Susan Chernak McElroy's Blog

[image error]Okay, good friends, it is time to take down this site so that there is no more confusion as to where I blog now. Please find me, new and improved, HERE.

I’m leaving this site up for only one more week, to give all of you time to travel over to my new digs. All my old writings are archived there, so we’ll lose nothing along the journey. Please follow me. As I’ve said, I don’t want to lose a single one of you!

Yes, we’re hopping from .com to .net!

YES, IT’S TRUE! I moved my blog from here to...HERE. (Or if that link does not work for you, please try this in your browser: susanchernakmcelroy.net.)

There is a new post of mine waiting for you there. After today, I won’t be posting here any longer, and will delete the site in about a month.

I moved for a lot of reasons. For one, I really wanted a blog where people could post photos in the comments section. That is what started this little migration. Silly, perhaps, but I love posting my photos and want others to be able to do the same when they visit me at my blog. Then, I realized I needed to be able to more easily link to my books at Amazon.com. And I wanted a blog that focused on more of what I am about these days, which is all about nature close to home. My home, your home. So, I made the leap!

And…I wanted a place to sell my new book which will be released this spring/summer.

I carried along all my old archives, so if you like reading my old posts, there are a couple hundred waiting for you at my new place.

Please come follow me to my new address, and sign up there to receive new posts. I don’t want to lose a single, much-treasured, one of you.

[image error]I have a close and enduring relationship with Stinging Nettle, and I’ll tell you why: This plant is a healing wonder. At least, she has been so for me and I suspect that if you were to make her acquaintance, she would bring her same gifts to you.

A few years ago, I was looking for help in healing my terrible chronic fatigue. There have been times in my life when I was nearly bed-ridden for months at a time with a crippling exhaustion of “undetermined origin” (That means, my doctors just thought I was a hypochondriac).

So I made a decision to start making food my medicine. In the course of changing my diet to one filled with wild plants and greens, homemade krauts and ferments, herbal teas, and medicine-in-a-bowl soups and broths, I stumbled across Susun Weed’s marvelous website. There I read about the idea of nourishing/healing infusions. These are “teas” made very strong and steeped overnight…

Susun suggests that you give each infusion a goodly long time to nourish you from the inside out, then perhaps try another herb months—or a year—later and see what gifts that one has to offer.

So for the next year, Carter and I drank Comfrey infusion every day for bone health and mental clarity. Then, also on Susun’s site, I discovered Nettles. One of the precious properties of this plant is her ability to stimulant energy. Boy howdy, you didn’t need to tell me twice. I ordered up a few pounds of dried, organic Nettle leaf from Mountain Rose Herbs (my go-to place for dried herbals when I need more than I can grow myself), and started drinking.

Long story short, Nettle gave me my life back. It was a slow, gentle process, but on daily infusions of nettle, my energy slowly returned, my allergies left me, and my skin took on a healthy blush. It also brought life back to my very ragged and dried out hair.

I’ll let the experts tell you a bit more. Here is what herbalist Kate Kirham��has to say about this plant ally:

“Often when I talk to people about one of the best herbs to take regularly, I suggest Nettles.�� Nettles has a long history of being used to strengthen and fortify the system, help with allergies, respiratory problems, anemia, fatigue, depression and exhaustion.�� I find this herb particularly useful for those who are suffering from chronic fatigue, adrenal burnout and symptoms of��despair and deep sadness.

Nettles are a super tonic because they are extremely nourishing and tonifying to the whole system.�� Nettles is particularly rich in iron and is helpful for anemia, and general lack of strength and vigor. �� Besides iron, nettles is also rich in calcium, magnesium, manganese, silica, potassium and phosphorus as well as vitamin C and B vitamins.�� Nettles has long been seen as helpful for health complaints such as bronchitis, asthma, and respiratory illnesses.�� Nettles also has a diuretic effect that makes them helpful for kidney and bladder conditions.”

