Category Archives: The Writing Process

Zinnias–Thoughts, and A Poem

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Dried zinnias from Lovin’ Mama Farm –left in a hot apartment, still gorgeous

Very soon, my dear writing compatriot and beloved friend, Sue Cummings, will be publishing a memoir about how she became a writer; specifically, how she became a writer through the magic of the July Women’s Writing Retreats up at Pyramid Life Center in Paradox, New York. I have attended retreats there since 2014, and met Sue in 2015 on a sun dappled path near the lake.

This July, several of us had hoped to attend in person (for the first time since 2019) but the B variants of Covid-19 struck many in our online writing community and struck hard, with serious health implications for everyone who contracted it. We decided caution was best.

Four of us met remotely and wrote and wrote in the intense July heat of our respective homes (New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey and Maryland). We came to understand that the experience of Adirondack summer writing camp had been planted deep within us. We brought forward those memories of the loons and owls and osprey–along with the serious intent of our fellow women writers from over the years–and created new memories and new writing.

View across the swimming beach at Pyramid Life Center, Paradox NY.

Here is the poem that came to me, almost whole, one Wednesday morning before our group met for lunch on Zoom.

Zinnias

Unlock the door
Click-thunk.
Enter the heat warily
Sniff the air for dead mice
Listen for wasp intruders
Smell only warm old wood.

Gaze on zinnias
crazy-haired, crisp curled petals
not lush pink, not glowing gold
anymore.

Swirly whirly on their way to done
on their way to death--
brown-gray leaks from the leaves.

Two days before
eight zinnias gleamed green-stalked
wrapped in brown paper
cut ends dripped
on the quick walk back
from the farmers market

(that bustle of unmasked throngs)
While white-snouted I
won't let go
they have let go
of sense
of wariness
to splash open faced to sunshine,
dogs, tamales, tubs of lemonade
thick lemon slices that float in sugar ice.

Sue wants to include this poem in her book, and as soon as her memoir is available, I will post the details here in the blog.

Hurray for the support of fellow writers, and our communities far and wide. That week of writing and reading with others has rejuvenated me; therefore, I will say–“More to follow, from me as well!”

Joy for the Taking: reviews of the book, and a short trip away

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Long Sands Beach, York, ME

First, on the ninth anniversary of this blog, a photo: classic mid-June sunrise in York, Maine, Nubble Lighthouse barely visible at the distant tip of land, with a solo surfer in the waves. In pre-dawn gray, the surfer had grinned uncontrollably as he pulled on a wetsuit next to his parked jeep. I grinned back and waved from the beach, both of us delighted to be pursuing our individual joys. 

The glowing golden-orange light made the sand look molten. Wide rolls of dark blue water reminded me the ocean temperature was in the 50s. Wind kicked up as the sky lightened and my sandaled feet numbed; after an hour of photography I scurried back to my room to savor hot tea and blankets on my toes, so happy to have ventured out.

Another angle: orb of dawn on golden sand.

***

Second, thanks to all who have purchased our book, who have perused or plunged into it, who shared joy about how it affected you and your relationship to walking or a friendship or nature—oh my goodness, thank you!

Here are two lovely reviews. The first is by Kaitlin Lembo of The Spot 518: https://spotlightnews.com/thespot/2021/05/27/a-walking-friendship-the-first-500-miles-chronicles-the-musings-of-two-wanderers/ and the second from Gillian Scott’s Outdoors column in the Sports section of the Albany Times-Union: https://www.timesunion.com/sports/article/Outdoors-Two-area-women-share-their-treasure-16256141.php?IPID=Times-Union-HP-CP-Spotlight. (I never imagined my name would show up in a Sports section! How fun.)

Another classic Maine image: fragrant beach roses against rugged rocks and splashing surf.
(Along the Marginal Way, Ogunquit ME)

***

A final photo below: the first walk on Long Sands Beach three days before, when storms were rolling in.

We could have been upset about wet weather “ruining” one of the few days we had on the ocean. However, mist ventured onto the beach and combined with roiling clouds to confuse the eye. Surf blended into sky; waves became almost irrelevant.

It was beautiful. We laughed when the rain beat down hard on us as we ran for our room after dinner. The fingers of mist continued over the days to reach for land in the morning and refract sunlight in unusual ways.

In its changing, the weather makes you adapt to what’s right here, right now. 

Changing weather also reminds me that opportunities for joy will present themselves regularly, even in the midst of the uncontrollable, the chaos and sadness, shifts and unpredictability and opportunities, of this summer just arrived.

Ever changing sky on Long Sands Beach, York ME

Yes, you can buy our book at the link below, as well as at independent bookstores and online retailers.

https://store.bookbaby.com/book/a-walking-friendship

The Book is Finished!

