Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

Introduction:  The following vintage piece has been rewritten for our upcoming book of Animá, a discussion about the most misunderstood and misrepresented of reptiles, but also about what our fear of these secretive creatures says about ourselves.  It isn’t just the possibility of a serpent’s bite that scares us, we also tend to be terrified of whatever we can’t clearly see or understand, the darkness and the unknown.  This was driven home for me again yesterday on the trail by our cabin, when I involuntarily jumped as a small gopher snake wriggled up and over my bare foot… and when I then hesitated to pick her up, even though I could clearly see by the rounded shape of the head that it was a nonpoisonous species.  Before being released back into the wild, our little friend proved to be not only passive but downright affectionate… an agent not of cold blooded evil but of the insistent anima, of life awakening into life.  -Wolf

Serpent & Shadow

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.animacenter.org

Our lives are marked by moonless nights and sun drenched days as well as what artists call “chiaroscurro”: the delicate interplay of dark and light brought about by subtly shifting shadows.  We paint with light as much as pigment, but make sense of what is illuminated one must explore the unlit depths of meaning and being.  The dark serves us in the form of insightful pain, comforting silence, the stillness between periods of tiring activity, the death that begets life, and the blackness that gives birth to light.  In spite of these facts, there is no element or force of nature more commonly associated with evil in Western societies than the dark hours of night, and no creature more demonized than the dreaded snake we imagine lying in wait for us there.  To the degree that I have a different understanding of them – of learning from them and accessing their power – it is perhaps because of decades of deepened intimacy with a canyon as yet untouched by a bulb’s glare, and time spent in close association with the serpents housed there.

It was over twenty years ago that I spotted a rattlesnake swaddled in shadow a mere few feet from one of my playing infant daughters.  I choked back the urge to shout a warning, afraid of causing her to panic and thereby alarm the four-feet long beast.  It happened to be a black-tailed rattler, a species found only in a few mountainous areas of S.W. New Mexico and S.E. Arizona.  But while known to be less aggressive than its cousin the diamondback, its poison is every bit as potent.  A single bite to a child’s calf so far from medical assistance, could possibly mean her life.  To my horror, she continued walking in its direction, singing a favorite song.  A heartbeat later she stepped directly on the outstretched creature, and then over and past it without it ever coiling.  I watched her go on her way, and then came as close to the unperturbed animal as I dared in order to proffer thanks to the reptile that had for whatever reasons opted not to strike.

My daughter demonstrated not only a level of blissful ignorance, but also her freedom from fear of the invisible and the not yet known.  She learned to hesitate and shutter but not until she was older and in the city.  At that stage she explored every dark nook, and still laughed as she stumbled without a flashlight in the thickest of night.  We adults, on the other hand, all too often freeze at the blurred edge of the moonless evening or the sharp perimeter of the street or yard’s security light.  We might mistakenly attribute both the snake and the blackness to evil entities, due to the way each reminds us of our vulnerability or triggers bone deep flight from the realization of our mortal life’s end.  Or we may have learned to accept our biological limits as well as value what we neither can see yet nor understand, but what is most likely to send chills up our spine is still the terror of the unknown and the nearly universal fear of change.

No wonder it arouses strong feelings and critical dogma.  The snake is an often concealed agent of mystery and danger, a representative of the shadow world and cross cultural symbol of unavoidable transition as it yearly sheds its skin.  The meaning of life itself can be discerned from a reading of its meaningful molt, with the spirit and anima continuing on as our flesh and energy is repeatedly cycled back into the earthen alchemical cauldron from which it sprouted and branched.  The snake’s molting skin is emblematic of our temporal creations and fragile illusions, as well as those exactly defined personas we pray will outlast all transition.

In societies where nature is generally considered to be base, dirty or evil, the serpent is reviled.  Indigenous peoples, peoples living near to the land, have never been as quick to abhor the rodent-reducing reptiles slipping through their granary roofs.  Examples of snakes treated as a positive, informative embodiment of life are found among many primal cultures: coiled within the womb of the African “black goddess,” wrapped around the Celtic and Teutonic effigies, held aloft in rainbow colors by the carved image of the goddess Una in aboriginal Australia.  The Sumerian “Great Mother Serpent of Heaven.”  The Venezuelan Yaruro’s “Puana the Snake,” creator of all.  The writhing passion of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent of the Maya.  Snake-hearted Paghat of the Near East.  The serpent and the planet-body, the snake and the feminized Earth were seen as one indivisible entity.  Thus for early Egyptians, the symbol of the cobra served as the hieroglyph for the word “Goddess,” and from her comes the egg, “Maat”:  a word meaning both “matter” and “mother.”

The rattler is prominent in Native American mythology, marked by its propensity to warn us first with the distinctive buzz of its tail, the buttons of its rattle made of the remnants of its shed skins.  They were often revered as agents of the Spirit who could avenge human affronts.  Bites were punishment for sacrilege, or the harming of a fellow snake.  The Comanche, on the other hand, would only kill one if it failed to rattle, presumably on a ninja mission of vengeance.  Other tribes such as the Talawa and Tarasco wouldn’t hurt one under any circumstance.  The Luiseno and Shoshoni regarded a snake-bit camp dog as a sign of failed spiritual duties.  Most refer to them respectfully as “Grandmother” or “Grandfather,” in deference to their spiritual significance and power.  Rattlers repay the Chitimacha of Louisiana for a historic favor by guarding their houses while they’re away.

