Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

It’s not even February yet, but you wouldn’t know it by the weather. It’s been unseasonably warm outside lately.  The ground is muddy, the sky clear and the plants responding by growing more rapidly each day. The vibrant moonworts (Artemisia ludoviciana and related spp to you plant people) are especially happy, and their silver green sprouts grace the ground everywhere I turn. Rubbed between gentle fingers, their leaves release the pungent aroma of wildness itself. In fact, this plant is one of the Canyon’s most intense and insistent inhabitants and one that I spend a great deal of time focusing on when leading plant walks during workshops and classes. Much can be learned of this special place and land through its flora and fauna, through the individual microcosms that make up the whole — and this particular herb is a unique and powerful expression of the Canyon.

More than any other single plant, the Artemisias attract the attention and affection of our guests here in the canyon. People who have otherwise never paid any attention to flora are enchanted by its soft touch and seductive fragrance. They catch themselves stroking its feathery leaves and brushing its small flowers against their faces. “What IS this?” they ask me in awed, eager voices as they continue sniffing and touching it. At first, I wondered why this specific plant attracted so much attention when there is such a diversity of flora here in the Gila, but I’ve finally come to understand that its vibrant and wild, fierce yet gentle personality is the medicine many of us need.

Although the moonworts are widespread and populate almost every part of N. America, they are especially prolific here in the Southwest, and the scent of sagebrush is certainly one of the signatures of mesas and steppes of the Wild West. So common here as to be practically invisible to many peoples’ eyes, they are easily one of the most prolific species of the canyon and surrounding areas. Their prevalence may allow us to pass them over more easily but actually makes them that much more important to us due to their sustainability and accessibility.

Moonwort is often an indicator of disturbed soil, happily thriving where grazing and concurrent erosion has stripped away most plants. They help to heal the ground by preventing more dirt from being washed away and by providing essential nutrients to the often starved topsoil. They are stubborn and strong willed, often growing in the harsh light of direct sun without any signs of wilting or being burned. As long as they occasionally get some water to cool their roots, they’re happy just about anywhere. While many people consider them to be weeds, I feel a rush of gratitude every time I see a colony of Artemisias staking down the sand and providing a welcome surge of green in an otherwise barren landscape. They survive floods, droughts, grazing and even pavement in many cases, providing a powerful role model for us humans trying to adapt and heal in an increasingly unsure and changeable era.

What many people simply call sage, is actually our moonworts, who have been known for as long as people have used plants as an herb of prayer. Twisted into tight bundles and dried, they are commonly burned as a fragrant smudge during ceremony, prayer, the sweat lodge and other sacred uses. They clear the air and the mind with amazing efficiency and Wolf and I often sprinkle a pinch of crushed dried leaves on the woodstove during the day to take advantage of their refreshing effect.  I love these plants for their tenacious, healing touch on the land and on us humans. I don’t leave home without a fresh sprig tucked into my pocket or a bottle of the tincture in my bag.

Often thought of as a dream herb, it can certainly provoke vivid (and sometimes disturbing) nights, but they are equally skilled at waking us up by providing a bitter tasting dose of medicine that both enlivens and relaxes the nervous system. I consider them to be one of our most important indigenous herbal remedies. For the gut, for the liver, for the nervous system, for wounds and damaged muscles and beyond. When I feel depressed or down, I chew a pinch of the flowers or leaves and the strong, bracing taste brings me back into myself and leaves me more grounded than ever. I’ve been working with moonwort for years, and I still feel as if I have barely skimmed the surface of its capacity for healing.

If you’d like to read more about the specifics of healing with this powerful and prolific plant, check out the Artemisia entry on The Medicine Woman Tradition site or search for Artemisia on the Medicine Woman’s Roots Herbal blog.

~Kiva Rose

~~~~~

Photography and Artwork (c) 2009 Jesse Wolf Hardin & Kiva Rose

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Hello!
It sure has been windy, but it’s not the normal wintery winds. It’s Spring winds, even though it’s Winter. It’s very nice to have the feel of the light breeze caressing me. It’s definitely a wonderful gift. It has been very nice weather, very sunny.  I’m usually fairly warm when I go on my alone time, though it’s quite cold in the morning.

Gifts
Yes! Lots of gifts. I’m making a embroidery for a nice woman who gave me a wonderful robe and some other wonderful things. I also made her stationary with her name written on it, though I haven’t given it to her yet. Mama Loba also made a pillow for a really really nice man named Marc who’s doing all kinds of wonderful helpful things to help us. I’m sure Papa’s already told you all about it. A really nice woman named Meya sent me a wonderful little teddy bear, which I’ve named Isabella. I love it! It’s the cutest little teddy bear. Me and Mama Loba love it.   It’s the only stuffed animal Mama Loba doesn’t mind on the kitchen counters. So thanks to Meya.

Cooking  &  Fun
I’m learning all kinds of fun cooking and when Mama Loba’s really busy I can make my own dessert or snack! I can also light a fire! Though I don’t really like doing that. But I’ll learn to get a better attitude. Anyway, I’m hoping to get up early one of these days soon to do the bread baking all by myself before Mama Loba gets up! We’ll see how that works out!  Speaking of learning, not too long ago I learned how to ride a four -wheeler all by myself! Papa wasn’t even with me! Well, I mean he was right behind me on a different four wheeler, but he wasn’t on the four wheeler I was driving, right up a big rocky hill.  ! After that I was so proud of myself, and so was Papa. I went and told every one about it.

Singing ~Songs!
