Stewards of the Land

We are born to the earth, we live on the earth, and when we die we will return to it. Just as our planet rotates around the sun, so do we, in our infinite migrations, rotate around the planet. So why doesn’t the Earth sit more fixedly centered in our thoughts? In my life it’s not a choice. I have nieces and nephews. I have great nieces and nephews even. Knowing that they and their children will live on long after me makes living a life of being kind to the earth important to me.

Over the generations we’ve watched our changing landscape spread out, crawling across the open spaces and clearing away the forested ones. We’ve despaired against the loss of green and wild places as animals became endangered and extinct. And now, it is such a state of how we live that we can’t imagine it any other way. We think that we cannot be a force for change, that one action cannot be a catalyst for renewal. But our bones know that we are people of the earth and they know that is not true.

The earth is not just dirt and bedrock beneath us. It is alive. We were born from its matter and our bodies will decay into its dust when we die. The earth is our Mother, a real and tangible parent beneath us. And mostly, in our short lives, we take little notice of the way we affect change to her. When we run out of room for progress, we build our cities out, abandoning discarded industry to decompose. So we build out, carving more space from the wild, and then we complain when the coyotes, bear, and deer wander our city streets.

What we need to do is to protect the green spaces that are left, from those who would wish to develop them. We are too smart to think that more green spaces will be discovered after we have removed them all. So we have to stop now. We have to become true stewards of the land and watch over the plant and animal life that is left.

Many people are already acting as stewards of the earth. And their pursuit of earth-centered actions have had larger and wondrous effects. Like this video of what happened after wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park. Click here to view the 4 minute video How Wolves Change Rivers.

I’m not talking about a total re-wilding of the earth, though I have to confess, I do love images of nature taking the earth back, like in the films I am Legend, Twelve Monkeys, and The Happening. To my delight, I have even met trees already engaged in the process (see the picture at the top of this post).

Be a steward of the land, no matter what that means to you. Where is the place you can make a change? How can you teach your children to have reverence for the world around them? Maybe you will pick up litter, or plant a garden. Maybe you will feed the birds or rehabilitate wild animals. Maybe you will protest environmental destruction from industry. Maybe you will protect the whales in the sea. Maybe you will be a teacher. Maybe you will plant trees.

Maybe you will sit quietly in the forest and its language. Maybe you will call the crow, sister. Maybe you will call the raccoon, brother. Maybe you will hear the earth singing back to you and maybe you will understand that we are all kin, and that our purpose is to walk softly with the natural world. 

A Prayer for Hope

When my ancestors found themselves in darkened places, where did they turn their prayers? To their god(s)? To their own ancestors? I think it’s safe to say that, despite your religious persuasion, everyone has turned to prayer in their lives.

You turn your face to the skies for an end to the snow or a beginning to the rain. To your car for just 100 more miles on those tires. To the gods of score that there’s one more skein of yarn from the right dye lot so you can finish your project. To the universe for a clean bill of health and a tumor to be non-cancerous. For miracles to happen, for time to turn back, for those who are dead to open their eyes.

What forms do your prayers take?

My Prayer for Hope

When I am knocked down and it feels like every turn holds another piece of bad news, may my feet keep moving forward. When I am teetering on my feet and the floor keeps getting snatched out from underneath me, may I hold my head high. When I can no longer see the light before me, may my heart remember love and a thing called hope. May I not be afraid of the darkness.

I call on Harold Lafayette Riddle and Elsie Elizabeth Durant, who lived and suffered through the financial hardships of the depression, and grew much of their own food. May I find the means to put food on the table. May I learn to be without extras. May my hands grow food from the earth. Their blood runs in my veins.

I call on Silas Parker Smith, Hattie Eva Dutcher, and their daughter Hattie Eva Smith, who came into the world as her mother left it. May I embrace the joy in the sorrow and know that life continues. Their blood runs in my veins.

I call on Charles Evan Ruston, the son of a wealthy landowner, and Ruth Ireland, a maidservant, who trusted in love over everything. He was disowned from his family and they came to the new world together. May I be courageous enough to stand beside my beliefs and heart. Their blood runs in my veins.

