windthread

in my element.  what an interesting phrase….she is in her element. 

Just a while ago,  Alyssia left with Emrie for the day…or,  till it's time to come back and pick the midling kids up from the bus stop…that would be 3:00.  

to recap the Facts:  Alyssia, the two midlings, age 8 and 10 and Emrie,  10 months are here Monday through Friday.   They live in Chico,  25 minutes away, still.  She drives from their home there to drop midlings off at school here in Oroville where they will sometime LIVE when her home arrives.  Sometime.  For now,  she then comes here with Emrie.  We all spend the day.  She picks up the midlings from the bus stop at 3:00.  We are all here till they leave to go home to Chico.  sometime in the evening.  Often not till 7 or 8 oclock.  On weekends,  daughter Jenny comes back and forth from where she still lives in Chico.  Sometimes Jenny's man comes.  Weekend days are Work days….morning till late afternoon, early evening.  There's more family once a week, Fate and his contingent,  but this is enough to tell for now.

and so

for someone who has lived a life being somewhat conflicted about family,   i am surprised to find myself 

completely         ~In My Element~

am looking at this because a short time ago,  Alyssia and Emrie arrived as usual but left about an hour later.  Usually when Alyssia has things to do,  Emrie and i hang out together.  She's never gone for long.  But my life is SHARED.  I SHARE my days.  Totally.  And  just that while ago,  watching them go,  Emrie too because Alyssia needs the whole day to be away,  too long for Emrie here,  she still breast feeds,   I felt an extremely Strong Pull to Emrie…the same kind of energy Pull i had for my own kids when they were babies.  

a pull that had dissipated over the years until in the last 15 or so,  other than when they came to VISIT,  i had become accustomed to being Alone.  Loving being Alone.  Needing to be alone.  and by Alone,  that included all the other humans i knew.   I spent and loved my days Alone.  Aside from work,  I kept my own company.  And  to be honest,  i had great trepidation about how i would do with changing that.  There were long conversations with daughter Jenny and Alyssia about setting boundries…how i would NEED that and if i could enlist their help in pulling it off.  We understood each other.  And it became time to go.  I felt it.  It was time.   If i continued to wait,  i felt i would miss some kind of Window of opportunity, that i needed to go while i was still able to DO things, while i was still uhhhh,  Viable as a Woman.  I didn't want to wait until i was  needing things FROM them,  as in old.  Frail.  For years i'd said that when i could no longer live alone,  ie take care of myself,  i'd come then.    Then.

But then, there rose up The Momentum.  From the Old Cowboy,  money appeared for them to begin finding a Place.  Then Place was found.  Finally,  after keeping the Goats for Jenny for those 5 years,  there was a Place for the Goats to return to her.  and here we all Are.   

With this day Alone,  there are zillions of ways i would want to spend it.  The 2 Cloths, first,  sitting here next to me on the bench…i can be Alone with them.   There are plant people needing to be placed here and there in the Hill forests.  There are steps needing to be carved in to the slopes of Campsite B.  There is a magnificent book that i am reading.  Two gallon glass jars to get plants in,  cloth in.  A clothes line.  Meditation time in the Meditation Hammock Chair,  Goat brushing and pellet training,  Writing,  taking some of the hundreds of photographs i hold in my mind's eye daily,  continuing with the Old Rock altar,  beginning to create the small one near where the Hut will soon be.  Hemming skirts,  mending frayed frays.  Drawing.  Sitting and watching….of all things…..the Blue Jay that has found that he can run off the chicken hens from their feed…I haven't seen a Blue Jay for maybe 30 years.  Emrie carried up a radish plant stem from the Wall Garden and it lay outside the door and dried stiff and looks exactly like a slender snake…..i want to tie things on it,  color some of it with the Inktense pencils…hang it over on the little Monzanita tree where Wendy Golden Levitt's prayer cloth is

a zillion things

and also,  missing Emrie.   Missing sharing my day.

So i can see it clearly.  I am now for whatever reason,  in my Element.   The shift has occured.  Of it's own accord.  And now,  in the next months,  i will work to refine how i spend time.  There really is Enough time…just how to use it,  how to Take Time and Give Time.  Give and Take.  ok.   I might want to come back here later and edit or add,  but for now,  enough.  The Cloth wants to be finished,  the one that is about Initiation.

