Windgrove — Life on the Edge

The evolving heart: functional “and” wise

February 20, 2012

Around 500 years ago, while observing corpses, Leonardo da Vinci did a number of beautifully rendered, anatomically correct drawings of the human heart.

This past week, I did my own research on the body/trunk of a tree and found out some interesting things about “its” heart.

Eight hundred million years before Leonardo took pen to paper, in the late Proterozoic Era, a very simple kind of heart was to be found in the earliest marine invertebrates and consisted of a muscular tube which squeezed rhythmically and moved blood-like liquid by peristaltic contraction.

Slowly, thousands of years upon thousands of years, the slow evolution of heart preceded beat by beat. Eventually, invertebrate hearts started pumping and, in ever increasing complexity over millions of years, from fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals to humans, our four-chambered heart evolved.

As excited as I get about the science of hearts, the symbolic and metaphoric role hearts play in our imagination provides me with an equal amount of fascination.

Around 400 years ago, William Shakespeare wrote that there “were tongues in trees”, perhaps meaning that trees had something to tell us.

Looking closely at the slice of tree, its age is around 70 years. What’s interesting is that the tree’s “heart” didn’t start to take shape until the tree was 25 years old or older. More importantly, the shaping of the heart, its creation, was the result of some disturbance to its growth. Animal? Lightening? Disease? Who knows? But it was this scarring that led to the formation of the heart.

The essence of being human is that within the heart resides the symbolic seat of all emotions: love and hate, fear or courage, sorrow or joy, compassion or indifference.

As Leonardo blended science and art through his renderings in pen, pencil and paintbrush of his close observations of nature, I choose to observe nature closely so that I can better learn to live wisely with a good heart. My art is an expression of nature’s lessons.

To me, there is something truthful in the shaping of the tree’s heart by scarring, and, by way of analogy, how our human heart — this great seat of human emotions — only begins maturing after our young hearts have been massaged with every emotion imaginable: from bursting open with first love, to, and possibly more powerfully, broken apart with despair. It is then that we start the move towards becoming adults with a capacity for compassion, tolerance and forgiveness.

And here I use the word “capacity” cautiously because a split-open heart doesn’t guarantee a kind heart. It takes many years surrounded by other kinder hearts to guide us towards wisdom capable of delivering an enduring happiness.

When did emotions get involved in evolution? Perhaps, during the big Bang.

When did humans divide off spiritually and soulfully from their plant and animal ancestors? Perhaps they never did.

{ 0 comments }

Slip sliding away; the courageous heart

February 13, 2012

So what are we looking at here? It’s an exposed section of tons of earth avalanched off a cliff near the Point at Windgrove. Approximately 100 feet in width (notice silvered trees along top edge for relational perspective), it demonstrates rather graphically and with force the 2nd law of thermodynamics: entropy and the irreversibility in nature.

But, hey. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. What’s physics got to do with love? Lots.

Every step of the way, I will always love you.

Heart wrenchingly sung by Whitney Houston, these lyrics tie in with words by spiritual teacher Jack Kornfield:

The courageous heart is the one that is unafraid to open to the world. With compassion we come to trust our capacity to open to life without armoring. As the poet Rilke reminds us, “Ultimately it is on our vulnerability that we depend.”.

The American poet John Caddy spent this past week at Windgrove as poet-in-residence. At the airport he arrived last off the plane, walking slowly, step by step with his cane; a physical disability the result of a stroke 18 years ago.

Now 74, and definitely feeling the effects of aging (of the slow dissolve of the physical body), John and I spent many an hour discussing how Cupid’s arrow of love is an antidote to the “arrow of time” that points to our ultimate death.

If I should stay
I would only be in your way.
So I’ll go but I know.
I’ll think of you every step of the way.

What sustains John, what allows John to remain vulnerable and with grace in the world, in his world, and not succumb to cynicism nor an unbearable grief, is the deepest of felt love for his mistress Earth.

It is this intimate connection to Earth and all her multitude of exquisite manifestations of form, function and beauty that gives John — and you and me — a reason to want to live.