I call on Bailey Harrison Whitcher and his wife Ordelia Lozier, who saw their country turn on itself in Civil War and lost two sons to the cause. May I know their fortitude to continue on despite the grief. Their blood runs in my veins.

I call on Peter DeLozier, kept as a Prisoner of War in Tripoli for 30 months and the spirit that kept him alive so that he might survive the ordeal. May I understand that we are forever altered by our experiences. His blood runs in my veins.

I call on Alice, her own family name unknown, wife of John Eaton, known to “have fits” of unknown cause. She handled the household in a time when it wasn’t a woman’s place, much to the respect of the townspeople. Her simple husband was easily swindled by strangers and she often took them to court. May I know such strength to do what needs to be done. Her blood runs in my veins.

I call on Mary Chilton, crossing a long and grey ocean to an unknown place at the age of twelve, to be left without any family after winter came, foraging anew on her own. May I keep one foot in front of the other, always moving, no matter what unknown lies before me. Her blood runs in my veins.

May it be so.

My First Imaginary Friend was a Ghost

When I was a little girl, I had five imaginary friends. But one of them was a ghost. Her name was Amy.

I remember waking in the morning, and she’d be sitting on the end of my bed, waiting for me. I called her Amy, because I had trouble saying her full name. I had a speech impediment as a child. She didn’t seem to mind. My adult brain keeps trying to fill her full name in from scattered memories. Amalia? Amelia? Emmeline?

She was a shadow in the house while I dressed, ate breakfast, and brushed my teeth. We didn’t speak inside but her presence was a comfort to me. We walked to school together every day. She always wore the same outfit, a dress that could have come from Little House on the Prairie, a pale blue dress with tiny flowers on it. Her hair hung in one long braid down her back. It was a light brown color. Her eyes were blue. And always, every day, her feet were bare.

We walked together in the snow, my breath hanging in the air in front of me. Not hers. We would walk together all the way to the corner of Grand and Prospect where the crossing guard stood. Amy would stay on my side of Prospect. She couldn’t cross the street. She didn’t know why. Every day, after school, she would be waiting for me there.

I remember knowing enough to hold my tongue until we were out of range of other kids. And I just accept it was true. Why do I believe she was a ghost? Partly because of all the other spectral encounters I have had in my later life that I know are true. But also because, of all my imaginary friends, Amy was the only one who I couldn’t change or control. She always wore the same thin dress. I couldn’t dress her for the appropriate season like I could the others. She was always barefoot. I wish I remembered the conversations we had, for I know we spoke together while we were walking.

I can’t believe I almost forgot that she was a spirit.

Children, untainted, untrained, unschooled, are open vessels to the world. I know a lot of parents who say their children talk about who they were in a past life, or bring up details on historical events they couldn’t yet know about. There are even children who give details about their imaginary friends that, after research, turn out to be people who had really existed. Kids see things we don’t. According to developmental psychologists, when children reach eight years-old, they begin to conform to what they have to believe and think in order to be part of our culture. And one of the first things they let go of is their belief in magic, and their imagination.

We did the same thing when we were kids. As we age we tell ourselves that what we remember couldn’t possibly have happened the way we remember it. And we alter our own origin stories. We tell ourselves that we couldn’t possibly remember what we did when we were four years old, that we must be making it up. But we must remember that just because we didn’t have the language we needed to accurately identify a thing, doesn’t mean that what we remember is wrong. It’s just out of focus.

I have been both cursed and blessed with a long memory for things that emotionally stirred me. I believed in magic as a child. I remember not speaking to Amy out loud in front of others, even though I didn’t speak out loud with my other imaginary friends. I just had conversations with them in my head. But with Amy, I remember thinking other people would not be able to see her. I remember subsequently hiding myself from the world because I felt I was different. I remember how disconnected I felt when I closed myself off to the natural world.

I believe that act was what caused my decades of unexplainable loneliness. The more I work towards reconnecting into the land I live on and within, the more I chip away at that dark place inside me and the less alone I feel. And the more I accept that the quirky life I remember as a little girl was more real than the one of concrete and asphalt.