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Our gorgeous cover, designed by Meradith at The Troy Book Makers, based on a photo by Carole Fults

Relief. Oh my gosh, the relief. Along with growing excitement.

An actual book. It’s here. Giggle, wiggle and woo hoo! 

For long time readers at this site, some of the essays and photos will be familiar. The growth of the nature essays into meditations on friendship will be new, along with the poems and photos by my co-author and delightful hiking partner Carole Fults. 

It has been months and months (I hate to say but yes, years) of striving to finish edits, hire a formatter and choose publication routes, stumble along, play avoid-don’t avoid, and return repeatedly to this very challenging work of creating and putting out a book. 

To unfurl, to birth a new thing into the world, happy Spring! (Ferns at Sage College, Troy NY)

I pet the silky cover of the locally printed copies from The Troy Book Makers. 

I touch the glossy cover of the print-on-demand version. 

I take in the saturated color of the photographs.

It is a sensual experience, this physical book, in a time when I have mostly been reading ebooks from the library on a tablet. Blue-lit screens during the day and brown-lit screens at night (so as not to disturb my sleep), thoughts of battery usage and news articles too easily accessed often distract me from the act of reading. 

Words on a page, I have heard, are more memorable than on a screen. I agree.

Squirrel corn (Dicentra canadensis), in the same family, very similar, but not quite the same as Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) below—
—somewhat like an e-book versus a printed book. (Both images from Robert H. Treman State Park in Ithaca NY)

Of course, A Walking Friendship: The First 500 Miles is available to view and preorder as an ebook as well as a softcover (love that descriptor!), at the national online stores here and here and independent bookstores (several here and here, or even for my dear friends in Chicago here but really at all of them!), and on our author page at Book Baby, where our print on demand and ebook versions originate. Every view, every pre-order, every Goodreads mention and Wish List addition, every request for a library to purchase, helps our book.

However our audience prefers to purchase, we want it to get out there. The release is June 11.

All these informational phrases are starting to flow trippingly off my tongue, as I earnestly learn “the elevator speech” to describe our book in a single sentence, and as I let go of Ego and self judgment based on what people might think of the project. 

***

I am better with perfectionism these days and recognize it more quickly. The weight of almost a year of mandated day-job overtime and completely different work duties added an extra layer to the challenge. I am just glad I can fall finally back in love with this manuscript—now book—all over again.

For right now I am doing the Happy Dance as I print promotional postcards and plan Zoom readings and interviews.

Go! Fly! Be Free! (More giggles.)

***

This book is imperfectly perfect. It is a creation that is done being created. It has taken flight, out into the world. What it will grow into, we will see.

Mostly my coauthor and I wish for the richness we found walking in the woods to be experienced by as many people as possible, since it was such a gift to us.

A tiny elm seed that made its way into my kitchen: metaphor for sending creative work out into the world.

Thanks to everyone who has helped and encouraged us, chided and applauded and assisted us–and most of all, took our work as seriously as we do.

We are so small in the hugeness of nature. What a wondrous feeling. (Hiker at the bottom of the 115 drop of Lucifer Falls, Robert H. Treman State Park, Ithaca NY)

Pandemic Care for Self

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IMG_3526 copyright of-the-essence blog 2020

Water swirls. Do we get pulled into it, or do we observe from a place of strength, like the yellow coltsfoot flowers on the left? Mariaville Lake, NY, April 2020.

In this pandemic at-home time, I don’t want to lose track of my days and experiences. To get to the absolutely vital, I need some sort of accountability, some kind of checklist that comes out of these questions: 

How do I organize my days?

How do I take care of myself?

Gosh—What is most important?

How do I live this time kindly and gently? 

Very importantly—How do I manage my day job at home (often with overtime) without over-doing it or under-doing it?

****

I am a list maker. 

Even as a young teenager, I mimicked my mother’s “Jot it down—you don’t want to forget; mark it off, isn’t that satisfying?” 

As a college student with a heavy course load, I organized my days in two hour blocks of time. They ran from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. six or seven days a week, in order to get all of the studies and papers completed with revisions and any technical glitches—which at the time involved a portable typewriter and carbon paper—and short breaks for meals. 

My desk sized calendar was covered with tiny smeary black pencil scritches of lists, time periods, what was left to do. Complete with panicked exclamation points!!!! and underscores for emphasis (and more exclamation points!). My body ached for movement and relaxation and something other than school. The lists kept score and I persevered.

Looking back now—the lists were brutal and effective. But not sustainable.

Lists can often scream at you only about what you have not accomplished, until out of desperation you write down things like Get Up, Make Bed, Eat Breakfast. Some days that is all you can do, for various reasons. 

