Beloved friends,
It is good to write to you again after spending the last couple of weeks on the East Coast spending immersive time with my parents. The trip home was complicated and lengthened by weather delay: I flew from Maine to Detroit to Salt Lake City to Seattle before the drive home. I lugged two bags filled with my mother's collection of cut, pressed, and candle-wicked glass, wrapped carefully in woolen clothing, the whole way. It took me three steps to lift the carryon into the overhead bin each time: I could lift it ground to hips, heave it hips to shoulders, then heave it up overhead. I wish you could have seen the look on the young TSA agent scanning my bag and trying to figure out what on Earth he was looking at!
I arrived home with a full heart and a weary body. And almost every person who I have shared yoga with this week has said that they are achy and slow and low, often followed by, "and I don't know why. In 30 years of teaching, this kind of uniformity of experience is quite remarkable, and it tells me that it's likely that there is a collective crash afoot after the early shocking weeks of our new political situation. This week, therefore, I'm going to speak to you of finding sustenance, which is what I've been gently tending to for myself as I settle back into my routines in the unfurling springtime on the Olympic Peninsula.
There is a lovely grassroots volunteer organization in my rural county who puts together a treasure trove of a weekly newsletter about local events relating to sustainability, resilience, equity, and inclusion. Last month they mentioned a seaweed identification workshop being sponsored by the county's Marine Resource Committee with habitat biologist Nam Siu from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. It was full, but I asked to be added to the waiting list, blocked the afternoon off on my calendar just in case, and lucked into a spot!
Friday afternoon arrived, sunny. I drove to town with the top down, and friends, I was slightly uncomfortably warm outdoors for the first time since last fall. I picked up my state Shellfish/Seaweed harvesting license for $17.40 and continued on to the beach, where I spent the afternoon tromping around in the intertidal zone with some game and friendly people, awash in delight and wonder, looking at seaweed. How had I never noticed that some of it – which I now know is Turkish Towel (Chondracanthus exasperatus) – is irridescent?! We tasted pepper dulse (Osmundea pinnatifida) right out of the sea – it tastes like truffles! I collected winged kelp (Alaria marginata) and sugar wrack (Saccharina latissima) to bring home, where I rinsed them in fresh water and popped them in my dehydrator. They turned out so delicious that after typing half this sentence I got up and went to nibble some out of the jar before typing the second half.
What joy to stand in the sunshine with my feet in the beloved Pacific Ocean upon which I lived for years, afloat. What joy to learn from a wise young local scientist, to chat with newly-met friends about what we were seeing, helping one another to identify and collect. How it lifted my heart to be educated by my county and state, for free, in how to responsibly and safely collect food from the lands we hold in common as a people. Ahhhhhhh.
Other events I've attended as I learn about my new home: low tide walks, during the day and at night, on the beach with our Marine Science Center, bird walks in state parks with the Rainshadow Bird Alliance (who changed their name like many chapters of what was once the Audobon society because John James Audobon owned, purchased, and sold enslaved people and opposed abolition), and a prairie saunter at a land preserve with some folks from the Washington Native Plants Society collaborating with people indigenous to this place (I regret that I do not remember which nation the indigenous herbalist belonged to, but this place is the traditional home of the Chemakum and S’Klallam people). At every event I meet people, and often make a friend. I'll be bringing some of my dried seaweed to the woman from the seaweed workshop who I asked if she'd be interested in connecting to forage together when the tide is right again.
Every event also shows me a new universe in my 30,000 person county in which people are connecting with one another and the life of the Earth in caring ways. If you are feeling distraught about the world but don't feel that political activism is the right direction for you, or if you are feeling alone, or if you are feeling called to do good but haven't chosen a form, I hope this can inspire. I promise you that there are people planting trees and gardens, counting birds, yanking up invasive plants, collecting trash, reading to children, holding the premature babies of strangers at the NICU, sorting food for the food bank, building and stocking Little Free Libraries, leading hikes, repairing bicycles, and all sorts of things that would love more hands right where you live. There are countless ways to build community, meaning, and do enjoyable things that serve the greater good, so many ways to let difficult moment in the world call you into closer connection with your community and the things that you value.
If you've chosen one, I'd love to hear about it!