With stories of personal remembrances laced with humour and holding wisdom only an elder can give, I and the several other visitors at Windgrove this past week were blessed with his presence. Not only was it a pleasure to have him here, but a privilege.

Eating the sting

Caught in the snapped circle of light
on the cookshack oilcloth,
an upright deermouse, holding yellow
in her fine fingers
like an ear of black-striped corn,
a wasp I’d slapped dead earlier.

She stares, belly resonating, round above
a scatter of brittle wing, bits, a carapace –
she has already eaten the stinger –
stares at me, still,
something thrumming in her eyes

beyond herself, a mouse stung
onto an edge as far from cartoons
as the venom she’s chewed into food.

She cocks a fawn ear now, trembling poisonchanger,
caught in the circle of light
I’ve thought myself in at times,

but never sure, I ask her softly how
she does it, if I can learn this turning
of sting into such food as startles in her eyes,
learn to suck pain into every sense
and come up spitting seeds, force poison
to a tear held fierce between my lips
and whirl it into tongue which sings, but

here I’ve come too loud: She drops the husk,
fusses whiskers with her paws, kicks
a scrap of wing aside, and whispers
thanks for the corn,

steps backward off the table
(and so potent she is with wasp)
flips a circle through light and
lands running on her leaf-toed feet.

John Caddy

You, you, my darling you.

Bittersweet Memories.
That is all I’m taking with me.
So goodbye please don’t cry.
We both know I’m not what you
You need.

I hope life treats you kind.
And I hope you have all you dreamed of.
And I wish to you joy and happiness.
But above all this, I wish to you love.

You, darling I love you.
Oh, I’ll always, I’ll always love you.

I believe in you and me.

I will always love you.
I will always love you.

As we climb the ladder of physical decline, perhaps, approaching the top is a kinder, gentler way of being in our bodies. May it greet all of us.

{ 1 comment }

A beautiful life; what more?

February 6, 2012

The small blue orb held between thumb and middle finger is, at first appearance, simply a tasty looking blueberry. To me, however, it is a time capsule; an edible indelible memory from childhood.

When I close my eyes and squash down on its firm skin, the very distinctive flavor instantly, without exception, takes me back to a summer-dry, boreal oak-heath forest in northern Michigan some fifty to sixty years ago where, down on my knees with blue stained impatient fingers, pail at the ready, I’m half the time filling it with as many huckleberries (similar to blueberries) as I am sneaking them into my mouth. No matter. My mother would always get three buckets to my one guaranteeing plenty for the up coming evening’s hot huckleberry pie and the following morning’s huckleberry pancakes with maple syrup.

I don’t know of any other fruit or vegetable that works its time magic this way.

Such summertime field trips to the deep forest to pick berries whilst spending a barefoot three months at the lakeside cottage with no radio, telephone, TV, or even hot water, were always, not only a delight for my young self, but (if I may use a term not known to me then) a “transcendent experience”.

It would be one of many such ecstatic experiences felt in nature as a child; from the Greek root — ek stasis — meaning “out-standing” or “standing outside ourselves”.

Of possible interest to the reader is that this blue fruit belongs to the Ericaceae family, a group of mostly calcifuge (lime-hating), acidic soil loving flowering plants whose members include the cranberry, blueberry, huckleberry, azalea and rhododendron. Bet you didn’t know that.

Most Ericaceae form a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizal fungi that grow in and around the roots and provide the plant with nutrients “in exchange” for sugar produced by the plant.

According to Diana Beresford-Kroeger in her delightful book ‘Arboretum Borealis’, there is something decidedly odd about the blueberry.

The plant loves the acid soils, no doubt, and grows well in them, making the powder blue fruit for which the skinny plant is famous. But the roots have no root hairs. They manage their underground life dealing with mycorrhizal growth in a mysterious manner. From its lucky dip of growth the plant manages to store some strange elements in the fruit. There are chromium, zinc, iron, copper, magnesium, and molybdenum. These are placed into a form that is extremely healthy to eat. All these elements make up the co-enzyme catalytic factors that fire up all metabolic pathways in the moving [human], beast, or bird.
Blueberries hike up the iron in hemoglobin. They are high in vitamin C and quercetin, the universal capillary protector. They therefore clear the skin and beautify the face. The ripe blueberry is antidiabetic and somehow helps with hypoglycemia.