Especially right now.

***

Six weeks ago, I created a list. Called it A Check List. Then A Care for Self Checklist. Finally, I had to mention the Pandemic—that there is an overarching shift in the world that has to be acknowledged as I take on this Care for Self.

Pandemic Care for Self Checklist.

Bold type, 17 point font on my paper. These are big things, for big challenging times.

JOURNAL. YOGA. WALK. CREATIVELY WRITE & PHOTOGRAPH. JOYFUL HOUSEHOLD. CONNECTION. COOK. READ. RUB A BODY PART. DAY JOB HOURS WITH GENTLENESS. INDULGE/RELAX.

I use the back to jot down those “gotta remember” things, as well as exciting meal ideas from what I have here at home, future Zoom meetings, and projects I intend to tackle in small bites. However, those are not requirements with a due date necessarily; they are written to relieve the heaviness in my mind, loosen it for other things, like letting go of the list.

I spend time crying and laughing. I do completely unexpected things.

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Stickers can make things so much more fun! The spots on the list are reflections from the window as morning sun pours in.

***

There’s a lot to write about this list. It has grown and shifted over the weeks.

But for now, I toggle between these various actions that feed me. I don’t expect to get every one of them done every day. I note and delight in any accomplishments—and there are quite a few, especially ones that wouldn’t normally make it onto a list.

What is on your Pandemic Care for Self Checklist?

IMG_3532 copyright of-the-essence blog 2020

This sunset photo was part of WALK, CREATIVELY PHOTOGRAPH, CONNECTION (with a friend, six feet plus apart, both of us masked) and INDULGE.

 

 

Baby (Snapping Turtle) Steps

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Look at its determined eye. At John Boyd Thacher Park (North), 2016

This newborn snapping turtle, along with its siblings, had come out of the nest in the gravel not a minute before we walked up on it, on the yellow Perimeter path at Thacher North. Coated in wet clay from under ground, it scrambled quickly for the nearby pond. Though only an inch and a half long, this baby was already fully itself, and on its way.

That’s me.

Right now I feel messy, roiling in the gunky mud of fears and expectations about the unknown. Half-baked, incomplete. But I will trust it’s about perspective: I am a baby snapping turtle, destined for size and strength I cannot imagine from my sticky clay birthing place, called to a future of sun-warmed water.

***

For the last eleven months I have been working half time.

In May of last year, a week or two before I leapt in to that job, I finished my initial Forest Therapy Guide training. On duty at the local library, I learned to scan and shelve materials, while at home I concentrated on the six month certification process, and graduated in November.

Back then I was pretty worried about taking those twenty hours a week for paid work away from my well established practices, and then the addition of the Guide training. Was I crazy? For almost seven years, I had had a much freer schedule, during which I became a serious writer of memoir and nature essays and a serious photographer. I also worked as a personal chef, accompanied a friend who was dying, trained as a yoga teacher, and created workshops for writers and artists.

Yes, I was pretty worried eleven months ago, but those who know me well were right. It all turned out fine—and in fact, excellently. Not only in my job, but in figuring out balance, even if it wasn’t the fully realized balance I so desired. Questions popped up, and I answered them as they came.

How to write? Request a work schedule primarily noon to 8 pm and then do the vital observations and editing while most of the world sleeps, between 4:30 and 8 am.

How to continue and increase my nature connection? Walk alone before dawn. Make walks and photo sessions with my hiking partner a happy requirement. Walk with friends sometimes at dinner break (mid-afternoon), and observe the seasonal changes in my city.

How to manage the inevitable exhaustion? Alternate those days of dinner walks with dinner nap days! Cry as I needed to, which turned out to be a lot.

Nesting eagle pair, Peebles Island State Park, glimpsed on a sunset self-care walk with a good friend.

***

The past eleven months, I haven’t posted any blog essays.

But I remind myself I am closing in on completion of the final draft of my first book-length manuscript.* I have written poetry for two small collections and for myself. Two of my photographs were chosen for the Thacher Nature Art Show this March, even though unfortunately I was too sick to attend the opening, see the exhibition, or even publicize it. This summer, I plan to be offering forest therapy walks in at least one place. And finally, I kept my promise to myself and posted this essay today.

I’ve been persevering, with self-compassion. Yes, alternating with panic and frustration and fallow periods, but those freak-outs allow me to come back, repeatedly, to self-compassion.

April’s first Oxalis (shamrock flower) with its fuzzy stems, searching out sun at Thacher North.

***
Now, next week—tomorrow! I begin a full time job with the state of New York.

I am feeling those same anxieties as when I started my half-time job last June: about performance, self care, managing my tendency to perfectionism, creating a new balance with forty hours a week gone, plus a commute by car now.

