Diary of a Land Healer: March/April

The landscape waits, with bated breath, for the warmth to finally arrive. The last two months have been unseasonably cold, and the longer that time passes, more anticipation is present in the air. The plants and buds swell, but are unwilling to come out while the temperatures still go into the teens at night. At Imbolc, Punxsutawney Phil, our local divination oracle, predicted six weeks of winter, but in truth, winter has turned from 6 weeks more, to 12 weeks more, and now almost to 18. Just two days ago, the weather broke, and it seems that spring is finally in the air. Here at the homestead, we are all growing weary. Each morning, my cat Acorn runs to the door, ready to go outside and explore.  When I open the door for her, a breath of cold air hits her face and she recoils back into the warm house. She looks up at me with a look: “fix this, human.” I laugh and tell her that we are all waiting for the warmth come and to stay–the trees, the river, the cats, and certainly, the humans. The humans in the area are running out of wood and fuel, and this situation is certainly causing financial strain for many winter drags on. Even someone such as myself, who revels and glories in the winter and the snow, has a limit–and I think I passed it as we moved into April and the cold and snow showed no signs of breaking.  Itching to be in the garden and in my kayak, itching for the spring to finally arrive. Still, the dark and cold of late winter and early spring offers a number of healing lessons, which we’ll explore today.

This is my “diary of a land healer series”, where, once a month I write about and document the changes on the landscape here at my home as I collaborate with the land for healing and regeneration.  These are in-progress thoughts as the seasons go on. You can read the first two entries here: January and February.

The Lesson of “Should Be’s”

This unseasonably cold spring offers a number of powerful lessons. The first is in studying people’s reactions to the cold vs. the land’s reactions to the cold. Humans have grown to expect predictable certainty; the certainty of the seasons coming on a schedule that we could depend on, the certainty of USDA zones and last frost dates. But that’s not what this planet can offer us anymore. Predictable certainty says that by mid-April, we “should be” firmly in the spring months. There “should be” buds and flowers. There “should be” warmth. But climate change prediction models say otherwise–the East Coast of the USA, where I live, is likely to see shorter springs and longer winters, particularly as the jet stream continues to shift. The truth is that spring will come, but it may take longer than any of us would like. Spring will come and frost will come, and summer and fall will also come–but no longer on predictable schedules. The daffodils understand this–they simply wait.  The animals and insects understand this–they wait. The flowers and seeds understand this–they, too, wait.

It seems that the bulk of nature here on this land has less of a problem waiting and adapting to the changing and unpredictable climate–but humans certainly do.  I have found that there are a few things we can do to acclimate.  First, I have found it helpful to stop thinking in terms of “should be’s” and start thinking in terms of resiliency. Resiliency is the capacity to endure, to adapt, and to be ready for anything. I’ve worked hard to this in this extended winter season to do so, knowing that each year will be less and less predictable than the last. From a gardening perspective, this means planning for these climate extremes. One of my favorite gardening books, Carol Deppe’s The Resilient Gardener tackles this exact issue–she suggests we plant and plan gardens with the understanding that climate unpredictability and uncertainty will happen.  A resilient garden is not surprised when it takes till June to get warmth, or when it warms up in February–plans are in place for both situations. Also, using equipment to mitigate temperature extremes can also help us be resilient gardeners, things like greenhouses, hoop houses. Planting polycultures of many species rather than monocultures of a single species, too, helps the ecosystem adapt and thrive and all of us become a bit more resilient.

In our broader culture, however, this same unpredictability and need for resiliency is unfortunately very present. I think that a lot of us are having a hard time with this extended winter season because of the state of the world and the political turmoil we face, particularly those of us living in the current political climate in the USA. We are so tired of the cold, and yet the cold keeps coming. We are so tired of all of the ridiculous drama, the media fiascos, the lack of integrity in leadership. There is not a single person I know that isn’t weary, and the dark in the cold winter months, especially as spring just doesn’t seem to come, are a reflection of what we experience culturally. But this same lesson that nature provides us concerning resiliency is also meaningful: learn to live with the unpredictability and find ways of adapting to that which we cannot control, just like the ecosystem does. I wrote about a few druid-influenced strategies to do this here.