When I was a little girl, I had five imaginary friends. But one of them was a ghost. Her name was Amy.

An Ancestral Labyrinth Meditation

There are a myriad of different meditations you can use to connect with your ancestral energy flow. The only limitation is in your imagination. There’s one meditation in particular that I use often that involves the use of a labyrinth. My favorite labyrinth is the Cretan, seven circuit labyrinth. It’s a visible representation for me of the Yoruban belief that if you do not know seven generations of your family line you cannot know who you are. It was that thought that prompted the start of my personal ancestor work more than a decade ago.

I like layers to magic and meditation. So when I walk the labyrinth, I am physically moving in spiraling patterns on a horizontal landscape. And at the same time as I walk, I pull my kundalini energy upward through my body on the vertical axis of the seven chakras. When I do this, I become the meeting point of these two planes. And where they meet in me, a doorway to my ancestors opens within my heart center, the mid-point of the chakras.

When I step into the labyrinth, taking my first turn into the track, my energy sits as the base of my spine, in my root chakra, the home of instinct. I think about my parents, both of whom are still living. They are the bridge between me and those who came before them. As I walk this first track, I fill my heart with gratitude for them, for breath, for body and bone.

I turn sharply onto the second track, aligning my sacral chakra of emotion, the house of intuition, with the memories of my grandparents. I acknowledge, first, those four who gave who gave me life. My next breath is for all those who married into the family after death or divorce, who were part of my life. As I walk this second longest track, I think about who they were to me, both good and bad. I accept their flaws and I leave behind what I don’t need.

On the third and longest track, riding the outer edge of the labyrinth, I open my solar plexus chakra, where energy and ego live. I open to my eight great-grandparents, one of whom I was fortunate to know in life. One step in front of another, I contemplate my mortality and the truth that my path will someday be ghost footprints across the earth. Just as most of my great-grandparents were unknown by me, someday I will be unknown to others. There is a breaking and a humbling in this track. One step in front of another, walking the edge of the labyrinth.

At the end of the track, I cross the short bridge that joins the solar and heart paths and turn, opening the compassion of my heart. I accept what it means to be alive. I accept what it means to live. I call forth to my sixteen 2x great-grandparents, who saw the effects of the Civil War and lived the turning into the 20^th century. I am grateful for how many of their stories I know. They were people like me, with families of their own, wondering what the future held. Wondering what their ancestors were like.

The shortest path rides the edge of the center. This is the track of the throat chakra, an energy center which sees a lot of action in our everyday lives. I slow my steps and open to my 32 3x great-grandparents, ones who braved wild territory to start anew. I can feel the slip stream of time as ghost steps crowd the path behind me.

Together, we turn onto the sixth track. I pull my energy and breath up into the third eye chakra, just above and behind the eyes, where empathy lives. I invite my sixty-four 4x great-grandparents to join me, and I feel my thoughts sinking deeper into my bloodstream. The fact that I only exist because those sixty-four people lived and loved is overwhelming.

I walk the final turn of the labyrinth with my one hundred and twenty-five 5x great-grandparents. One hundred and twenty-five! I think about all of those people, and the children they had who were not my direct ancestors, and the children their children had… how many cousins might their be that I will never know or meet? For a moment, I imagine I can understand what eternity means, and what it means that we are all part of the same well of energy. I open the top of my crown chakra, prepared to meet them face to face.

When I enter the center of my meditation, I am standing in the center of the labyrinth with two hundred and fifty-four spirits. They are the collective spirits of the first seven generations of my family tree. I am two hundred and fifty-five. I am a pillar of energy. I am walking in ancestral fire. I sit in the center and open to whatever visitations might occur.

When I am ready, I return the way I came. There is only one path to the labyrinth and the ways in and out are the same. As I leave, I pull my energy back down through my body, pulling my awareness back until I am me, in my body, feet on the earth. I thank each generation for journeying with me, for their part in giving me life. I return humbled, deeply connected, and surprisingly sure-footed. 

Click on this link to find a labyrinth near you!

The Shape of Transformation

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person that walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.”

