Canyon Updates: Dec 1 News & Blessings
Greetings friends, on a clear Dec. night. After three days of rare clouds and a session or two of rain, the battery-charging and skin warming Southwest sun is again ascendant and insistent. It has been freezing in the morning, and everyone has finally moved inside shelters to sleep, much as we love to be out of doors. Yet by noon today it was vest weather, Rhiannon playing ball as if it were a Summer day. With the parting of the clouds, seems to have come a return to brightened spirits after a week or so of difficulties and simultaneous deadlines. Somehow we have managed to proceed with student’s work and magazine articles with a progression of visits, doing the daily tasks required for the conference organization while still tending to our dear guests over the smoked-turkey day celebration. Kiva and I have been particularly grateful for Loba, the canyon’s emissary of delight ensuring the exquisiteness of each person’s experience. Here we see, left to right, Loba, Leah, Kiva and Nicole, with the Otter girl up front as she likes!
Among the blessings and relief, was the successful repair of the R.I.S.E. (Rising Appalachia) veggie-oil bus. RISE singer Leah and her friend Nicole had planned to only stay a couple days, so their breakdown could also be considered a blessing by having resulted in a longer visit and more live canyon concerts. Not to mention all the firewood they eagerly chopped, making them exceptional canyon guests for more reasons than the great music. It was certainly great to connect, ahead of the THW Conference which Leah and her sister Chloe will be performing at. In addition, Resolute’s “Owl Rover” was recently fixed by a local “good ol’ boy” who always charges us ridiculously low rates, and is ready to serve to shuttle her here next time from the airport, as well as to pick up and drop off featured presenters at the conference next September. A blessing was dear friend and longest supporter Nick, taking care of our internet problems when it looked like we could lose service, and the help that Steve has been. With Resolute’s assistance we were able to get Rhiannon a deluxe adult telescope, ready to feed the steller obsession of this special girl you all love. We are grateful to all her ancestors, for making it possible for her be in the world, excitedly training to be a powerful protector and sweet gift to it.
It’s also thanks to Resolute, serving as conference treasurer, that the conference account is ready to go. It is a blessing, as well, that Kiva was able to use new software for conference payments. Even while writing for SageWoman and sending counsel to another student every other day, she still managed to get us ready for the opening up of conference registration today. Blog readers and FaceBook friends registering first will be given gifts of Herbal instruction and one of my signed Medicine Woman art prints. See the post below, for details and the conference links.
We should soon be back to getting student work out on a reasonable schedule, and be back at writing our books soon. The deadlines never stop, but the initial work for the event will be complete and we will have caught up with the most delayed of responsibilities and tasks. I have returned to the writing of the in-depth “Awareness” essay and curricula, usually starting before daylight. So much wells us within me, words and even entire concepts that feel like they would be lost if I were to speak them without first writing them down. The courses, while assisting our students, are propelling this work forward, so that before long there will be a cohesive and largely comprehensive lifeways and healing practice recorded and made accessible. I cannot imagine anything, any life or mission, more satisfying.
In keeping with the Animá teaching on self nourishment and taking time off, Kiva and Loba will be taking a day next week to gather conifer needles in the higher elevations near the Arizona border, not only for medicine but as a component of their favorite new Winter tea. Tomorrow, I will be walking the river to take careful stock of beaver activity and river health. It will be my time for the wordless, with no thoughts intruding on the bodily groking of all that surrounds me, all that is part and extension of me. Time for fascination with the swirling dervish dance of leafless willow in the afternoon winds, and the artsy mosaic of dead cottonwood leaves on the forest floor.
As always, it is your own discovery of art and dance that I hope to inspire or instigate, closing again with blessings on your looking around and seeing your never-too-familiar world as magical and new again.
Love, Wolf
Categories: Announcements & Updates
