White-throated Sparrows, Leaf Litter and Whiling Away Time

Practicing Mindfulness in Nature Part two: 

Another outing, this time in the expectant daylight of May, Lucas and I find ourselves in a nearby small woodland in which I whiled away many an hour of my teen years. On the forest floor leaf litter scatters while a pair of squirrels take chase. We sit awhile and watch as they race about.

Bordered on one side by a residential neighborhood and the other by a golf course, the small ravine of mixed hardwood and softwood somehow maintains a sense of being unspoilt by all the nearby development. I know otherwise but am temporarily lulled by the wonder of the moment. 

Our heads on swivels, our mouths agape, we are descended upon by small birds. A flock of White-throated Sparrows has swooped in exploring the lower brush, hen-like, their tiny feet scratch through the thick layer of last year's decomposing leaves. There must be thirty or more of these dainty sparrows whom I am new to identifying. Black eye stripe, yellow lores and boldly white throated, they are slightly larger than the Song Sparrow, their cousin.

My son explains they are newly returned spring migrants. I recognize in them a shared delight in this little woods, leaves in bud, fern fronds still coiled up as  fiddleheads along the riverbank.

One alights on a low hanging branch to my left, so near that I could reach out and touch it if I cared to.

Heaving up his long lens and aiming towards this moment's object of our attention, Lucas, an avid birder and nature photographer, attempts a photographic capture. He snaps a quick succession of clicks and lays back down on one arm avoiding the discomfort of the ancient Hemlock roots which not so subtly wind their way down the sloped bank towards the river.

Another day in the same woods, his older sister Maria joins us as she often does. Their keen ears catch wind of another creature's sound and turn my eyes towards a good sized bumblebee.

"Mom, check this out!" They point to where the forest floor is moving. Air from the bumblebee's wing buzz is causing the leaf litter to lift in places. Humbled, I can honestly respond that I've never before noticed such an occurrence. 

When each of our three kids were little, they happily brought me back to the level of grass blades and ladybugs. Our youngest daughter Clara, Queen of the Calapitter's, was noted for her ability to be present to the insects she adored.  And although it was a time of great wonderment, I must admit that too often I was not fully present. Agenda driven by arms length lists of household chores and seemingly endless meals to prepare, my attention was often fractured. I never would have guessed that it would be my teenage children who would quietly urge me back to a mindful awareness of the natural world I have always loved so much.

Practicing mindfulness in nature is the act of losing oneself to the experience of the present moment as it unfolds in the natural world. In our stillness we find the ceaseless motions of nature begin to reveal themselves to us. But our choosing to pay attention is required, and if the natural world around us isn't worthy of our attention--what is?

Jill MacCormack

Amphibian Hunt and the Marsh Maiden

Practicing Mindfulness in Nature: Part One

Practicing mindfulness in nature is the act of losing oneself to the experience of the present moment as it unfolds in the natural world.

The fictional character with whom I've identified most recently in my life is the Irish marsh maiden from Lord Dunsany's The Kith of the Elf-folk. Wild eyed mistress of the night time marshlands, the soul of humans and their constructs are such a curiosity to her that they temporarily pull her from the rhythms of the night marsh towards solid land, daylight and a human form. Towards this end, her kin, the kith of the Elf-folk, fashion a soul for her from un-quantifiables such as "the gray mist that lies by night over the marshlands" and "the myriad song of the birds". Soon, she is off into the strangeness of a walking human body dressed in clothing, desperately seeking the beauty of the world but saddled with the responsibility and mystery of dinner table talk.

Like the marsh maiden soon after taking leave of her native home,  I often find myself questioning the ways and motives of humankind. In response to my own sense of confoundedness, I have a renewed interest in a wild re-connection to nature. 

And so I am re-becoming the nature lover of my childhood. 

In mid April, wet nights are particularly magical as amphibians are called out by that deep, ancestral need to be acknowledged by another.  And so, one mild and rainy night this past April my teenage son Lucas and  I headed out for a walk to nearby Moore's Pond to hunt for amphibians and see what we might see.

About a half hour into our walk, after the initial excitement of finding several species of toads, frogs and salamanders, we were drenched.  I thought we should turn around to head for home but Lucas thought otherwise and strongly suggested that we go on just a  bit further to a favourite side road. It was there that we made our discovery.

