Iconic

Calories hoarded for winter's keeping

fire and ice

tassels and silk

Sun to leaf

Seed to mouth

Ritual

Water

There is a visceral sinking, a drop out in the gut, that hits the moment I realize the water system is down. This week it occurred in the form of a morning phone call from two of the World's Best Neighbors, informing me that their tank was empty and inquiring about the status of mine. They get my overflow. I had been tinkering with my ram pump system the previous week, replacing the weak link again. (The weak link is the only plastic part in the system, a check valve between the pump and the delivery line. The plastic casing keeps cracking under all the pressure. I'm going to try to get a metal one custom made in the local factory.) Skipping over the tedious details of the troubleshooting steps of repairing the system, I will focus here on the sensation I experienced when I hiked up to my reservoir, and, upon opening the lid, discovered it to be nearly empty. For me it was like a quick sinking, not dissimilar to the feeling when you drop down hill on a roller coaster. Accompanying the physical gut drop, there was some sort of cerebral switch-over that occurred with equal swiftness. I can best describe this mental shift as turning a dial from a setting that is called "Post-Industrial Modern Brain" to a setting entitled something along the lines of "Lizard Brain." Something old and animal and basic kicked in. All other pending tasks and plans melted into a descending blur down the priority list as all of my mental, physical, and hormonal resources immediately mobilized into a charged and focused mission of securing usable water. Survival instincts kicked in. And it felt like, as my dear neighbor so poignantly put it, "a punch in the gut." 

Don't get me wrong here. I live in what is sometimes referred to as a borderline temperate rain forest. Water is an abundant resource in this nook of the southern Appalachians. I personally live in a private little watershed, where a bowl shape of hills and coves collects and cleans water, conveniently dispensing it into a continuous flow of cold, clean, accessible spring water year round. I am at no eminent risk of being without water. But I find it awesome, especially with all that being said, how quickly and efficiently the body switches gears when it perceives a decline in access to basic elemental needs. I can only begin to ponder the psychological and physiological state of humans living in drought-stricken parts of the earth. 

Skip the details of fixing the system, which was relatively easy when I think of the on-going benefits and convenience that the system provides, pumping water around the clock, night and day, with no additional power inputs other than water and gravity- supplying 3 households with clean, cold life-blood straight from the teat of the Mother herself.  The feeling of buoyancy endowed to the person who realizes she has an ample reservoir of water with more flowing is the instant antidote to the previously described gut-drop fear of the empty tank. Amazing. Light. Free. My list of things to do ascends back to my awareness, but this time everything seems easier.  A shift in perception. We have water.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, each element is affiliated with a major organ system in the body as well as an emotion, time of day, and time of year. Water governs the kidneys, and is associated with winter time and fear. I think I can experience this most readily when I am confronted with situations involving too much or too little water. A dry tank. A flash flood. The fear is instant, primal, real. Elemental. 

Evening Devotion

One thing I love about the woods is this: the moment needs to be nothing other than the moment. No expectations or judgments.

The hooded warbler sings a song, then a portion of a song. Soon he will start to fly south. This moment he sings here in the angled golden sunlight. The sunlight casts mottled gold through the trees and leaves; it both brightens and darkens the forest, simultaneously.

Caterpillars crunch leaves above. A black-throated green warbler sings.

Hopey sits in a spot of sunlight. She is aging and will die. This moment she sits quietly with me. There are blackberries that could be picked. They hang ripe on the brambles.

The earth turns and the sunlight is shifted.

This moment is heartbreakingly beautiful. And it is just a moment.

On Guns and the Bypass (for Rosemoon)

I gave a very old man a ride to Asheville once the day after Thanksgiving in my old doo-doo brown 1979 Pontiac Catalina. He was hobbling down 25/70 very slowly in the rain on the bypass. I couldn't bear to see it, so I pulled over and asked him where he needed to go. Asheville. I was going anyways. He had his hand inside his coat holding something which I couldn't see, presumably to protect it from the rain. I said to the man, "sir are you armed?" He squinted, rain in his face, and loudly replied, "What?" I repeated myself one or two times, very loudly. He said, "no ma'am, I ain't armed," to which I politely informed him that before I would give him a ride to Asheville, I needed to see what he was holding inside his coat. 

He pulled his hand out to reveal a light bulb. "I found it on the road. It's still good" he told me. 

I told the man I would give him a ride to Asheville, but then he would need to find another ride home.

During the ride, I asked him how his Thanksgiving was. I gathered that it hadn't been much of a to-do, what with his wife being old and bed ridden. I couldn't verify if he celebrated Thanksgiving at all. When we got to Asheville I asked him where he wanted to be dropped off. He told me he needed to go to the Sheriff's station downtown to get his gun back. As I dropped him and his light bulb off, he attempted to insist that I take $5 from him for gas. I refused thinking he might need that later. 

Saint Johns Day update, small scale

I was awakened last night by a beetle trying to crawl through my ample head of hair. At least it was not a wood roach, of which I occasionally find a few in the house. At least it was not a cockroach, which thank the god of all things nasty we don't have here. At least it was not a wolf spider spinning a web in my hair like what happened to RM a couple summers ago. Just a small beetle, trying to get somewhere.

I am on a food growing kick for some reason. I can't stop planting more and more seeds. It's really scratching an itch.

I am putting together samples of the Xiao Yao San tincture with an official letter explaining my philosophy and methodology for the process of making this formula, which includes cultivating some of the ingredients. These samples will be distributed to acupuncture clinics in Asheville. I am hoping that local practitioners will want to use this locally produced product to meet their Xiao Yao San needs.

I saw a man walking on 25/70 yesterday on the Marshall by-pass. He was walking rather briskly and was carrying 5 or 6 rifles over his shoulder.

Mowing on Thor's Day (just when you thought the Thor tributes were on summer vacay...)

This evening, as I mowed through the jungle which is also called my yard between rain showers , I stopped after a time to refuel. As the engine quieted I heard the rumble of Thor. I couldn't tell if it was the deeply wild and prehistoric sounding beating of turkey wings flying to roost up in the woods, or the thundering rumble of another storm over beyond Franklin Mountain. It was both. I remembered it was Thor's Day. Glory. The frogs sang extra loudly, and the wet heavy smell that hung in the evening air permeated all of me like a memory. The perfume of the woods in June.

Poppies in foreground overlooking garden stretching up into cove. Thor has been good to us this year. 

Dang gui

This is dang gui (Angelica sinensis) thriving in my garden. The dang gui root is harvested after the second year of growth, dried, soaked in yellow rice wine, and then cooked in a wok over an open flame. It is then combined with 7 other herbs to make the Xiao Yao San traditional Chinese herbal formula. The cultivation and production of this formula is my primary project on the land here.