Resources
We Belong to the Wild
Kate Siber
Kate Siber enjoys working outside via her laptop often from her home in Durango, Colorado. Her experience, shared in Outside magazine, of what it was like to try doing that in December and January have been inspiring to me as I encourage myself to spend time outside here in the Pacific Northwest while the days grow longer but the temperatures are still in the 40s. She says, "Around the fourth week of my one-person experiment, I noticed that I didn’t even have to think about going outside more often. It was becoming a habit without fanfare or inertia. I just walked out the door. It was as if the walls of my house were starting to feel more porous. There was less of a mental barrier between indoors and out. One morning it was 35 degrees and snowing, and I set up my camp chair under an eave next to our wood pile. My hands weren’t even cold, as if my body itself was adapting. It was actually starting to feel normal."
The Scripture We Create in Living
Some seasons and holy days that I look forward to because of the poems which have become traditions for me to share at those times. Mary Oliver's "Spring" from House of Light is one of these. If you were in class with me last week, you heard it; what a joy it was to read this every few hours for a week! There is an old yogic teaching that mantra, long-practiced, becomes a sort of living thing within us, like a heartbeat. I find this to be true, too, of poems that I read over long spells; there are many that I have been reading to folks now over decades. They have become my scripture. If you feel similarly, you might enjoy checking out the Poetry I Have Read to You section of my Bookshop.
When you shop there, I receive a 10% commission on that – and whatever else is in your cart for that purchase. (Privacy note: I see a list of the books purchased, but not the name of the purchaser.) Bookshop is a gentle way to support this mystic in my work. Choosing to become a paying subscriber for this newsletter is another! It takes me about a half day each week to write this, and frankly, only a handful of people are paying supporters, though I see that over a hundred people read it every week. If each of y'all signed up at $5/month or $50/year, that would be a big shift in my working and living. Pretend you bought me a cup of coffee once a month, perhaps? Sharing my newsletter onward so that the reach of my work grows is also a wonderful support! And of course, I'm truly glad to be connecting with you, with or without return.
Spring
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her —her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
The Greening
What a joy it was to pick up our first CSA box of the year last week! James and I are both habitual eaters and we love the way a subscription introduces a little chaos into our groove. The first spinach of the year was so good that after tasting a leaf to be sure of what it was, I popped a handful more in, just plain right out of the bag. The Lingeringest Item of the Week prize went to broccoli raab, which I had not chosen to cook before and had a vague sense was hard to cook. I was delightfully wrong; it was simple and exquisite: blanched it for one minute while sautéeing garlic and crushed red pepper in olive oil, dried it, tossed it into the garlic and oil for another 2 minutes. Absolutely incredible! Full recipe at The Kitchn, which is my favorite place to teach myself to cook. The blanching water was so beautiful that I saved it with soup-shaped intentions.
Zooming Out: Free for All
In looking to see if it was legal for me to share with you images from the James Webb Telescope, I learned that all such images are public because that is how NASA rolls: they do not copyright images. Because of course: we all made this possible, together, and the best way to keep getting funded is for the public to love the results of space work. My heart!
The image I wanted to share with you today is of a Herbig-Haro Object, which is a phenomenon that can result from the birth of a star "when hot gas ejected by a newborn star collides with the gas and dust around it at speeds of up to 250,000 kmh (155,000 mph), creating bright shock waves" This image shows a star and a protoplanetary disk, in which "dust grains clump together to form pebbles and eventually planets themselves."
I find this so moving: that dust grains together form pebbles and then planets.
Resistance
Becoming Ungovernable
"Did you know that in the 1940s, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services made a whole handbook on simple things you could do in your day to day life to gum up the works of an authoritarian regime? The CIA declassified this guide in 2008, and for some reason, it has become extremely popular again lately." You can download the guide, now equipped with modern illustrations, for free.
International Giving
If you are concerned about the devastation caused by the elimination of most of the development and humanitarian aid programs the US has long offered and are in a position to give, Vox has a piece on where your donations can fund lifesaving aid programs. Thanks to Aimee
Organizing
MoveOn, Indivisible, and Working Families Power have joined forces to create a newsletter called How We Fight Back. These are all well-established groups who have done good work, and I am hopeful to see them working together.
Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul
I've heard great things about the book Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul. "Alongside inspiring, real-life examples of highly sensitive world-changers, author Dorcas Cheng-Tozun expands the possibilities of how to be a peacemaker and how to create a positive social impact, affirming the particular gifts and talents that sensitive souls offer to a hurting world." The book elucidates six possible paths. Thanks to Calah