Sara Wright

The Mighty Oak or Acorn? by Sara Wright

Most of us are familiar with the mythology around oak trees. They are considered oracular beings in many traditions. The Druids considered them to be sacred, the Greeks associated oaks with Zeus –( patriarchy strikes as the ‘ king’ of trees). In Britain there was a goddess of oak trees….but in general oaks are considered to be male beings though they bear seeds and flowers on one tree.

Mighty male trees ? Nothing could be further from the truth in terms of behavior because oaks are found all over the world and in this country they are what is considered to be a keystone species. What this means is that oaks support and nurture an incredible amount of animals, insects and birds. A ‘ Mother ‘Tree in every way. We have four species in this country, one of which clones itself and behaves like a bush. It is believed to be about 1300 years old ( found in the west).Throughout the world oaks are also considered to be keystone species.

Aging and Kinship by Sara Wright

When I moved to the mountains my children were grown and gone…

Finally I had land of ‘my’ own with a brook and mountains that was surrounded by forests. I felt protected by something I could not name. I was living on the edge of wilderness and a hunger I had been carrying for all of my adult life was finally appeased.

Although I had a vegetable and flower garden I felt a deep reluctance to cut trees and eventually lost most of my field to pines. When I finally built my log cabin, I did plant fruit trees, but every action was predicated on my need to give back to nature what she had given to me.

Seeding Up by Sara Wright

Every spring it’s the same… the hunger to begin starting seeds. As a woman and an eco -feminist I am convinced that this need to work with seeds and soil is an ancient pattern that stretches back to our egalitarian matriarchal beginnings.

Some of us like me come from a family of gardeners so there is something to say about the influence of our ancestors directing this process on a personal level. Both patterning and ancestral influences seem to work together. Another “both and”.

After I broke my foot last year I was forced to cease gardening altogether out of necessity because I could no longer use a shovel. If I am really honest I can say I was more than ready to let go. I have grown both vegetables and flowers since I was a child, then while raising a family. At mid – life when I moved to the mountains I made (what seems today) a radical decision. I decided to plant trees, plants and flowers primarily for non – humans in a small area around my house. Nature determined what grew and thrived on the rest of my land. Today people call this re-wilding but then my intention was simple. I wanted to give back to nature what S/he had given to me. I wanted nature to be the receiver.

Inspiration is Always Present by Sara Wright

I walk with care
clearing paths
iced over
lead feet
dragging
a broken foot
my companion
Listen to
first spring
bird song –
chickadees
and doves!

January: A New Year Begins by Sara Wright

This morning at dawn I quartered the ripe pomegranate that had been sitting in the center of my wreath since early in December, remembering the night my dad brought one home when I was a small child. I swallowed my first seeds feeling a child’s sense of awe and wonder that any fruit could taste so bitter and so sweet. Crimson bedded in pearl. I have a vivid memory of sensing the importance of the act although I couldn’t have been five. I say this because my little brother wasn’t with us. He was almost four years younger than me. Once mobile, Davey, became the love of my life; we were inseparable.

How could I know then that I had entered the myth, and like Persephone would make periodic descents into the underworld throughout my life? Once I understood, I resisted identification with this mythical figure. This resistance lasted throughout my forties and fifties, but eventually I became reconciled to the Fate that was mine to own.

Feeding the Birds….Refuge, Part 2 by Sara Wright

You can read Part 1 here.

It was a little more than a year ago that I dreamed that my brother, whose ashes were buried below the house, had moved and roamed freely through the forest I had come to love not just because it was wild, bursting with some 200 year old trees and fertile ground but because it was protected – all 12,000 acres of it. This dream held a ring of unshakable truth for me because Davey and I spent our childhood and adolescence in the woods. Over the past ten years the Powers of this Place (my home) have been fractured. I believe the fragmentation of natural power is due to this small parcel of land being sandwiched in between others that have been heavily and carelessly logged. The perpetual noise created by constant traffic, the whine of man’s machines drowns out the voices of Nurturing Nature Spirits.