Of all the known American rituals involving serpents, the Hopi Snake Dance is the most widely known.  Many of the animals they use are rattlers, held in the teeth at a point five or six inches behind the head.  This portion of the dance occupies less than a half-hour of the nine day ceremony for rain, but fascinates the snake fearing ethnologists and jumpy observers.  They’re pulled from the enclosure called a Kisi one at a time by costumed participants until each one has been danced with, then they are placed in a circle of sacred cornmeal by the Antelope priests.  Women scatter more white cornmeal over them, before they’re grabbed by the Snake priests in great handfuls and carried to the four directions to be released.  It’s then the snakes’ job to reenter the underworld, and there ask the Thunder Gods to bring the much-needed rain.

By affirming snakes’ right to exist, we affirm proliferate, sentient, outlaw life.  Sensual life.  Sexual life.  In the Yogic traditions the energy of life and transformation is known as Kundalini, serpent energy that rests at the base of the spine in the sexual chakra.  It spirals in a timeless state, a unifying fire that extends upwards to that atrophied portion of the modern human brain, the source of shared instincts and dreamtime appropriately labled our reptilian cortex.  The spine is the conduit for the life-force, the trunk of the sacred tree.  It’s the arousal of the Kundalini serpent power that reunites the false dualities of good versus evil, spirit versus matter, body versus soul.  It’s our conscious retrieval by the Garden of Oneness.   It’s the re-membering of our selves, of our selves as the planet-body Gaia.  With Kundalini we have both human nature and greater nature on the rise.  With the Greek Oroboros – the snake with its tail in its mouth – we have a complete circle, nature forever consuming itself without diminishment, a corporal as well as spiritual homecoming.

Here is the source of mantism, telepathy, intuition and healing, the power of the Earth to know and to cure itself.  It is the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, breaking free from the hardening concrete. In spite of what you may have been told, the snake is velvet soft rather than slimy.  It is a blessing.  It is a teacher.  It is a manifestation of anima and spirit provoking us to wake up and pay attention to the world under and around us, including those scaled and voiceless soothsayers living nearest it.  We sing for her, stoop to apologize for any mistreatment and to praise her for her teacher’s role.

The serpent and dark are not threats so much as opportunities, with all manifestations of nature in and around us ready to inform and empower, and with darkness being the fecund womb from which all possibilities arise.  Both the shadow world and its resident snakes are in ways always right here in front of us, unseen among the dried grasses and lichen-covered rock of our still wild souls.  They wait not be to ambush us, but to welcome us back to the real world of inter-coursing dark and light.  To wholeness and balance, to the wondrous cycling of death and life.

(Post and share freely…)

(All photos (c)2009 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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WHISTLES:

Now I mean penny whistles (or tin whistles) not just some body whistling. I love penny whistles, at first I fancied bagpipes. I wanted the Irish small pipes that were in Moor Child. Mama Kiva got me a music dvd so I could hear how they sound. I decided I didn’t terribly like the sound. Besides they are hard to get and are expensive. So right now I’m content with penny whistles and flutes. The flute I have right now is side blown and I can’t play it very well but I’m getting better at it. I can now play sally gardens on my penny whistles!  Sally gardens is one of my favorite songs, I’m hoping to learn how to sing it too soon.

I will have to add more of my favorite singers to my list besides the sad Kentucky Blue grass songs. Tom Russell is another one of my favorites he makes some very good songs. Tori I think you all know I love, and the bands of Omnia and Fawn are some other favorites. All a rather strange mixture, but you can love mandilons and penny whistles at the same time. I’ve always liked a mixture of celtic, german, and Irish songs but is wasn’t untill Mama Kiva  got me the dvd’s of Fawn and Omnia That I went crazy over all of those songs.

THE DESK, RESOLUTE & OWL:
We had a desk that had been sitting out side for weeks, waiting to be used. Papa put up shelves and that night I helped him put my books up. After that Papa went and got the desk and put it underneath the treehouse. So I’d have a work space to read and work at. The desk also has drawers, so I put drawing materials in the top one and toys and things in the other two.

I was so excited when Resolute got here deciding to stay about 10 days. As a gift for her I made her a owl embroidery and me and Mama Loba glued ribbon around it and put it in a frame. We are going to miss her. We had a incredibble time up on the Owl mountain, we picked rose hips and yarrow and indeed had a lovely picnic and I made Mama Kiva and Resolute invitations with fancy lettering. Which was lot’s of fun. I’ll never forget the lovely mint chocolate pie we had with it.

BOOK:

We continue to do what we can to get our book out, I’m a Medicine Woman Too!.  A nice woman named Kathy reviewed it for the upcoming SageWoman magazine so that could help, and our friend faery artist Katlyn from Mermade Arts is going to announce it to all her friends and clients.  If you could mention it to people that would be great too!!

LOVE:

I just want you to know that I love all of you!  You are my bigger Anima family.  My friends and tribe!  Sure do wish you the courage to make your life as magical and purpose full and fun as mine!

Otter Hugs,

Rhiannon

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Our beloved apprentice and supporter Resolute has been with us this past week, what a joyful thing! Yesterday we all went on an adventure up to the high country in search of elderberries, rose hips and more. Kiva drove the jeep up the steep mountains for miles, while we searched the mountainsides for Oregon Grape, which she found in a few places, and dug up some of the bigger plants’ roots. It’s always amazing to get up into the higher altitudes, where the spruce trees laden with usnea and the miles of aspen trees feel like a fairytale forest. Once we reached the top, we unloaded our hefty picnic cooler, our gathering baskets and such and began the search for plants. We were able to harvest a bunch of perfectly ripe rose hips, but unfortunately the birds had already beaten us to the elderberries. With the lack of our normal monsoon rains, some things were looking a bit dry. There was lots and lots of yarrow, however, which we were really excited about! Resolute and I had a lot of fun picking the dear little yarrow leaves that were covering the trail to the spring, while Kiva and Rhiannon explored the steep slopes, and Kiva returned with happy hands full of treasures.

