Storm slams, surprises—
tall firs swoon into the gale,
branches embrace crows.

A stormy quilt from area webcams, click to enlarge

Wild winds whip waves white.
Giddy gulls glide gleefully.
We watch, wait, worry.

A knot of starlings bursts from the tallest fir tree and explodes like fireworks across the pale morning sky, fluttering back to ground like fallen black stars.

Two does, two yearlings and three fawns lazily find breakfast in the meadow. Then something startles a fawn, and suddenly they all skitter into the woods.

The same scrawny fox I saw last week lopes into my yard and spends about five minutes hunting for his meal—an unlucky mouse. The fox repeatedly leaps up in the air in order to pounce heavily on the ground—perhaps to startle the mouse out of hiding?

I thought I heard the fox make some interesting sounds during all this, and one cry reminded me of a lost fawn. This video illustrates just a few of the many different fox vocalizations.

FOXY VIDEO

And while I stood stone still at the edge of my deck watching this drama, a hummingbird repeatedly tried to extract her breakfast from the large red blossoms on my wild, floral dress! As I stood between a hanging fuchsia and a verbena basket, I must have just seemed like another item on the menu. If she ever figured out I was human, she didn’t seem to care and continued to flit from geraniums to petunias to me.

We all nurture something or someone else.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What’s your role in your family food chain?
• Are you provided for, or are you the provider?
• Do you blend in, or do you stand out?
• Do you need to nurture yourself more?

Meet other animal allies here.

Warm autumn morning,
geese linger on the lagoon;
they’ll be leaving soon.

After a leisurely walk along upper Sequim Bay this morning, I stopped next to a harvested cornfield to watch hundreds of Canada Geese fatten up for their long journey ahead. They seemed in no hurry to leave, meandering slowly through the field against a drop-dead gorgeous backdrop of the Olympic Mountains. (Notice the first snow of the season.) I love geese, always have. Migration fascinates me, that ability to move twice a year and set up a new home each time. Some geese do return to the same spot year after year, but others will try something new each spring and fall. More and more, some Canada geese are choosing to remain year round in temperate places like this part of Washington state. Have they tired of so much travel, I wonder, or have they decided, like me, that this is a fabulous place to live all year long?

Why would you leave this? click to enlarge

geese heading south, glowing gold...click to enlarge

VIDEO

CONTEMPLATIONS

• How are you preparing for winter?
• What are you stockpiling?
• Are you stronger than you look in some special way?
• Can you find your way home?

No clouds overhead, slack tide, lavender and azure bay mirrors the sky; then a crow breaks the spell. Deer fold themselves into the meadow for a night under the stars, and a trail of quail scurry about on last-minute business before sleep. A ragged vee of nine geese fly low along the bay, heading for the lagoon. By the greeting they get, they’re in good company. It’s nearing dark, but still more geese return, and this chorus with their nasally, multi-pitched honking creates dissonant chords of modern music. A symphony of geese, gulls, quail and frogs sing up the still-big moon.

Meet other geese here:

Murmurs On The Land

A distant crow makes an announcement,
and tall grasses sway in the breeze
as sparrows chatter in the spruce along the ridgeline.
A sudden wind pushes through alders and maples,
and accents the drone of unseen insects.
Apples plop to the ground, not quite ripe,
and a bee goes about her work near the herbs.
The creek tumbles through the woods,
and I say a prayer for Gaia.
My own song rises to greet the new moon,
and our renewal blooms in my heart.

In my ongoing mission to name each of the new moons this year, this September lunation I will call Crow Molt Moon.

Throughout August and September each year my jolly band of crows gift me with their feathers. I have hundreds of them now and I’m waiting for inspiration to use some of them in some special artwork. But for now, many of them reside in a basket (above) that hangs on the wall of my living room, surrounded by other crow art.

Gathering the feathers causes me to be selective, since some of them are in really bad shape—ragged evidence of gales overcome, thunderstorms survived. Perhaps I should keep some of those, too, for inspiration during my own challenges. Is it wrong to want only the pretty feathers? Or just societal brainwashing?