The quote is by the Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, and it is true about every hurdle and curveball life throws at us. Every experience we have changes us. The way we see the world alters and we adapt, finding ourselves in another period of transformation, where we become a new version of ourselves. When things get hard, that’s a hope you hold onto… that you will be a better person for it when it’s past.

These storms, these hard moments do not happen to us because there’s some greater reason, or purpose. No deity is pulling strings from behind their curtain in the heavens to manipulate our lives. Sometimes the point simply is that we survive, that we change, and that we become something and someone new to discover. We are the journey.

Everyone’s journey is different. But we all have one. That is a constant truth. We are all muddling through this life together, while we’re here. But it does no good to compare your journey to anyone else’s. It does no good to judge yourself based on where you stand in relation to those around you. It is up to you to reflect on who you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. How do you feel about your path? Your choices? Listen to your intuition? Despite what the outside world would say to you, do you feel your feet are moving in the right direction?

We are constantly changing and evolving and it’s good to know where you are in the journey. This time of year, when the cold drives us indoors and the earth slumbers beneath us, is a good time to check in with yourself, to listen to yourself, and see what things you cling to, that you no longer need, that are hurting you.

We think about life and time like it’s a straight line. We’re born, we live, and we die. Especially in genealogical work, that’s what our ancestors become, names on a timeline. But while you’re living life, you understand it’s not a straight line at all. It’s a path that goes up and down and often trails back across itself.

Life runs in cycles, like a spiral going upward around the outside of a glass cup. Always forward, always in motion, even though from an aerial view, the path you are walking looks like a circle, winding around and around without exits to get off. That’s what it looks like and often what it feels like, but it’s actually a line, with revolutions layered atop each other. We often come back to the same places we’ve been before. As we age we revisit these spaces with new and older eyes and the way we perceive our world shifts and opens with each overlap.

We often talk about getting stuck in hamster wheels… but the point is, when we realize we’re repeating unsuccessful patterns, to see it with new eyes and make a different choice so that we do not find ourselves back there again. These are opportunities for us to reshape the parts of ourselves and our lives we’re not happy with. That is when we move up the glass, up the path. The wheel, the circle, the path, the spiral… all of these are among the shapes of transformation.

I talked last week about using petrified wood as a tool in my ancestor meditations. Another fossil I treasure is the ammonite, with its spiraling shell. It reminds me of the spiraling journey upward and inward. It represents the need to move into the darkness to get through it and back out into the light. One of my personal mantras is, the only way out is through. The ammonite reminds me of the labyrinth, turning inward so that I may later turn out with new knowledge.

It’s important for us to be the best versions of ourselves we can be. I am not the same person I was, nor am I the same as the person I will be. But I trust that my feet are walking the path I am meant to walk, and that kindness and compassion are the seeds I am planting. I trust that the world I am leaving behind me is a better world than the one I walked through. I trust that I am leaving the world a better place for those who will come after me. Through every painful transformation, when I fight against giving in to what society wants me to be, I hold tightly to Mother Theresa’s words, because it’s what I believe in my heart of hearts:

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. Afterall, it was never between you and them anyway."

The Magic of Petrified Wood

Petrified birch from the Blue Forest, Wyoming.

In my spiritual life, to better connect to the natural world around me, I use allies as focusing tools, like animals, plants, and stones. I love trees, and feel a strong affinity with them. They have taught me to slow down, to stand and be present in the moment, to breathe in seasons and touch stillness. For this same reason, one of my favorite stones to work with is petrified wood. I use a lot of fossils, the petrified remains of organics that lived millions of years ago. I call them earth bones. They are the ancestral stones I hold when I meditate backwards through my family lines.

Almost as magical as the rock itself, is the process it undergoes to become stone. The word petro is Greek for “rock/stone.” When something petrifies, it literally becomes stone in a process called permineralization, where organic material is replaced over time with minerals, mostly silicates. Many fossils form as compressions or impressions, but petrified wood uniquely forms as a three-dimensional representation of the original, preserving detail at the microscopic level. To feel the weight of the minerals in your hand and the coolness of the stone while your eyes perceive grainy bark… it is a wonder of the natural world.