Our picnic was incredible! Rhiannon was so excited, she had made lovely invitations with special calligraphy that she learned and practiced especially for the event. And at each guest’s place on the picnic blanket there was a beautiful hand-lettered invite.  We were celebrating not only the joy of being all together, but Resolute’s birthday! She had brought us a bunch of rock cornish hens from the city, which I had stuffed with green chiles and onions, and roasted over a fire the day before, along with some peppers and onions. I’d also made a lovely cheese dip with goat milk and a variety of cheeses, blended with red wine, chiles, garlic, and toasted pecans. We brought preserved grape leaves, fresh green beans, crisp apples, cucumbers, red onion, olives and more! What wondrous combinations we made for ourselves as we mixed and matched ingredients in our grape leaves and in our bowls. But of course we had to leave room for the grand finale, Kiva’s Mint Chocolate Cream Cheese Pie! Covered with real whipping cream, it was totally irresistable! We also enjoyed some wonderful mulberry tarts that Rhiannon had made, and some Prickly Pear/Grape Cordial that Kiva had made. And we sang Happy Birthday to Resolute, who got all teary eyed at one point cause she was so happy to be in such a beautiful spot where she could see all the mountains below.  It made her feel very wonderfully owl-like, so we decided to name the spot Owl Mountain.

Grilled Stuffed Cornish Hens with Green Chiles
Saute 10 medium-large mild green chiles (I used Anaheim )in olive oil until browned and tender, mix with diced raw onion, and stuff inside the cavities of 5 Cornish Hens. Grill about 5 inches away from a bed of wood coals until cooked all the way through, about 30-45 minutes (depending on how hot, and how many coals you have!)

Goat Cheese Dip with toasted Pecans and Red Wine
1/2 cup Merlot
1/2 cup goat milk
2/3 cup soft goat cheese
2/3 cup semisoft cheese, extra sharp cheddar or goat cheddar
1/3 cup toasted pecans
1-3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 or 2 roasted chiles (optional)
Put all ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth. Pour into a glass jar and refrigerate until ready to serve. Enjoy with roasted veggies, meats, etc.

Hope some of you may be inspired to have a picnic of your own, to celebrate the harvest, someone’s birthday, or simply the beauty of the day!
love, Loba

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Preface:  The following is another taste of my nonfiction written for other than the usual audience, a tale sad as well as sweet in its ageless truths.  It is the story of a friend of mine I seldom see any more, a wounded war vet complicit in all too many unnatural deaths, seeking to deeply reengage hoth nature and life… and also the story of a man, hunting in an ancient and sacred way not just for an animal to eat but for redemption and reconnection, and not just for a soul mate but for congress with the soulful land.  His story is evidence that, done right, the hunt can become a holy and heartful quest for meaning… and that true love can be as elusive as any deer.

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THE HUNT

A True Tale of Land & Longing

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.animacenter.org

Letter From Joe To His Father, November 1967:
    “Got my first deer today, on my 16th birthday.  Imagine that!  Used a swell Springfield, and took a picture of Pa squatting next to it.  Feeling fuller than I ever have, sad and satisfied all at the same time.  Spread cornmeal near his mouth where he fell, like I read the Sioux used to do.”

Joseph’s been hunting the rugged mountains of the Southwest every Fall for a full two decades now.  It’s on these long rambling walks, carved osage bow in hand, that he thinks about his deceased father the most.  Usually he pictures him standing like a tree clinging to the vertical banks of a Dakota dry wash, anchored by roots of will and unspoken love of place, resisting the storms of change in proud silence.

His dad had always been a stoic sort, who seldom spoke about how much he loved his wife.  But it was clear from the half century they spent together through thick and thin, and from the way he regularly visited her grave after she died, head bowed and hat in hand.  He always drove his old station-wagon out to the cemetery when it was too hot or stormy for the exercise of casual sentiment, at those times when nobody else was likely to be there to notice the tear in the corner of a softly blinking eye.

Nor had the old man talked much about his love for the treeless hills and rabbit grass where they lived, but it showed in his allegiance.  Seldom did he go even as far as the closest town, except for essential supplies like seeds for planting or a good deal on motor oil.  Neither county fairs nor rumors of a circus ever seemed like a good enough reason to travel more than thirty miles in any direction from the place he called home.  His idea of a vacation had always been seven days in a row where you didn’t have to go anywhere, and nothing less than a funeral could draw him out of state.  His “boy” had inherited the same stick-to-it-iveness, and in time it would become the source of his greatest suffering.

Perhaps that’s what being “indigenous” is all about: a certain unwillingness to leave, passed down from one generation to the next.  True, the boy grew up to commit his life to a different skyline, several states to the West — but they both adhered to the same primal creed: find the place that feels like home, and then stay damn close to it.  For Joseph this meant the southwest corner of archaic New Mexico, ten miles from any satellite dish, thirty miles from the nearest unscrupulous real estate agent, a two hour drive from any yuppie boutiques or New Age workshops, six hours from what passes as the halls of state government…. and over a thousand miles from New York and the site of the collapsed Trade Center, from Miami rush hour traffic and “The World’s Largest Mall.”  It meant a certain watershed, a particular canyon, an exact bend in that river that maps called the Frisco.  But to Joseph it would always be the “Sweet Medicine.”

Letter From Joe To His Father, Nov. 1973:
    “Not sure I’ll ever be able to hunt again.  Thought about taking the Marlin to look for squirrel, but it just isn’t the same anymore.”

He didn’t start hunting again, in fact, until ten years after the end of “that crazy Asian war.”  And when he finally did, he was determined to make it a sacrament, an art, a quest.

