Hands & Hearth: Elder In the Heart of the Volcano

During the week of Lughnasadh, my love and I visited the heart of that old, sideways volcano called Sibley, up in the dry coyotebrush hills. In the late spring, I had noticed that right there, in the center of that quarried landscape once volcanic, once grazed by American camels and strange, trunked horses, grew a small and hardy elderberry. It felt like some old enchantment to me, that this lone elderberry was growing in the heart of a fallen volcano, and so I made a note to leave her umbels of white flowers, and come back in late summer for those berries.

Something about an elderberry elixir put away for winter colds and flus, grown on the dry soil of an ancient volcano, feels deeply healing, as if the old songs of the volcano might somehow echo in the hollow branches of the elderberry. Who knows what her roots gather in that deep down soil; what stories they hear.

The elderberry also grows at the entrance of a labyrinth created four decades ago by a woman who walked her goats in these hills. A small seep runs seasonally along the edge of the quarry-bottom, and so a stand of tules grows to the north, and a stand of willows to the south. The elder must gather some of this moisture too.

There is a strange poetry about the place to me; that a quarry happened to open the heart of a volcano so that now, people come to walk a labyrinth there, where magma and ash are somehow mixed into the soil and stone. The elderberry has a timelessness about her that is suited to such a place; so much Northern European lore tells of the dryads and fairy beings, elven folk and old witch women associated with elders, how they may be doorways to other realms on full moon nights. But my favorite of all magics associated with the elderberry comes from the beliefs of the native California Indian people, specifically the Coast Miwok, told to me by Malcolm Margolin of Heyday books. Below is an excerpt from a book I co-authored with him called Wonderments of the East Bay, coming out this fall, detailing some of this magic...

"When the elderberry flowers bloomed in heady umbels, this signaled to the native people of the Bay Area the end of the shellfish season. No more could be gathered until the elderberry flowers turned to dusty black berries at the cusp of summer and fall. In between, during the dry summer months, shellfish were subject to the red tides caused by algal blooms, which turned them toxic for human consumption. {....} The elderberry is a doorway of sorts out of the shackles of mechanical time, back into the rhythms of natural time that are dictated by such mysteries as the moment of blossom, the moment the golden-crowned sparrow returns, the moment of fruit. The elderberry was also a more literal time-keeper in the older world of native California. Her light branches were made into clapper sticks. For every dance, those elderberry sticks beat out the rhythm, they sounded the time to the music, to the dancer’s feet. And so she both marks the passage of time, and measures it, beat by beat.

The world over, elderberry’s hollow branches have been also been used as delicate flutes— in fact, the name Sambucus comes from the ancient Greek sambuke, a stringed musical instrument, likely made from elderberry wood, as were other European instruments. Here, in native California, elderberry flutes were used for courting. It was said that in order to pick just the right branch for flute-making and wooing, you had to find the tree with music in it. And in order to find just that elder, you waited for a windless day, and then you wandered until you found an elderberry with a leaf moving in the still air. Such a tree had music held inside. Such a tree reminds us that it is the world itself in which music resides; we don’t impose it, we only do our best to coax it out. And when we do, that music weaves us back in again to the flow of elderberry-time, and gives us a glimpse of the calendar of the living land."

Hands & Hearth: Shorn

Every two to three moons, the venerable Hawthorn must stand to have his fur shorn. I know it is not nearly so great a thing to shear a rabbit as it is to shear a sheep—and I've at least gotten as far as flipping a ram and holding him still with my knees, his horns to one side, which was so difficult it made my legs almost give out—but I am still getting used to the process, and so is Hawthorn. With an angora, it is very important not to delay when the wool starts coming out all over the hutch, because they are prone to "wool block" (essentially an enormous fur ball in the gut which they cannot cough up like a cat, and which will cause them to starve to death if not noticed soon enough—and rabbits like to hide any discomfort until the last moments, likely a survival tactic from those days, still close to the surface of their skin, when they were wild). So although he isn't very keen once I reach his chest or his belly, and I haven't yet managed to flip him on his back—apparently rabbits will go "tharn," to use a word from Watership Down (a state of paralyzed fear) when held down on their backs, which makes me feel awfully bad, and between that and Hawthorn's fierce claws, so far it can't be done—I can report that I am getting better at it. And so is he.