Wood becomes preserved when it is buried under sediment, where a lack of oxygen stops aerobic decomposition. Then, water rich in minerals flows through the sediment, where they deposit in the plant cells. Permineralization begins when silica from the mineral-laden water permeates the wood. Next, this solution penetrates the pores of the cell walls. Then the cell walls, cellulose, begin to dissolve while, elsewhere in the trunk, the minerals begin to build up, preserving the wooden frame. The last to decay is the inner lignin of the tree. Afterwards, silica deposits itself in any spaces in between the cells, until it finally penetrates the cell lumina, the cavity within the walls of the plant cell. It might fill these voids with chalcedony, agate, quartz, calcite, pyrite, or opal. Finally, lithification occurs, which is the process where sediment compresses under pressure, into rock, as water loss continues to occur. The initial silica is amorphous, which is unstable. Over millions of years, due to more extensive polymerization and water loss, the silica transforms into a more stable crystalline structure, like opal or quartz.

Cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin account for 95% of the dry weight of live wood. After permineralization, 90% of the weight of the fossil is silica, showing that very little, if any, of the original material remains [according to Leo & Barghoorn (1976), Sigleo (1978), and Mustoe(2008)]. Permineralization is one of the most accurate modes of fossil preservation. Because different layers of the wood decay and fill in with silicates at differing rates, it preserves the individual parts of the tree, though accuracy varies between specimens. Some are “sugary,” where the cell detail is blurred. Others show the tree rings intact, and still more are comprised of such a fine grain of silica, that the histology of the original tree can be studied satisfactorily.

Believe it or not, that bark is pure stone!

Some specimens of petrified wood, when uncovered, are pure silicate/quartz white, though, over time the sun will darken it. Other minerals add to the beautiful colors of the petrified wood. Carbon colors the specimen black. Cobalt and chromium both add hues of green and blue. Manganese tinges the stone with pink and orange, while manganese oxides color it in yellow and black. Iron oxides color it with red, brown, and yellow.

Petrified wood is a common fossil, but the conditions needed to create it are specific. Temperatures over 212 degrees Fahrenheit will break the wood down before the process can occur and excessive pressures will deform the organic tissues. And not only does it need mineral-rich water but, chemically, wood breaks down when the water’s pH value is below 4.5 and above 7, so the window for a perfect environment is still precise.

They are treasure from the earth, gifts in their assurance as to the cyclical nature of life, and the knowledge that life will out in the end. I use them as touchstones. Their process of transformation traverses so many millions of years that I use them to connect to the past, as if I can take a shortcut and touch any point of time in their linear history. When you come across petrified wood, take a moment to touch it and connect into it. Touch the energy of the spirit of the tree it was once a part of and be reminded of the larger, universal web we are all a part of.

Facts and Folklore

·         Most of the petrified trees have been given the name Araucarioxylon arizonicum. 

·         Petrified wood is found on every continent except for Antarctica.

·         There are petrified trees more than 10 feet in diameter and 100 feet long at the Petrified Forest National Monument, Santa Cruz Province, Argentine Patagonia.

·         The stone of Alberta, Canada is petrified wood.

·         The Chinese government has cracked down on the collecting of this material.

·         The Museum of Natural History in Chemnitz, Germany has specimens that date back to their discovery in 1737.

·         The Puyango Petrified Forest in Ecuador has one of the largest collections in the world.

·         Egypt declared their petrified forests to be national protectorates.

·         The largest forest can be found in the Petrified Forest of Lesvos, on Lesbos, Greece, covering 93 miles. Upright trunks with roots intact can be found there. Some trunks measure up to 72 feet in length.

·         In the Great Sand Sea of Libya, pieces of petrified trunks and branches are littered over hundreds of square miles, along with Stone Age artifacts.

·         At low tide along the coast of Wales and England, submerged petrified forests become visible.

·         Seven species of tree have been identified through petrified wood.

·         Petrified wood is often used in lapidary work, cut into cabochons for jewelry and slabs for table tops and counters.