 

 

as with the other spaces,  they have cleared quite a bit of what was there.  What remains,  WiLL remain…no longer browsable interest for this season.  No way to know what will return over the winter months of moisture.  But what is so  just heartfelt for me is watching them 

RUN

To the left in the pic is an unexplained open meadow..don't understand these things yet.  and beyond,  to the back,  looks close, but is not…it's the far land across the big road and then beyond that the valley and the rim,  way out there is wilderness, very FAR AWAY.

you might remember that originally,  when we had to move the bucks from their original Formal yards because of the neighbor,  SunnyRay and Jack got the woods just to the west  campsite B,  between C and the road.  It was very wooded.  But then somehow,  SunnyRay had that Great Escape.  So they lost their opportunity for that forest world,  but really…this suits them.  Jack is very buck for a wether and likes to push and challenge SunnyRay who is young enough to still enjoy,  and he is not fast enough to cause damage.  So….they RUN,  spin and twirl,  then rest under that very big pine.   SunnyRay is looking more like his sire Gideon.  I'll put a pic soon.  I called out to Gideon this evening….Come.  See this.  All is Well.

 

 

 

 Their world extends back and over to the Big Rim that looks down at the canal creek.   Like the doe Goats forest,  this too was dense with growth and not so much anymore.  But still a fine and Beauty Full world of sun Light and shade.  To one side,  between their world and the world of SunnyRay and Jack Flash,  a chicken yard was put in place.  First small and then enlarged as the chickens grew.   Most of the chicken yard was made safe with the deer fencing woven to the regular fencing and then draped in a canopy over the top.  Two small spaces were hard to cover but we thought it wouldn't matter as they didn't know Vertical Flight.  Wrong.  in two days,  Hey Hey was in with Nogal and Tenzen,   A day later,  Talkie.  Only the rooster, Cuddles, remained in the original space.  And so it went.  Alyssia cut the netting and a small door in the wire fencing to make easy passage,  not requiring flight up to branches.   Nogal is enamored by them…with? them? , both.  Enamored.

Tenzen remains pretty much in his own internal world.  Yesterday he spent quite a bit of time itching his gums on/with a branch.

A couple days have passed and the rooster (who was supposed to be a hen),  Cuddles,  is nowhere to be seen.  This may remain a mystery.

But for now, all is well here.  Days go easy.  There is room for every Thing they can imagine.  We have time between now and September to decide who, if anyone, gets bred.  To whom.  We will go over the papers that remain in that Storage Place down the road.  Track lineage and decide.  It may be that we send DNA to UC Davis to be sure of genetics from that breeding long ago now, 6 years.  Keep the herd Good.  For the children.

Emrie stood at the doe gate,  reaching in to Caroline,  who took her small finger in her teeth and bore down,  scaring her and scaring us….but seconds later,  she put her hand in again.  This time knowing .   She pulled her hand away,  just in time..just after the lips,  before the teeth.  

 

 

 it has begun.  the hut at campsite B.   I need to stop calling it a hut.  Huts are round.  This, a rectangle.   After all the other plans that went awry,  Plan A.  Build from scratch.  ok.  

it will be 14 X 24 ft.    the door at the corner of South East,  the porch/steps there going around the corner to a porch/deck on the East.   First Sun.   You can't tell from the pic.  This is taken from the North hill….up toward Campsite C.  When i walk to B,  i come from C along a path between Jenny's home site  and the second Buck Forest,  curve down and face this….the close bottom of the pic.  That black tub is still full of tomatoe starts.   Then there is a slide down ,  maybe 3 ft to the flat of B which is flat scrapped of everything down to the bedrock of granite.  The "relative flat",  then extends a ways to it's rim,  which then again drops down to the driveway road.  Across from the driveway road is forest,  again on a rim of a steep drop down to the canal/creek.

Because this is granite,  the foundation cannot be dug in but will be on pillars…the cement block with rebar and concrete  All according to regulation.  Sooner or later,  the assessor will arrive and it will need to be up to standards.