I have been learning to sing all kinds of songs. And learning quick too. It’s very exciting. Every time I learn a new paragraph or line I sing it to Papa. The new songs I’ve learned so far are Wayfaring Stranger, and Eastern Kentucky. I’m also will be learning And You’ll Be My Own True Love soon, the song from the Cold Mountain movie. All of the songs I’ve learned so far are Appalachian songs or you could call them old timey. Tis funny though, that all the songs I’ve learned yet are sad. You all know I’m a fun loving otter so you wouldn’t think I’d like sad songs so much.

Creating & Reading Books
I’m almost done editing a book I wrote and illustrated called Luke The Warrior. I’m making a copy of the book for myself. I sent the first one to my cousin Ben for Solstice. I liked the little book so much that I decided to make one for myself. After I had sent that off, I began starting one for myself. It’s amazing I did all the pictures for the book myself and the writing and some of the editing. The story is about this young mouse whose mother is killed by Dragon, a mountain lion, and her mate Fire. It’s about how the mountain lions try to take over the woodlanders land. It also taught some good lessons. Me and Mama Loba have been working on a scrap book. It is full of pretty pictures and remembrances so that when I grow up I’ll remember all the fun things I did with my parents when I was little.  Cause I don’t want to ever forget all the fun things and walks we did. We also made home made glue and used it to make the scrap book!:) We add things to the scrap book every time an exciting fun thing we don’t want to forget comes into our lives.

Sending you Canyon Love until next time!

Rhiannon

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P.S.  To Suzen, Danu, Dave & Sierra
Thank you so much  for the comments to my last blog!  You are so sweet!  My Papa sure looked hard for those boots. They are indeed very comfortable. What a wonderful winter solstice I had.  I hope you had a wonderful winter solstice too!  I love sharing my world with you all.  I send my love and best wishes.
Love, Rhiannon Cadhla Hardin!

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A number of the Blog Reader Survey comments mentioned wanting to read more Animá student, associate and ally experiences here, and so we’ve decided to begin running them from time to time.  We will welcome submissions from students whose existence is becoming more powerful or meaningful thanks to their studies, from event participants who were moved deeply enough by their time here to make changes in their lives when they got back home, and from those who have benefitted from health consultations or counsel.  Remember that is important to share the struggles as well as the revelations, leaps and accomplishments.

-Wolf

My Apprentice Journey:

Part 1: Spiritual Homecoming

by Resolute Michaels

Our first entry comes from our Apprentice Resolute, one in a continuing series from her detailing what we’ve witnessed to be huge growth, deepened self knowledge, the overcoming of ill serving habits, the building of new skills and putting them to use for a heartful purpose.  This introduction describes her spiritual homecoming to Animá and the Canyon, and will be followed later by her continually evolving story.Whenever we meet folks in the Canyon, the natural question is posed – how did you find the Canyon?  So, I decided for my first guest post, I’d tell my story.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that I would find my tribe here in the Gila region of SW New Mexico.  And I feel perfectly at peace.

I know that I’ve always felt an affinity with the Anima, that vital force enlivening, animating and connecting all things, even during the times when I was furthest from knowing myself and honoring myself and the Earth.  I remember a photo of me as a toddler, in someone’s yard, investigating a daisy. I remember the yard of our house in Annapolis, which was a child’s dream come true for magical, creative play.  Those were jeweled days in the endless summers, in a yard that appeared to go on forever and that seemed to have every plant in the world. I suppose it did contain every plant in my young world!  We moved from there when I was eight, and I was devastated. I became a loner, and cocooned myself into schoolwork, books and music.

Through my teen years, I became distracted with the task of growing up, without much guidance from parents, teachers or others. Even during forays into the out of doors where I felt a kinship, I felt strangely lost.  I would be in the woods, and not know the names of trees, animals. I had no one to show me and in the age before the Internet, no resources save for our outdated encyclopedia, and still not knowing what I was looking for.

As a young adult, I started a series of partnerings that I knew I would outgrow, even as they served me at the time.  My son, Michael was born, and I struggled to provide for him emotionally while providing financially as well. This brought me to what has become my career, in insurance claims, always, though, with the focus of helping, touching those who were victimized by accidents and emotionally hurting.  Being an empath, with no one to help me learn about this gift, I took on everyone’s emotions and struggles.  When this became too much to carry, I simply shut down my feelings and left home, as it were.  While this allowed me to function, it narrowed my life down to my own basic survival and that of my son.  And then, it narrowed further, to myself, all alone.

After struggling against a partner who was verbally and emotionally abusive, I took myself out of the situation and into these last ten years of reclaiming myself, a time of reawakening to life and living, joy and pain, ecstasy and despair, in turn.  I began to take on the explorations that most folks complete during their teen years and early adulthood.  And I felt very young, and inexperienced.  I began moving through a number of exploits, escapades and adventures.  With each one, I learned a bit more about myself.  Yes, I loved leaves. Yes, the woods still called to me.  No, I didn’t want to be distracted by TV or movies. Yes, I’d take a chance on a friend. No, I would keep my independence even as I again partnered.  And always searching, although I wouldn’t have called it that at the time.

One of my most recent forays was into pottery.  I took classes, set up a studio on the back porch.  With my hands in the delicious, pliable earth, spinning as on an axis, so much started to come clear. The earth began once again to speak to me.  I dreamed incredible dreams that turned my heart and mind to the Southwest.  I knew with a knowing beyond that I was to return there.  I started my search in earnest.  Yet, all the earthen beauty seemed to be covered over, scheduled, and packed with thrill seekers and those wanting to gain insight from outside sources.  Disappointed, yet determined, I continued searching   Then, as I read Loba’s and Kiva’s columns in Sage Woman, I went to the website, and devoured every page, every word, every picture.  And so I sent off my application for my first workshop with fear and trepidation – what if they didn’t want me? And if they did accept my application, what would I find?  I was so excited when I got Kiva’s welcoming response!