And yet, the promise of spring is still in the air.  Despite the snowfall last week that blanketed the ground with eight inches and then melted by midday–adaptation and resiliency is the lesson here. The only constant is that change happens, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always change. Living here on this land teaches me that, despite the cold, spring will return again.

The Lesson of Carrying Capacity

During our extended winter season, I’ve also been taking a lot of time to reflect on the journey that brought me to this land, to be here and present. Late winter/early spring is a useful time for reflection. I begin my druid your journey 12 years ago on the spring equinox, and every year on the equinox, I take some time to reflect back on that journey by reading my old journals. What strikes me about the last year of this journey is that I finally faced a lot of my fears. I face the fear of being alone and the fear of feeling I wasn’t good enough if I wasn’t doing it all. I faced the fact that just like the land, I have limits and they are important to recognize.

The land speaks to this lesson: this land here, and all land, and our entire planet, has a certain carrying capacity. This carrying capacity is what the land can support: how many humans, how many plants, how many trees, and so forth. There are limits to how much abundance it can produce, how many mouths it can feed, and so forth. The land here is a powerful lesson in this: my current land is at a severely diminished carrying capacity for several reasons: a large swath of lawn that produces no food or habitat (soon to be transformed into gardens), a damaged forest due to sustainable logging (which I spoke about more in January’s post in this series). As I wrote about in this series in January, I can see this diminished carrying capacity in people who have been the victims of trauma and pain–we can no longer offer as much light to the world. Like the land here, we need time to heal and grow.

Humans in Westernized society don’t like the word “limit”; we see it as something negative, something to overcome and breakthrough. But that’s not the way nature works–we live on a finite planet with resources that are growing more scarce. Our land has her limits.  This land, here, also has her limits–five acres can only produce so much. But the more that we learn to work with her, rather than against her, the more that we can think about that carrying capacity as a good thing–and work to increase the damage that has been done to so much of our land. Here, in a few short years, through the collaboration of humans and nature to regenerate and heal this ecosystem, the land will become an abundant place with regenerated ecosystems and a much higher carrying capacity.  She will still have limits, although she will be used to her full capacity and bursting with life.

Of Daffodils and Dogsbane

We’ve been talking on this blog before about growing where you’re planted, and I really like that metaphor for this time of year because of the early spring flowers. While the temperatures remained cold, the daffodil buds are swollen but closed, waiting to emerge. I kept visiting them, and they kept saying to me, “not yet.” As soon as the temperature hit 70 this past Friday, the daffodils knew the time had come and they all burst forth. As I walk among the blooming daffodils, they offer us a lesson of hope. On this land, the patches of daffodils are all through the forest floor in the woods, even along the floodplain and right next to the stream (which I wrote about in February’s entry). This afternoon, they are calling for almost 2″ of rain, and these big patches of blooming daffodils may end up underwater as the floods come again. Given the size of the patches of daffodils, I know that if the waters come up, these daffodils will endure–they will just go under until the waters recede again.  The daffodils are opportunists and offer lessons in adaptation.

Even the dead husks of the plants from the previous season, however, offer promise. Another exciting find on a recent walk was the dead stalks of dogbane, it is a kind of milkweed that is used for cordage and is well-loved by bees and butterflies. I harvested a number of the dead stalks from last season, spreading the seeds all along the field. As I harvest the stalks, I spread the seeds encouraging this patch to grow even more abundant than it already has been. Finding the dogbane offers a wonderful reminder that nature keeps on giving, even when it appears like the land is barren. In fact, this time of year is a perfect time to harvest dogbane–a wonderful natural crafting material (I’ll share more about this in an upcoming post). What appeared to be a barren and snowy field has much to offer, for those with eyes to see.

Closing

I know that things will start to move quickly now that the warmth is coming back into the world. In the last few days, it feels like spring is finally in the air. The land will grow and heal, and each day new blessings await. I am thankful for the lessons of resiliency, carrying capacity, daffodils and dogbane, and am once again grateful to be in the light half of the year.