·         The oldest known species of petrified wood can be found near Gilboa, New York, dating to the Devonian period, over 358 million years old.

·         The stone in the National park in Arizona are of the Triassic Period, over 160 million years old.

·         Petrified wood is associated in metaphysical worlds with the astrological sign Leo and the Base Chakra.

·         Petrified wood and dinosaur bones are the best-known specimens of permineralized fossils.

·         Petrified wood is found in large numbers in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Greece, Indonesia, India, Israel, Libya, Namibia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States.

·         In the United States, Petrified Forests and Parks can be found in abundance: the Gilboa Fossil Forest in New York; the Petrified Forest in Mississippi; the park in Lemmon, South Dakota; Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota; the Petrified Springs in Kenosha, Wisconsin; Yellowstone Petrified Forest and Gallatin Petrified Forest in Yellowstone, Wyoming; the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado; the Ginkgo Petrified Forest, Wanapum State Park in Washington; the forest in Calistoga, California; the National Park in Holbrook, Arizona; the Escalante Petrified Forest State Park in Utah.

Family Tree Stories

I was lucky enough to have multiple grandparents. There were seven in total. Some of them were part of my immediate family, some were names on my tree, and some were unknown to me, having died before I was old enough to put my world together in thoughts and memories. It seems to me that sometimes, in our grief, we deal with it by keeping stories precious to us close to the breast. Or we keep memories quiet out of deference to those who come into families after the fact, lest they feel excluded. It’s understandable, but sad for those like me, who don’t share in those memories.

I might not have known them, but there were other family members in my life that did. There are others still alive who remember them. I only recently realized that the older I get, the smaller that group becomes. If I don’t remember, how will those who come into the family after me? I’d like to be able to say more about my father’s mother to my nieces and nephew than, “She died when your grandpa was five.”

I can tell you all the pertinent information about my family tree. I know who was born when and where and who they married. I mostly know when they died and some, how. But that doesn’t tell me about them. Knowing what my birth date is doesn’t tell anyone anything about who I am. What would I want to know from those who do remember them? What would you want to know?

Lives Drawn from Memory

• Family Member: name
• What profession(s) did they have?
• Do you know of any vacations they took; any places of the world they visited?
• What kinds of things did they enjoy doing in their leisure time? Did they have any noticeable hobbies (needlework, gardening, knitting, carpentry, model-making, etc.)?
• How many children did they have? How many boys? How many girls? What were their ages (i.e. how often were they having them)?
• In their lifetime, where were the places they lived?
• Did they serve in the military? What branch? What was their title?
• Describe things you did together when you spent time with them.
• What kind of food did they like to eat?
• What was their favorite season of the year?
• Did they play and/or enjoy sports? Which one(s)?
• What was their favorite holiday?
• Do you remember attending church with them? Or them attending church? Do you know what church they attended?
• Did they drink tea or coffee? Both? Did they have a regular cocktail? Do you know what their favorite drink was?
• Did they listen to music? Did they have a favorite kind of music? A favorite artist?
• Did they have any known addictions or flaws?
• Did they have a busy/active social life?
• Were they members of any clubs or lodges?
• Do you remember them ever being seriously ill?
• What kinds of foods did they enjoy? What types of things did you eat when/if you ate at their house?
• Did they cook?
• What did they do with their time after dinner and before bed?
• Did they read? Did they have a favorite kind of book (romance, history, murder/mystery, science fiction)?
• Did they wear glasses? Hearing aids?
• Did they have tattoos?
• When you think of them, what style of clothing do you associate with them?
• What age were you when you first met them? Did you always know them?
• Did they seem happy most of the time?
• Describe briefly a favorite memory you have of/with them.

These are meant to be prompts. Add your own questions. Tailor them to fit your family. Pass them out to your parents, your aunts and uncles, and your grandparents. Ask them to answer the questions about their parents and grandparents, even great-grandparents if they knew them. Take the information you receive and compile a history that gives flesh to their ghosts.

Tell their stories. Share them. Pass them down through your generations. Whisper the names of your loved ones long after they are gone. Tell the stars their stories if there is no one left to share them with. What is remembered lives, and never truly dies.