He hadn’t killed anything bigger than a fly since getting back from Nam— had promised himself, in fact, never to eat another piece of meat until he could take it in the ways he imagined the Native Americans took theirs: with love and with prayers.  He’d seen too much blood spilled without a pause for meaning, the squealing hogs hoisted on hooks above the slick linoleum floors of the Custer slaughterhouse, the bodies of pajama clad Viet Cong, the amputated arms and legs of his fellow marines shipped home in black plastic ziplocks.  The boy hunter, the lover of ribs and chops and gravies now asked that nothing but vegetables and breads be served him…. until that magic moment when he could make the taking of life sacred again.

When Joseph next killed it wouldn’t be because of either necessity or orders, but rather, as a rite of passage back into the food chain— into the cycles of birth and perish, spirit and flesh.  It was going to be a ritual, as all the best hunting had been before meat started being something that comes from a cold cellophane wrapper.  It would be the re-welding of a link to his and our ancient primal past, a rite of passage into the responsibilities of life through the ministration of an honorable death.

Letter To The Author, December 1981:
    “Made a fine bow, the old way, and covered it in rattlesnake skin.
“Hunted near the land once, and spent another three days checking out the area between Cuba and Chama.  Sure felt good to be hot on a track again.  Didn’t see any fur this week, but I’m sure I will next.”

Joe was a very “particular” fellow, and he could only see it happening one way: with a stave he’d scraped and cured himself, loosing an arrow fitted before a ceremonial fire, unleashing death like a song, like praise, like love.  At that moment he would know himself as inseparably connected to the deer he would finally eat, and to the spirit in all of life.  With the release of the string he would be washed clean…. and perhaps in the process, find himself just a little bit closer to home.

He found a scoped rifle lacking for a number of reasons, and considered taking an animal at long range out of the question.  It reminded him of the arcing mortars and laser guided “smart bombs” that prevent the predator from locking eyes with his prey, the killer from feeling the terror and indecision of that which is about to be stilled.  No, it had to be a bow, hand made from wood he gathered in North Dakota after his daddy died.  He’d use arrows made true in an ancient shaft straightener found in a New Mexico cave, and fletched with the feathers of a road-killed hawk.

After all, a bow would bring him closer to the quarry — in a deliberate act as intimate as making love, and as intimate as blood.  He would revel in the holy connective moment: that second when the four legged becomes conscious of the price it will pay for its inattention, and the two legged assumes responsibility for its intentional demise.  Joseph sought no exemption from the turnings of the wheel of mortality or the unyielding laws of karma, but rather, an opportunity for personal redemption— redemption that required his re-becoming a conscious participant in the dialog and dance of death.  This time he would feel in his own chest the animal’s lungs, aching from a futile uphill run.  He would wince from the shock of the arrow, as it slices between the ribs and on into the beating heart of his deer.

Yes, on top of everything else it had to be a deer, and not a dove or elk.  For reasons only Joseph understood, no other species would do for the sacramental spilling— whether a ten pointer or fork-horn, lithe Sonoran whitetail or heavy mountain muley.  Maybe he wanted to see his approving father again, reflected in those brown saucer eyes.  Or maybe it would symbolize the closing of a circle: a man returning to what he remembered as the beginning, so that he could finally start again.  Either way he passed up shots on javelina, as easy as it was to locate and approach them.  Sun dappled turkey were entirely safe, even when he was lucky enough to surprise them chasing grasshoppers through the windswept beeweed.  Gorgeous merganzers and gambels, immigrant ibex and white fleshed fish might work their way back into the larder later, but not until a maiden carving of dark red venison.

“No way around it, this is the year!  Be watching for me to surprise you with some steaks.”

Letter To The Author, November 1988:
  “Made a medicine bag out of brain tanned buckskin, and filled it with cornmeal.  Saw several deer from a primitive tree stand, but the one old boy was smart and stuck to the cover, while other three were illegal spikes and not for me.”

They said Joseph wasn’t one to “settle for less” — not that he could afford the finest things, but that he knew what he wanted in life, and would rather go without than accept any substitutes.  These included things like an old Smith sixteen, quick to the shoulder.  A vintage Dodge truck, even though parts where hard to get and the insurance nearly double.  And a certain little piece of hard-to-get-to New Mexico property, when it seemed no where else would do.  He’d had plenty of chances to get married, but at fifty he was still keeping one eye peeled for “Mrs. Right.”  He was holding out for a gal who would get as excited and teary-eyed as he did, gazing at a pine forest in first light.

I knew Joseph to turn down dates with exotic gals from the African dance class because he found them too “cityfied,” and he stopped dating a beautiful equestrian sugar-mama after she failed to appreciate the smell of the soil when it rains.  He passed on a shot at a passionate poet, because she didn’t write any sonnets about New Mexico, or the Gila, or the rising Rio Frisco in the Spring.  He’d wait as long as it took to find a woman who already shared his hopes and needs, values and beliefs.  He wanted someone pre-equipped with the necessary intensity and commitment, arriving in the midst of signs and omens with her own canyon dreams.  Someone with hungers that nothing “out there” could satisfy.

Ideally, she would have a child’s capacity for laughter and awe, and a woman’s wisdom and lust.    She’d be familiar with the smell of freshly emptied shotgun shells and Tularosa catfish flaking and blistering over a backwoods fire.  He pictured her loving both Hank Williams and Miles Davis, and being quick to skip and dance even when she thinks no one’s watching.  She would likely sport the brown skin of an Indian or a Gypsy, of someone who spends her best hours outdoors— with a river of dark hair coursing down a slender but muscled back.  She’d stand strong in the face of beer swigging trespassers, but cry every time they put on a sentimental video (“Please let me go!,” Heidi sniffs.  I want to go back to the mountains with Grandfather and Goat Peter!”).  But if there was a single most important requirement for the woman of his dreams, it was this: she’d have to fall crazily in love with the same splendid chunk of planet Earth that he did, joyously tending to its every need whenever she’s home, and aching to get back anytime she’s away.