In the inky darkness, about halfway down the roadway, his flashlight caught a glimmer of something light in the centre of the lane. There before us was a sizable Northern Leopard frog, laying on its little speckled back, its smooth white underbelly facing the blackness of the rainy night sky. Stranded by who knew what, it was the very picture of death waiting. 

With bated breath we paused a moment straining our eyes to take in the scene before us.

I think he's gone mom" was my sons gentle reply. Disbelieving, I looked a little closer and soon pointed out that its breath was still rising. This acknowledged, we were called  towards action.

Earlier in the day I had strangely zippered a sturdy envelope into my rain coat pocket instead of tossing it into the recycling. Recalling this, I took it out and in a moment Lucas slipped it beneath the trembling creature and carefully carried it off the laneway slick with water. He laid him right side up on a bed of wet grass in the hopes that it might survive. We turned and walked back towards the shadows of the main road.

As we made our way back past Moore's Pond we noticed two frogs had been squashed by passing cars since we had been by about ten minutes earlier. We couldn't help but feel for these little creatures who were simply trying to safely make their way across the road from one waterway to the other in answer to the call of the wild. And what about the little frog on the side road whose life we had  possibly just saved? What exactly was it that had caused Lucas, my mild mannered son,  to strongly urge me onwards down that dark laneway when we had already felt satisfied by seeing any number of amphibians crossing on the main road? Had that little Leopard frog somehow been calling out to him for help? 

Spurred on by tiredness and the seeking of our warm, dry beds we quietly paced our steps to the brisk, uncertain chorus of spring peepers and the occasional toad. 

Upon our return home that night I thought of Lord Dunsany's words as he wrote about wild things and the little marsh maiden : "I chanced to stand that night by the marsh's edge, forgetting in my mind the affairs of men; and I saw the marshfires come leaping up from all the perilous places. And they came up by flocks the whole night long, to the number of a great multitude, and danced away together over the marshes."

June Nights Await

shreds of
wing light, tattered
soulscape, lit upon by
grace-little moth splayed out in joy-
my heart

Eye of the Beholder

"I want to work a lot of places when I grow up!"

"Like where, Lily?" I inquired of my almost six year old niece.

"The dump, an ice cream parlour-- I want to be a singer, an artist, a dancer, a hair dresser!" she excitedly and assuredly proclaimed.

The dump ? you might wonder to yourself as you read the otherwise typical list of a very girly little girl. 

The conversation occurred as we were walking up my little neighborhood side road to my house in the early am of a day off from kindergarten. Soon into our walk she spotted several small liquor bottles which someone had recently tossed. She said they were cute and I could tell that she wanted to stop and pick them up but foolishly thought I should make the conversation a teachable moment. 

"Wow, Lily" I exclaimed pointing to the ditch." Look at all the other garbage people have thrown away"--a Tim Horton's paper coffee cup and waste plastic lid, a potato chip bag--"Maybe people should really try hard not to buy things that they just use and then throw away! " I said as I tried to restrain her from picking up the dirty, drippy debris.

She stood there grasping my hand, itching to dive into the ditch, her little eyes bulging with the artistic possibility which lay before her.

"You know, nothing is garbage to me." she had said several weeks earlier to her cousins, my three children, who were visiting with her and her younger sister at my parent's house.  

In her sweet innocence, the world of waste is filled with artistic potential.  "Beautiful junk" was what my oldest daughter's kindergarten called it. And I can understand the delight--being allowed free range over transforming the refuse which no one else wants into the invention of your choosing. Isn't that at the heart of every artists dream of transformation? But I figured at this age her parents might appreciate clean and dry junk rather than what was in front of us.

Walking on I was flooded with more thoughts. The social activist/ environmentalist inside me got to thinking of the thousands upon thousands of homeless children living in dumps and slums; children whose very survival depends upon the refuse of the world. The possibility they struggle for is life itself. 

I also thought of what our little Island might look like in the not so distant future should we all continue to mindlessly consume plastics the way we currently do. Even so-called recyclables are a burden to Earth. It was not a very pretty picture which came to mind.

Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
"Our true home is in the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment. Peace is all around us--in the world and in nature--and in us--in our bodies and in our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace we will be healed and transformed."

What might the future world look like if we could mindfully and imaginatively transform how we engage with the here and now?

The gift of each new moment offers us the potential to make such transformation a reality. 

In peace,

Jill

                                                                                                                                    

Please consider commenting on the PEI Climate Change Adaptation

Also for your consideration: the role of and need for a child advocate on PEI

A beautiful junk example which would be worthy of modeling:

Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts

Happy Earth Day 2017

Earth Day 2017 and so many wonderful things going on to help us reawaken our connection to the sacredness of the living Earth.

An afternoon in the relative quiet of our little south facing front garden provided all the inspiration and sense of connectedness I needed to sustain me for Earth Day this year.

My three children, two delightful teens and one sweet preteen, my dear two and a half year old nephew and I all passed a wonderful afternoon digging about clearing out remnants of last year's garden and planning for this year's expansion. So many little discoveries awaited our curious, sometimes patient, unearthing.

Eight honey bees busily pollinating the early spring bulb bluebells--which we almost didn't plant last November. A large box of mixed bulbs, a late but most welcome gift, and the bluebells themselves an afterthought in the garden really, but so very welcome to the busy bees this day.

And a nest of three slumbering queen Bumblebees coiled in little earthly beds beneath a sandstone foundation stone lining the side of our driveway.

Many, many earthworms of assorted sizes and one very large dew worm.

A white cabbage butterfly fluttered by and a Tree Swallow swooped deep swells of sky high above the trees behind our house.

An Osprey called out its high pitched ode to spring returning to its nearby nest platform after feeding in the pond down the road.

A powerful Raven made the parents of an incessantly chirping baby crow in our neighbor's evergreen windbreak pretty nervous for a short time. Then it was off like the clouds and they all settled down for a while.

"It's a pretty hard day for digging outdoors today" was my little nephew's take on the afternoon. He dug in our little bed for a solid hour and a half, with a pleasant seriousness only his father could better, studied the honeybees, ran and played catch with his cousins, tree climbed, swung in the hammock, yelped out for all to "Come see this one guys" when in his very earnest digging he dug up a plump dew worm which was 9.5 inches long. We had the tape measure outside because we were planning our garden redo. We are expanding our little front edibles garden because our gardening efforts of the past five or six years have proven so delicious and bountiful that we are undertaking the joyful planting of even more good things to eat at the request of our two very interested, oldest kids.

Life is strange and wonderful. I thought of many things during our happy little afternoon outdoors together. The circle of life was not far from my mind as I played with my little nephew in the soil and thought of my dear sister, his mom, who is 31 weeks pregnant with her second child and eagerly awaiting meeting their new little person.

I thought too of my ninety year old grand aunt whose end of life party we attended last Saturday and who passed away yesterday afternoon amid the tearful farewells of her loving family. She will be buried in the graveyard down the road from my house, and hers, early next week. She comprised an interesting combination of spunk, generosity and warm graciousness. 

Life is precious -- all so precious and all so deserving of our mindful and loving attention.

This dear Earth can hold us in a myriad of ways, us the myriad of creatures that we are. But, and this is a big But, we must take better care of this tiny, sacred orb. The lives of so many utterly depend on our realization that the Earth is not here for our taking but for the caring and sharing of many creatures for years to come.

Special thank you to all my dear outdoor companions today--for helping me remember to keep close to the Earth, and to my son for so willingly teaching us all about the wonders and ways of the creatures we saw today. It never fails that when I take time to pay quiet attention to the living world, I am duly rewarded.

Happy Earth Day 2017
In Gratitude,
Jill MacCormack

Living, Loving Universe

Extend
your gentle ways
to all creatures, beings
so that goodness, kindness blooms with
each breath.

Jill MacCormack

Late winter is a wonderful time to consider the ways in which life wants to engage with us. We are emerging from the cocoon of snowdrifts and darkness with the sun's strengthening and lengthening daylight hours. What better time to re-consider the re-awakening world as one that is alive with potential to nurture and heal us of our sense of separation? What if we took some time to ponder the following excerpt and consider the sacredness of the natural world and the wonder of being an integral part of the living universe?

