Sara Wright – Page 6 – Feminism and Religion

Trees Scent and Sing for Life by Sara Wright

On November 6^th, the day after the election in the middle of writing through my own anger/grief I suddenly stopped and got up – heeding that inner voice that often interrupted my train of thought. Picking up the lights I opened the door to adorn my young cedar for the very first time ever.

I planted this twelve-inch-tall seedling in 2020 to replace my original Cedar Guardian Tree that had been decimated by deer during a year-long absence. To my astonishment in four years, this seedling had become a seven-foot-high Guardian Tree. Of course, in the interim I have carefully tended this cedar, watering her, talking with her, touching her, loving her, calling her ‘my guardian’ but this species is very slow growing so even as I began to festoon the tree with lights, I experienced a sense of awe. I was of course talking with this tree as I adorned her… I told her that I would be lighting her as a Tree for Life.

When the air around the tree suddenly exploded with the scent of cedar, I experienced a powerful sense of relatedness with this cedar, and with all nature that is impossible to describe. That she was communicating with me using her own words moved me deeply. Although I have had these experiences before each one remains a revelation, especially when I have one during times of deep distress. When I plugged in the lights, I saw the unintentional spiral that I had created when I wound the strings so carefully around and across her delicate fronds. Just perfect I thought as a breeze rustled through her branches making the lights twinkle for a moment.

Hecate’s Moon by Sara Wright

I spent hours
writing
you snaked by
underground roots
entering my story
with your
forked stick
‘witches’ are a
lie that christians
made up
to legitimize
harm done
to our kind
Artists, Writers,
Healers,
Visionaries,
Trees,
(men too)
Women whose
Difference
others defined.
Nature defiled.

What Happens When Hate Wins? by Sara Wright

Do the sandhill cranes stop singing?
Do the junipers cease to release their scent?
Do the stars fall into the sea?
Does the white moon weep??

I want to keep writing stories…

The wind still ruffles fine sand in the wash.
Cottontails leap, jumping through twilight.
Scaled quail still peep as they scurry over red ground.
The thrasher gobbles his suet without restraint.
A woodpecker taps at my window.

I want to keep writing stories…

Witch Power? part 2 by Sara Wright

You can read part 1 here

After being nailed as a witch I separated myself from the word and witch power in general. The word witch had a very dark side and could be used in the same frightening manner as it had been during medieval times to label and to expel any woman who lived on the edge (source of my original sense of unease). Especially one who lived alone in the woods and loved animals like I did.

Why had I been singled out? I was an outsider whose crime was to animate nature. Anything associated with nature was suspect if not ‘evil’.

Feminists beware. If you claim to be a witch – recall that the word is loaded. Personally, I think the label has backfired reducing our overall power as women. Perhaps making us more suspect than we already are.

Witch Power? part 1 by Sara Wright

On my grandparent’s farm witch hazel trees were common, sprouting up around old fieldstone walls at the edges of the forest. I loved these trees that bloomed in the fall after all the leaves had fallen. Masses of buttery yellow spindles covered bare twigs. Clusters of blossoms stood out starkly against the trunks of most of the hardwoods – hickory, beech, maple and oak.

As a child I carefully inspected each clump of blossoms. On some branches I found empty seed capsules which I learned much later expelled their seeds all at once the year before. Even these bird beaked pods looked to me like a kind of flower. I also saw little round balls that I later learned were next year’s buds already formed and that the identical looking flowers were either male or female. If I stood beneath a tree, the tangled shapes of the branches wove a loose string -like tapestry above me, one that was often mirrored by a cobalt blue sky.

A Leaf Peeper’s Reflection by Sara Wright

Twice a year, once in May for a few days and during the first week of October I can’t leave home because I’ll miss the next moment of spring flowering or scarlet flames.

Last week I was captivated by how the golden morning light affects each deciduous leaf. For about five days I ran inside and out all morning to feast upon the astonishing leaf color changes as the sun rose higher. ‘Fire on the Mountain’, crimson, gold, seductive sultry salmon brilliance. In and out for hours. I drove my dogs crazy. Noting the bees on the blushing hydrangea, glad for dragonflies cruising around the house. Greeting little green frog framed against his log. Breathing in the Light. Infused by all too brief moments of swamp maple’s fierce fiery splendor.