In what I have come to call ‘my forest’ it is blessedly still at least in the spring and fall. During the spring there are so many birds singing at the edge of the river that I slip into an enchanted state unable to do anything but look and listen… The Powers of Place are palpable, all day long. Frequently I experience the amorphous presence of my little brother. I have also found my burial place in Hemlock Hollow among the tangled roots of the Mother Trees sung to by the river.

Feeding the Birds….Refuge, Part 1 by Sara Wright

It’s another gray snowy day with large white flakes falling from the sky… January lasts “forever” every single year. I feed chickadees on my window ledge until the squirrels show up; then I scatter seed on the ground. Chickadees begin their day just before 7 AM when it is still dark, coming to the ledge. Today the turkeys are absent, fluffed up monks still hidden under hemlock boughs. The blood male cardinal appears with his usual message. I peer into the forest as the turkeys make their way across the brook and start up the hill while gazing at sage green shield lichens and two pure white birches that stand out like sentries, peeling white skin. Some maples and many hemlocks border the brook that is running clear of ice. A multitude of twigs and evergreen spires sway, branches twist and bend filling every inch of space, a comforting sight, even though all the deciduous trees are bare. Global warming turns snow to rain and back again in every storm creating ice bound paths, easily traversed by my little dogs. Dangerous for me. Often now I am housebound.

This gray world of mine needs animation from within…

A Womanist’s Perspective by Sara Wright

Last night I was listening to plant scientist Monica Gagliano who is pushing the boundaries of what we know about plants. She proved that plants respond to the sound of water by moving toward it and cannot be tricked. Bio-acoustics is the study of sound and Monica is researching other ways that plants communicate. We know they use chemical messengers to warn each other above ground and below through the mycelial network thanks to the work of Suzanne Simard who I shall discuss in a moment. We have learned that plants emit electrical impulses. But Monica is studying another way that plants communicate. She says they listen to all the plants around them and learn from each other so that they do not have to re-invent the wheel with each generation. In one amazing memory experiment mimosa plants taught her that plants remember what happened to them previously and don’t repeat their mistakes. The Mind of Plants was her first book. She also studied with Indigenous healers in the Amazon and discusses this mysterious and compelling journey in her latest book Thus Spoke the Plants.

Answering a Call by Sara Wright

“Shamans bridge the night flow…” the first lines from a poem I wrote long ago keep coming into my mind. Frustrated because I can no longer access the poem, I accept that the first line is what I need… ‘bridging the night flow’ of intrusive negative feelings/actions on the part of others (as well as myself) is precisely the edge I am on. Even smoke – filled rooms remind me that I need personal protection.

An Indigenous healer and impeccable scientist and naturalist friend of mine reminds me of what I know, spiritual forces are moving. When I told him of my dream his response was to focus on protection, create the intention, and let it go… I tried to do this in my mind with limited success but apparently our discussion around this subject opened a door for me or we both did as I remembered how important it is for me to ground my intentions in something concrete. How had I forgotten?

When Betrayal Makes Sense by Sara Wright

When I was a young woman, a divorced mother of two, working as a waitress I became obsessed by a window hanging in a local store. This cluster of grapes was fashioned out of thick, uneven hunks of stained glass that the artist had retrieved from bombed cathedrals in Europe. The grapes shimmered – ecclesiastical purple with limed green leaves. Although I could hardly afford to, I paid an outrageous $50.00 for this piece and hung it above my bedroom window. I never regretted the choice. Whenever I looked at the stained glass, I had the strange sense that there was a message hidden there. I ignored it.

After my brother’s death two years later (my youngest son was two) I lost most of myself, but held on to my love for plants tending to them with deep affection and attention.

My first word was ‘fower’ for flower so my relationship with plants stretched back to babyhood. I believed the flowers plants and trees that lived around my grandmother’s house were my close friends.