But it's begun.  

they  made a drawing to scale.  with graph paper.  drew in my futon, the end where the "bathroom"…which now means my compostable toilet,   (but they want the space big enough to incorporate a shower  "as/if needed")  (daughter thinks ahead) (she says i can put shelves now)  (i plan to take showers at Alyssia's house (when it ever gets here)     The stove, refrigerator, the black utility sink from home depot or somewhere,  i forget,  but black.  and a utility sink so i can wash my hair with a spray nozzle and wash dishes and  for  dyeing cloth….i'm adamant about this…..  and i guess that's it.  There can be as many windows as i want.  I have begun to imagine things.  No walls.  just open space.  and windows.

right at the side of the driveway road,  where the old cowboy's truck was parked with all the quickcrete bags and lumber where people were coming and going all day for two days straight,  where IT had been last year,  last year,  the ONLY snake they saw,  but now,  there,  in the same place,  in clear sight,  the rattlesnake,  not small,  not big,  midling,  it was there.  When they got there, mid morning,  the first day, all through the day till they left in the evening,  then again the second morning,  there again and when daughter inched at it with a shovel it coiled.   On and off all that second day,  Puppy,  the Hill cat,  Puppy Merced Hill,  was there….sitting,  staring at it.  Moving in,  moving out.  Jenny tried to call her away several times.  Puppy is her own being and does not listen.  Tay displayed no interest.   

At the end of the day,  as they readied the truck to move it,  i called out to Jenny about the snake…was it still there?,  and she went to look and yes it was,  but then quiet and she said there was something wrong.  It was.  still there.  but it was dead.  There were ants at its eyes.  Dead.  When that morning,  it had coiled.   As far as i know and i think i know,  Tay was no where near it.  Puppy was.  There were no birds of prey.  Puppy only.  Dead.   and me,  who doesn't cry,  had a rush of tears.  They left and i walked down to campsite A and watered the Wall Garden,  feeling a deep sadness,  a grief.  No need for any explanation to self or otherwise,  but a deep deep sense of loss of life.  Alyssia was still here and we talked.  We ended up sending it off over the rim of the steep slope down toward the creek.  the original urge for burial too human,  to contrived.  

it seems impossible that a cat can kill a rattlesnake.  a small cat.  But Puppy is feral.  She chooses some domestication.  Some.  

We will never know.  

 

 

 

 

 

having gone off to maybe the little grocery just 2 minutes down the way,  or,  once a week into town,  into the whole world that plays out from day to day in america,  i return.   Driving up Olive Highway,  turn right on Old Olive Highway.  Not far, turn at the first left onto a one lane dirt road that was created for the 3  "properties" that run along this rising hill of  land.  

the other day when i took this pic through the windshield,  i stopped, just turning in.  Where you see the sunlight at the "end", is where i turn IN to the road that allows passage onto this Hill.    Behind me,  the world.  In front,  something else entirely.

I was flooded by memory of another similar road in Eugene Oregon,  1989.  Kagyu Dakshang Chuling,  where i took the Vow of Refuge in the Buddhist Path.  I offered the traditional khata, the white cloth.   a scrap of my hair  was cut off, I was given my buddhist name.   Then the Refuge Lama     snapped his fingers above me    and so it was Done.   So many years ago,  so many fragments, scraps of doing but same thread.  The same thread weaves its self into the days now,  here.

So many "signs"  still present day to day,  the most recent and Startlingly Beauty FULL,  the May 25th post on Spirit Cloth,  Jude's video…Ghost Spring.    This is how it can be,  how it sometimes was,  how it sometimes IS,  when i remember that i have taken the Vow.  

Each time i turn off now,  i will stop for a moment,  remember and  re-know.  Snap my own fingers and just Go.

In deep  Love and Gratitude to You All,  who come here….my Cloth Sangha 

 

Doe Goats.   12 of them.   Their Forest is an acre and a half or two.   When we arrived in December,  this was dense with all manner of  Plant People from low growing plants to brush to young trees and of course,  all that poison oak.  You could not see more than a few feet ahead as you walked.  There were no paths.  It felt as if you could become lost and not able to find your way.  

it's been 5 months and they have cleared it.   There are still many of the one kind of tree that i don't know the name of yet,  but mostly it's the Live Oak and Pine.  They have no interest in the bark of either,  as they have had no interest in the bark of the more mature of the unknown name trees.  It's shaded by the canopy.  Throughout there are small glades of Sunlight where grasses grow.  They are uninterested in those grasses but now ARE eating the dried seed pods as they present.  But still the plants themselves are not eaten.  So….sunlit glades of grasses in a Live Oak/Pine forest.  