My first trip into the Canyon is now legend. Just days before we arrived, we learned that we would need to carry in whatever we needed for the event.  My traveling partner and I packed and repacked in order to be able to bring in everything ourselves, to make a showing of the independent women we are.  I only had a rolling suitcase and was willing to sacrifice to the water and mud if necessary.  So off we went.  With the help of my friend, we rolled that suitcase all the way through the Canyon, wheel tracks leaving a memory of our progress the entire two miles.  I was determined to carry it through every river crossing myself, and was so proud that I didn’t fall into the river!  We arrived as early as we could, but it was late enough to arrive at the seventh crossing at dusk. Kiva was ready with smiles and hugs. Rhiannon showed us where to wash the mud from our feet.  Loba had steaming bowls of dinner ready for us.  And then, when I met Wolf, I drank in his eyes deep and long, looking for the answer to my heart’s question – Is this real?  Is this truth? And the Canyon itself echoed the answer – YES!  And in the mirror of the Canyon, I saw myself clearly, I saw myself as love, I saw my heart as home, within my own body.

Living in the Northwest, I have had many opportunities to watch the salmon returns, silver muscle struggling up the rivers, some with water so low, blocked by dams, clogged by toxins and the silt of erosion. Still they come.  Still they struggle with all their strength, under the freeway, through the culverts. And many die in the attempt.  All in an effort to reach home.  Home.  I look back on my determination, using all my strength to make it through the Canyon, being drawn by a feeling as intense as it was mysterious. I would get there. Or die in the attempt. I now know, along with the salmon, what it is to struggle toward a place that calls, that is only a memory.  Home.  And as the salmon spawns and dies, I too forfeit all I thought I was, new life springing up, my heart young and innocent in all its wisdom of the ages. Home.

(photo of Apprentice & Supporter Resolute and my lovely daughter Rhiannon (c) 2008 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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The Search For Home

Part 1: The Search Begins

Excerpt from the upcoming book Home by Jesse Wolf Hardin

“There are more people wanting to break out of houses than wanting to break into them.”
-Thornton Wilder

“There’s no going home,” you may have heard them say.  What they mean, of course, is that there’s no way to go back in time, no retreat to the comforting arms of parents who always made sure there was food on the table and the cuts on our knees healed, no way to reclaim the houses we grew up in or the innocence that attended us there.

What a terrible thought, to never be able to go home…. whatever that word has come to mean for us.  Depending on the circumstances under which we left our parent’s domicile, at one time or other most of us experience a longing to return to whatever familiar landscapes — childscapes — once permitted us the feeling of being most ourselves in at least conditional safety and relative privacy.  Sometimes this meant a comforting house with a protective papa and a loving mama who served both delicious foods and bountiful hugs, a fort with walls that neither ill intentioned bullies nor freezing storms could ever breach.  A grandparent’s farmhouse with printed flower wallpaper and a porch with a squeaky swing.  An adobe casita with a torn screen door through which the chickens always got in.  Or even the basement of a red brick tenement house, featuring high windows with opaque glass that no stranger could look in.  For others the buildings of our earliest memories still house either real or imagined terrors, sometimes a father’s unforgivable abuse, and in other cases simply the oppression of suburban mediocrity, of tasteless art on septic white walls.  Or the stench of mildew on old carpets and the ominous clanking of the plumbing in an overcrowded apartment.  For them the hunger to return is no less great, though it be to the undeveloped lots where they could play free of not only violence but from manipulation, convention and constriction.  Or to a well-remembered tunnel under backyard hedgerows, beneath concealing stairs in a wilderness of alleys, or the trusted arms of neighborhood trees that conspiratorially lifted us above the line of sight of any supervising adults.

Either way, a toddler’s entire world consists of a relatively small amount of space, a playing room that also happens to be the place where they sleep, and a bathroom once it’s time for toilet training…. living as if nothing exists beyond the reach of one’s own hungering physical senses.  It isn’t long however before that reality expands to include a yard, a local park and then an entire sprawling neighborhood.  The growing child ventures out in all directions but returns home each time, usually well before dark.  Its movements back and forth trace the spokes of a wheel whose center remains essential and intact.  For most kids this reality, this home keeps on changing, but each new house or secretive yard becomes the center of their attention in turn, the center of the known universe.  We want to believe, long after we’re grown and on our own, that we could go back to that center if we “really wanted to.”   We’d like to believe against all evidence, that even if birds ate every bread-crumb left behind to mark our trail we could somehow find our way back.  Back not just to a time but to a place where things made “sense,”  where our senses were at home in the characteristic tastes, sounds, sights and smells or our childscape.

And with this taken away, perhaps we can’t go home after all.  At least not to those homes, not the way we remember them.  While some writers have described successful pilgrimages to the only slightly affected haunts of their childhood, for most of us such haunts no longer exist on the physical plane.  If our idea of home was a tract house with pink stucco walls and sprinklers in the yard, we could be in for a surprise.  Locate a recognizable spot on the map, hunt down the appropriate off-ramp and try to ignore the malls ever under construction.  The whims of progress will likely have altered the landmarks you once depended on to orient yourself.  Without a numbered address, one could easily get lost.  Even with some surviving reference point such as a hill too tough to have been completely leveled, a church preserved by the Historical Society (exactly two and a half blocks east of the house, and you passed it twice a day being while being driven to school and back) still the land may appear foreign, reordered and remade.  Even if you could find a high spot from which to judge the morphed terrain, pulling off a digital survey of this alien movie set, hold the surveyor’s mast up on the giving tops of the parked cars, shoot a line through the discount store and the waiting room of the MinitLube and determine the exact spot where you’d slept beneath cowboy or castle print covers, where wild things lived in forests beneath your bed….  even then, you might not know your home.