Crows offer their feathers to me nearly every day. Blacker than a moonless night, they remind me of the heights just fallen from. It’s as if each feather can be read, can tell a tale of adventure, of sunsets seen from flyways, of treetops slept in, of moonlight flown through, of sonatas written to the rhythm of their steady wing beats.

I write about crows a lot, as I feel a special bond with them. It isn’t their color, as I’m not drawn to black—though in strong sunlight there is often a deep purplish sheen to their glossy bodies. One reason I love them is they make me laugh with their never ending antics. Bunches of them always seem to be up to something, and hardly an hour goes by without a chorus of comments echoing across the hillside.

I also admire their bravado in defending their homes and their young. Even a single crow will take on a marauding eagle and send him back to his aerie. I see this all the time where I live, next to an eagle’s nest.

crows living dangerously video

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Are there things in your world that have been cast off yet still retain beauty and meaning?
• Is there something you need to shed from your life?
• What do you ceaselessly protect?

Flap around with other comic crows here.

To prepare the tobacco fields of North Carolina, they are sometimes burned first to sterilize the soil and kill off weeds. This is usually done in the winter when the local box turtles may be hibernating. If they wake during the fire, turtles must scurry for their lives, rushing they hope toward safety, not from one frying field into another. Sadly, some of them don’t make it.

But in some areas their magnificent shells are rescued by children who are members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The children have been taught to treat the turtles with honor and respect and they find other uses for the shells. Which is how about 20 years ago I came to have an eastern box turtle shell that I then made into a wearable shield and medicine bag. I wear it over my heart on special occasions and whenever I want protection in a challenging situation. Hidden inside the shell is a leather drawstring pouch, in which I keep special stones and other amulets. Fringing the shell are various beads and charm symbols that are important to me. Whenever I wear my turtle shield I think of the brave little animal who carried her house with her whenever she went, and who I hope had a good life for awhile at least. Box turtles commonly reach 25-30 years of age, and there are well-documented cases of them living to 40 or even 50 years, so perhaps mine already had a good long life.

Box turtles have a homing instinct that causes them to try to return to the place of their birth if they are moved, something I find remarkable. As someone who has uprooted herself countless times, that idea touches me. I wish I had a true home base to return to. The ability to carry one’s home with you is also appealing to the vagabond camper in me. Covering my heart with her home makes me feel safe, less vulnerable, impervious to other’s negativity. I call on her energy, her tough spirit—which still infuses the shell—to transfer itself to me, and in that way I keep this fragile turtle alive and vibrant and eternal. And now we keep each other safe.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Have you ever rescused an animal?
• Have you ever preserved some portion of an animal?
• Do you connect with its spirit?
• What wisdom has it shared with you?
• What makes you feel safe?

Meet other animal allies here.

There are some signs of hope though for our animal friends. All over the world, in fact, concerned people have created wildlife corridors in an attempt to return to wild creatures what was theirs to begin with—open space to roam and breed and live independently.

One of the ones nearest me is the Quimper Wildlife Corridor, a patchwork quilt of public and private land stretching clear across the Quimper Peninsula (which is part of the larger Olympic Peninsula). Deer and otters and other critters can roam from Discovery Bay on the west end (above) to Port Townsend Bay on the east end. The QWC offers safe passage for native wildlife, maintains a natural flood water control system, protects existing habitat and water quality and provides open space and recreation opportunities. It’s been in development here for 13 years. Jefferson Land Trust and its partners have been actively working for the permanent conservation of the Quimper Wildlife Corridor since 1996. One of their wonderful projects is monthly guided walks through the corridor, which is an ideal way to get to know our own natural world more intimately.

Certainly, preserves and other chunks of land that we’ve set aside for wildlife are better than nothing. But it’s creating longer, larger inter-connected safe areas where animals can behave more naturally that really preserve fragile ecosystems.