Joseph would promise to the right woman, the way he was promised to his land.  He’d pledged to protect that forty acres from every present and future threat, as one might guard the safety and happiness of a daughter or wife.  And as is often the case, paying for the land turned out to be a necessary first step in its guardianship.  With no work in the lower counties, he found himself three months at a time in too-trendy Santa Fe…. much, much too far away.

Letter To The Author, November 1993:
    “Still missing that ornery redhead, even though it’s best for both of us that she split.
“Passed several does grazing at the golf course on the way home.  A mite aggravating, I admit.  But no matter what else I ever do, Fall will always be the season of the chase, its clarion call leading me to that heaven that is the solitary hunt.”

Mercy, how he resented the barrios and ranches being  perverted by the twin processes of gentrification and urban sprawl— but he hated the artificiality most of all:  the framed walls, stuccoed over in such a way as to look like sun dried adobe.  The over-priced hotels masquerading as ancient Indian pueblos.  The poker faced tourists, hoping to look like locals in their mass produced concho belts and blow-dried hair.  He liked to tell people how putting new shopping strips in the old city was like putting a polymer stock on an antique Winchester.  He was sure something was fundamentally wrong about a community where plain ol’ coffee was hard to find, but every convenience store had a selection of flavored espresso you could buy.

He’d found a good paying but uninspiring job (perhaps the most insidious kind of all!), working for a middle aged divorcee with a half inch of black goatee she proudly refused to pluck.  A sympathetic ex-girlfriend gave him a good deal on a windowless studio in her fenced backyard, and the bulk of his check went to cover the installments on the land.  What little cash was left over went to cover gas, medical, and an occasional box of number 8’s just to keep the eye in shape.  Every morning he’d get up and step outside, then face south towards the fabled mountains of his need, glowing like an Oz or Valhalla in his mind.

Oddly enough, it seemed like Joe saw deer everywhere he looked since he got a place up north.  They’d work their way down from the Pecos high country and the range they call the Blood of Christ, graze right up to the ski resort at the upper end of town, and walk out onto the fairways of the Country Club below.  They’d trip the electric doors of Santa Fe malls, and feed on the flowers bordering manicured lawns.  But come season there were seldom any bucks to be seen, and Joe only hunted in season.  On trips from Colorado to the Gray’s Ranch on the border with Mexico, he stalked like the best of them.  But quiet and purposeful as he was, the old vet hardly ever got within arrow range of anything with horns.

“How about that sweet Jane?,” we’d prompt him.  She loves gardening, and can cook up a storm.”

Letter To The Author, December 2000:
“Got a chance at a nice buck, but sunk my arrow in an alder instead (Note: there’s no way to dig a homemade point out of the wood without wrecking it).

“Trying to get down to the land more.  It ‘s a struggle, but then I guess it’s not supposed to be easy.”

Some people think it’s his hard-headed obstinacy that keeps ol’ Joe going.  Maybe so.  But as much as anything else, it’s been a belief in miracles that puts the powder in his barrel and the wind in his sails.

Joseph may have found that good things and genuine characters were getting few and far between.  He could see that the odds were considerably stacked against the success of any noble or meaningful pursuit.  But at age eight he’d discovered an obsidian arrowhead buried in a bleached deer skull, and it had been the heeding of a dream that led him to his special land.

Just because something wasn’t likely, didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.  Humanity could grow to distrust developers, tune in to the wisdom of children, and cherish every wetland big enough to float a duck.  We could create green belts around the cities, and regrow the neighboring wildlife habitat.  It was possible that someone could start making an affordable double, and marriages could start lasting forever.  That dams could be lowered for the sake of tummy-pleasing salmon.  Raw logs could remain in the local economy instead of being sent overseas to multinational mills.  Leather bound books could become more popular than plastic laptops, and the ugliest hound find a home outside the pound.  He could get that deer during the last daylight hour, on the last day of the season.  And his long lost love might be only a river bend away.

Perhaps she’d surprise him on his favorite hiking trails, and be just as pissed off as him about the increase in foot traffic.  Or she could show up at a Barry Lopez reading, intolerant of shoes and anxious for true love.  It was even possible she’d follow the river all the way down to his place, in search of the few deep spots cold enough for the elusive Gila trout.  She could call him tonight, saying she’d heard he “knew a lot about guns,” asking to meet and discuss the value of a silvered Colt revolver or inherited Fox double barreled shotgun.  She might even be a cute UPS driver, looking beyond the shoulder of the road to the mountains between Silver City and Old Frisco.  Could be that making deliveries was just a way to cover the rent on a little house on the outskirts of town, while she dreamed of moving to the country and finally settling down.  Or maybe it would be an impassioned artist, showing her discomfort at having to wear make-up for a presentation at the Ducks Unlimited auction.  A friend of a friend, coming to help with riparian restoration.  A wild foods gatherer, in search of her archetypal hunter.  She might arrive at any moment.  And any season, could be the season he gets his deer.

“This is gonna be the year. I tell you!  I can feel it!”

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A Newly Revised Section from our Upcoming Book:  “Home: Reinhabiting Self, Place & Purpose”

River Dreams:
A Paean to Water
by Jesse Wolf Hardin

www.animacenter.org

Sleeping outdoors as we do, the sound of the flowing river course through our dreams as through our lives.  Last night I awoke to rains that failed to come during the normal July and August monsoon season, the musical rhythms of the season’s first torrents.  It is hard to imagine it, given that the Rio Frisco is currently low and narrow enough in places to leap over… but it was just such conditions in 1983 that resulted in an early October flood that filled the canyon from one side to the other.  At any given point we know we could be encountering either a deluge or a drought.

