The Dogwood Birds Sang Today

Mario and I went out to Falling Creek today, only our second time this season. It has been so cold and so rainy that we haven't been able to get out. But today we bundled up and went out into the Gifford Pinchot.

The whole world seemed all water and green today. So many shades of green. That nearly fluorescent green of the new growth on the tips of various pine trees. The deep dark green of the Doug firs. The blue-green of some of the spruce trees. The shiny jade green of the Oregon grape. The lime-green of the vine maples and dogwood leaves.

All of the green was touched with water, and the sound of water came from all around as we walked the trail that went alongside the creek.

I saw gray, too, in the forest. Shocking gray trunks of trees I don't even name because I am so entranced by the brightness of the gray: by the jewel-like color of the gray where the sun touches it. I point out the spot-lit gray trunk to Mario and we ooh and ahh. I think of my own white-gray hair. I remember getting my first gray hair when I was twelve. My father went prematurely gray in his twenties. So many people look at me, all white now since my early forties, and see nothing but the gray. See nothing but old.

As if being old is bad.

The trail is muddy. A kind of red mud. Not like in New Mexico. Not that hot dry red that is soothing and exciting all at the same time. This is a deeper red. A red that can hardly lay claim to red because it is so brown.

We find one blooming bear grass. Only one. The sharp shining leaves grow up from the ground, like green hair on some science fiction creature whose body is all hair, all green, scurrying around very low to the forest floor. It's unusual to find only one flowering. Usually when one blooms, hundreds bloom, each flower growing up from the center of the grass hillock on a single stalk, stopping two or three feet above the grass, looking like a white flame. When this happens, you can stand in one place and look through the woods and see these bear grass flowers lighting up the forest.

The bear grass aren't blooming, but the dogwoods are. We stop and gasp as we look around. The white bracts of the dogwoods hang in the air all around us like flocks of stilled white birds. We can't see the actual trees or the branches, most of the time, just the bracts, which I learned some years ago aren't exactly the petals of the flower. They're more like leaves, even though they're white and look like petals. They surround the actual flowers which, in the case of Pacific Dogwood, are tiny and greenish.

Doesn't matter what they're called. They look like birds. Or sometimes if I'm close enough, they look like hundreds of lotus flowers hanging from the sky. Sometimes I imagine a Bodhisattva or Buddha in the middle of each of them, meditating serenely. More often I see birds. And lights. The white bracts are lights in the forest, and this year they are everywhere.

Mario and I walk and talk and gaze all around us. Normally we try to hike in silence. But today so much chatter is in my brain and it spills out as we walk. Disappointments. Fears. Irritations. Grief over the oil catastrophe in the Gulf.

We stop to count the deer's head orchids. We are here so late that we've missed most of them. Today we find only twenty-five. Each and every sighting feels like a gift, like every time I see a hummingbird or every time Mario walks into a room where I am.

It is a glorious day.

We stare at the falls when we reach them. Someone has carved letters into the cedar tree near the falls. Deep into the red wood. I feel so angry. And disappointed. What does the tree feel? Did the vandal damage the cambium of the tree?

I ask Mario if he ever carved his name into anything. He says, "No, I never had that kind of ego."

I said, "I had that kind of ego, but I knew a tree was a living thing and it could be damaged."

I wouldn't want someone carving into my skin.

I don't understand this disconnection people have with nature. Sometimes I don't like people. And I don't like not liking them. I'm a pack animal. I want to love my pack.

Mario and I hold hands and start the journey back. I keep thinking about the scarred tree. How could we teach people to have empathy with the natural world? How could we get people to see themselves as part of nature and what they did to the part they did to the whole?

Mario does not think about the tree as we walk. He has let it go. Nothing he can do about it. I admire his abilities. I don't seem to have them. I want to fix the tree and find the vandals.

We continue to walk.

The dogwood birds fly all around us. They are silent and still even as they move in the forest breeze. They make me feel wild and settled all at the same time.

Mario and I laugh together, giddy that we get to witness this wonderful blossoming. This white amongst the green.

The creek next to us turns and dips and gurgles.

We are almost out of the woods when I think I hear the dogwood birds singing.

I stop and listen.

Their songs sound just like my heartbeat.

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Ecocide

I haven't written much about the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico here. (I did on Facebook, but I've quit FB due to privacy concerns.)