Amen to all that. And here is a great write-up about Nettles on Susun’s site right here.

This is how I use nettles in my daily life: Before bed, I boil up a gallon of water. To this, I add 3-4 cups of dried nettles. I let this sit out overnight, strain it into a gallon jar next morning, and pop it into the fridge to keep. Some time during the day, I’ll pour myself up to a quart of this “tonic,” add a touch of stevia for sweetness, and sip all day.

There have been times when I have felt the need to drink quarts of nettle infusion in a week. Other times, I brew it up less often, but it is always in my rotation during the month. I don’t often drink plain water anymore. Instead, I am sipping healing herbal teas and infusions, or Kefir water (more about that later). It’s an easy way to add the goodness of healing greens and herbs to your diet. Just drink ‘em!

[image error]When a plant has been a particularly good friend to me, I find myself wanting to grow her in my garden, to get to know her better, and to have her healing energy close by. This spring, I finally managed to get the jump on Nettles, and bring her home to MillHaven. In the past, I’ve always waited too late in the spring to gather, and by then, Ms. Nettle too tall to be a good traveler.

This year, I timed it right. The Nettles lining our local creek were just poking their vibrant green heads up out of the leaf mulch. I had brought along a small trowel, and canvas bag, and some gloves for gathering. But I decided against the gloves. Nettles bite, but I have arthritis in my hands, and that stimulating sting of Nettles sometimes feels good on my hands.

Carefully, I dug up eight small starts and set them gently in the bottom of the bag. I was careful to only take a few. Sometimes wild foragers get greedy and wipe out entire beds of wild herbs—criminal, as far as I’m concerned.

With hands hot and tingling, I replanted the Nettle starts in a large old truck tire that I placed in a fairly shady corner of our yard, where we would not be inadvertently ambushed by stings. I set the tire over a downspout, as Nettle likes her feet wet. Already, she is thriving! Hopefully, she will return year after year, and give me enough spring greens to brighten up our soups and stir-fries. Her sting vanishes with heat, but her green tips are a nutritional powerhouse.

Feeling tired in the middle of a long winter? Give Nettle a try.��You’ll love her. I guarantee it! ��

She always takes the high ground

wherever she can find it.

And when.

Lucy atop the lion’s head

or the bird feeder or

the strawberry pot.

Sometimes it is so hard

for wide duck feet to

find purchase on high ground.

Orange skin smooth

as summer sunrise

curled tight and holding on.

She knows things from

spending so much

time on high.

Really, she does.

Sometimes she says

God’s hand is a paw

Her eye is

this small, cool white stone.

Sometimes the Shekinah

speaks in a

boisterous quack.

You must listen hard to hear it.

With ears in the center of your chest.

And spend a lot of time with your

Head in the clouds.

Are you brave enough to

do just that?

I should not be having any reason to fuss or fret about my bee hive at this time of year. This is the time that my only task ought to be sending prayers to the bee gods that my beloved hive thrives in the harsh truth of winter. But I have been fussing and fretting. And the object of my stress has come in the form of tiny little creatures the size and color of medium-grind black pepper: Ants.

They are moving like the sharp focus of a bright idea, all lined up and streaming in a bright ribbon toward some glowing goal. All of them—all of the ants in the whole world it seems—are moving around my hive, drawn by the sweet smell of honey and the warm cluster slumbering bees.

I’ve heard that ants can drive a bee colony away from its hive if there are enough of them. I don’t know if this is true, but I’m trying hard to make it so that there are NOT enough of them. Yet they are thwarting me at every turn. As a first line of defense against their invasions, I sprinkled cinnamon on their trails and on them, because it is clear they do not like this pungent spice. They run away from it, shouting the ant equivalent of “retreat! retreat!” but as soon as the soft amber powder blows way, as it does quickly in the winter winds, they are back…

I tried oil on the legs of the table that holds the bee hive. They waited until it solidified and soldiered forward. So I tried cinnamon on top of the wet oil, but they were undeterred. At each turn, they found a new, clean route. There was not enough oil or cinnamon in this world to stop them.

