More of those hickory nut shells I wrote about on Monday.
Search Results for: shag bark hickory
All Is Certainty
The rain wouldn’t have kept me from walking in the woods, but it stopped when I went out to feed the animals. I kept my red muck boots on knowing there would be mud and possibly water flowing over the wood planks that are the Gulley Bridge.
It was a relief to find out this morning that Jon has a kidney stone and nothing worse. I was ready for a walk in the woods after getting back from the doctor’s office.
I followed the path I cut years ago. Fallen trees lay across it now. Some I step over, others I have made a new path around. The stream by the small waterfall soaked the path leading to it. This happens every spring when the snow melts.
Zinnia splashed in the small stream and Fate and I jumped over it. As I walked up the hill I was overcome with a feeling of peace. It came suddenly, washing over me from head to foot. All the tension I’d been feeling was gone.
It felt magical.
I looked around me at the landscape I’d come to know so well and had the feeling that everything was just how it was supposed to be. And not only in the woods but in my life as well. As if there was certainty in all that was happening, both the good and bad.
The feeling stayed with me when I got back to the farm and even as I’m writing this.
I thought about how when I walk in the woods, something is always different. Another tree has fallen or was bent by the wind and a mushroom is sprouting in a place I wouldn’t have expected. Change is constant, there is no remorse it’s just what is.
Maybe, I said to Jon as we were in the kitchen cooking dinner, this is the same feeling people have when they put their trust in God.
Because I’ve seen an aura of peace in people who really believe and I’ve always wondered what it feels like.
I don’t know how long this feeling will last. But now that I know I can experience it, maybe I’ll be able to get it back again.
Peeking Into My Life
It was early evening and cooling off. The last couple of times I tried to walk in the woods, the bugs were so bad I didn’t get far. Even the dogs were trying to outrun the horseflies.
With the sun low in the sky, I figured there would be fewer bugs if we kept to the dirt road just south of the farm.
At first, I walked past the field, the dogs running ahead of me. For all the years we’ve lived here it’s been planted with corn, but this year it had a low cover crop. And it had just been mowed.
I called the dogs back and we headed into the field.
The last time I walked in this field there was enough snow on the ground for me to be wearing snowshoes. The dried, cut corn stalks, most of them sticking straight up through the snow, would get caught in the mesh of my snow shoes making it hard to walk.
I’d never been in this field in the summer. It was barely recognizable to me.
The two old Shag Bark Hickorys sprouted 8-inch deep green oblong leaves. The stone wall was hidden by tall grasses and wildflowers.
Fate and Zinnia ran under the old strand of barbed wire that leads into The Orphaned Woods, but quickly came back when I called to them. We were separated from our farmhouse by the marsh and I saw it as never before too.
Shrouded in trees, with the hill rising behind it, it was as if I were peeking into my own life from the outside.
Yesterday Jon wrote on his blog about a “bump” we had in our relationship. It happened because,as prices began to rise and his blog donations began to dwindle, Jon had used up most of his IRA to keep up with our expenses over the past months. But he didn’t tell me.
For me, it was more about trust than money. Jon had his reasons for not telling me, some of it fear and shame. He was also trying to protect me because I was going through a difficult time dealing with emotional issues around my birth family.
We were able to get to a better place by talking honestly to each other. Not always easy, but simple. And we’re still doing that.
Yesterday Jon had a moment of clarity about some of his impulses around money that rocked our world again. This time in a good way. And he helped me emerge from a panic attack over money just by us being able to talk openly about it.
But these kinds of changes, individually and as a couple, don’t just happen because we want them to. We’re changing lifelong habits and ways of thinking. So we still have a lot of ongoing work ahead of us.
But neither of us is afraid of that. We welcome it because we both know that what we already have can be even better.
Jon wrote how we’re both anxious people but that doesn’t mean we aren’t strong. That’s what we need to remember about each other. Underneath the anxiety is two strong, creative, and determined people.
And we wouldn’t want to be thought of in any other way.
Walking in the field and seeing our farmhouse as I’ve never seen it before makes me think of Dorothy and her red shoes. All this stuff that Jon and I are dealing with has been right in front of us all along. The trouble as well as the solutions.
We just couldn’t see it.
As the field circled back to the road we walked along the same stream that runs under the Gulley bridge. I couldn’t see the water because it was hidden by wildflowers.
But I could hear the bullfrogs and see the stands of cattails, so I knew it was there.
The Orphaned Woods
It was finding the Witch Hazel bush last week that made me want to get to know our woods better.
