Nonetheless! There is cause for marvel and delight in early winter. (For I will posit to you that November marks the change of season in our hemisphere. That the Earth holiday coinciding with Halloween is in fact the beginning of winter. And that the December solstice — the shortest day in the North — must be winter’s mid-point, not its first day! Think about it!)
Now, the present seasonal shift has prompted a certain kind of noticing on my part. Such as… this little observation at my home place. On a soft morning, after some light rain, a scrap of blue sky comes whirling into view outside my window. Suddenly, on a low branch at the edge of a thicket, there’s an azure bird, holding an acorn in its beak. Alert and somewhat surreptitious, this California scrub jay scans left and right to be sure it’s alone for the moment. It then zips to the ground, tucks its prize into the soft soil, flips a bit of weedy camouflage, and hops back up to its look-out post. It then appears to be memorizing this single acorn’s location! Turning and cocking its head. Considering angles and distance and landmarks. The jay is storing data that will favor its chance of finding this morsel of food… in the uncharted future.
It will repeat this promising action many times during late-autumn-into-winter. Some of the goods will be recovered later. Others, not. But chances evidently favor the strategy!
For me there’s more than adaptive genius to this scrub jay story.
It’s also advice of sorts from the living world, for human beings. For those of us dwelling in the Northern Hemisphere, even in a fertile soft climate, this threshold of winter is slack time. It’s a sacred time of twilight, of mystery, and embarking on a recurring journey through death… into rebirth. Earth Instructions for this season include deep rest (hibernation) and dreams; a fire kept burning in the hearth all through the night; and for sustenance, drawing from the year’s harvest, carefully stored.
In certain ways, planet Earth is entering into a dark night, a global contraction on an imponderable scale. A wintry dying back for species and ecosystems; oceans, forests, ice. I ponder this, especially during this present season-shift. I aim my imagination into communion with our planet. Listening to Gaia.
What does our living world call for during this profound “great turning” (in the words of Joanna Macy)?
Along with actions and engagement in restorative change, what is the tiny acorn that I can tuck into the ground today? And leave behind, down in the rich dark soil… as a prayer that that all life can somehow persist and even thrive into the future?
Oddly enough, when I pose these questions to myself, answers arise. Instructions for the moment. Simple gestures, including gratitude for encounters with Earth beauty and wisdom.
What about you? Perhaps you have some insights, received from a monarch butterfly, an osprey, the lichen bedecking a buckeye tree. What small blessings into the future suggest themselves to you?
For me, praise for the sky-blue scrub jay is just this sort of prayer with no known outcome.
I suppose I’ll just continue noticing what I can find and glean and love… and then I’ll tuck little nuggets of praise into the ground… and leave them behind. Not knowing if they will nourish all life into the future, or sprout into new trees, or decompose into the soil and fortify the microbiome.
Little gifts into deep time. Not knowing the results. Yielding into winter’s rest… the dark of the year. Keeping a candle on the altar glowing bright.