I've been in such grief over it that I haven't known what to say. Or more importantly, I haven't known what to do. I encourage everyone to call the White House and your elected representatives and tell them this has gone on too long. It's been over a month. What's happening there is a crime. The administration has been naive, at the very least, for trusting BP to take care of this.

The best engineers in the world should have been called out right away to figure out how to fix it. Although, in truth, offshore drilling should never have been allowed UNLESS something like this wasn't possible. And it's always been possible, that's why people were against it. I keep hearing officials (BP and otherwise) keep up the mantra, "We never expected anything like this." They're either lying or they are so amazingly ignorant that they should all be fired.

Accidents happen. Someone gets into a car and the road is slippery and they crash. That is an accident. Someone is drunk and gets into a car with bad brakes and crashes into a group of people and injures and kills them. That is NOT an accident. That is a crime. What has happened in the Gulf is a crime and it continues to be a crime. Now let's put it on the books and clearly make it a crime.

I'm tired of amoral disconnected people running the world. The politicians and BP all keep talking about money. Money, money, money. Money got us into this mess. Greedy people not doing their jobs got us into this mess. Money isn't going to make this whole. The wetlands of Louisiana are dying, some are dead.

Wetlands are amazing ecosystems that filter water and can clean up many toxins on their own, as long as they are healthy and thriving. Being deluged with oily will kill them. Has killed many of them already.

I don't understand how or why the American people are still in the thrall of big business. I don't understand why the American people don't stand up and say enough. This should have never happened. But for some reason, the American people—maybe everyone on the planet–seem helpless and useless to stop these corporate behemoths.

We need a revolution. Now. A clear decisive revolution. Not to overthrow the government. But to overthrow the corporate fascism that now runs the country and the world. Only the people can do it.

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Responsibility

The sun is out even though the sky is overcast. There must be a patch of blue that I can't see from my vantage point. It's that kind of partially sunny day where sun seems to be turning on a spotlight here and there. The tree on the other side of the Methodist Church across the street is all lit up. The green near the top where the thin branches grow up and out is almost fluorescent. Further down the tree, where the branches are thicker, the green gets darker. The tree is still here. Peaceful. Still, overall, the tree reaches out. And out.

The big old maple on the school property kitty-corner from me grows up and up, probably twice as tall as the other tree, probably fifty feet up, with a trunk three of us could not encircle with our arms stretched to reach one another. Its branches don't reach up or out. They are just there, a part of the tree, sustenance no doubt flowing up from the ground and down from the sky. The difference in the lighting seems to make no difference to how this tree looks. Light or dark. It is solid. It is unmoving now, but I have seen it bend a bit in heavy wind.

The rhododendron next to my window holds its blossom close and closed. Most of them are green and egg-shaped with no hint of the flower within. On some closed blossoms the egg has cracked open enough to reveal the tips of ruby-colored fingers. Within days (a week?) the flower fingers will transform into full-blown flowers, like a slow-motion trick where the magician pulls flowers out of his top hat.

In the distance, beyond the small green tree, the gorge cliffs hunker, dark and old. They never move in the wind. They wear snow storms like a blanket in the winter. In the summer they are black and green and ever-present.

All seems peaceful in my little part of the world. That is comforting. Beyond, though, I know oil is flooding into the Gulf of Mexico.

What do we do during such catastrophes?

The best strategy would be prevent them from ever happening. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend about thirty years ago. He was a pacifist, and I was young. I asked him, "But what do you do about people like Hitler?" He said you prevent him from ever getting into power. I agreed that would be great, but what then?

I don't think I ever got an answer from him.

Let's just decide prevention is the best offense to any catastrophe. We could argue that they should have never put oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Or we could argue if they did put them in they should have had in place every imaginable safety device.

But they didn't.

Now what?

Oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

When this first happened, I did some long distance energy work in the Gulf of Mexico. (We can have a conversation about energy work or long distance healing work another time. What it is, whether it works, whether I'm a crackpot or a crazy person. For now, just know that I did it.) What I saw and heard was that this was big and it was awful, and I needed to go back home and take care of my own people. I heard other things, but that again is for another conversation.

I came back from my journey and asked other people what they were doing and hearing. Some people said they were sending light and Reiki, some didn't think it was a good idea to get emotionally attached, and some people were angry and in grief.