Which is to say, it may not look at all the way one remembered it.  There could easily be fuel station trade magazines and nondairy creamers where your comic books were once stacked.   The nightly walk down the hall to the bathroom may cross the floor of a hair salon, or point through the walls of several subsidized housing units, deep in the bowels of a giant forty-story complex.  Reach out in the dark, but there will be no familiar light switch.  Every direction would involve moving through unfamiliar terrain and arousing the suspicions of strangers.

For many of us it was never really our home anyway, perhaps just one in a long string of rentals, in a succession of inner city apartment buildings or the generic houses of the suburbs.  Our conceptual home often remains hidden in the “Never-Never Land” beneath the old maple bed, a place full of secrets and dragons and bears extending down through the floor and foundation, down into the soil and the depth of the stories it could tell.

It is the soil, and sometimes only the soil that lasts– home-ground, alternatively covered with concrete or asphalt, and successive waves of structures built with the flesh of trees and powdered gypsum-rock pressed into panels.  Forests are leveled, hills terraformed by men in roaring graders, and one building after another succumbs to rot and age or the fickle whims of a never-ending series of titleholders…. but beneath all this surface traffic the earth abides.  Microorganisms feast in it’s fermentive hold, working away in the dark, patiently feeding on those “made to last” materials standing between it and the warming rays of the sun.  As children we bond not only to the layout of the rooms, but to the particular feel and odor— even the taste— of a soil blend peculiar to the area we’re in.  Our subconscious bodies register their position on a grid of electromagnetic lay-lines, as they naturally attempt to orient in each new place we move to.

For someone like myself, it’s a difficult matter to determine which of so many residences could be considered a home to return to.  I remember the confidence I felt as a young boy paddling an innertube too far out into a darkening sea, depending on a recognizable shore light to guide me back.  The outgoing tide threatened to take me away to my destruction, and the further out I got the more lights I could see until I could no longer tell one from the other.   I’ve experienced a similar terror in the search for my roots, looking back for a single point of origin, a spot on the horizon that would tell me, unequivocally, that I was on the right road home.  Instead I see a plethora of too-bright spots, accompanied by the hazy recollection of jumbled numbers on faded curb sides and tin sidewalk mailboxes.  My head spins with the pictures of so many walkways, doors in dozens of different colors each leading into a place where I’d once tried to belong.

Where would I start on a search for my source-point, the geography of my mortal and spiritual beginnings?  Surely not the hospital where I was born in transit west to a “promised land,”  that three-hundred room concrete “birthing hut” with the aluminum chairs with their red vinyl plastic seats lining its waiting room, a sterilized stopover on the way to someplace else, just another “rest stop” on the highway that  happens to have a particularly high percentage of doctors and nurses milling around.   How about the first  “tract home” my parents ever bought, purchased before anyone had planted a blade of grass, with many of the neighboring structures empty and the smell of freshly turned soil still strong?  Definitely not the various pastel apartments with their chlorine-smelling pools with the impossibly blue bottoms, huge structures packed with folks I never met, subjected to the sometimes personal sounds of deliberate strangers bleeding through my bedrooms’ hollow walls.  Nor the garages I converted into black-light bedrooms after puberty cast its spell, yearning for freedom but clinging to free meals and shower privileges.

Whenever I travel through an area I knew as a child, I longingly scan it for anything even remotely familiar after the passage of so many years.  One time I found a particular house we’d once lived in, now inhabited by a family with no toys out front. I wondered if they’d let me go inside for a peek, hoping for the relief and affirmation a flashback might provide, hoping to spot something in the corner of the house that would confirm my future by verifying my past.  But of course I never knocked, unwilling to face their suspicious expressions through the locked security screen or be subjected to an interview through the peephole in a closed door.  Instead I took advantage of the coming darkness to walk around the side, defying the “Neighborhood Crime Watch” signs posted on its lawn.  I moved slowly past windows full of well illuminated residents brushing teeth in the bathroom and watching TV in the den.  I stopped at the rear corner next to the arresting smell of a honeysuckle vine still working its way up the trellis by what was once my bedroom window.  Though empty, the overhead light was on, and my attention was drawn to the spot where a poster of Bardot on a Harley once hung.  While the house no longer appealed to me, I felt somewhat betrayed by its easy acceptance of others. The wall was still white, flecked with little sparkly stuff just like it always was,  but now it sported fluorescent pennants instead.

All in all I’ve found a half dozen of my early residences.  More often though the buildings are long gone, replaced by a fast-food restaurant or “multiple-unit housing.”  At best I may have located the parks where I underwent romantic rites of passage, now too brightly lit and too well patrolled to serve these darker rituals.    Even the shopping center once billed as the largest of its kind proved long outdated and long since removed, sometimes making it difficult to come up with a single crucial landmark (so little exposed “land” these days, and so many “marks”).  Again, it seemed as if the only constant was the soil beneath it all.

Soil, and water.  Water running underground, rain flooding the streets, water escaping down cement ditches in a mad dash to the sea.  The rocky cliffs I once clambered down to launch my innertube have been terraced and developed, fenced and posted, but like the soil the ocean abides.  Some years ago I snuck down a driveway, past the resident’s covered motor boat  and down a familiar trail to a shellfish-encrusted rock.  I sucked in the collecting dark, faced the immensity of the mighty Pacific.  Behind me a place I no longer knew busied itself with foreign endeavors.  Ahead of me, save for two distant ships, lay an empty expanse I still associated with whatever “home” was.  What else could I do, there beyond the reach of the rear porch light, but take my shirt off and jump in?  Jump in, and forget about looking back.

