October Colors, Cat Lessons and Canyon Updates
Autumn is truly wonderful here, as usual, with the first bit of ice on the surface of the outdoor barrels showing, every afternoon warm and sunny with a quality of light that exists no other time of the year. Catching the shifting colors with our camera offers another reason to take time off from writing for you all and switching to crawling through the willows and playing in the falling leaves. The clear skies have been perfect for Rhiannon’s latest obsession, a fascination with astronomy and hunger to be out each night pondering the mysteries and patterns evoked by the stars’ and planet’s brilliant light. We want to buy her a used telescope when we can locate a good one, as apparently there is a huge difference in image quality. “Kid’s” models have never been that useful for her, as anything she is interested in she approaches at an adult level, in both her depth of understanding and care she gives things. Kiva, Loba and I all grew up without feeling any need to call these celestial bodies anything but “pretty stars,” but Rhiannon’s desire is not only to sense her place on the continent and the earth, but Gaia’s place in the expanding universe.
Enjoying Arborea’s newest song as I write this, a haunting aboreal remake of the classic “This Little Life of Mine,” soon to be released for sale on an Odetta tribute album. Readers have been asking for us to write more about our discoveries in the best eclectic music, which I promise we will soon as we can make the time available. I have been consumed with correspondence course and conference promo, including spending a ridiculous amount of hours putting together what I hope will be a helpful and comprehensive outline for Darcey, Rosalee and anyone else helping by contacting potential conference presenters. The new conference brochures and flyers are done, and Darcey thankfully already distributed a number of them at the recent Plant Savers gathering in Tucson. Kiva and I are steadily catching up with our patient students, and it’s even possible we will be able to do some work on new course lessons and books before December.
It’s been sweet, how many letters and comments have come in about my Furry Buddhas post. Much appreciated! Please though, I implore you all to focus on the fact that these cat-taught lessons are meant to awaken, enliven, inform and inspire our own lives, to motivate us to make changes to be more like them and thus more our true creature selves… to reside in the intensity of present time, play with and delight in our food, to not let people’s opinions affect us and (as Resolute wrote to me) “let ourselves outside.” Our animal companions, like our children, are not surrogates or proxies living life wholly in our stead, enjoying what we think we have no time to enjoy, having the adventures we might decline to have. No, they are coparticipants in a life that we too are called to vitally engage, experience, co-create and manifest.
-Wolf
Categories: Announcements, Updates & Canyon Tales
