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Flower Moon
caroleharmon1.substack.com
I received a poem recently from my friend Jeanine Cardiff which was written in response to the removal of dams on the Elwha River in Washington state in 2012 and 2014. Jeanine lives in Port Angeles, WA. near where the Elwha flows into the sea from the Olympic Mountains. Ten years later salmon have returned and the river’s eco-system is regenerating through natural recovery and, in part, through restoration initiatives. It is not exactly the river it was before but its new eco-system is adjusting and thriving.
The Mighty Elwha by Jeanine Cardiff
I heard a sigh, a great sigh of release.
Breath held for a hundred years let out
In joyous surrender to its birthright.
An ever-flowing river to her sea.
The spirit waters flow again
In the mighty Elwha
From beginning to end,
A heart beat no longer muffled
behind walls that separate.
Behind walls that have silenced
Too many voices.
The walls of arrogance have come down
And the sweet voice of the river
sings her song of life
Reminding us
That a river never forgets who she is;
Reminding us
In this great metaphor of life
That we, too, must never forget
Who we are
’til the walls come a tumbling down.
In 2012, unaware of the Elwha’s liberating fate I make my first research trip to trace my grandfather’s history in the Puget Sound area. On our way back to Canada from Olympia, WA. I want to explore Olympic Peninsula; the fjords of Puget Sound partially separate it from mainland Washington State. I have always imagined it as a wild paradise, bounded by ocean, with dense, forested Olympic National Park at its heart. Instead we drive through ancient and recent clear-cuts and forest tracts marked with lumber company signs. This modern forest industry descends from sawmills my great-great grandfather, Hill Harmon, helped build in the 1870’s near Port Hope on Hood Canal. It has eradicated a complex forest eco-system thousands of years old and replaced it with clear-cutting and mono-culture replanting. I try to imagine what this former paradise must have been like, but I can’t. I have never experienced, even in my wanderings in the Canadian Rockies, far from civilization, the abundance of wildlife, plants, fish and birds which reportedly thrived in North America before colonization.
We come to Aberdeen, a small city on the Pacific Coast, at the south-west corner of Olympic Peninsula. It’s named for Aberdeen, Scotland, which my mother described as a beautiful white granite city which glints in the sun. To my horror this namesake Aberdeen, which was only established in 1884, is a city of mostly derelict, abandoned and decrepit warehouse buildings, relics of the fishing and lumbering industries which once relied solely on sea ports to take their products to market.
The Elwha project was a successful trial. In 2023-24 four massive dams on the Klamath River which flows from Oregon into northern California will be removed allowing that eco-system to regenerate.
Dam Removal on the Klamath River
I fervently hope I will live to see the great Columbia River, which flows from Mt. Columbia in the Canadian Rockies to the ocean west of Astoria, Oregon, free once again, her enormous dams removed. My grandfather photographed Mt. Columbia, headwater of the river, in 1924. He photographed along the Big Bend Highway which followed the original course of Columbia River in Canada before it was dammed in the 1930’s. My father photographed Mt. Columbia and Columbia Icefield from the air in 1974 as part of his aerial photographs of Columbia Icefield in the 1970’s.
I camped with Jeanine and other friends on Dosewallips River on the Olympic Peninsula in 2018. It’s a wild river which lives up to my ideal vision of Olympic Peninsula.
On Dosewallips River
A water bug swims towards me, propelled by thrusts of strong legs on stick body.
Floating
four lobed wings cast flower shadows on smooth pebbled river bottom.
It veers in fits and starts creating parallel ripples in phased waves.
I drop a paper in the water. My swimmer thrusts to investigate,
as blue ink blurs and spreads, veers away.
This backwater creates a perfect mirror of overhanging trees framing circles of light
centred by the swimmer. Now I see their round paddles which are drawn in, then spread.
They swim through rippled surfaces, half aware of other dimensions.
We’re joined in this interlude of water, light, reflection and curious beings sensing one another.
Bumble bee buzzes me, my blue and white polka dot top a strange flower.
O, what a beautiful blue.
It’s new moon today and I’ve nothing to say. Rather, I have plenty to say but little which would be helpful to me or to you. I offer a meditation in flowers.
Once upon a time there were no flowers at all... A little while ago--about one hundred million years...
...just a short time before the close of the Age of Reptiles, there occurred a soundless, violent explosion. It lasted millions of years, but it was an explosion, nevertheless. It marked the emergence of the angiosperms--the flowering plants.
Flowers changed the face of the planet. Without them, the world we know--even man himself--would never have existed.
So wrote Loren Eisley in The Immense Journey, first edition published in 1957 when I was ten.
Glacier, or avalanche lilies, grow in the Canadian Rockies from montane to sub-alpine, chasing the snow upwards as spring transforms into alpine summer. They can be seen growing right through the snow and in meadows carpeted with their loveliness surrounded by tiny white spring beauty.