But let no one ever say that we don’t have running water.  Whenever it storms, the sweet water runs off our metal roof, runs down the gutter and into waiting containers.  When they overflow we run out to transfer buckets from one barrel to the next, and when we run out of water in the house we run outside to get more!

Dipping out a cup full, it’s hard not to be affected by its crystalline clarity, intrigued with the way the surface curves up the sides like a cat rubbing against a leg.  We remember that without this most vital liquid the digestion and assimilation of nutrients would be impossible.  The universal solvent, water reduces the nutrients necessary for both plant and animal life, dissolving them in the bowels of the soil as in the twists and turns of the human digestive tract.  It’s capable of penetrating most barriers, and when flowing it can wear down even the hardest stone daring to impede its willful passage.  Water constitutes up to three fourths of a person or animal’s total weight, and similarly three fourths of the planet’s surface is covered with it– three hundred million cubic miles of fresh and salt water.  The soil is full of it, it flows beneath the driest deserts, and even the most solid of rocks harbor some moisture within.  Looking at satellite images of the mostly blue covered planet, one might be tempted to name it Oceanus instead of Earth…. a world of water.

On the other hand, while the deepest trenches of the Western Pacific could easily swallow the breadth of the tallest mountain, the oceans are but a shallow film relative to the mass of the Earth, similar to the thin skin on an apple.  Competition has gotten fierce for the ever scarcer fresh water supplies, and underground aquifers are fast being depleted through wasteful surface irrigation and the growing demands of industry, urban golf courses and suburban lawns.

Like so many others in the arid Southwest, the Rio Frisco is drained of every drop long before it gets to the sea.  In the United States three hundred and fifty billion gallons of ground and surface water are removed per day, from reservoirs that are increasingly polluted, depleted and despoiled.  Counting the water used for the production of their food as well as their household usage, citizens here on average require an astounding fifteen hundred gallons per person per day.  It can take up to two thousand gallons just to produce a pound of Western beef steak.  During recent court wrangling over the disposition of the Rio Grande, it was revealed that more water was being demanded by the growing cities than the area’s farmers – mostly to water ornamental non-native grass and keep the state’s many hotel and motel showers flowing.

Arriving in this remote canyon in the Fall of 1979, I was literally the first protector of its precious river in 1,000 years, fencing off parts of the land to protect it from the free ranging cattle.  For years I had no partners, no focused land-loving mate or offspring devoted to and helping me protect and serve this special place, replanting and restoring its banks until at least one section of the canyon was a thriving riparian forest again.  In time, willows stabilized the banks, wildflowers attracted pollinators like bees and songbirds from afar.  Before long, blue heron alighted to nest, and noisy flocks of ducks chose this part of the river for a rest stop on their lengthy migrations.  Beaver have built dams, preparing the area for the possible reintroduction of endangered otters.  Close on the heels of this the influx of vegetation and critters, came our students and retreat guests, touching their authentic natural selves, awakening to their needs and dreams, and each discovering in their own way the river that runs through them. Once loved and healed itself, the Rio Frisco offered the chance of healing to all those coming open to her gifts.

In the Frisco, as perhaps in all rivers, we witness the rise and fall of dream and fortune and the passage of our gifted mortal lives.  We discover ourselves in its reflection, our moods ranging from shallow to deep, alert or asleep.  Like the river, we can be full of ourselves, spilling out over our edges, exceeding the capacity of our containers, expanding beyond our imagined limitations as we seek to penetrate and inundate the universe.  It’s at this point that it becomes a magical or spiritual thing, as we join in as participants in the ongoing riparian Chautauqua, the riverine revival.  Freed of rational constraint and incessant doubt we partner with the crowds of buzzing bees and spinning dragonflies, rapt grass and attendant trees made whole by its touch.

The rivers, in turn, need our tending, not only protection but attention and celebration.  Thus the was it blooms and shares its bounty at Kiva’s healing touch, and responds to Loba’s cascading voice of gratitude echoing off the cliffs.  It may be that all things natural have an intrinsic sacred value, but through ritual, attention and intent we make them even more so.  Investing the rocks with centuries of prayer, nourishing the soil with our promises.  Swelling the river with generations of practiced magic and directed love.  It’s often a part of the belief systems of those peoples living closest to the land — that the river knows when we’re singing to it, and knows when we’ve stopped.  And that it holds in its bowels, the memories of all life’s songs.

Ancient river-informed peoples from the Euphrates to the Rio Grande spoke of something like water, continuous and contiguous, that we’re all a lasting part of: what we call the “anima.”  They saw the similarity between the physical/spiritual cycles of life and death, and the water cycle’s endless circling back into itself, the balance-within-change that so personifies nature… sometimes symbolized by a “Round River,” a circular watercourse with each part feeding the other.  Here perhaps is the real meaning of the expression “going with the flow”… not malleable or easily coerced, indifferent or directionless, but rather, willingly and intentionally choosing to move in the cyclic course of our own true natures, and that of evolving life and purposeful spirit. Students of the river know that we, like it, are forever changing… and yet, in some manner or capacity, that we also stay, that something of us remains.  That we, too, are dissolved by an energy like the sun, returning homeward like the rain.

So do we of many cultures and colors speak of the power of the “healing waters.”  The sinuous touch of a “holy river” blesses as well as baptizes, the chill embrace of a beckoning lake cleanses the mind of the worrisome wordage that can take us out of our bodies and present time.  Mineral seeps and hot pools are considered therapeutic to bathe in or even drink, and we can benefit from ingesting generous amounts of liver-flushing and flesh-hydrating fluid.  But just as important may be the way we are affected by simple proximity to the example, gentle sounds and relaxing negative ions of running water.