Try moats, my friends suggested. Certainly, a water moat would stop them. I knew they were right. I could put an empty cat food can beneath each leg of my metal table, and then there would be no ants. But in winter, the bees have loaded their larders with honey. There is probably no other time of year when the hive is heavier. My vertical hive consists of four stacked wooden boxes and a roof. Each box can hold around 25-30 pounds of honey. Then there is the weight of the bees themselves, a few more pounds. And lastly comes that fancy, ornate, heavy roof.

Still, I armed my husband, Carter, with four empty cat food cans and told him to follow me up to the hive. It was a sunny morning and cold but a few bees were out and about, their fuzzy bodies glinting golden in the low sunlight.

I’ve always had strong shoulders. So I got down on all fours with my head jutting beneath the metal table and the hive. “When I raise this up, slide those cans under the legs, okay?” I instructed Carter, whose own problematic back keeps him from hefting more than 25 pounds—doctors’ orders. He looked doubtful.

“Are you sure about this?” he said.

“Not in the least,” I answered.

Arching my back like A cat with sumo wrestling aspirations, I heaved my shoulders upward. Nothing moved. I strained again, hard. The table legs wobbled and scraped against the stones beneath them. Carter crawled beneath the table, small cans in hand. One, then three. Four. It was done! My shoulders fell with an audible “oomph.” Farther down my spine, I could hear my low back mutter, “You should not have done this. Seriously, Susan, what were you thinking?”

I shuffled over to the water hose and quickly filled up a jar of water. Hobbling back to the hive, I poured it into our four little tin moats. From inside the house, I could swear I heard the heating pad calling my name. But I hunched off to the house filled with a kind of fanatical pride that I had finally thwarted the ants and saved my hive from siege.

That night, I listened to the east wind thunder a hundred horses wild around our house. The next morning I headed up to the hive, my heart light and a song on my lips.

Until I saw them, dancing in an ink-colored conga line across the face of the hive. My song died at my teeth.

How had they ferried across the moats? Putting my glasses on my nose, I inspected the four tin cans that had cost me my back. In one of them, a wind-blown brown leaf had cast a sturdy bridge over the water. Many ants were in the water, drowned, but many more had made it to the shores of paradise and my honey-laden hive. Over my head, and tiny bee looked down at me, her fine antennae waving. “So, now what?” she said before turning around and heading back into the dark interior of the hive.

I pulled out the leaf bridge, swept away the conga line, and walked dejectedly back toward the house. Down, but not defeated, I came back that evening to check the hive. I believe my jaw actually dropped when I saw them again dancing up the face of the hive. This time, they had forged a raft of dead ant bodies across the moat that had held the leaf. Many ants had drowned in the leaf-crossing, so they simply threaded their way from one floating body to the other and to the table leg. My God, but they were determined! Again, I swept them away, washed their bodies out of the moat, and went to bed that night pondering my ant dilemma.

I hoped a clean moat would do the trick, but I approached the hive next morning with trepidation. And, of course, there they were. This time, they had made a long chain from the ground up to the hive’s shed cover, across the sun screen cloth, to the only place where the hive touched the screening. Their journey must have been in ant miles the equivalent to the moon and back. I was impressed. How could I not be? You can’t fault an ant for lack of will and persistence.

So I spent the morning trying to pull the hive away from the screen. This time, my back would not comply.

I felt no shame in being out-smarted by the ants. What shame could there be in being bested by nature? She is far more skilled and resourceful in all things, and if we have any common sense, we should expect her to outdo us at every turn. In this way, she teaches us about ourselves, our limitations, and guides us to greater resourcefulness and creativity. So I did not mind being bested by the smallest-of-the-small in nature. What was so disturbing to me was that I was running out of ideas.