(to be continued)

(you are welcome to forward or post this article anywhere you like, credited)

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Thanks again to everyone who filled out a Reader Survey, it was great to hear from you.  Two more have come in recently, that you may enjoy reading as we did.

To Christine and Yael: Having the impact on your lives that we do, makes all the work of sharing a delight.

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YAEL

3. What is your work, path or purpose? I am a mother of many, three that I have given birth to. I am a healer and feel very drawn to the Medicine Woman. My purpose, this I am currently learning about. I earn an income as a preschool teacher. I love learning with and from the children.

4. How did you find this blog, and what causes you to keep reading (or stay subscribed)? I first read about you in Sage Woman, which I happened upon at the Barnes and Noble two issues ago. I was so drawn in by Kiva’s writings; I felt she was writing to and about me. I can’t seem to get enough, I just keep reading. I am going through the archives, I have read all of Rhiannon’s posts, I have read the history and I still keep reading.

5. How has this blog influenced how you think or act? I feel a deep peace since I have been reading. Strangely enough the writings made me uncomfortable at first, but still I kept on reading. I have been searching and searching all my life, for what I could not have verbalized to you. But I feel a peace amidst the pain and chaos. I am learning to open my eyes, I am learning that pain is not ‘bad’. I a learning that to heal another does not mean you have to heal yourself first. I am learning more to respect myself , the earth, and others. Can you describe any particular instances of something you read here affecting the quality, tenor, depth and meaning of your day to day life? There was a recent article I printed out on “Hard Choices…” It was very painful to read, but I felt I needed to print it out. There is something I must learn here…something that is calling to me deeply.

6. Are you a subscriber? Yes

7. Which of the categories do you enjoy posts from the most? So far I am working my way through the archives. Rhiannon’s writings were wonderful, and I could not stop reading about the history of the Center. I enjoy Kiva’s writings very much also.

8. What topics might you like to see written about from an Animá/nature perspective, that haven’t appeared here already? I really enjoy reading about the canyon and I love the pictures.

9. What else might you like to see more of here? I am hungry for it all, so at this point whatever you post, I am going to read. Anything else that you’d like to tell us? Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I have been in such pain for so long and for the first time in a long time I feel like I am waking up.

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CHRISTINA

What is your work, path or purpose?  In the material world, I work at UNM’s School of Medicine, in the Human Patient Simulation lab.  I hang with manikins all day – it’s actually quite cool.  But that’s my income-work.  In my personal life, I’m an herbalist, a shamanic practitioner, and a Pipe Carrier in the Native American Tradition (Lakota, Cherokee, and Ojibwa).  My purpose, and the declared purpose of The Feathered Serpent Lodge (my teaching lodge here in Albuquerque), is the education and enlightenment of all peoples through intimate spiritual connection to the Mother Earth and honoring of the Sacred Feminine in each of us.

How did you find this blog, and what causes you to keep reading (or stay subscribed)?  I don’t remember how I found your blog/web site, but the exquisite posts I get from you – all of you – are what keep me coming back.

How has this blog influenced how you think or act?  Can you describe any particular instances of something you read here affecting the quality, tenor, depth and meaning of your day to day life?  Jesse’s posts on wild/wilding/re-wilding spoke to something very deep in me – I heard a psychic echo the first time I read one of his pieces – and I’ve been chewing on that subject ever since.  I’m an audial person, it’s all about how things sound (rather than look) for me, and it’s difficult for me sometimes to advance my thinking on a particular subject until I’ve found a hook to hang it all on.  Jesse’s writing often provides that hook.  I can only describe it as “nibbling around the edges of a subject” – the way you eat hot tomato soup, you know? taking little sips from around the outside of the bowl? – and then I’ll read something of his (and it’s not just him, really, you all do it in different ways) and suddenly I’m right in the hot middle and it’s all clear and I can proceed.

Are you a subscriber?  Yes.

Which of the categories do you enjoy posts from the most (see the Archives category list on the left side of this blog page)?  I’m interested in virtually everything you communicate – life in the Canyon is particularly appealing, and I LOVE the pictures.  You are living the life I began dreaming of for myself back in my 20s.

What topics might you like to see written about from an Animá/nature perspective, that haven’t appeared here already?  Nothing that I can think of.

What else might you like to see more of here?  Anything else that you’d like to tell us?  Just that I think you are grand, and have the greatest respect and admiration for you and what you’re doing “out there.”  I wish I could support you more regularly (I work at UNM, and you know what that means in terms of salary…), and I hope one day to visit in person.  “Seven rivers to cross…”

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People get very different impressions of Wolf, depending on their preconceptions and the circumstances under which they meet or read his work.  To back to the land types and conservative outdoorsman he is a Libertarian iconoclast, a throwback to another age and time who just happens to be a crazy tree hugger who consider the mountains his school and church.  Our more alternative friends and students tend to think of him as the rather psychic Intuitive and Counsel that he is, but manage to overlook his primitivist streak, or support for very non-liberal ideas like limited government and personal self defense.  Those living with him can attest that he is more of a warrior than his compassionate counsel would seem to indicate, and sweeter, gentler and funnier than his muscles or adament opinions might lead you to believe.  This picture of him was taken at age 5, at a time when it was trendy for photographers all over the U.S. to pose urban kids on groomed Shetland ponies (note that his legs were short and only extend halfway down the one-size-fits-all chaps).  Here you get a glimpse into the real Wolf, always ready to pay any price for adventure, and ready to break out of all restrictive conventions just like he broke out of the suburbs… mischievious and unreasonably happy, as he rides off into the sunset on his hero’s quest!

-Love, Kiva

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Coming Back to Earth!