A favorite thing for me to do after a day of typing on this laptop is to walk down the the river, stand in the gently moving current, then falling backwards into its welcoming aquarian arms.  Falling, in fact, back into balance, and into sensate myself.  My mind hushed, the cool flow commands the attention of my entire being, and I find myself tripping-out on the shifting opal patterns of the river surface.  Like the dynamic flow of life and death, the forms, the ripples, the glimpses of the faces of slaughtered creation and departed loved ones wash downstream before my very eyes— and yet continue to exist there, flowing, in front of and around me.  With my hands in the river I can feel the water moving through my fingers.  I can neither grasp it nor hold it back, but when opening my hand it becomes instantly full again.

Tears become rain that becomes a stream, and then turn into anxious rivers filling the oceans’ bed to the brim — though only to be called back to the clouds once again.  Molecules of water dance in the lightless subterranean tunnels as well as on the bright mountain winds, participating in a vast and constant migration without ever really leaving the Earth that host them.  If contained or restrained they immediately seek to leak out or evaporate.  If swallowed they’re soon spilt back upon the earth.  Thus water, like spirit itself, is consumed without diminishment, and changes form without depletion.

Who can say which to call the origin, the ocean or the cloud?  Or the both joyous and grieving human heart.

(post and forward this piece freely)

(photos (C)2009 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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Betting on Ourselves:

Novel Objections to the Health Insurance System

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

Yes, I am among the millions of unassured Americans.  Unassured by industry claims, administration promises and congressional intentions when it comes to health legislation.  No, I am not one of the privileged, able to slap down multiple plastic cards and receive the kind of A-1 care reserved for the well insured, looking down my nose at the less fortunate.  While our work and purpose includes healing others, my family and can’t get medical insurance even if we want it.  We don’t qualify for existing state and federal health insurance because our land is considered an asset, and yet not anywhere near enough money comes in to pay the premiums on even the lousiest policy.  It is a stretch for us to make small payments to a private subsidized clinic that serves our backwoods community, a wonderful doctor and staff who nonetheless lack the equipment to conduct many tests, and who have to refer their patients to the big-city hospital whenever the condition is serious or requiring surgery.

As a technically impoverished healing school, you might think we would be among the first to champion a new system of universal care.  Not!  The larger and more standardized a system is, the less personal, regional, flexible and adaptable it becomes.  And as poorly managed as private enterprises of any kind can be, it is the official government run systems and programs that have the greatest potential for mismanagement and abuse.  In the hands of bureaucrats, even something as seemingly benign as health care becomes a means for the observation, manipulation and control of a country’s citizens.  Of all the so-called solutions, insurance co-ops make the most sense to me, so that participation is strictly voluntary, and its members get to vote on who directs it.  But frankly, even the very concept of insurance seems largely absurd to me, unnatural and objectionable.

To begin with, the majority of people with health insurance will pay far more in premiums during the course of their lifetimes, than they would have spent direct-paying doctors.  If that weren’t the case, the insurance conglomerates would be losing money instead of making the billions and billions of dollars in profits that they do.  In addition, in an environment where there were no insurance companies, the costs of health care wouldn’t be nearly as high as they are now.   Providers can charge the insurers more than they would individuals, leading to doctors ordering expensive and often unnecessary tests that they otherwise wouldn’t have.

A problem with the very concept of insurance itself, is that it tends to make people more dependent and less responsible.  Kids sent out into the world with the insurance of a financial safety net tend to be more careless and cavalier than those teens and twenty-somethings who know they can’t count on their parents to pay for every mistake or bail them out of every jam.  Similarly, people insured from childhood on have proven to increasingly focus on treatment after the fact, than they do on prevention.  Subconsciously if not consciously, folks may feel less need to concern themselves with the effects of the foods they eat or the exercise they miss, when the believe they can always turn to a doctor to treat the heart disease and adrenal burnout their lifestyle choices may have caused.  For the same reason, the longtime insured are also less likely to ever learn how to treat themselves, even when dealing with simple conditions that are easy to both diagnose and affect.  They’re less likely to pay attention to their own bodily signs, to experiment with changes in the way they eat, to become familiar with herbal and other natural remedies, to seek advice from an experienced relative or midwife, or to visit and support community herbalists and natural healers.

If that weren’t enough, I am at a gut level repulsed by the very way in which insurance works.  All my life I have done what many thought was impossible, doing things differently than others, taking extreme risks, following a dream with little money and little common sense, but also little self doubt and even less restraint.  In essence, I bet on myself again and again, bet my life and belongings, even my future.  I was all the more careful and tried all the harder exactly because there was no backup, no fallback plan and no net, knowing that I had placed everything I am and own on “myself” in the “first”… “to win.”  It galls me even to be forced to pay car insurance we can’t afford every month, on a Jeep we drive less than ten miles to town and back, forced to bet our scarce funds on a game where I only get paid anything if I screw up and have an accident, or fail to notice some other driver screwing up in time to avoid the collision.  There is something seriously wrong about a government threatening us with jail unless we participate in some profit-producing game, especially one in which the only way for us to win is to lose!  And now they want to force me to pay for a health care arrangement where I get fewer benefits the better that I take care of myself, where I have to get sick or do something unaware and hurt myself in order to get any payback, and where I only win the lottery big if I come down with something serious, chronic and largely incurable.

We might better place our bets on our selves, on our driving abilities and the human body’s natural inclination towards health.  That way we’re more likely to pay attention to how aware we are being on the highway, and on how our bodies feel as well as how we are treating them.  It’s said that the worst thing that could happen this year is for the Congress to fail to pass on national health bill.  It would indeed be tragic for some us with no other way to get the high dollar, high-tech help.  On the other hand, doing nothing in the halls of Congress is always better than doing the wrong thing.  And it may prove that those without sanctioned insurance plans may be most conscious, concerned and caring… the response-able, responsive ranks of the growing unassured.