Later that day, my friend Pixie came over to brew pickled beets with me and I told her about the ants. She looked at me and I read her mind, and at the same instant we said out loud, “Feed them.”

“In Bali,” Pixie reminded me, “They put out rice grains around the ant mounds as an offering. It also keeps the ants out of the people’s huts.” I swear I was the one who told her that story, and now she was reminding me of what I had utterly forgotten.

Why I had not thought to feed the ants? Of course, they were drawn by the sweetness in the hive. Especially in winter, aren’t we all in need of a bit of sweetness, a bit of warm sustenance to inspire our very survival?

On the other side of my yard, far away from my bees, I have a feeding station for birds and squirrels, but I also put out a dish each night of dry dog food for the raccoons, opossums, skunks, and lost cats that I know meander thorough our city yard each night. These night creatures are looking to make a meager living off of us—and in spite of us. I give them a nightly meal for several reasons. First and foremost, I want to make an offering, a gesture to these wild ones in humble apology for the once-wild ground my home has usurped. I want to make them and myself aware that they are still welcome and safe on my home ground that was once theirs. I want to be willing to be inconvenienced by—but also deeply appreciative of—these animals we so unjustly label “varmints” or “vermin.”

Isn’t this always what we call creatures who want some of our bounty? And aren’t we too quick to obliterate without a second thought the ant who would come for a drink of water at our kitchen sink, the raccoon who would be so audacious as to steal a scrap of melon rind or a coveted chicken egg?

So I make my offerings as one would bring sacred giveaways to a temple of the mysteries. This simple act of filling a dish of dog food and bowls of water for birds, insects, and other creatures helps to keep me just this side of my outrageous human arrogance. I put out the food and say quietly, “Here you are, sweet ones. Have a safe night.”

Over the years, I have discovered that my oblations seem to have a secondary beneficial effect, one that I had not expected.  Wherever I have lived, I have, of course, wished that the creatures who traveled through my property would be generous in their treatment of my ponds, my trash, and my “livestock,” which right now consists of two defenseless ducks. Surprisingly, offering my wildlings access to an easy, nightly meal seems to have dimmed their interest in sorting through my other belongings and treasures in search of a meal.

My neighbor had a koi pond full of expensive fish until the raccoons ate them all to the very last one. Conversely, I have a pond of frogs, goldfish, and plants and the raccoons seem to use it as a drinking station only. Since making offerings, I have never had a chicken taken, a trash can upended, or a water feature ransacked. “Why wrestle a duck?” the opossum opines. “I’ll just have some of this nice kibble instead…” Chaos is averted. Peace reigns. The Nature Gods are honored.

Why had I forgotten the magic of offerings when the ants came calling? Simply, my siege mentality—which had kicked into high gear before I could even think straight—had made my thinking as thin and constricted as the line of ants. The largesse I easily extended to my mammal relatives was, it appeared, absent when it came to ants. I had to admit to myself that as unprejudiced as I believe myself to be where all members of the Creation are concerned, certain ones I still find more unequal than others. Without my awareness, ants had fallen into that category.

These were the words—when I was willing to admit them to myself— I had been holding in mind concerning ants: robbers, invaders, intruders, destroyers. They were, to my mind, beneath the station of the bees. In my own private caste system, the bees were worthy of protection, the ants were not.

It is true: I still unconsciously judge each creature on some sort of greater-than, lesser-than scale of my own making. And I must admit I do this with people I meet, too. Are they more than me? Less than me? Smarter? Better? Less sensitive? Jerks?

I think most of us rank others in an innate  biological drive to establish to ourselves in the pecking order of things. I think this is natural, I honestly do. The danger comes if I do this with no awareness and no heart. For at each meeting with the sacred Other—be it beast or lover or bug—I want to be able to rise above this pack mentality. That mentality serves wolves, but it does not serve us. We are far too complex and dangerous to play Alpha-Omega wolf games at this time in our evolution.