This challenge has been taking up quite a bit of time and energy, as at first I delved into the test taking within Civil Service, then interviews and decision making—while I maintained that half-time job.

This is not a place I ever intended or planned to be, taking an office day job in my mid-50s. I’ve loved my decades of creating a personalized daily and weekly schedule with its many layers of paid and unpaid work. I loved to be a parent, then a homeschooling parent, to run a massage therapy business and before that a tutoring business, manage a household and house and rehab of said house, cook nutritious local food tailored to multiple dietary requirements. And as part of the fabric of my life, to organize and work for social justice and community.

But in those early years, I also left no space for myself as writer and naturalist—didn’t even know I WAS either one—or for myself as a physical being who needed much more regular exercise and connection with the outdoors, along with moving meditation.

I took care of many people but not enough of myself.

When I started my half-time job I was very afraid of returning to that place of self disregard. Again, I acknowledge than in almost eleven months, I’ve done pretty well.
I also had some unexpected surprises.

I fell in love with my community again, through people I met as they came for books, DVDs, and music. I fell in love with my historic and struggling town again, through those walks before dawn. At the library I got to glory in organization and creation of order, in the quiet and in the chaos of deliveries from other libraries. I experienced kind, patient, and interesting co-workers.

A wide variety of humanity walked through the heavy wooden doors of our building and gasped at the Tiffany window behind the circulation desk. They also fought with their children, suffered daily frustrations without some of the skills I’ve been lucky enough to develop, showed me patience and compassion, and thrilled with their first library cards.

I handled a lot of books but didn’t read many at first. Then I took out piles of them, like raiding the candy store. Now I’ve settled into 20 to 30 books out at a time, and gotten to enjoy popular items along with dusty volumes pulled from the stacks. After a couple years of illness and depletion and a very sad inability to read long-form writing, I can stick with a whole book and read it over time or in an afternoon.

I hope to still work some hours at the library, because of these gifts I have found.

Post-March blizzard, curls of heaped snow compete with the curlicues and angles of the library’s 1897 architecture.

***

Now I’m going into this full time day job. I was fretting, anxious, anticipating the worst, as I pursued the actual getting of the job. I was also able to observe, feel, analyze what spoke to me, what didn’t, and know I had a choice—not something I’d really felt before.

I hate that I’ve been so wrapped up in learning these balances I haven’t been able to do the essay writing, finish all books I’ve been writing, sort and enjoy my photos.

I try to listen to those around me, those who love me, who again say I will be fine. I return to leaving behind perfectionism and fear of Armageddon brought on by my own mistakes. The details of learning how to follow all my goals will be familiar AND unexpected. I will attempt not to anticipate all the problems or things I might dislike, and be open to the surprises.

In the muck to come, I will remember my turtle-ness and my snapping-ness. My completeness and my newness. I will remember that I’m just starting on this part of the journey, and that I am well on my way.

I will hike and take photos and guide walks. I will do yoga and meditation. I will do my personal writing and my creative writing. I will travel, close in and far away. I will cherish my friends and beloveds and attend to my own wisdom.

The pond awaits.

And the sky above….

*I am presently editing the first book of essays, poems, and photos that Carole Fults and I are co-authoring, gathered from years spent together at Partridge Run Wildlife Management Area, in Berne, NY. More news soon!

Doing this book editing, I realize—I have been through all this before. For example, my blog post entitled “January Thaw.” Guess what! I have been stuck in my writing when my attention just had to go elsewhere, my creative energies spread into a job search, a business build, a health crisis. I forget. Then I return to myself, and remember. Thanks to my readers, for waiting and for encouraging me in the remembering.

A Surprising Summer Sabbatical

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Dahlia readying to bloom.

This spring of 2016 has been a little strange—and it’s not just the weather.

In the cold days of February I did not venture to the beautiful new Capital Roots Grow Center to dig through bins of donated seeds.

In March, I did not plan out sections for chard, arugula, carrots, blue borage—or any novel plants, either.

I did not go to the April workday at my little plot; in fact, I did not even pencil the date into my calendar.

This spring, after six years, I am taking a sabbatical from Community Gardening.

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My first community garden plot, in 2010. You can spy arugula, chives, tomato plants, butter crisp lettuce–and a hose–amongst the horrendous weeds. I had a lot to learn.

***

I call the time off gardening a sabbatical because, like a traditional academic sabbatical, this seventh season will concentrate on studied time outside of my usual setting. A pause enables me to focus on other things and will include a little required travel. Whenever I might return to community gardening, it will be with a refreshed perspective.