A Creation Narrative Leads to a Surprising Equinox Encounter, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.

Yesterday on the day before the equinox I returned to my favorite hemlock forest after another morning of unproductive research on the mycelial web. The scarcity of information on this critical source of all life on land is troubling. As my frustration mounted I heard a little voice say, ‘Go visit with the hemlocks’. I did.

After I crossed the bridge into the forest something amazing happened. An invisible cloud of incredibly fragrant mushroom scent slipped over me like a shroud. I just stood there for a moment inhaling sweet earth, astonished and bewildered.

A Creation Narrative Leads to a Surprising Equinox Encounter, part 1 by Sara Wright

Walk lightly
pay keen attention…
practice gratitude
but not at the expense
of truth
take sparingly
share

an Underground Web
writes the Story
my roots
belong to Earth

‘Listen to
feathered voices,
seek mushroom clouds
keep breathing deep
into the forest floor
feel that luminous Light
rooted beneath my feet’

(my fall equinox prayer)

During these days of mindless violence and fearful political upheaval, I feel driven to enter the woods on a daily basis. Lately, I haven’t even left my property. As I cross the bridge over the brook, I brush by the first lacy hemlocks and lovingly touch a branch of witch hazel whose lemony fingered flowers reach for mine. I am on the trail of mushrooms, but not as a forager.

I am drawn to these fungal fruiting bodies because I am trying to learn more about the complex relationships between certain fungi that emerge as mushrooms and their relationship to the trees around them. Some fungi that are in a symbiotic (or mycorrhizal) relationship with one tree or many, do fruit above ground but there are only about 20,000 mushrooms in all. The rest (which is most of the fungal world) fruit underground.

Elderberrying with the Yei by Sara Wright

Every year at the end of August I celebrate the Wild Harvest by gathering elderberries to make a medicinal tincture that I use all year long and share with close friends.

This gathering is a process that begins in the spring as I search for new bushes and then later blossoming elderberry flowers in old and new places. As the summer progresses, I continue to monitor the bushes searching for those with berries. Beginning in early August I am on alert for ripening. I am especially mindful because our weather is changing rapidly. If the trend of bad air, fog, and too many deluges continues unabated it’s probable that the times for harvesting berries may shift. In addition, many of the wild places that once supported elderberry bushes have been manicured to get rid of the wild plants by mowing them down, bulldozing the soil to remove all greenery, etc. The rape of wild nature has escalated with time.

This year I have been especially fortunate because I found new clusters bursting out in places they weren’t before. I think the Elder – Berry Woman is helping me. Destroying these precious wild plants and their habitat means that a once common ancient Native plant remedy may be disappearing. Despite horticultural advertising our elderberry bushes do not do well in cultivation, if they survive at all.

Seeds of Life by Sara Wright

I have been involved with plants since I was a toddler. My first word was ‘fower’ for bright yellow buttercups, a nickname I was given by my grandfather that stuck.

I guess it’s no surprise that I started out with gardening as a three-year-old under my grandmother’s tutelage. Her large vegetable plot fed us for most of the year. I seeded my first yellow summer squash into rich moist earth and watched with wonder as the seed emerged with two emerald ears.

In college when students were decorating their rooms with drapes and bedspreads, I bought a pepper plant to brighten my cement surroundings and soon had a windowsill full of plants.

As a young adult I grew many house plants and often talked to them, noting that we seemed to have an uncanny personal relationship, a childhood reality that I had been educated out of. I also gardened with herbs outside my back door, because I loved to cook and needed tasty condiments. Soon I moved on to planting a full – fledged vegetable plot. I canned what I could like my grandmother still longing for the bountiful flower gardens of my dreams. I come from a lineage of female flower gardeners and farmers that stretched back three generations (that I know of) but as a young single mother who worked and one who was frozen from loss, I didn’t make the time.