As I listened to the responses, I tried to determine what resonated with me. When the United States went to war after 9/11, I dedicated years of my life trying to do whatever I could to stop it, end it. I co-created a peace group where I live. We organized marches. I participated in other marches and demonstrations. I wrote article after article, essay after essay. I wrote to my elected officials. I donated money. I did whatever I could do.

We still went to war, and I watched as our elected officials allowed the constitution to be shredded. I watched as thousands of people died in Iraq and hardly any Americans seemed to notice or care. So many Americans walked around with their fingers in their ears going, "Lalalala."

The disengagement of people around me was astonishing. Yet even though I was engaged, I was failing. I didn't stop the war. I was glad that I wasn't silent during those years. And yet, the war continued and continues. People are still dying. The American people are still oblivious.

When Hurricane Katrina came ashore, I was at first relieved that it did not hit land as a category 5 hurricane. Later I was appalled as the levies broke and the government failed. During this time, I felt absolutely helpless. What could I do? The story of Ruby's Imagine began to unfold. During the next year, I researched and wrote Ruby's story. I thought this is what I do: I write stories. It is part of my activism. It is part of the healing.

Years have passed. The environmental degradation gets worse. More people seem disengaged. More people seem to be running, running, running.

Maybe there is wisdom in stillness.

To be grounded like that old maple. Always. Wouldn't that be something?

But back to the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. What did I think was the correct response for those of us who weren't there?

I do happen to think that sending healing energy can help a situation. There have been some studies which seem to indicate directed thought, directed intention, can make a difference. I do energy work. I've seen people healed and transformed by the work we do together. I've also put my hands on the hood of a car when it wouldn't start, and no matter how much I wanted the car to work, my hands on it was not going to do the trick.

One avenue does not lead to the truth. One path does not lead to the solution. Necessarily.

In fact, there probably isn't one solution to most problems.

One of my teachers once said, "There are some pretty dysfunctional activists out there. They need to come sit on a mountain and meditate. And all those people sitting on the mountain meditating need to get up and go out into the world."

I thought that was brilliant.

It's clear politicians cannot save us. They never could. This doesn't mean they are evil or all corrupt. They are part of the system. They need we the people to tell them what is important to us.

The capitalist system which brought us this oil flooding into the Gulf of Mexico is not going to save us. For this system, it's all about the money. The politicians and oil companies keep saying everything will be paid for. As if money is going to solve or heal this problem. No amount of money is going to make the Gulf of Mexico and environs whole again.

The only thing that will make the Gulf of Mexico whole again is us. We have to decide as a community of human beings that we include the Gulf of Mexico in our community. We have to decide that that forest over there is part of our community. We have to decide that those wolves over here are part of our family. We have to decide that our comfort and our needs do not supersede everything and everyone.

A dog eat dog world does not work. In the end, only one dog remains, and he's alone with indigestion.

Every day I hope they figure out how to stop the oil in the Gulf. Oil spewing into any body of water will kill it. If the oil spreads into the ocean, it could kill the oceans. Then we would truly understand that we are ultimately connected to everything: If the oceans die, we die.

One day last week, I was so in grief over what was happening in the Gulf and my feeling of helplessness that I curled up on the couch and could barely move most of the day. I was nearly paralyzed.

I realized this is why most people don't think about these things: They are trying to get through the day without coming to terms with the truth and becoming paralyzed.

I got up off the couch. I began researching. I decided I needed to get the skills to help people change their lives practically. I would learn how to make homes and businesses "greener," healthier, more a part of the land and the environment. We need a sea change on how we live our lives. But people are overwhelmed. They don't know what to do. I could learn to cut through the fog of information and misinformation and help design a better world. A world where we understand we are not separate from Nature. A world where we create sustainable communities. A world where each of us understands that it is our responsibility and our great honor to let our voice be heard.

It's true I've tried to live my life sustainably. I've tried creating community before. I've tried to heal and change the world with my writing. But now I hope to get more hands-on experience and skills to do the down and dirty work of creation more successfully.

This is a long way of saying that I'm going back to school for ecological design and planning. This is a long way of saying that this is what I am doing in response to the oil churning into the Gulf of Mexico.

What about you?

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