In particular, I am beginning a six-month Forest Therapy* certification in May. During the time I would have spent digging up my plot, fencing, planting and weeding, I’ll be reading about relationships between natural experiences and human health, learning our local ecosystems in more depth, taking a seven day intensive course, sitting under the forest canopy, and leading guided meditation walks.

Beforehand, I’ve started with a series of classes about wild edible plants. They are led by Dave Muska of Ondatra Adventures, and held up at Dyken Pond Environmental Education Center.

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For example, I now know that these trout lilies have edible leaves and bulbs, though proper plant identification and sustainable harvesting techniques are required before ingesting.

***

This summer I also want to finish dozens of pieces of writing about the garden, and about my life. In addition, I am wrestling with three book manuscripts stuck at various stages (hence the increasingly intermittent posting here on the blog). Finally, I anticipate moving into the world of the day-job very soon.

The richness of the outdoor life not only grounds me, it can distract as well. There is always more to do, more to experience.

Strange as it sounds to say, in order to focus on the beauty and meaning of the natural world, I have to decrease the amount of input. Or at least choose which forms I can take in right now.

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On the hill, a much more organized and bountiful garden, 2014.                                                                          (Still more weedy than I would prefer.) 

***

I have very mixed feelings about the sabbatical, like any choice to step away from a beloved activity.

Community gardening is part of how I have defined my summer life and myself, since I moved to upstate New York. It’s felt intrinsic to the new life I have created. My plan, therefore, is to pay attention and be open to how it feels to NOT work this garden.

I ask questions.

What emotions do I feel? Where do they come from?                                                                   What do I miss?
What do I NOT miss? (Aside from woodchucks.)
How do I get out in the dewy world of early morning sun, that feeds me so well?
How do I meet my body’s craving for hands and knees in soil?
What other repetitive jobs do I find meditative and soothing?

I sit with my thoughts, long and patiently. As I have learned to do with my writing–let them steep like tea, simmer like soup, rise like dough.

Then the meaning behind the meaning has a chance to show its shy self to me.

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One beautiful sweet pepper, ripened to red in its own good time.

***

Some questions we can all ponder:

What feeds you?

Which are the “bare minimum” self-care activities that you know you need?
What do you want to leave —and just be done with already?

What do you desire to take a sabbatical from?
What would you concentrate on if you did?

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End of season plum tomatoes, ripening in the kitchen, 2015.

****

*Forest Therapy is a research-based framework for supporting healing and wellness through immersion in forests and other natural environments. In Japan it is called “shinrin yoku,” which translates to “forest bathing.”  I will be leading some meditation walks, required for my training, in the summer and fall so if anyone is interested,  information will be available on my business blog. More information about Forest Therapy is at shinrin-yoku.org

Part the Third, Wherein the Butterfly Disappears and I Ponder Life, Death, and Survival

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A different sulphur, this one either a Pink Edged or Cloudy Sulphur, observed on the slopes of Gore Mountain NY Ski Area, in the fall.

A different sulphur, this one either a Pink Edged or Clouded Sulphur, observed on the slopes of Gore Mountain NY Ski Area, in the fall.

February 13, 2015 morning. Yesterday, after I looked up all the photographs of butterflies I’d taken in the last couple years–I had no idea I had so many!– I took more pictures of the Dainty Sulphur at the window, from different angles, and in the afternoon she moved down next to the air conditioner. By evening she was hanging at the floor trim. This morning—gone! can’t see the butterfly high or low. She might have been eaten by a spider.

There’s part of the situation where I don’t have responsibility—how far do you really chase a butterfly? It follows its instinct.

Even though one of my own instincts is a tendency to care-take (“Hey, I’ve got food here, places you can rest, even!”), I have to let the butterfly go where she will. In the same way I learned to let my teenaged children venture out into the world, and then release them completely (well, almost). I needed to let them go, for my own sake and theirs.

This butterfly, like my own children, like humans, has its schedule of daily life, and of life and death.

Dainty Sulphur sips from the edge of a spoon. She really is dainty, isn't she?

Dainty Sulphur sips from the edge of a spoon. She really is dainty, isn’t she?

February 13, later in the day. The butterfly fluttered in the kitchen; it had been over by the stove. I made more honey water but I don’t think it’s interested or has to find it on its own. I’d almost been relieved it had been “lost,” that I had no longer felt the pull of keeping track of it.

February 14, 2015.  The butterfly is living its life cycle. I don’t have to save it like some protective “master” who has more power and more intelligence. How about we live our life cycles next to each other, not intending harm, but not fretting unnecessarily about it, like I do about most animals, and most people? To do the kind thing when I can, but not to wear myself away figuring out how to save or fix the situation? What is there to fix, anyway?