The first time I encountered such a meadow was at Healey Pass, hiking with Dad one June in the late 1960’s. Many years later I wrote a poem about my first attempt to photograph avalanche lilies on that glorious afternoon.
I lie on the ground in homage gaze into the face of lily her petals curl against blue sky like yellow bird wings eager for spring she thrusts green heads through snow twin leaves furl round reddish stems which rise six inches eight inches curl dangle a green bud six yellow petals force an opening a downward facing tangle of petals then tips unfurl skyward reveal stamens coated with deep red pollen
March is the month of my birth. I love its growing light, its promise.
I am alert to what arrives in my field leading up to new moon. Recently a friend’s computer dredged up an old poem I had sent her, in the way computers have of retrieving old emails as a reminder, and she forwarded it to me.
BAFFLED BEAUTY—ROSE
apples are roses, each seed unique Eve’s treat
quince with heady perfumed fruit
immortal pear
all the stone fruit are roses
apricot, aphrodisiac of dreams
fuzz cheeked peach fends of the hags of hell
tart cherry sweet cherry choke cherry white heart cherry
plums name all the Li’s in China
succulent loquat tangy yet sweet
musca fly courts meadowsweet, queen of the meadow
bees buzz hawthorn, drunk on its perfume of rotting meat
sweet almond, bitter almond—poison in kernels
mountain ash, bane of adders, bane of sorcerers
medlar the regulator
blackthorn blooms mid snowy blasts—blackthorn winter
at spring thaw serviceberry garlands prairie graves
double fruiting firethorn—the famine tree
straw berry rasp berry goose berry black berry dew berry cloud berry
diamond droplets cupped in lady’s mantle leaves
foaming goatsbeard
shining photinia
all are roses
What is dreamt in the blue chamber flourishes in the green. Rose is an understory plant. Who might you be human rose, outer petals trembling in the breeze, inner swirl guarding your seeds? Fossil rose whispers of sperm blowing in, mystery grows in the rose bed. Mystery of centre. Chalice, from calyx, cups the divine. Under the rose what’s spoken must remain secret. Faerie queen calls, witches visit the grove. Aphrodite rises from waves; roses spring from her flowing tears.
Mary is mosaiced in rose windows, mirrored in labyrinths. Equally spaced points around a circle connect rose mandalas of dizzying complexity. From whence comes the fadeless colour of rose, the scent of rose attar which lingers through ages? Love is key to the walled garden. Beloved the names of rose.
I love the wild ones.
Wild Rose is one of the Twelve Healers in the flower essence repertory discovered and prepared by Dr. Edward Bach, 1886-1936, an English physician with a Harley Street practice in London who studied the role of bacteriology in chronic disease, then went on to study and practice homeopathy. Dr. Bach recognized that there were personality types that related to various patterns of ill health, irrespective of the physical symptoms being presented by the patient. He worked with vaccine therapy then with homeopathic principals, eventually abandoning his formal practice to research his flower remedies. These, he felt, could harmonize the emotional imbalances that he came to see as the real cause of physical illness. In his short life he was known for innovations in each field of medicine he practiced. His thirty-eight Bach Flower Remedies are known around the world and have been the inspiration for individuals researching and producing flower essences in many countries from local flowers.
Wild Rose Affirmation : Dr. Edward Bach
Resignation, which makes one become merely an unobservant passenger on the journey of life, opens the door to untold adverse influences which would never have an opportunity of gaining admittance as long as our daily existence brought with it the spirit and joy of adventure.
Wild Rose Positive Qualities: Will to live, joy and commitment to life despite trials or pain. Patricia Kaminski, Flower Essence Society, Nevada City, CA, USA
As green shoots pierce the ground, irrepressible harbingers of spring, I anticipate the abundance of healers, in the form of flowers, I will soon walk among. Every gardener knows this, and anyone who has walked wilderness trails or visited city parks with open eyes and heart.
Rose fossils as old as 70 million years have been found. The Roses are here to stay, our inspiring and hardy companions.
Edward Bach wrote, There are seven beautiful stages in the healing of disease, these are: PEACE, HOPE, JOY, FAITH, CERTAINTY, WISDOM, LOVE
from Twelve Healers, Dr. Edward Bach, 1933
My favourite names for this moon are Wolf Moon (pagan); Great Spirit Moon, New Winter Moon (Anishinaabemowin), Someone’s Ears are Freezing Moon (Oneida) as reported by our global information source, Google.
However, it’s an unusually warm, many would say unnaturally warm, winter. No-one’s ears will freeze in much of Canada this January.
Which is a perfect seque into my topic for this blog. I have a piece forthcoming in the next issue of the wonderful online literary journal, Dark Matter Women Witnessing. This issue will go live Friday, January 12, 2024.