These pecking-order games that I act out as oblivious as a sleep-walker stop me in my bloody tracks from making offerings to the unequal, the lesser-than. And in a minute, I’ll tell you why I want to be able to make these offerings, over and over again.

In truth, what do I really know of ants and bees and their secret agreements? Perhaps the ants hunt out mites that are hurtful to the bees. Maybe they simply enjoy each other’s company. Perhaps they sing each other familiar songs from their shared history as social insects, superorganisms. So little do I know of anything—most especially, mystery—yet how quick is my own mysterious mind to rank, to rate, and to act on these most flimsy of perceived truths I ofttimes don’t realize I hold to.

But this I know: I’ve received a valuable teaching from those ants.

Back in my right mind, finally, I put out a small covered bowl of sugar at the table leg the ants most frequent. It took them a few days to find it and to appreciate its size—huge and generous in comparison with their tiny bodies. Their children’s bellies will be full for the winter.

In that simple act of setting the bowl down on the wet ground at the rear of the table, I was forced to kneel. Such an appropriate posture, I thought.

Kneeling there with the white sweetness in my cupped hands, it was impossible for me to think of the ants in a negative way. In that moment, I came to see that an offering genuinely bequeathed brings peace and equanimity to the giver. We cannot hold onto the siege mentality when our hands are full of gifts of sweetness. And our reward is peace and an instant—longer if we linger on the act—of true, right-relationship with the receiver of our gift, be they God or insect.

I am not meaning to imply here that there are not times when our protection drives are not warranted, but I do mean to tell you that it sure feels better to come forward in sweetness than it does in defense. And I believe that with just a little bit of discernment, we would discover that there are many, many times when an offering would serve far better than a metaphorical sword or an actual can of Raid held in a raised hand.

Make your sacred offerings this season. Extend in your hands this warming gift of winter sweetness, this gift we all seek. In this moment, put down the burden of your pack mentality: You are no wolf. Not a one of us will never have Wolf’s nobility. But we may have our most powerful moment of humanness when we kneel down on the wet ground and offer our oblation to the sacred Other.

That sacred summer

I watched an osprey dive feet first

wings spread like benediction

when it rose with a silver, fluttering trout.

That trout, oh! That trout plucked from

the dense tug of water

into the effortless current of air.

Gasping with astonished breaths

that rash unknown sunlight

only now obscured by nothing, nothing.

Shuddering lips

tasting that sharp bite of

sage and pine, of star particles and  meteor dust.

Mouthing what! What?

That abrubt death and

that equally abrupt rebirth.

I’m asking you, have you felt it? I know

I have.

That moment when razored talons grab you by the neck

rip you out of the sweet spiraled current of

your one native life

into an alien other.

What!

What?

I’ve been a trout

Have you?

Gulping and amazed at fire light and

the unsound emptiness of air

offering no rampart nor shore

When death comes as Winter

a dream dashed

A love lost

An unwarranted “no.”

A life upended.

I think it will be like that, too

at the very end.

That astonishment that

sense of angry

and betrayed wonder.

Can you become a silver trout

with sudden, unexpected wings

gulping unheralded star dust

shouting Hallejulia! with your

rounded lips

when you are called to soar?

How outrageously new are

you willing to be?

I wake up this morning in the dark of predawn. At my bedside is a cup of hot coffee with cinnamon and real cream, curtesy of my husband who brings me this tender offering each morning. My morning pills are within close reach and I open up the small jar after snapping on the light by my bed. Four pills, tiny things, but powerful. Without one of them—the thyroid medicine—I would not remain long on Earth. Without another—the antidepressant—I would not want to, anyway. Medicine, the need and the ingestion of it, should always be a ritual undertaking because it is so powerful an act. Yet I slosh down the pills with a mouthful of coffee, without a second thought.