Before, I said that here in my apartment and in winter, “it won’t survive.” What does that mean? Of course it will survive—it is a alive, it continues to be alive. But life is not just survival, it is living in and through the moments. We are all NOT going to survive in the end. We all die.

How long would it live in a normal life cycle? Two weeks to a month, the internet tells me.

Another butterfly, this one from summer at Partridge Run: Fritillary.

Another butterfly, this one from summer at Partridge Run: Tiger Swallowtail.

The definition of survive: “continue to live or exist, especially in spite of danger or hardship.” Isn’t living always a bit of an ordeal, under difficult circumstances? Is this life here in my apartment a hardship for her? Maybe, but danger is everywhere for butterflies: frogs, birds, getting trapped, getting smushed, parasites. Survival means getting through some situation—but both of us are not only getting through, but living in, our respective life situations.

I see me looking out the kitchen window, as the butterfly hangs on the glass today looking out as well into deep deep winter. Both drawn to what we are drawn to. I am not doing harm to it, not wanting it out of my life so I don’t have an obligation to it. Yes, I talk to the butterfly, Oh you don’t have to run so madly against the glass! but that is a message for me as well. I don’t have to fight against difficult circumstances, either.

If the tiny butterfly were sentient in the human way, perhaps she would wish things weren’t such a struggle for me, and even wish it could do something for me. As she hangs, rests, it reminds me of my meditation, in which I don’t have to get someplace, I can merely BE. On my yoga mat, feeling what I feel, thoughts wild or calm doesn’t matter, I note them and let them pass; I breathe. Perhaps she is just BE-ing, respiring.

A fritillary of some sort, also at Gore Mountain in the fall.

A fritillary of some sort, also at Gore Mountain in the fall.

We humans like to read meaning into things. For example, I was reading the All Over Albany blog, came across a link to a local writer, Amy Biancolli, and her blog, Figuring Shit Out, went to the blog, read some of it, ordered two of her memoirs from the library and then on a drive across town, happened to hear the beginning of her storytelling on The Moth Radio Hour. Ok, so I am meant to connect somehow with her or her writing. Or maybe she’s just out there, and I’m out there, and we intersect, like this butterfly who just happened to show up in my apartment, and I am learning things from the experience.

I fell in the love with the prologue to Amy’s first memoir, House of Holy Fools, where she writes about Death in her family as “an unwanted guest, oily and shrewd, with a stalker’s bad personal hygiene and pants that gave him a wedgie…”

I am thinking about the feeling of being stalked by death, what survival means, the role of death in our modern lives versus other eras (the 1918 flu epidemic, tuberculosis, recurrences of the plague through history). How unnatural death can seem, and yet it comes to everyone.

So here’s this butterfly to remind me: stop trying so hard; stop banging around. Just BE. It is valuable to JUST BE.

Back at the Chicago Botanic Garden, swans with babies, be-ing.

Back at the Chicago Botanic Garden, swans–symbols of fluidity, intuition, and dreaming–with cygnets, be-ing.

Part the Second: Wherein the Butterfly Drinks, And I Consider the Bugs in My Living Space

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Dainty Sulphur, drinking!

Dainty Sulphur, drinking!

I’m still talking to a butterfly, in my kitchen.

February 12, 2015, later that day. Since she would not come to the tiny plastic feeder that I put out, this afternoon I spilled some of the honey water right next to her, onto the top of the air conditioner. She actually came and drank! It was fascinating to watch: antennae started waving once her tarsi (feet)—through which butterflies can “taste”—hit the liquid; her proboscis unfurled, so long it went under her belly, but into the fluid; and then she stepped away and curled the proboscis up again.

See the C-shaped, rolled up proboscis?

See the backwards C-shaped, rolled up proboscis in front of the green compound eye? The feathery looking bits above that are the “palps” which sense what is food and not-food.

Thinking about her survival, I flit between hard-edged City Woman and warm Earth Mother. Well, anyway, I say, there’s your honey water for a couple days. Don’t get stuck in it. Now she’s looking all satisfied, her previously flopped down abdomen—which is the hind end, with the center part actually called the thorax—bent up high.

Am I stupid to put out this sugary fluid for food? Aside from getting stuck in it, her wings might get wet! I blow gently; no, she can pull them up just fine. Nothing like a snack, I think. I could use one myself.

I am playing with anthropomorphism again, I realize, but am really, really clear I know I’m doing it.

****

The Dainty Sulphur is a small crushable creature, one of trillions.

I’ve stepped on, swatted and flattened probably hundreds of bugs its size and much larger: horrifying palmetto bugs and leaping hairy spiders in the Florida of my childhood, and hordes of German roaches in multiple student apartments. Even mice and rats were caught and drowned when they overran other living spaces. My mother always said to invading creatures as she squashed or sprayed them: You can live outside, but I can’t let you stay here. This is MY space.