Dark Matter: publishes writing and visual art created in response to an age of massive species loss and ecological collapse. It is a home for dreams, visions, and communications with the non-human world—especially those with messages for how we might begin to heal our broken relationship to the earth.
The issue my piece will be in is titled: Bodies In (and Out of) Place: Part 2. In preparation for each issue Lise Weil, the editor and founder of Dark Matter, holds a zoom conversation with those contributors who are available at the scheduled time. She then edits this conversation into an editorial.
This issue will contain powerful essays, poems and images. I hope you will dip into it when it is available, not for my sake but for our sake. The creators are writers, artists, activists, and people living in specific geo-political and geo-cultural situations.
To whet your appetite I have created a sort of ekphrastic piece with quotations from the submission of each author who participated in our zoom conversation.
There will also be amazing visual art! Enjoy.
THE KINDOM die Gestalt, the form, Diane Raptosh In stillness is the wild stuff… World in its robes, the universe circular I came to just sit here being the kindom. My Body—An Eco-terrain, Carole Harmon tick in the night how my lover clung to me four shooting stars My blood is a river that transports food supplies and medicines wherever they are needed. My journey is guided by herbalists and homeopaths, inspired by shamans, witches, and wise women of old. Some maps were prepared in ancient times, some are charts of routes only recently discovered…I negotiate with the world within. It is populated by beings who live in ever-fluctuating relationship with my blood and organs, nervous system and brain. To them I am home. I am their colony. Living on the Edge of Devastation, Alex Eisenberg I need to keep remembering. I need to keep associating—finding association and kinship—and staying in living, dynamic relationship with this place and the world at large. Even if it is no longer what it was or what I want it to be; even if more of it is going to be lost. If I don’t do this I might as well have died with the forest. Gardening in the Motor City, Elena Herrada I became a gardener out of rage… The man said: What do you do to heal yourself? I had no answer. I was a single parent, a union representative for SEIU and was engaged in battle at every turn: ex-husbands, bosses, grievances. I said sometimes I garden. I read. The stranger told me to garden as if my life depended upon it. Refugia, Yehudit Silverman The night of a thousand stars won’t keep you safe as you run on desert sands… There must be a place a refugia where both of us are welcome. Too Much Sky, Kristin Flynz The morning after my mother’s wake…I watched the sun rise over the distant hills with fiery insistence, pushing over the horizon like a baby crowning between his mother’s thighs until at last, he is free—visible and fully formed: I am here! Such as It Is, Joe-AnnHart “Nature’s not all birdsong and blossoms,” Liliana said. “It’s a violent game of chance.”… We all looked out the window, a reconstructed woodland of soul-breaking beauty. “Welcome to the world, Robin,” I said. “Such as it is.” pelicans in exile, nan seymour …we saw the sea diminish until the tide did not return, we witnessed the end of our protection… Even as we teeter on this precipice of unfathomable harm, our movement to restore and replenish the [Great Salt] Lake is swelling. We are learning to love more robustly and visibly. We are transcending our tired divides. We are gathering on behalf of everything that matters. What it Takes to Breach, Michaela Harrison Whalesong glitters the endless saline solution with astral technology through notes both audible and beyond my capacity to perceive with my ears; only my soul can hear the deeper utterings. Whales in the Desert, Nancy Windheart I learned that her name is Ethyl. Short for Polyethylene. She is life-sized, 82 feet long, and is made entirely from recycled plastic. Her creators hope to raise awareness and inspire action around the plastic pollution crisis in our oceans and on our planet… I’ve been meditating with plastic as I meditate with Ethyl, and I have noticed that my own relationship with plastic has changed. Rather than viewing it as something “bad”, a problem to be gotten rid of, or trash to be disposed of, without consciousness or life-force, I recognize that plastic, too, has an energetic frequency, an essence, a vibration that I can be in relationship with, in some kind of way. Blow, Lise Weil A Somali friend of mine told me the most horrible moment of her childhood—and she lived through mass killings—was the first time she looked at herself in the mirror. She was five or six years old. It was not that she didn’t like what she saw. It was that until that moment she had lived in the world as a purely sentient being. Now, she said, all was localized perception. Then, it was her whole body that perceived and the world was completely alive. Whole-body perception. Here, with the whales, I had an inkling of what she was talking about. To Love What We Love, Deena Metzger Loving with our whole being is what I am thinking about tonight as the moon rises…When is devotion to loving the most profound political act?… This is the task: to remain engaged and compassionate in the face of brutality, cruelty and overwhelming circumstances we are afraid we cannot meet…When it seems impossible to bear it or go on, to turn rather toward loving fiercely: fervent, immoderate, impassioned love for earth, for our land, for our people, for the moon.
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