Already, my mind is lurching ahead into the day, then past the day into summer, into the summer garden, then off sitting by the bees, then ruminating about my 92-year-old mother. Still dark outside, the world is peaceful and my room is like a soft, downy cradle, but my thoughts yank me away from this comfort and careen me forward again: What to defrost for dinner? Do I have any appointments today? When did I last clean out the duck pen?

With an effort, I pull them back, pull the runaway train of my mind back for a moment. Sometimes, that’s as long as I can keep it in check—a moment. Each morning, I make a habit of asking myself, “What is the quality of Skan this morning? How is it moving right now?”

Taku Skan Skan is the Lakota word for life and it translates, roughly, to “Something moving. Something sacred moves.” I think of it as a word not only for life, but for life force. Sometimes, life—which to the Shamans imbues everything in the Creation from stones to trees to wind and fire—may not seem to be moving much at all. But the force that animates all things is always in motion. And it always has a particular quality to it.

So, each morning, I ask, “How is Skan moving this morning?” Sometimes I sense the movement as strong and focused, other times fractured and bouncing. Sometimes it moves darkly, and sometimes with great, blinding spirals. This morning, which ever way it is moving, I have no sense of it at all because my mind has made a cunning escape and is off imagining how big the asparagus plants could be come late-May.

Especially in these dark moons of late autumn and coming winter, I notice in myself an insidious desire to avoid these seasons, even while another, deeper part of me cherishes them. My mind, in the morning dark, runs away with remarkable speed, leap-frogging past December and January and March, landing splat into the first warmish day of April. Even for those of us who tell ourselves that we relish the deep, cold, inner-work times of winter—and we are not many—there is this pull of an even greater power to avoid this season and these tasks. These oft-times scary tasks. These moments when the dreariness outside becomes the dreariness within the heart.

I don’t need daylight to tell me what dwells just outside my window this morning. The rumbling of rain on the roof, like heavy trucks passing, tells me that our backyard is already a world of muck, and that every last, spent plant stalk is hanging over, weeping cold tears. I used to believe my fear—because fear is the right word—of the dark seasons and my dark moods was a failing in my will. That I did not have enough strength of will to face the wintry blasts with boldness.

But I this morning, I wrap my tender heart around this fear like a mother bear enfolds her naked, vulnerable cub. Because I recognize this piercing fear as the wild in me. It comes forward from my most ancient, Pleistocene past, and it is no weakness but an ancient-brain respect for the deadliness of the cold moons. Moons that in the past took us with icy fingers and killing throat-holds of freezing floods and starvation. One cruel blizzard could wipe out an entire tribe. Maybe it wiped out my tribe, long ago. We have an old and respectful relationship with the freezing moons. It is a natural and life-protecting caution we feel about the dark and dark times, and I count as precious all the parts of me that remain wild, tribal, and instinctual. Even when the wild instincts do not feel good and my stomach clenches in spite of myself.

No wonder my mind seeks to push such ancient dread away and think about asparagus sprouts in spring. I don’t live in deep snows anymore. Winters here are fairly temperate. For some of you, winters are almost nonexistent. But our bodies remember the glaciers. Our eyes speak to our brains and our bellies when the sun drops low in the southern skies and the days grow short. Even if roses bloom for you in winter, your ancient animal brain remembers the ice.

This season, I will not push that wild caution out of mind. I will put my arm around it like a cherished long-time friend come to stay the winter. Side-by-side, my winter friend and I will look outside and see in the first light of dawn the skeletal beauty of the trees, the fog that suspends a secret and warming blanket over the morning. Here in my room where I can now make out the geometric patches of red and back and gold on my blankets, I will call my mind back into THIS moment. This moment where the heater hums and small birds collect on the feeder just against my window. Where bees rest in winter dreams on my drenched hillside.