I don’t mind sharing, but not with things that bite or sting me, or spread disease. I’m really allergic to dust spider bites and mosquitos, but understand that larger spiders and thousand-leggers eat such critters, so yes there is a hierarchy of acceptable and unacceptable bugs in my living space. I can whisk unwanted ones—bees, wasps—out the window but if they don’t go I can become insistent, and murderous—depending on how you define murder.

Luckily butterflies don’t hurt humans, though we can hurt them.

Chicago Botanic Garden.

Late summer Chicago Botanic Garden.

Carolus Linnaeus was the Swedish physician who established “binomial nomenclature,” the multitiered system of scientifically naming plants and animals. I recall the huge bronze statue (which, when my children were small, you could still belly up to and touch) of a kneeling Linnaeus at the Chicago Botanic Garden.  Up close, Linnaeus’ roughly hewn figure was formed of creatures and plants alighted on him, under him, wrapping him; with the collecting bag on his hip and eyes open and curious, his eager hand reached out to touch and identify still more on the ground.

Dainty Sulphur Butterflies, in Linnaeus’ classification are truly Insecta, and moving more specifically down the entomological nomenclature, fall into Lepidoptera (moths & butterflies) and Papilionoidea (non-skipper butterflies; do you see the French word for butterfly “Papillon”?), Pieridae (whites, yellows, sulphurs), Nathalis (sulphurs) and her full name: Nathalis iole.

Like a softie, I’ll leave the sweet water there for a while, probably wipe it up and then put out fresh, for this particular Nathalis iole. (Boy I hope I’m right that it’s a Dainty Sulphur! I would hate to find out I am All-Wrong scientifically.)

I cannot guarantee this butterfly’s survival or quality of life. However, I don’t have to squash this insect either, “put it out of its misery.” She does not harm me, and in fact is a little company, on a cold cold day.

Because bitter wind chills, twenty and thirty below, cause me to hunker down inside, both of us are stuck in my apartment for now. And I am getting to know this creature better.

Sure is snowy and blowy out there, isn't it?

Sure is snowy and blowy out there, isn’t it?

To be continued.

A taste of full summer with fountains: Brazilian vervain (verbena), which butterflies come to visit.

Remember summer? Fountains with Brazilian vervain (verbena), which butterflies come to visit (Chicago Botanic Garden).

Part the First: Wherein the Butterfly Arrives

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My unexpected visitor.

My unexpected visitor.

February 11, 2015.  I’m talking to a butterfly, in my kitchen.

At first I thought it was a moth. My internet research indicates it’s a butterfly, and might be something called a Dainty Sulphur. I have no idea how it materialized in an upstate New York brownstone in the middle of winter.

Could it have been hiding in my apartment and if so, where was its chrysalis? Could it have traveled from another part of the country, the pupa attached to the dried moss of my December birthday amaryllis? Or did I carry it in with my bags of produce from the Niskayuna Coop?—after all, bananas, grapefruit and even paper bags come from far away.

Further investigating Dainty Sulphurs, I find its arrival proves somewhat unusual—they are not native and don’t overwinter here or fly in every year like an immigrant species; in fact, they are considered a vagrant species, one that only rarely comes up from the south.

It seems to be a summer phenotype, too, because of the yellow hindwings. In a winter individual, the hindwing would be greenish-gray, with additional black patches to absorb solar heat.

Sun-seeking.

Sun-seeking.

If I were to anthropomorphize—which as a scientific person I tend to avoid—right now it looks like the perhaps-summer butterfly is perched staring out the window, yearning for the sun, a whole-insect-body aching for outside, to move and flutter and find nectar and other butterflies.

When I go to bed, the butterfly is still there.

February 12, 2015. I know if I let it outside, it would freeze. I know inside, it will not survive, though how long does a butterfly live anyway? However, it certainly won’t mate, and I don’t quite know if and what it needs to eat and drink.

My sentimental heart, in spite of my lack of knowledge about butterflies, caused me yesterday to put out a little water-honey mixture, like you would for hummingbirds. This morning she—further research indicated it’s definitely a Dainty Sulphur but probably a female because she doesn’t have the reddish-orange hindwing scent patch of a male—this morning she was still resting, midlegs and hindlegs on my peeling paint window ledge, forelegs on the icy glass, peering out with her compound eyes.

Do butterflies sleep? She’s in the same position, and hasn’t touched the honey-water I dripped onto a tiny flipped-over plastic cup. (I thought it was a perfect shape, like a birdbath with an edge to rest on.)

Inside, looking out.

Inside, looking out.