This past new moon, I sheared his wool for the third time, managing to cut it much closer, and preserve longer hanks of the lustrous stuff. I didn't actually mean to align the shearing with the phase of the moon, but I do hope the serendipity of it will encourage his wool to grow back thick and strong, as it does our own, and the seeds we sow. It took me until this round of shearing to really relax, and of course, once I am calm, so is Hawthorn. 

Hawthorn came into our lives because I was enamored of the idea of keeping a small creature whose wool I could shear to spin yarn. I did not anticipate quite how much I would fall in love with him, so that the act of shearing has become also an act of reverence—that this little being, fed nasturtiums and comfrey and raspberry leaves, and let loose to have adventures through the yard, creates upon his back every season a crop of the most silken thick fur imaginable. What a gift, what bounty! I'm sure those who keep animals feel the same—that there is something miraculous about the generosity of this exchange, no matter the histories of domestication. That the bees produce honey and the goats milk, the chickens eggs, and though some may argue coercion and domination in this pact, at our best I think these relationships humble us and remind us that we can't do this thing, this human thing, alone. Whether we are hunters or farmers, we take from the land and the animals in order to live; we need them, desperately. And we also need to be in right relation to them. But that's a story for another day, a deep and tangled one.

As for angoras, the harvest of their wool (which of course has some very negative sides in commercial settings) has more the ring of a strange, far northern, mountainous fairy tale about it. Hawthorn's is so soft and thick it lifts away from my fingers in the slightest wind. According to what seems to me a mildly legendary piece of history (for nobody is quite certain), angoras originated in the Carpathian mountains, probably in a slightly less furry state, and were tended there by mountain tribes who found their wool to be very warm and softer than that of the goats they also kept. Much later, in the 1700's, angoras found their way to France and England aboard Turkish ships bound from the port of Ankara, hence the name.

I don't know if this is true, but I do know that angora wool is so hot spun and knitted up into a sweater on its own that such a garment is unwearable, except in literally arctic or high mountain winters. Angora is better blended with wool, or made into smaller items, such as hats and scarves and gloves.

In any case, here it is, part of the Hawthorn harvest, his wool a tri-color, silken gift with the echoes of mountain bells and snowy peaks within it. What gratitude I feel, for the fur of animals.

And here he is, looking like a raggedy hare, except for his back end, which still needs one more trim. I think he's pleased, because now he can romp through the deep bushes and emerge with slightly fewer burrs and bits of leaves stuck all over the place. 

The Juniper Way & Some Changes Afoot

A year or so ago, I wrote here about one of my very favorite books, Wise Child, by Monica Furlong. Those ramblings sum up rather well my adoration for the wisdom, the wildness, the strange beauty, of that slim book. Since around that time, a little phrase, "the Juniper Way"  has hung about my heart and mind, my feet and my hands like a guiding light. I can't articulate precisely what walking the Juniper Way means, but it is surely a way, as in the Taoist concept of the term. It is inspired by the wise Juniper, mentor to Wise Child, who is a doran. 

Juniper and Wise Child, from the cover of Wise Child

Juniper explains to Wise Child that a doran is the true word for what she is (not a witch, which can mean many things, and only sometimes what doran means). She tells Wise Child that a doran is one who has found a way into seeing or perceiving, and that the word comes from the old Gaelic root dorus, an entrance, gate or way. When Wise Child asks what is seen or perceived by these dorans, Juniper tells her "the pattern," and I imagine she means the great web of connection between all beings, that hitches the bobcat to the brush rabbit to the oatgrass to the dry soil to the earthworm to the magma heart of the earth, and the other way too, from the bobcat to the fir tree its carcass will one day feed to the oxygen the fir tree makes and the moon far above. And us, too, tangled somewhere in the middle of it all. 