They have their wooden shelter with straw bedding but go there only when it's raining, and more and more,  only when there is significant rain,  choosing instead to sleep near their gate and along the fence line that is across the way from Nogal and Tenzen's Forest.  Also where their food bowls now line the fence.  This all shifted when we had to move the bucks.  Twice.

It's impossible to guess what will re-grow in the spring.   So for time being,  they are fed alfalfa.  we are going to check out grass hays as an alternate to alfalfa…like they had in their other Place.   

They continue to wander,  browsing on twigs and bark,  throughout the day they move.  They rest in those sunlit glades.  They have become independent.  Way more than they were at the Other Place.   I guess really,  independent of me because they have a world here that belongs to them,  rather than "yards" that rim my own living space.  It took some getting used to.  For me.  Not for them.   Now,  Tay and I…sometimes Alyssia and Emrie and sometimes the midling kids,  we go into Their Space and wander with them,  sit among them,  but there is a distinct different feel to it.  Am not sure how to describe that.  They are all healthy and the eldest are elder now.  The youngest are not so young.  There is a WINDOW for any breeding.  We have wisely decided to wait a bit.   It all just recently has felt like a kind of settling.   

And still,  since our loss of Snow Bunny,  no one of them has taken the lead.  Which is surprising.  

i find it hard to find words to tell of the feeling of them,  Out There,  in that great space of a Space,  where they can RUN and not,  where they have made paths of their own design,  according to urges of their own desires.   

When the Fire Marshall comes and pronounces his/her pronouncement we may need to clear other spaces.  If we do,  we will turn them loose to do the work,  returning at the ends of days to this space.  But for now,  it's peace Full.  Calm.  Good.    I sit among them and think of Metta:  May you be safe,  may you be healthy,  may you be happy.  May you live with ease.  

Done.  All these things.  Finally.  They have "returned".   

there ARE….rattlesnakes, large spiders,  centipedes in water tubs.  There ARE.  But also,  there are finches and quail and butterflies.  Damsel flies and very large copper and amber Dragonflies.  Brilliant BLUE skies and nights so FULL of stars it's almost overwhelming.  There's children learning and Mothers learning.  Dog and Old Cat.  Young  Cat.  Learning.  Plant People just Going,  seeding and so so many of them Grasses….all manner of Grasses.  I don't even yet say much about the creek,  the canal…..a whole other world…..

Earth.  Planet Earth.  at its finest,  its most Glorious.  Free and of its own Accord.

This.  Earth. 

this is where my most deep Heart beats.  Earth.  In all its myriad manifestations.  

Cloth is changing.  Cloth that i could not find connection with is suddenly Cloth for how it IS.    How SO much it is…

in the center the piece  soaked in Storks beak…here,  probably not much looking green ?  But IS a kind of bronze green,  but in certain light,  not….    but then again,  in other Light…..Is…………            

 

 

Old Olive Highway,   just down a bit.  On the left,  the land rises up.  First road.  Carefree Way. 

where i live.  

Today,  with chance of showers,  we pulled the tarps back to cover the Goat feed.  Where we'd seen that Huntsman spider.   Did not see her but did see one of the long slender lizards,  an egg sac of something,  large,  maybe the Huntsman?  Several cacoons.  An exquisite chrysalis.  In the doe Goat water tub some kind of thin centipede being….identified it,  but i've forgotten.   and now,  late in the day as i give water to the Wall Garden,  the Quail.  The creek flows.  Water striders.  Fragrance,  pungent, of the Spanish Broom.  An Invasive.  As we are.  Invasives.  

 

One of many Signs.   This year's Retreat in Maui.  Ram Dass.  No fear  No death.  I sign up to watch online.  

all the years since Be Here Now days,  i have not been able to be comfortable with him.  Even last year…same retreat on line.  This year, though,  …. different.   And i come away with the knowing that it's time now.  Time to begin the Work.  I have a lot of Work to do.  

the Buddist teachings that i love….Gaia.  These,   Center.    This Cloth speaks about this.   About this time in my life,  about why i came here,  about my sense of what i'm finding here.   So…a path stitched…path of Spirit.  