So why the bird? Just to show that nothing happens at Windgrove without other equally fascinating events taking place, as well.

On the day I ate the blueberry, I woke to a noise on the roof. Thinking it was a possum I went to check it out, but was amazed to find it was, instead, a goshawk who, after flying off the roof, tried to enter into the house through the french doors. In the dim early morning light and without my glasses I quickly tried to get a photo of her, but didn’t do a great job of focusing.

For the twenty years I have lived at Windgrove, a white goshawk has never been sighted. The male goshawk is grey — and get this — only half the size of the pure white female. She’s no friendly white dove of peace, either, as she chases down little birds for breakfast.

Simple encounters make my day. They keep me excited; ecstatic. My childhood and adult adventures have blended into an ongoing lifestyle hybrid of what psychologist James Hillman would call a beneficial, yet paradoxical, paradigm of senex and puer.

{ 1 comment }

Carbon

January 30, 2012

Vascular: having the form of tubular vessels; consisting of continuous tubes of simple membranes.

In my garden, sunlight illuminates these green tubes of the squash plant.

During the Silurian Period of earth’s evolution (443-418 million years ago, MYA), the first vascular, upright-growing land plants started to green the landscape and, in the process, grab carbon out of the air to build themselves. It took another 50 million years for these tubular stems to grow in strength to create the first tree like plants of 2-3 meters tall (390 MYA). The first forests (360 MYA) didn’t appear until the Devonian Period (418-354 MYA).

[As an fascinating aside, other than when the green producing chlorophyll got depleted and allowed other coloured pigments to exhibit a bit of yellow, brown or red, it took another whopping 235 million years for the flamboyance of flower power to arrive on the scene during Cretaceous Period. Then, finally, those ever-green vascular plants and woody trees decided to adorn themselves with a bit of colour for a bit of pro-creative pizazz and dance with pollen stealing, symbiotic insects. This was 125 million years ago. Talk about slow.]

To get back to the subject on hand — carbon — in between the Devonian and Cretaceous periods, besides the dinosaurs munching on everything green in the Triassic (252-200 MYA) and Jurassic (200-142 MYA) periods, there was the earlier Carboniferous Period (354-290 MYA) where vast tropical forests laid down vast depositions of coal-bearing shales. This was never to be repeated again.

I say “never to be repeated again” because, until the end of the Carboniferous Period, there just weren’t decomposer fungi to compost the fallen trees before they turned into coal. Today, when a tree falls in the forest, fungi gets to it first before there is a chance for the tree to become coal, but not then. Amazing? Yes.

[Another fascinating aside is this: We know that our present day climate is warming due to (among other things) an increased carbon dioxide (CO2) presence in the atmosphere. However, during the late Carboniferous Period so much carbon had been locked up in the making of coal that “too much” was taken out of the atmosphere and the earth’s average temperature dropped to 10 degrees C as opposed to 20 degrees C during the early Carboniferous and 15 degrees C today.]

Now, however, it behoves us to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere and to live out our personal lives as close to carbon neutral as possible.

By going on-line one can easily work out their yearly carbon footprint. The above photo shows around 16 tons of firewood being stacked this past week in and outside the wood shed equating to a year and a half’s supply of home heat. When I also factor in my use of a car, household purchases, gas hot water and fridge, food, and even a round-the-world flight, my yearly carbon footprint is 12 metric tons of CO2 per year.

With a deep bow, and a smug smile, I will admit to being even better than “carbon neutral”.

Why? Because I sequester away more carbon than I consume.