Obama, Getting Real, & the Grounded Work Ahead

by Jesse Wolf Hardin <mail@animacenter.org>

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It is Inauguration Day as I write this, the historic occasion of not only the first President of African Descent and avowed opponent of the Iraq War but also seemingly the most compassionate and articulate in decades.  He will support important alternative energy technology, put a halt to the Bush era practice of using simulated drownings (“water boarding”) to extract unreliable information from suspects, and issue hybrid cars to his staff.  And he’s so sincere it make us want to trust him with our children and our world.  On the other hand, I find it alarming the degree to which all but our most conservative of our acquaintances appear to have lost touch with reality, no doubt high on hope and (after George W.) slap-happy drunk with relief.  I write this because it is dangerous to be self deluded or ecstatically oblivious and disarmed when the more exploitive and unsustainable systems of the civilized paradigm will continue to grow unabated.  There are no clear solutions to the complex quandaries of our times, no politician or person is either all good or all bad, and if anything the election of a President of mixed race should be a reminder than nothing is as simple as black and white.

I am more apolitical and tribal than politically minded, and more Libertarian and Green than either Democrat or Republican.  But even if one was a Liberal in the Democratic Party mold, there would still be much to be concerned about.  If a main issue was getting troops out Iraq, one should be angry about the thousands he wants to leave behind as “Support,“ ‘Trainers” and “Advisors,” or at least be questioning his tripling of American combat troops in neighboring Afghanistan.  If one is concerned about environmental regulation to protect what is left of biodiversity and habitat in this country, they should be appalled at his consideration of opening up offshore drilling in sensitive areas.  If somebody opposes the open ended captivity of suspects in Guantanomo Bay enough to applaud his closure of the Gitmo prison facility, then they should also be disturbed that the new President has made no moves to close the detention and torture facility at Bagram Air Force Base as well.  If you thought the State sanctioning of gay marriages is an important issue, you would have been disappointed over his refusal to support the issue.  If like us, you are disgusted by the shredding of Constitutional rights and liberties in the name of “national security” and fear a “V For Vendetta-like” future regime, then your cheers should stick in your throat over Obama’s retaining of Robert Gates as head of the Defense Department.  As head of the CIA, Gates backed the invasion of Panama to defend our “interests” against the corrupt thug we had helped elect, oversaw the Iran/Contra affair that included the funneling of arms to Central American death squads who were killing endless peasants and a smattering of American nuns.  He played a part in the removal of democratically elected Jean-Bertand Aristide in Haiti, helped prop up the terribly brutal Suharto regime in Indonesia, and ran the very Iraq War that the President is promised to withdraw from.

And regardless of one’s political leanings, our emotional response should be informed by the fact that the billions or even trillions of dollars that will go to the wasteful bank bailouts (one bank used the money to expand and buy another!) and other programs to “save the economy” will be at the expense of our children and grandchildren, who will face absurdly higher taxes, find the dollar worth less, and realize that a large part of America is actually collateral for Chinese and Arab investors who can call in their loans at anytime.  Barack may be an “environmentalist” (a term that we have for several reasons never adopted), but protection of wild places, clean air and rivers, open spaces and sustainable human habitat is simply not possible along with the endless population growth and nonstop economic expansion that he condones or supports.  Not only livable space and precious wilderness continues to be at risk from this modernist paradigm, but also rural culture, self reliance, regional self sufficiency and national sovereignty.

Regardless of who is ever elected our “leader,” they are restricted in what they can accomplish, can’t buck the special interests that funded their elections, and even if they wanted to they can’t sell notions like healthy population reductions or economic contraction, local production or regional autonomy, the repeal of the outrageous Patriot Act or some of the thousands of stranglehold regulations that rule every aspect of our modern lives.  No governmental edict or elected official can make the modernist paradigm tenable or sustainable, neither the unrealistic credit system, our current spending habits or growth patterns.  We applaud any bettering of governance or furtherance of liberty that this or any other administration might provide, but real change will require a shift in basic American values and evolution in lifestyles that few are ready to make.  It is not Presidents that will deliver us from this destructive artificial morass, but new precedents.

It is time to come back to earth after the election high, back down to the living giving ground where we do the real work of limiting family size and empowering as well as loving our children, growing organic gardens and learning to use biorgionally available plant medicines to heal ourselves and each other, ensuring ecosystem integrity while building old fashioned supportive community, protecting what matters most and slowly altering and deepening the values, priorities and goals of the society that even the most nonconformist of us cannot help but belong to.

(feel free to share this sobering and disquieting wake-up call with others)

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Enthusiasm

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.animacenter.org

“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”
-Harriet Van Horne

“To the rind!  If you’re gonna do anything at all, do it to the rind!”
-Taj Majal  (in a tee-shirt picturing a watermelon, chewed “clean to the green”)

Enthusiasm an often undervalued element of effective magic, in cooking as in life.  It is the enthusiasm of the flames that cook our meals, and the vibrant will that powers the slicing knife and propels the dipping spoon.  Without it the finest ingredients in the world would remain separate and inert, the pretty bowls feeling abandoned and lonely, the kitchen all too clean.  Without it the disenchanted diner has no positive recourse beyond raw fruits and vegetables, while the more penitent of the lot may opt for the self denial of microwavable dinners and self-flagellation fast-food restaurants.

It is this dearth of enthusiasm, not any shortening of the hours in the day, that accounts for the shift from aesthetics to convenience, from an affair of pleasure to a simple matter of utility.  In its absence there can be no such thing as “home cooking,” even if the food be prepared at home, and no benefit to eating beyond the base maintenance of the human machine.