and here is a true story.    Alyssia and Emrie and i walk down the Hill mid morning to water the Wall Garden at Campsite A.  The portable play pen is there.  So Emrie can watch.  So our arms are free.   This is also where the two midling kids play after school every day.  I see that in the play pen,  someone has put scrap wood and long grasses,  now dried by the Sun.  I am annoyed and reach in,  taking some of the grasses out and a couple pieces of wood….walk away mumbling to Alyssia about "your kids".   Suddenly,  a harsh voice…..Gramma!!….she is staring down, pointing.   She'd continued to empty the scrap pieces, one was left that was propped against the side where the netting has a hole.  and there,  still, except for the flick of the tongue,  a rattlesnake.  IN the play pen.  Where we have been reaching in.   Our hands only a few inches away.  Small,  smaller than the one that we think bit Tay.  Young.  We stand.  Staring.  Hearts pounding.  The snake moves under cover of that last piece of wood that is propped.   We continue to stand.  Staring down.   We don't  say much and continue to water the garden.  In the end,  we were each thinking the same things,  silently.  How it just couldn't be True that somehow the kids had put the snake in there….they SURELY would not have done that…..and so,  the snake must have gone in there through that hole…a whole 6 acres and the snake goes into a baby playpen through a small hole in the net.  This thought changes things.   How do we be Aware,  Alert enough to imagine such things?   How do we teach the kids to be Alert enough?  All the rest of the day we are subdued.  The snake remaining there.  What to do.

She picks the kids up from the bus stop and goes to the Lakeside Market/Gas Station to get gas and ice.  As they follow her through the store,  she asks….did eiither of you see a snake yesterday?   Behind her is silence and she turns to see startled faces, eyes wide, mouths open.  To make this long story short,  upon returning,  they were told to sit on the ground and given paper/pencil.  Told to write their version of how that snake got in there.  Tho varying in detail,  story was  the same.  They'd found it in a cardboard box and after much debate, decided to keep it somehow.  "because it was little" .   and then, they  "just played with it" for a while,  Destiny's words,  ….gave it those pieces of wood,  the dried grasses as a "habitat", Julian's words.  The plan at that moment was to return after dinner,  after the work  on the Chicken's run,  and figure out a way to let it go.  But they forgot.  

I won't go in to all that happened next with them.  But to say they are still,  the third day,  being held accountable in various ways.   Alyssia and i went down and saw that it was still there.   This is after all night and in to the next day.  I move the last piece of wood with the hoe and reach in,  take it out.  Small snake just sits.  Watching.  We walk away,  the hole in the netting open now.  They go home.  Late in the evening i walk back down.   It is gone.

And what i come away with is a profound respect for this small snake.  We had read that these particular snakes are considered non-agressive.  But this was so beyond that.   And i also come away with…..NO FEAR.   After Tay's bite,  there was significant tension,  apprehension sometimes.  That's gone.  just Gone.  

This Hill,  the place of Planet Earth,  is offering the Beauty of learning what Wild means,  in a way i did not imagine.  This Emphasizing that there is no time to waste.   Each moment, a gift .  

 

 

 

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a few days ago.   With the Storks Bill that we pulled to make the vegetable garden in the Wall Beds at A.   When i was pulling them,  all the dye pots were still at the storage unit down the road.  They lay there, the Storks Bill,   a few days , in Sun.  Drying.   Seeing this,  those days in a row,  caused me to go to that storage unit and climb through (literally)  the stuff and pull up some of the dye pots.  Bring them here.  In my head,  i just said, bring them home.  But changed it on typing it in.  Bring them here.  

Alyssia had cut off a pair of mittens for crawling gloves.  Emrie didn't seem to mind.  Those along with her Chinese shoes made it easier to navigate on the rough cut gravel.   She likes the game of In/Out.  We did that.  With the plant leaves and stems,  two root clumps.  Early the next morning,  before any heat,  i put them simmer on the stove.  In the enamel pot and the aluminum.   The copper pot had remained hidden in Storage.  Both those pots were eventually put into the large copper tub, with a single scrap of cloth tied to a piece of bark with string.  3 days in SUN.   I had hopes.  Vivid green.  But, as it goes,  a soft and vague bronze green….and though not vivid,  i see it,  feel it,  to be the Ground Cloth for much to come.  Today i began a new cloth with it…center,  on some of Deb Lacativa's cloth magic.   I look at this pic,  look at the pronounced veins of my arm…how they are so similar to the marks of the string on that cloth scrap.  

in the morning will pour the liquid into a gallon glass jar and tie and submerge more cloth.   Set to the Sun.  It's such a fine and gentle kind of science.