(Jesse Wolf Hardin is codirector of the Animá Lifeways & Herbalism School, with Kiva Rose: www.animacenter.org.  Feel free to share and post this piece)

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Greetings to you all.  It is chilly morning as I write this, the temperatures dropping each night for a week now even though the afternoon remain in the 80s.  At this rate the cottonwood leaves will begin their shift from green to gold early, and I’m inspired to take time to go take some photos of the Summer foliage while it is still in full swing.  Before long many of the bird species will move on, and the elk will start their rut madness, announcing the arrival of Fall with their bugling flourish.  We never did more than a couple of Monsoon-like thunder showers, but managed to get enough slow rains to provide for the canyon’s green growing beings.  Not the least of which has been the stinging nettles, growing higher and thicker than previous years, one of the most nutritious of all plants.  Below you can see Loba and Rhiannon, preparing a batch after a morning of careful gathering.

We had an unexpected visit by family for the past week, a stirring of emotion that was very sweet and very exhausting.  Kiva still somehow got some of her many waiting herbal consultations finished, and I tended hundreds of emails as well as meeting magazine article deadlines and adding more to my expanding Awareness piece.  Soon she needs to shift to creating the Herbal Conference website, and updating the Animá site including the new Mentorship and 8 week course descriptions.  To anyone thinking about studying with us, I suggest waiting to consider between the demanding year long Mentorships and what will be the new topic-specific courses.  Kiva has no more room for Mentorship applicants at this time, and I will be accepting only a very few more due to the intense amount of student/teacher interaction involved.

Sales of I’m a Medicine Woman Too! have slowed considerably, with most of our community having already purchased them, and with it having already been announced to much of the herbalist and healing world.  Further exposure will depend upon getting the word out about it to a wider audience, something that some of you could be of help with.  Suggestions include telling us about publications we could approach, writing book reviews for your local papers and magazines, posting an announcement on forums and blogs, and so forth.

We just heard back from one old friend and ally who is going to review IMWT! for his site and newsletter.  Walkin’ Jim Stoltz is a prolific singer-songwriter and one of the finest of human beings, a true gentleman with a huge heart not only for people but for every living thing on this precious planet.  I had the honor and pleasure of performing with him in the 1980s and 90s, inspiring audiences with my pre-rap monologue woven between Jim’s soul stirring stanzas, his deep baritone voice reverberating like the voice of the mountains themselves.  And no wonder!  Unlike all too many nature proponents and ecological activists, Jim has lived the life he exhorts, walking thousands of miles of trail on what has become a lifelong journey of deepened intimacy with the natural world.  He does not just sing about or for the untrammeled wild, that essential wildness and earthen beauty sings through him.  We recommend checking out Walkin’ Jim’s Website, which includes images and tales from the trail, a place to share your own wilderness stories and reflections, and a Kid’s Corner with activities and opportunities for children.  Forever wild, Jim… forever wild.

Resolute will be here again soon, this time helping with ideas for organizing the Book of Anima, putting the conference together, and mastering the difficult InDesign program in order to begin preparing our completed manuscripts for self publishing.  She is not only a joy to have around, but gives attention to her growth and uses her time to assist and give back.  Until her Friday arrival we will be trying to get back to those of you who await, and move ahead with all the essential projects awaiting our attention.

Enjoy the poem below.  And have a great week, friends and students, staying close until we speak again.

-Wolf

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Intro:  The following is the latest poem by our Kiva, and what will likely be the first in a thematic series.  Those of you familiar with her other poetry will note that this piece features not only a new mood but also a fresh rhythm.  Rather than a subterranean river, an inward journey of mystery and transformation, this new work seems to be an evocation of a world and identity waiting to be assumed, an above ground flow of life giving waters that propel us forward into our own fresh ways of being, giving, doing.  This new collection will speak of the Medicine Woman and the healer’s connection to the wondrous plant allies, but the call is for each of us to root, bloom and help heal others in our own individual ways.  I hope that it moves you…  -Wolf

A Wild Remedy

(From the Forest’s Edge)by Kiva Rosewww.animacenter.org

standing at the center of this circle
with my gathering basket and medicine bag
so many years worth of wildflowers
gone to dust, carried out on wind
that moves around my ankles
like a small animal, wailing
with the fever that keeps
me restless and watching,
still calling for the rebirth
that’s always rising
one wave following the next
the tides of our healing
receding and then reviving

when I shake my head
to clear it of your cries
leaves and roots come
flying from my hair in a flurry
of dirt and foliage and the scent
of the earth rising in a storm
heavy with rain, rampant with thunder
wild with the dance that drives
me from day to day
my arms full of herbs
and the hurt that haunts
my people, the wounds
that refuse to heal
until I dress them in bark
and resin and the breath
of my fervent prayer

I weave green lichen
and spiderwebs into
cloth, dress your wounds
with my tears, give myself
to the rhythm of this work
the pull and ache of
what I am called to do
the mantle of elder leaves
falling across my shoulders
before gathering on the ground
shaking and shimmering
before fading back to leaf mould
and dust

the skin growing back
the edges knitting until
you can’t even remember
the scar until I trace it
with my fingers from memory
the knowledge of how you hurt
and how you heal
a history that my body
cannot help but hold

goldpoppies and meadowrue
red hyssop and the motion
of my hands as I bathe you
in the fragrance of the forest
the magic of the land seeping
into you and bringing you back
pink as new flesh and breathless
from the dreaming you traveled on
to be reborn into this place between
worlds and words where the flowers
wear faces and teach us always again
how to be human and whole

——————-

(Artwork by Jesse Wolf Hardin.  Share this poem as you like…)

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