"At the cutting edge of contemporary science a remarkable insight is surfacing: the universe, with all things in it, is a quasi-living, coherent whole. All things in it are connected...A cosmos that is connected, coherent, and whole recalls an ancient notion that was present in the tradition of every civilization: it is an enchanted cosmos... We are part of each other and of nature...We are a conscious part of the world, a being through which the cosmos comes to know itself."

Ervin Laszlo 

Too oft we forget how deeply it all is connected. When we do remember, we can once again care for each other and for the well being of this achingly beautiful, altogether mesmerizing world.

In peace,
Jill MacCormack

Sarah and Sebastian Storm Day

Sarah and Sebastian are best friends. They've known each other almost their whole entire lives. They live in the countryside on a little Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They love their little Island and they are curious explorers of the world around them. Won't you come join them?

Sarah awoke early to the deep sighing of the wind.

She popped up and looked out her window which was covered in lacy ice ferns left by the deep cold night. The snow was swirling in frosty dips like a square dancer stepping high then bowing low in one after another do si do.

Just then Sarah's mother opened her bedroom door.

"No school today Sarah. Go back to sleep." her mother smiled. "Your father will be home today but I have to go to work. See you at suppertime!

Sarah pulled the thick layers of warm quilts up to her chin. I wonder if Sebastian will be dropped off today, Sarah thought to herself.

Sebastian's mom and dad both worked in the city like Sarah's mother and on day's off school Sarah's father kept care of Sebastian.

 

Sarah drifted off to dreamland and awoke for the second time that morning to the sound of her best friend's voice.

"Come on Sarah! Get up! Are you gonna sleep all day?" 

Sebastian laughed at Sarah with her great pile of sleepy red hair in a tangle around her face.

"I already had breakfast and I want to go outside with you." her friend said.

Soon Sarah was getting on her snow suit to head out with her friend into the snow. The evergreen hedgerow that bordered the property was a favourite place of Sebastian and Sarah's on blustery mornings in wintertime. They crawled in under the thick canopy of snow laden branches and lay back in the cold quiet of the hollow beneath the trees. 

Craggy bits of a gray green lichen called Old Man's Beard hung in shaggy tufts on some of the bare branches. Sarah grabbed a lichen covered twig off the snow beside her. She held it up to her face and Sebastian laughed at her. 

"You look like an old man" he said to her.

 Sarah giggled and handed it to her pal. 

"You try it Shun."

 He held it up and it tickled his chin. 

"These trees are getting old like great- grandpa. Dad told me this stuff only grows on very old trees."

Shun tossed the stick aside and looked out at the stormy day.

"If I was a rabbit this is where I would live in the wintertime." Sebastian said to Sarah as he shook an evergreen branch and powdery snow fell on his face. He rubbed his mitten on his cheek and brushed the snow away.

"Oh Shun" Sarah said. "You mean Hare, not Rabbit. Remember what we learned at school last winter. Rabbit's are at the pet store but Snowshoe Hare's live in the wild here. We saw their tracks last year in the field out back."

Shun remembered the little tracks which looked a bit like miniature snowshoes but smiling at his friend said he would always call them rabbits because he liked the word rabbit better. 

Sarah crawled out of their secret hideaway. The cold wind brushed against her face. Shun crawled out behind her. 

“I’m freezing.” Sarah said. "Let's get some hot cocoa. We can come back out later on." 

The two friends went inside to the warmth of Sarah’s house. They drank hot cocoa and played puzzles and painted pictures. Sebastian said one of his pictures was of a white rabbit hopping in deep snow in a blizzard. Sarah laughed at him because the page he held up was blank. Sarah loved how her best friend could always make her giggle.

Prince Edward Island is home to many species of Lichens; Old Man's Beard is just one of them.

To learn more about Old Man's Beard visit: https://flandrumhill.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/lost-beards-of-the-forest/ 

Snowshoe Hare tracks are some of the animal tracks you see in the winter woods and fields of PEI. To learn more about Animal tracks of PEI visit: http://www.cwf-fcf.org/assets/pdf/en/trackingwinter-72.pdf