When Wise Child asks what dorans do, Juniper then tells her: Some of us do healing things, like me and my herbs. Some of us sing, or write poetry, or make beautiful things. Some don't do anything at all. They often stay in one place, and they just know [...] how things are" (83). 

Each day, she schools Wise Child subtly in the ways of the doran. They gather herbs together, process them, milk the goat, learn the stars, the old stories of the world, the lives of animals. They engage deeply, joyfully, and with great hard work, with the simple everyday tasks of life, from sweeping to root-scrubbing to wildcrafting. 

Pearly Everlasting along the Muddy Hollow Trail-- a native summer medicine!

I try to bring the wisdom of Juniper into my every day, and so I've decided to share a bit of that Way in a slightly more orderly manner here. If you all enjoy, I shall carry on with it! My plan is to have three to four different themes, under which I will post new thoughts and images two to four times per week (!). They will obviously be little bit shorter than usual! And yes, things are going to be much busier around here than before...

The categories are as follows: 

Catskin, by Arthur Rackham

Patchwork Coat of Muses— in which inspirations, learnings, and small scraps of my own stories are shared. This will generally mean passages from wonderful books, ranging from fiction to ancient, medieval & indigenous history, ecology, natural history, folklore, etc. The personal writings will generally come from my morning exercises, in which I often choose a painting (from all over the place) or symbol (from my Book of Symbols) to spin a small yarn. (Wise Child learning astronomy, geography, poetry, calligraphy...)

Hands & Hearth— in which makings of the hand, held within the sphere of hearth and home, are explored, from felting to embroidering, herbalism, spinning, plant-dyeing, rabbit-tending. Tea too. (Wise Child milking the cow, sweeping the floor, learning to weave and dye, tending the herbs in the garden)

Notes from the Wild Folk—in which the Songlines of the wild land beyond my back yard are explored, from the tracks of coyotes, brush rabbits and ravens to the fruiting of the manzanita bushes, and the language of wrentit, towhee, robin, & more, and their places in the great web of being. (Wise Child and Juniper wandering the woods and heath, wildcrafting and learning the ways of the animals and plants of the self-willed land beyond the fence.)

Elk Lines— in which I share more occasional explorations of my latest Wild Tales by Mail project, this rewilding of the Handless Maiden fairy tale. Insights into the process, excerpts and some illustrations will be posted like small windows into this strange writerly realm. 

And finally, I would like to invite all of you dear and blessed readers to come join the strange blue gathering-place of my new Facebook page for Wild Talewort. This was a very big and difficult decision for me. I have resisted and avoided this for many, many years. Sometimes I want to throw in the towel and flee from the entire internet, for the way it dissociates and deadens, distracts and destroys, as much as it also connects and empowers individuals, artists, activists, in ways never seen before. And yet I must thank it, that I can make my living and my path as a tale-weaver in this world. This is an enormous blessing, a great gift, and sometimes a very difficult way to walk, let me tell you! 

And yes, surely Juniper had no blog, no Facebook, no none of it, but this is the world in which I live, and you live, and I am trying to navigate it the best I can, because it is where we all seem to increasingly gather. I know it is a very complicated and fraught issue, but at the end of the day I say to myself—yes indeed, old girl, you & your love could run off alá Juniper to the woods and meadows happily for the rest of your days, making do, milking goats, growing herbs, tending fires, off the human grid and deep in the wild grid (no easy feat, I should, and also one that I do dream of, and see somewhere down the line, if a bit far off), and maybe one day the world will shift and these Internet webs will be no more, nor many of the structures we so depend on. But for now, I am a writer, and a tale-maker, and it is no fun writing stories for yourself, nor is that quite the point, not in my heart. So there you have it, and here I am, on the Book of Faces, trying very hard not to run away again with my tail between my legs in terror. Do come and say hello!

If you would like to read some truly brilliant and more in-depth thoughts about said Book of Faces (a term I borrowed from Rima Staines), come along and read her excellent post on the subject here. You won't regret it. 

And you can expect the first of these Juniper Way sharings tomorrow!