Loba will have none of that nonsense.  Dance from stove to sink, and no meal will be without the rhythm of your pulse.  Smile, then praise the ingredients so that they will smile too.  Sing while you stir the batter, and for days the bread will sing back to you.  Laugh into your big ceramic bowl, and your guests may hear the chuckling echoes as you spoon its contents onto their plates.   She knows that no matter how unimportant we might think we are, how truly fallible or imperfect, we deserve finer treatment than our sour haste provides.  As living, breathing creatures we deserve to dwell in a state of excitement… to be fully enthused, and to reap the benefits of that enthusiasm.

And as she’ll tell you, the food also merits better than that, each product of life deserving our most conscious treatment, ardor and zeal.  Each is to be honored by the respectful handling, the fervor and ceremony in its preparation, the royal pairing with other worthy ingredients, the intention and success of the recipe.  The cabbage warrants acknowledgment and the doves, affection.  The dessert likes its horn blown.  For their sake as well as our own, we should remain as enthused in the eating as we were in the cooking.  Loba holds the celery out before her for a moment of recognition, even adulation, before placing it in her mouth.  She embraces the muffin, tickles underneath the chins of the asparagus, and kisses the apple before she bites.

Surely this is one of the great lessons of the Enchanted Kitchen: if one is to proceed (whether to cook, or to undertake a lesson or any other task), we’d best proceed without pretense or restraint, with the gusto that makes it both pleasurable and worthwhile.  With the zest and relish that enlivens our world.  With the enthusiasm that makes our disappointments seem negligible, and our triumphs complete.

(This piece is excerpted from Loba’s upcoming Animá cookbook The Enchanted Pantry.  Photo of Loba (c) 2008 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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I’ve often considered the ways in which the contents and methods of our teaching differ from most others, especially on the occasion of losing even one of our dozens of Animá course students.  At such moments I am painfully aware that I likely had seen it all coming and could have salvaged the relationship, ensured their continuing donations and lasting admiration by simply allowing them to subscribe to an appeasing untruth uncountered and unchecked, stepping back quietly as someone indulges in poetic rationalization or clothes self-compromise in spiritually toned self denial, or acts as if transcendence and self denigration were honorable mechanisms and goals, or seems to apply only to others an insight meant also for them and us all.  With only a degree of withholding and some comforting words, I might never had the few drop out, or leave a counsel session nonplussed.

It is difficult at the onset, to promote a practice that is based on response-ability, that leaves no one off the hook, hears no excuses, expects us to be true to our natures, honor ourselves and further our purpose without fudging, evading or excusing, a way in which we cannot define ourselves as victims no matter what hardships are set upon us because we are conscious decision makers and co-creators of our world and reality.  We leave it to religions to afford the security of being saved, for our time here requires our own solutions, and life on earth is a call to be and do.  We cannot afford students the certainty of dogma and solution, only the tools to navigate moment by moment through the ever shifting universe.  Unlike vested authorities or gurus, we will not take control of another person’s choices no matter how much they might sometimes prefer that, as we are here to empower, and they learn best from their mistakes and gain power from their accomplishments when we leave everyone plenty of room to make an unhealthy decision or do something counterproductive.  And because one’s choices depend on what we are aware of, we will not do anyone the disservice of holding back a painful insight, disruptive clarity or inconvenient perspective… even if it could result in someone responding that they have “grown past needing a teacher.”

I cannot bear to silently witness a man go through a separation claiming no attachment, and then dedicate to her a two year period of  self denial and celibacy while she explores her sexuality, desperately waiting for her to return and see him as a new man… while calling it “surrender” to the will of deities or vagaries of fate, cosmically discounting his deep personal anguish with statements like “pain and joy are the same.”  I cannot hear without comment, a woman telling herself that the husband she has love but insufficient passion for could become everything she needs if he would just go to counseling.  And our love for another student will not let us accept her attachment to depression and powerlessness, valuing herself largely to the degree that a lover or lovers desire her, wishing she could hang on to the one that she is breaking up with even as she reaches out to another.

The same is true when we are dealing with someone’s quandary over where they belong, who they are, or what they are to be doing.  Yet all of the anonymous examples above involve relationships or marriages that are  over or still in question, one of the hardest topics for anyone to accept advice regarding.  It is so personal, so tied into our identities and sense of worth, that it is understandably something we might rather would sort itself out in storms of private tears or years of slow erosion, rather than the abrupt and perceivably brutal light of day.  Whether we ultimately seem to be supporting an honest reappraisal or separation, or a healing and strengthening of existing bonds, we seek not a certain result but the student’s honest realization, deep no b.s. consideration, and then responsibly living with their choices.

Of the people cited above, one is bravely sleeping by herself as she reappraises her needs and relationship, doing the hard work and hearing hard advice.  Through this process she is risking losing her family, income, and the emotional support of a good and gentle man.  Whether she remains with him or not, she intends to never again fool herself about her situation and desires, and we are very proud of her.  The other woman actually distanced herself from us and these teachings after an earlier bout of advice about not honoring herself, something we could not blame her for finding difficult to swallow.  That we are able to advise her again, testifies to the fact that she came back and even enrolled in a Path of Heart course… prepared – like our other impressively committed students – to face and then utilize to the best of her ability even the hardest to hear insights and most difficult to implement counsel or realization.  We can give them all tons of credit for such effort, and precisely because they are so often given potential reasons – and reminded of their option – to balk, deny, pretend, dilute, diverge or turn away.   And along with the opportunity to face, engage, stretch, grow, commit, resolve and stay.  Together we take the mortar and pestle to make our medicines, reach out from a most real and uncompromised place to hold, and to remake, our deeply feeling world.