I urge you to investigate your area and see if there is a similar program near you. Volunteering with such groups is one of the best ways to start to erase our heavy carbon footprints.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• How big is your carbon footprint?
• Do you ever think about the wild plants and animals that used to live where you do now? Where are they now?
• Do you know where the closest wildlife haven is in your area?
• Can you send them some money or give them your time?
• Have you shown an eagle that you love it lately?

Soar with eagles here.

I found a bright orange, spindly Pacific Blood Sea Star in the high drift at Crescent Bay recently.

Though sea stars are uniquely designed intertidal creatures able to endure both pounding surf and periods out of water between the low and high tide marks, they still do best in tide pools or clinging to damp seaweeded rocks. They are not meant to bake in the sun on the sand. This one must have died at sea and simply coasted to shore on a raft of kelp.

I’m surprised a gull hasn’t nabbed it for breakfast—it would surely stand out from any low cruising altitude. (Unless, of course, gulls are color blind?) I hate to see it go to waste, but I’m glad I got to see it, even dead. Every starfish I meet is resonant of my first primal beach experience, fitting my six-year-old hand to a purple star gripping a rock on Cannon Beach in Oregon. From that day forward, I’ve thought of my hands as sea stars, though sun dried and bleached.

I feel such tenderness for this lifeless creature—perhaps I am hard-wired to respond to all five-pointed beings and see in them early blueprints of myself. The heart of splayed Leonardo Man could easily have been a resonant sea star. This frail being inspires such compassion in me—I want to hold it, to revive it. It looks so forlorn and exhausted. I wish it could tell me of its adventures in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I want to know what it’s like to feel the tide rinse you clean four times a day. I want to know how it feels to float fearlessly on a wave.

In fact, I’ve been haunted by the image of this star, so much that I decided to make a memorial to it in my home. I headed over to the one emporium I figured might have a suitable replica—and found myself a beautiful glass sea star in exactly the right color on ebay. Resting on a piece of driftwood, surrounded by a circle of red jasper and dried seaweed, my new sea star will live the rest of my life at least, and the original will live in my heart forever. This altar reminds me daily of the beauty—and the fragility of life.

While I'd prefer the sea star who inspired this to be alive, this preserves her in my memory. Click to enlarge

CONTEMPLATIONS

• How do you react when you come across dead beings?
• Have you ever connected with the spirit of one?
• What kinds of creatures resonate the most with you?
• How do you express compassion?

Meet another five-pointed animal here.

Waxwings get their name from the red waxy substance that coats the wing tips of mature birds, possibly as a mating signal. They are gorgeous birds, and I’m thrilled to finally see them here. Try planting native shrubs that produce berries, and you might just attract some, too.

And what a grand party they were enjoying—

yellow-bellied males, females and young fledglings all taking turns feasting on the bountiful supply of berries. The ones who were waiting for their turn at the buffet passed the time puffing out their feathers and sunning themselves on the tips of nearly every branch—

golden ornaments decorating a winter icon—
in June.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• How do you signal what you want?
• Are you subtle about it, or do you sport the metaphorical equivalent of red spots on your wings?
• What are you feasting on in your life now?
• How about declaring today a holiday of your own devising?

Spot other fascinating birds here.

That’s all the mothering I’ve ever done—cats, a dog and some injured birds on occasion. And since my own grandmothers and mother are long gone, Mother’s Day is a non-event for me. It’s almost fawn season here, and I do enjoy watching the gangly, spotted young deer learning how their legs work. The does, who often have twins, are so patient with them.

What interests me even more, is cross-species adoption. My first cat was partially raised by a yellow lab mom, so that showed me early on that some amazing things were possible. Stories of wild adoption combos abound, and here are a few heartwarming photos of such pairings as my Mother’s Day greeting for you.

dog adopts a fawn

dog adopts a squirrel

dog adopts some ducklings

Pink the piglet and her dachshund litter mates