Her position looks like: Mom, Mom, I want to go out and play! Like my kids used to sit on the back of the couch, heads in palms and feet warm on the radiator, looking out into the snowy exterior, thinking of all the adventures to be had later in the day, once breakfast was done and snowsuits were put on.

But this butterfly has no snowsuit and I have none to offer it. If nothing else, I will at least accompany this creature as we both look out the window, into the deep snow, into the near future. I don’t want to be a well-meaning idiot, like those who “rescue” baby birds from perfectly fine nesting areas when they have ventured a ways from their nest. So I’ve gone online and further studied forms and colors, behavior, size (yes at 22 mm she is a Dainty), and learned that the honey-water is perfectly acceptable food.

Mostly I marvel once again at the variety of things I have not seen, or did not look for, that I am discovering now, thanks to my Dainty Sulphur.

To be continued.

(Many thanks to my favorite insect information and identification website, Bug Guide.net, and in addition, the North American Butterfly Association website. I invite comments, especially from lepidopterists!)

Essay Tangles and Snarls

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How I felt, essays all gnarled and ugly, on my way into the retreat.

Feeling defeated, essays all gnarled and ugly, on my way into the retreat.

Even with a short piece of writing, sometimes the initial story gets entwined in another.

The second small bit knots up with a third, maybe even a fourth and fifth, and all of a sudden you the author face thousands of words when you were only looking for a couple hundred. All the threads of connection seem intrinsically linked. Where can you slice so you aren’t left with a chopped up pile of confusion?

On top of it, the perfectionist editor-in-your-head won’t let go: The relationships between these things are amazing! amazing I tell you! She can’t allow the piece be simple and stand on its own.

That’s what happened to a blog-bound essay, then several essays, I planned to finish in October.
November.
December.

I did lots of other writing, for small groups and for the radio. I prepared to curate an evening of local memoir readings. I applied to artist residencies and photo exhibits.

Cut to the last weekend of January. I held one of my quarterly Move with Mindfulness/Write with Ease workshops. In the cozy retreat house, I led yoga and stretches for the writers and sun-on-snow hikes up the hill onto white pine lined trails. I cooked Mexican black bean soup and sweet rhubarb and blueberry coffeecakes.

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Mexican Black Bean soup savory with cumin, multi-colored carrots,  cheese curds and fresh cilantro.

No internet or TV, no voice phone service, and only minimal housekeeping interrupted us; instead, session followed session, where everyone was writing, including me.

The themes of the weekend were phrases we use often on the yoga mat:
Be grounded. Relax what you can. Be curious.

They apply equally well to writing.

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On the mats, in the welcoming morning warmth.

After one hike, I knocked the snow off my boots, made a cup of hot tea, and turned on my laptop. For months I’d averted my eyes, stomach aching, when confronted by the working titles on my computer screen. This time I clicked on the documents one by one to open them all together and finally faced down the matted tangle of five to eight potential blog posts.

I got mad when I saw how close I’d been to finished on several of them.
I got sad at how seasonal the topics “could have been.”
Then I got determined.

Over and over I learn the same lessons. That’s part of why I teach them.
Be grounded. Relax what you can. Be curious.

See the pretty things hidden in the tangles?

See the pretty thing hidden in the tangles?

I can’t yank apart the knots between them, I thought; that will break the teeth of the comb, and accomplish the same thing as sharp scissors snipping haphazardly (remember to be grounded). How were the strands initially woven together? My previous efforts deserve gentleness (relax what you can) and not being in a hurry (be curious).

What do you do to a mental or writing knot?

Same as the visualization in yoga: straighten out, unwind, free, loosen, unclasp, release. Breathe!

Deep sigh after deep sigh followed, with shouts of “D’uh!” (often, embarrassingly, out loud) as I realized places to tease out a conceptual filament and drop it separate. The connections didn’t have to be quite so tight as first imagined; pictured it in medical terms, the conjoining was at the toe, not the chest, and therefore my surgical intervention was simpler, with fewer complications.

Still struggling, I asked: What do you do with a physical knot of tightness in massage therapy? Breathe into the pain, stay with it and it will lessen. Your body (and your writing) will be happy you are paying attention. Be grounded. Relax what you can. Be curious.

I did that with my essay snarls. Over and over again. What a relief.

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Thump! Bump-bump! Pine cone rides the wind over snowy ground. Can I fly free, like that?

I’m not finished. But during the next few months, thanks to that weekend of attention to body and attention to writing, I look forward to posting some completely out-of-season, close (if not finished), relatively unsnarled meditations.

The sun setting on my work, at Still Point Retreat Center.

The sun setting on my work, sparkling its light everywhere, at Still Point Retreat Center.