-In love and Service, Jesse Wolf Hardin

(photo of mortar and Marble Man globe (c) 2009 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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Awakening to the Spirit
———–Animá, Spirituality & Religion

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By Jesse Wolf Hardin (www.animacenter.org)

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The winding river canyon where we live is host to many dozens of now primarily indiscernible subterranean pit houses, homes once inhabited by the peoples that archaeologists call the Mogollon, but who knew themselves as the Sweet Medicine People.  And near this exact bend where we built the pine board hobbit houses of our teaching center, can be found the remains of the largest kiva in the area.  Kivas are the underground chambers dedicated to religious ceremony, and at least once such structure marks those places selected to be the center for group ritual for an entire region.  At certain significant times the black tressed natives would have walked from many miles both further up and down the river, gathering to exchange stories, to trade and to flirt, but foremost to attend or actively participate in the ceremonies and prayers that they believed would ensure their people’s well being.  Many is the retreat guest or student who has come to us with a tale of having heard the muffled sound of drums or flutes emanating from the cave-pocked cliffs, or heard laughter intermingled with the glug, chortle and bell like ring of the river as it rolls over rocks and plunge pools.

For them as us, all the world would have felt alive.  For people living so intimately with the land, everything would have felt personable and energized, endowed by a creator or creative force with a spark of spirit deserving of acknowledgment and respect.  The myriad plants springing forth from the unlikely alchemy of seed and soil, the complex creatures that provided humankind with vital lessons and valuable examples as much as they did clothing and food.  An energy or spirit vibrating in the volcanic rocks, glowing in the light of a setting sun.  Spirit in taste and scent, struggle and fun.  Given voice through the river, recorded in the patterns of tree bark, danced in the Fall spiraling of cottonwood leaves.  Spirit tracing its own movements, in graceful designs in weed lashed sand, and spirit empowering every giving person’s helpful hand.  Spirit in the hopeful child’s face, in the hearts and deeds of they who served love, truth and place.  Spirit taking flight in songs, echoing off the kiva’s earthen walls, and emboldening young alders to do the “impossible” by planting determined roots in what is an always unpredictable, shifting shore.

These immanent aspects and qualities of the canyon are no less discernible to the residents and guests arriving today, whenever we quiet the persistent commentary of the mind long enough, and they become too intense to ignore as we begin to reawaken our physical senses, our intuition and ancient dormant instincts.  They are, in fact, so vitally present that even the rare distracted visitor who is nearly unconscious of their surroundings, will still sometimes stop in mid sentence to try and gauge what they are feeling, wondering why they are responding emotionally when they intended to keep the conversation constant and superficial, or why they are know beset by repressed memories of unfulfilled needs or unlived hopes, missions or dreams.  At the least, nearly everyone experiences the canyon’s sometimes unsettling “enlivenedness,” usually leading to a sense of all things’ interconnectedness and the ultimate unity of their purpose and design.

This is what we call the Anima, the unifying and animating force of creation and proliferation, of adaptation and manifestation, life begetting life.  Animá (with the accent over the “a”) is not a religion but an evolving study and practice for living awakened, ultra-aware, purpose driven, choice filled lives… informed by the Anima and all elements of the natural world.  For the agnostic or atheist, it can be readily described in the language of new science – from the latest understandings of ecology and psychology to Larry Dossey’s research into the extended mind and Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of “morphic fields” – and for the religiously inclined, it can be explained as the God-given spirit that engenders as well as connects all things to one another, as the force of life and transformation set into motion by divine intention.

An Animá practice begins with awareness we can’t suppress, insights we can’t ignore, distraction and dishonor we can no longer tolerate, and a calling that won’t let us be.  It involves self exploration, growth and actualization.  Conscious interdependence, interpenetration and interaction.  Expanding empathy and heightened sensation.  Compassionate contact and reciprocal contracts with the inspirited land.  Such a life could be called spiritual by those so inclined, but a spirituality that neither denigrates nor denies desirous existence.  Life’s hungers, disappointments and pleasures are as catalysts accelerating our manifestation, transformation and growth.  Animá – like life itself – is an assignment that we of necessity sign up for again and again, each and every moment anew, promises kept and the impeccable dance each of us do.  It is love fully given, existence fully experienced… and our individual most meaningful purpose every day more fulfilled.

Awakening to the experience of being/belonging can be both transformative and blissful, a state of self-realization and intense mindfulness sometimes known as the shamanic state, “satori,” “samadhi” or “enlightenment.”  Such states are not so much about transcending matter or flesh as about reimmersion in the depth and breadth of embodied reality: deep seeing, deep tasting and smelling, deeply dreaming…. touching and praising the universe through the world that is not “ours” but “us.”  Contrary to what some traditions teach, enlightenment is neither forgetting the question nor figuring out all the answers.  It is casting a light, not only on outward form but on the inner recesses of truth and being.  It is the intense experience of conscious interpenetration, the wordless, timeless thrill of being propelled into realization, relationship and responsibility, challenge and delight!  Enlightenment is not to make things easy or safe, nor to spare us any lesson or assignment.  It exists to thrust us into the pulsing fabric of a rhythmic, patterned universe… and in this way, back into the fullest living of our spirit filled lives.

We are not, after all, the secular pilots of an unfeeling Spaceship-Earth, but rather, the blessed participants in the dance of embodied energies.  Singers.  Dreamers.  Praise givers.  As from a birthing hut we rise, forever changed and changing, revealed to be responsible celebrants of amazing life, agents of awakeness and caring, playmates of and vehicles for omnipresent spirit by whatever name we might choose to call it.  Christians, Buddhists, Pagans, Agnostics or Eclectics… together we can help co-create the world, not as the pawns of fate but as ecstatic organs of a larger whole, as the willful extensions of the forever miraculous.

In this way, our drums and voices, too, become part of the mountains’ and canyon’s longtime telling, a song for all the future’s waiting ears.

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