Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Nature Journal #5

Last week and weekend I got to spend several hours enjoying nature. On Thursday I sat again at the bank of Po-sun-co-la. I like to sit at the foot of a tree, some of who's roots have been exposed by the eroding bank of the river. The river still is high from the melt off in the mountains. she flows quickly these days. Already the temperature is in the upper 80's and low 90's. Once I was comfortable, I reached into my crane bag and pulled out some incense. I lit it and offered it to the nature spirits of the place as gift in hope of their welcome. Things were quiet and still for some time. After a bit I heard voices. This was not overly surprising as I was in a park, and though I was in a secluded spot off the "beaten" path from time to time people pass me by. What did surprise me though was to see a man floating down the river in an innertube! of course he was not wearing a life jacket. I could only shake my head and watch him pass. I small prayer escaped my lips for his safety. Po-sun-co-la has a reputation as a killer. Once the rafters went past silence returned. I watched the trees in the dappled sunlight. Some of them dipped their branches into the water casually. Birds flit from branch to branch. As I looked up and to my right I was treated to an aerial show. A large group of damsel flies had swarmed. They would all fly together in a spherical pattern centered around some thing only they seemed to know, then suddenly they would simultaneously fly off in different directions and land on the branches of nearby trees. After a brief pause, at some unknown signal to me, they would all fly together again in the massive sphere of darting damsel flies. This patterned repeated itself time and again as I watched transfixed. I have never seen damsel flies behave in this way before. I have chosen to take it as a sign from the nature spirits, that my offering was well received and I was welcome in that place.

Over the weekend I got to travel just south of Yosemite national park for a handfasting. On Sunday, myself, my beloved water witch, the air witch, and my fellow ADFer druid got to spend some quality time in a giant sequoia grove. Long time readers will know that I have spent a long time with many different trees. I often exchange energy with trees. I walked up to a large giant, estimated at well over 2,000 years old and placed my hand on it's soft bark. I talked to the tree, and gave it the offering of water from my canteen. The energy that I got back from it was not like any tree energy I have ever felt before. It's hard to put into words. After giving it some thought I would say it was like sleepy silk scarf lightly running over the skin of my arm. So much more subtle then any tree energy I have experienced before. Besides the sequoia there were beautiful dogwoods with bright white flowers in full bloom. There were some old growth Douglas fir as well. This was very pleasing to me as it was like being in my old home again. There were also incense ceders. I took some incense ceder and a small black raven feather I found to use in my Lughnasa offering. There was also sugar pine and white fir. It was nice to once again be in a place where I could recognize the trees.

Lastly one of the neatest sights was that of a tree growing out of a stump of a giant sequoia that had been cut down over 100 years ago. I immediately thought of the ADF symbol.

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