The ten or so wooded acres behind the farm are a messy and scrabbly woods. I’ve come to know some of the trees but there are plenty I can’t identify. I thought it would be fun to learn about the trees and write about them on my blog as I do.
It seems whenever I post a photo of a tree or flower that I can’t identify, someone who reads my blog can.
I told Jon about my idea when we were away for Christmas and that’s where it blossomed. I write about the woods enough that I thought I could call the writing by a specific name, like a special feature on my blog.
Jon suggested having one image that I always use at the top of each blog post so when people saw the image they’d know it was a continuation of my writing about the woods. He called the photo a Sig,(like a signature) a word that I had never heard before and I assumed came from his newspaper days.
Then we started thinking about what to call it.
Jon asked me what the woods meant to me and as I thought about it I started to cry. They’re not the most beautiful woods, I said. Bordered on one side by electrical lines and thorny bushes, the neighbor’s hunting camper forever parked behind the stone boundary wall and I can always hear the cars on Route 22. It’s like they’re a forgotten woods.
But I think that’s part of what makes them special to me. They evoke in me the same feeling that made me want to adopt Frieda from the SPCA because no one else wanted her.
And like the companion I found in Frieda, I’m finding an unexpected connection with our woods.
It’s not only the trees that I want to get to know. It’s the wildflowers that last only a few days in the spring, the fungi that spring up unannounced, the mosses that weather all seasons and the rocks they grow on. It’s getting to know the buds on the tips of the branches and the leaves and nuts when they fall. It’s watching the water in the creek and small waterfalls as it flows, freezes, and dries up with the rain and snow. It’s about getting to know the animals and insects, even if I never see them, from what they leave behind. It’s even about the old garbage dump, mostly buried under soil and leaves.
That’s when Jon suggested the name The Orphaned Woods.
I didn’t have to think twice about it. I knew it was just right.
My first thought was to stitch the words, The Orphaned Woods and use that as the Sig. My other idea is a photo of the old Shag Bark Hickory, my first friend in these woods.
This morning I walked through the orphaned woods with Fate and Zinnia. I picked up the shells from the Hickory, an acorn and pinecone. I took pictures of the twisting grapevines, fallen trees and hollow stumps, looking for inspiration for my Sig.
Next week I’ll let the woods and what I find there inspire me to choose an image. Whether it’s the words stitched or a photo, just like the name, The Orphaned Woods, I’ll know it’s right when I see it.
Mother Tree
Fate knows the trees that I visit when we walk in the woods. She runs up to them and waits for me.
Jon asked me if I name the trees I visit regularly. And although I told him I don’t, I do think of them in certain ways, that I guess, in a way, are my names for them. Like, the Big Old Shag Bark Hickory (which has always been male in my mind), or The Oak Next To The Pine Where The Tree Stand Was.
And then there’s the Mother Tree.
Her big bottom sits firmly on the ground, spreading out around her like a hoop dress on a crouching woman.
When I stand in front of her, my forehead is the perfect height to rest between two rounded protuberances that are evenly placed, like breasts. One even has a perfectly centered bump like a nipple. But, like the goddess Artemis, she has many of these “breasts” all around her trunk.
Her yoni is above her breasts, a grotto that I once placed one of my earrings in as an offering.
Smaller trees surround her, growing from her roots as if taking in her wisdom.
I’ve actually been reluctant to share a picture of her. She seems too sacred. I don’t believe any photo I could take would do her justice. Also, I feel protective of her and selfishly possessive.
But of course, she’s not mine for me to do any of these things, including naming her. And she’s told me many times that she’s not better or worse than any other tree in the woods. That we are all one.
Yet still, I feel in her the strength of the Divine Feminine, grounded and nurturing.
Thirty Second Meditation, In The Woods
Because of the cold, I knew I wouldn’t have to even think about ticks today. So I went to the woods behind the farm, knocking down the tall grasses as I walked.
The snow on the Gulley Bridge was untouched, but I did see footprints in the woods from the bobcat whose tracks I saw for the first time last winter along with rabbits, deer, mice (they have a line between the feet that their tail makes) and something that looked like a small fisher.
There were a lot of small dead trees that fell on the path since I last walked it. I moved the ones I could and next time I’ll go back with a clipper to clear what I can. The bench that Ed Gulley made was turn upside down. I can only guess a person did that, but I can’t imagine why.
I visited the old Shag Bark Hickory and walked the perimeter of our property. Fate ran and ran, then met me on the other side of the gate where the sheep and donkeys were picking what grass they could find out of the thin layer of snow.
Walking In The Woods, Ticks and Skunk Cabbage
It was two days ago that I took my last walk, off the path, in the woods. I came back crawling with ticks and know that this time of year the woods belongs to them, not me.