When this crazy, elusive mind of mind leaps off to the riverbank in late summer, I will call her back kindly, without exasperation but with kindness, to the smell of my coffee in its red cup and the stillness in my belly. Then, only then, I will ask myself, “How is Skan moving in this most precious moment just…right…now.”

“Winter Sojourn: An Intimate Exploration of the Cold Moons”

December to March 2015

Winter-to-Winter, our spiritual and physical nature is matured and ripened by the seasonal, circular celebration of the seasons. This December, I am offering a winter web retreat to explore and build upon the natural gifts and qualities of Winter. Crafted from my book, “Why Buffalo Dance,” this extended 3-month program will use stories, your commentary, and brief outdoor activities that will genuinely anchor you in the natural healing energy of these dark months of nature. (Don’t worry about the weather! I promise the activities require no physical effort and only 10-15 minutes outside each week.). Total time commitment for the course is around an hour a week, and you can tailor it to fit your schedule.

This retreat functions as a “circle gathering.” The support, validation, and insight of your fellow Winter Travelers are a key component to the very real potential for personal/spiritual transformation along the path of this Winter Sojourn. Once a month, we will participate in a group teleconference call to kindle and deepen our relationship as Winter Travelers.

We’ll be conducting our winter travel on a private Blog I will be creating just for us. My hope is that by keeping the course fee very low, we’ll have a good-sized group of us to keep the momentum going. If you have a rough week or so along the way, no matter—you can make up explorations along the way, or just pick up the current thread. The cold moons can be hard on body and spirit, and I don’t intend this program to be another hardship, but a comfort and inspiration to us all.

These are my goals for this retreat:

That you complete the journey with a newfound, sustained connection to Nature where you live, and to the unique power of Winter.

That you are able to call on this new connection/relationship for insight, comfort, grounding, and peace—no matter what the circumstances in your life.

That you feel safe, supported, and strengthened on your Winter Sojourn by the human community of your fellow travelers.

THE PARTICULARS:

DATES: Begins Winter Solstice, ends the day before the Spring Equinox.

RETREAT REQUIREMENTS:  (1) About hour of your time each week, (2) A copy of my book, “Why Buffalo Dance,” (I’m certain you can purchase them online used and inexpensive), and (3) Access to a computer and email.

FEE: $65 paid by check, money order, or credit card to my hubby’s PayPal account. Foreign travelers are welcome! Send funds to Susan Knilans, 1213 NW Ash St., Camas, WA 98607. If you want to use Paypal, I’ll post instructions soon. Payment for the retreat is due by December 20.

TO REGISTER: Easy! Email me and tell me you would like to participate. (My email address: susanknilans at gmail dot com.)Your email to me will serve as your registration. Questions? Email me!

Several years ago now, I offered a winter web seminar on the gifts of the winter season. It was three months long, conducted through email lessons and posts, and all of us who walked this winter path together had a grand time. This morning, I took down the full course, and began reading it again. I thought, goodness, why not do this again??

So, in the next week, I am going to be posting information on the particulars of this “retreat,” and I hope you will join me. Last time it was limited to 20 participants. This time, I’ll take all comers. Last time, it was $300. This time, I’m offering the full six weeks for $65. Pretty good deal, huh? I figure more of us can participate with a pricing that low, plus all of the course work I needed to create from scratch last time is sitting here, saying to me, “Oooh! Let’s go!”

Usually, I feel it first on a bright sunny day when the wind is suddenly crisp and the shadows carve sharp angles across the landscape. “This is autumn,” I tell myself, “here to visit.” And I smile because I love autumn. But this year, the season crept up silently upon me, shifting with a subtly I did not immediately feel. Autumn came with a date on the calendar and with the soft hiss of still-warm rains.

I feel it now, this kiss of fall, and my inner world is suddenly turned on end. In the puddled yard, with clouds the shape and weight of dark smoke all around me, I acknowledge the end of garden time, hot sun time, long-day time.