Seen through a telephoto lens from a neighbour’s porch 2 kilometers away, is a tree circle with a 140 foot diameter that was planted out 14 years ago with around 1,000 she-oak trees. These trees — along with the “other” 7,000 trees and shrubs planted over the past 20 years — are allowing me to build up a hugh reserve of carbon credits.

How? Assuming the average of each tree is 100 kilos, there is now 800 metric tons of wood growing. This equates to around 60 metric tons of CO2 currently sequestered.

As my carbon footprint is only 12 metric tons of CO2 per year, I’m well ahead of the game. With each passing year, as the trees grow even more, and, as more trees get planted, I just might consider a trip overseas to Cuba and not be too bothered about either the carbon footprint the jet trails leave behind nor the smoke from my big, fat cigar while listening to the Buena Vista Social Club.

Then again, I think I’ll just hang out here at Windgrove and stack up so much carbon credit in the years to come that I’ll wipe clean the debt on the carbon credit card given to me at birth. A credit card that is certainly, as a westerner, still well over the limit.

It’s a good feeling knowing that when my friends sequester my body in the dirt, my final carbon tally will be a healthy one for all concerned.

{ 0 comments }

Walking time

January 23, 2012

Ants first appeared 140 to 168 million years ago during the Jurassic Period, but they only began to flourish about 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period in concert with the flowering plants.

So what’s with this “Jurassic”, “Cretaceous” talk?

And what does a breaking wave have to do with an ant on a hakea bush?

To answer the lathing latter question, I just liked how the two photos looked together. The curling spidery creamy white flowers of the hakea seemed not too unlike the wispy back spray off the waves. Maybe the ant enjoys hanging onto his green tube inside this unfurling whiteness as much as a surfer enjoys being on her board in the green room. Who knows?

What I do know is that a walk of observation around Windgrove always presents new wonders to the senses and brings me a little closer to understanding (actually “embodying” is a better choice of words) my connection to the time line that has placed me here on this earth at this moment.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

To get back to the ants, what I originally started out to write was that, with the help of Jess and Ruth, a new project was begun at Windgrove last week when we hammered into the ground at 50 meter intervals enough stakes to mark out 1.2 kilometers (or, for the metric challenged just under a mile). This will eventually become the Gaia Walk where people will be able to trace an evolutionary history of the earth from 600 million years ago to the present day.

Each step a person takes (assuming each step is a meter long) equals 500,000 years. The Gaia Walk will begin just as the last snowball earth event (see? more white) is about to blizzard near the end of the Precambrian Eon 600 million years ago.

Along the walk, as people walk through the years, signage will list the various time periods (Cambrian, Silurian, Carboniferous, Jurassic, etc.) as well as denote things of interest such as first trees, first flies, first cockroaches, first land snails, first snakes. Get the picture?

And, of course, the first flowering plants and the first ants.

As for those two people in the photo, where one is squatting and the other standing, the earliest evidence of bipedalism is the Orrorin leg bone from 6 million years ago. The first direct evidence of bipedalism is the Laetoli footprints found in east Africa dated to be 3.6 million years old.

Our current “modern civilization’s” time on this earth thought by scholars and experts to be the last 12,000 years or since the last ice age (forgetting, of course, the 50,000 year history of the Australian aborigines), is just a fat pencil mark on the fence post at the end of the Gaia Walk.

{ 0 comments }

Changing focus

January 16, 2012

This press of time we humans seem born into, how often do we walk or worked rushed, absorbed in thought as beauty bursts forth unrecognized?

“Stop and tarry”, I say.

Admittedly, it is hard to see the rainbow when standing directly beneath its arching grandeur, but the point I want to make is that our intense focus to get from A to B can deny us from seeing what is actually happening under our noses, or behind us, or in the sky above, or…

or to the left on the rocks 20 metres below the cliff we’re standing on where the power of an incoming wave wells up to break in dramatic fashion.

Soften the gaze, open up to the wider scheme of things. Shift focus; change direction. Then, bring one’s attention to detail.

We set the pace.
But this press of time –
take it as a little thing
next to what endures.

All this hurrying
soon will be over.
Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy.

Rumi