I did bring the owl eggs, that I found in our barn, with me and left them at the roots of the giant Shag Bark Hickory that I always visit. I’m sure they’ll be long gone by the time I get back to the tree in the fall.
On my walk I came across this seed pod, that had fallen from a tree and was stuck on a strand of spider web. The way the wind was blowing it, circling around me, coming straight at me then jerking quickly away, it almost felt like it knew I was there, knew I was paying attention to it. Like it was teasing me.
The strength of the spider’s web astonished me. At one point I held the seeds in my hand, but the web didn’t lose it grip or break.
I will miss walking off the trail in the woods, but am so fortunate to have those trails to walk on.
One of the paths borders a swamp for a bit. It’s such a primal things, filled with peepers and skunk cabbage, ferns and mosses. The mosquitos aren’t out yet, so I was able to find a dry place to stand and appreciate it for a while.
The Skunk Cabbage are sprouting leaves and flowers. I got this photo of one today.
Our Sycamore Tree
I always thought of Sycamore trees as City Trees.
I think because it’s where I saw them when I was growing up. They were always in the city parks and school yards in Queens and New York City. It’s like they were domesticated trees. Planted by people in public places, surrounded by cement.
Their smooth blotchy bark was so different from the thick, craggy bark of the two giant oaks that grew in my back yard in the suburbs on Long Island. I always thought of Sycamores as being dirty, covered in truck and car exhaust.
It wasn’t until Jon started taking pictures of a Sycamore tree growing on the edge of a corn field, near us, that I began to appreciate them. Until then, I was as if I hadn’t ever really seen them at all.
Now I see the groves of Sycamores growing on the edges of streams and cornfields where ever I drive. These are not domesticated trees. They’re as wild as any Oak or Shag Bark Hickory. And they are gorgeous, their white branches reaching out like the misty fingers of a ghost.
I no longer see Sycamores as blotchy, but mottled in shades of grays, greens, browns and whites. The white bark being the newest, the brown the oldest. They’re quick-growing hardwood trees, which may be why they were planted in public places.
Now, whenever I look at a Sycamore tree, I think of Jon. I think of how he opened my eyes to their beauty. I think of them as “Our Tree”.
A month ago I went looking online for a Sycamore Tree. I found one right away from Fast-Growing-Trees. com (I tried to find one locally last year but none of the nurseries around us had any).
Our new Sycamore tree was delivered today.
It came in a long box, the top of the tree bent over to fit. Jon watered it and we stood it up against the house so the winds that were blowing around the farm wouldn’t knock it over. It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so we’re planning on planting it on Sunday.
My heart gets soft and I can’t help but smile when I think of us planting our Sycamore tree. I know Jon will water it faithfully throughout the summer as he has all the trees we’ve planted. I feel like the tree is a symbol of our creative life together, of our love.
I love the idea of watching our Sycamore grow in our yard every year. And, that it will keep growing, long after we’re gone.
Thirty Second Meditation. Purple Thread
I saw the purple thread strung on the stalk of a weed growing in the woods and knew it came from me. I’m always trailing threads and have no doubt I left this one behind on one of my previous walks.
I know I leave evidence of me in the woods, smells, footprints, there’s a crows feather stuck in the bark of the Shag Bark Hickory I always visit and an earring and a bone I left in the hollow of a tree as an offering.
But I didn’t expect to see something so obvious of me, as the purple thread.
I took this slow motion video of the thread, which is only about two inches long, caught in a breeze.
The Feather Under My Feet
I was standing on top of the scattered black feathers and didn’t see them.
It took Fate, nosing around them, to make me look down. And there on the ground, like a throw rug beneath my feet was the scattering of black feathers.
How can it be, I wondered, that I was literally stepping on them, but didn’t see them.
Surely a bird had died here, its body carried off by whoever killed and ate it.
I picked up one perfect feather and thought of taking it home. But I couldn’t picture it in my house or my studio. Somehow, I felt that if I brought it inside, it would die a second death. One of gathering dust and being forgotten.
But I also felt like I had come upon the feathers for a reason. I wanted to honor the bird they belonged to and the animal who will survive because it died.
So I picked up the feather and carried it towards home.
When I came to the big old Shag Bark Hickory, the one with the three trunks and holes up high that I can see the sky through, I knew what I wanted to do.
I stuck the feather in the bark.
It immediately felt like an altar.
And I know that even someday, when the feather is blown off in a strong wind, I’ll remember that I once put it there.
And it will remind me to get out of my own head long enough to see what’s in front of me.