When I lived in the Rockies, autumn was a time of seasonal anxiety when I hurried to get the yard and house prepared for the deep snows to come. Was the snow shovel out on the porch? Had I made arrangements with the plowers? Were the garden beds covered in mulch, and was there enough wood or propane for the heating stoves? Where were my winter clothes? Enough boots and gloves? Emergency provisions in the car?

Even though death by cold is not so much of a factor here on the coast, there remains in me that edge of tension: am I ready for the winter that is coming? I’m guessing that that edge is really not about the season outside at all, but about the seasons that turn and churn inside the heart. In times of transition, seasonal or otherwise, the soul pokes us in the belly and whispers with just the smallest hint of agitation, “Are you ready? Ready for what is coming…?”

Are we ever ready for what is coming?

I divide my life by two seasons, really: The indoor ones and the outdoor ones. Spring and autumn are the shoulder seasons that can go either way. I’ve been mentally preparing for winter ever since the summer began. Each time I say to myself, “Susan, you need to do more writing,” I answer, “There’s time for that come winter.” Each time I want to eat my own homemade bread but the kitchen is already summer hot and suffocating, each time I pick up a handcraft to paint or sculpt, or look at the dusty state of our wood floors, each time I think of the sailing book I’ve carried inside of me for 30 years, I say to myself, “Winter will be here soon enough.”

And then, as suddenly as the coming of this rain, winter is on my heels and I feel in my chest this intense drive to surrender the season just past and turn my full attention to the one greeting me just outside my window this morning. It wears a welcoming face, this fresh season, all scrubbed clean in grape-scented wind.

This summer just behind me has been one of the best I can ever recall. My sense of home and peace has been great, and I was able to hold onto the stability of a positive, happy outlook for weeks on end. This has been huge for me, and I am hoping to carry this calm and gratitude into the winter with me as I begin reclaiming my inner ground for the next few months of increased inside time.

Autumn announces the coming of the dark months and the traditional goes-within times. In many native traditions, these were the story-telling months. Outside, the plants and trees in my yard are beginning the process of taking down their foliage and exposing their bones. I used to think that the plant nations slept in these seasons, but I know know that they are busy deep below the ground in their own goes-within process. All the growing we see so visibly in the plant nations continues in the dark of the soil, where conversations with the mineral spirits and dreams for green expansions are all happening beneath our feet.

I, too, exchange one kind of activity for another come the cold months. I, too, converse with different spirits that come close to us in the winter months, and dream of my heart’s expansion—where I may go, what I might undertake—come spring.

I look forward to the coming months, while at the same time, I feel these daily emotional jolts—like tiny electric currents in my blood—as my body notes the leave-taking of summer with each kiss of warm breeze and each touch of honeyed sunshine. I find it fascinating how quickly simple distracted activity can pull me away from my cherished awareness of the autumnal shift in my body and very cells, and allow me to miss this precious and profound inner transformation.

For many animals, as winter comes, their chemistries change dramatically, enabling them to digest different sorts of seasonal foods, and survive extreme climate changes. I believe our chemistries shift, too, but we are often too numbed or busy to take notice of it. And so instead, we get sick or tired or angry or weepy as our bodies adjust to changing light and temperature.

I want to notice these turnings inside, and honor them. I want to become ever more my animal body, and appreciate that instinctual, deep aspect of myself that for all of my younger years has been given over to work, bills, and many very stupid concerns. This, then, will be part of the magic of growing older for me, this slowing enough to notice my most earthbound  and earthy self. Along with the returning salmon and the migrating birds, I am a part of this noble march of creatures from season into season. I can feel it inside if I just listen and allow my inner turnings to join hands with the outer swirl of autumnal changes.

May you step forward into the coming sweet and fertile dark months with peace and good dreaming. May the colors of autumn melt your heart into sweetness and mellow you like fine wine. May you steep in the potential of this sacred goes-within time and make good medicine of these months.