Budding Trees

walnut harvest

A bunch of us piled into a van, last week, for a 6-hour road trip down to southern Wisconsin, to gather black walnuts from trees that line the roadsides. We camped out in a friend's yard, and gathered walnuts all day, every day, for a week. It was an adventure that was filled with friendly farmers and small town folk. The most memorable parts of it were when a group of teenagers TP'd the trees around our tents in the middle of the night, and when we were on our way home, our trailer broke down from being old and overloaded with nuts.

I found this nut while gathering, and noticed its heart-shape.

gathering

some of our nut harvest

the end result!

It was really warm during the day, with cold nights, and when we arrived back at Teaching Drum, I settled into chilly rain, and after a week passed, we got our first snow of the white season-which was today! It felt strange to experience snow already. We had a big feast for some guests who were departing. There were multiple dishes contributed by different people. There was a greens salad, fire roasted deer ribs, baked cisco fish that we caught last year, mixed veggies, and I made a wild rice pilaf with cranberries and nuts. We sat in a circle on the floor and held hands, the elder sharing blessings, and then one by one, we passed our bowls. I watched the snowflakes fall onto the ground. The weather and the food felt reminiscent of Thanksgiving.
I thought about my family in Missouri, and then I thought about what I'm grateful for.

 I'm grateful for/happy about:
-An NVC (Non-Violent Communication) course I'm taking in town. I'm really enjoying it, and learning a lot.
-The delicious and healthy food that is healing my body.
-The healing circle; living with people who are all dedicated to emotional healing work.
-Living in the woods, right up against the national forest, and getting to see deer almost every day, and hear the birds, and view the stars so clearly.

Lake Superior

 

The Great Gitche Gume. The largest of the great lakes.  31,700 square miles of blue. Shiny pebbles along the shore, the calming sound of the waves, and wild grapes!

September comes to a close. October brings colder weather, red leaves, people coming and going out my life, children growing and changing before my eyes, and myself changing and growing in more subtle ways.

Wild Plant Harvests on the Lake

A friend and I did some some exploring yesterday on Hiles Mill Lake. We were looking for a section of mountain maple trees located above a floating bog. We wanted to go out there to gather seeds for edibility tests. We paddled for about 1 1/2 miles, and then waded into the bog. What's neat about the floating bog is that it's bouncy. It reminded me of being on a moon bounce when I was a kid. What's a little scary/exciting is that it is difficult to see how far you will sink in until you step down. I fell into a deep spot a couple times when I wasn't being completely aware of where I was stepping. Once we made it through the bog, we climbed up a path of fallen trees into the mountain maple forest. It was a really beautiful day, and we collected a couple bags of seeds.

This whole area is surrounded by lakes. Almost every time we go out to gather wild edible plants, we explore a different lake. I'm enjoying the opportunities to get in a canoe. I'm getting better at canoeing, and I'm getting stronger. I really like being out in the sunlight, and on the water, with a view of all the colors of the fall trees.

The cranberries are also ripe right now, growing wild alongside the edges of the lakes. A few days ago we canoed onto a different lake, and explored a couple different islands that had cranberries growing along the shore. We took the kids with us, and they really brightened up the day, running around the islands, and making conversation while we gathered. We spent the whole day on the lake, stopping to crack nuts as a snack, and drink water. 

Our biggest wild food staple has been the wild rice. We were on the lake for a couple weeks this year, and, we gathered 600 pounds.

some of the rice we gathered, unhusked, drying on a tarp

 The Ojibwe are the native tribe of this area, and they call the wild rice manoomin. There's a long history of manoonmin being gathered by the Ojibwe, and lots of interesting stories.
"Traditionally, its harvest promoted social interaction in late summer each year. In August our people moved to their manoomin camps for harvest. Once manoomin ripened most energy was focused on harvesting. Manoomin was our main food source.
Manoomin is an aquatic grain, or a cereal. A truly healthy natural food, uncooked wild rice contains more than 12 percent protein and is richer in protein than white rice and most other grains.

Real Wild Rice vs. Paddy Wild Rice
Many consumers confuse paddy-grown wild rice with the true wild rice, hand-harvested from northern lakes and rivers. Frequently, the wild rice offered for sale in local grocery stores or at roadside markets is paddy-grown rice – a different product than the true wild rice taken from naturally growing stands of manoomin. Paddy grown rice has larger, darker (almost black) kernels, takes longer to cook and lacks the distinguishing nutty flavor and fragrance found in native wild rice. Paddy rice is farmed in large rice paddies and mechanically harvested. Commercially grown, paddy wild rice comes mostly from large paddy fields in Minnesota and California."

The above is from http://www.manoomin.com

Next week, we will start gathering black walnuts!

Ricing Moon and the Healing Circle

Alex and I spent the whole day today canoeing and gathering wild rice from the lake. I've been ricing for about two weeks now, and it looks like today was probably the last day. The stalks are browning, and the rice falls light. The wind was coming in heavily from the north, blowing white caps on the water that chopped at the canoe. We used all our strength to paddle against it, and once we got to the shore, the wind lay low, blocked by a stand of trees. I looked around and noticed the color of the trees. Yellows and browns spotted the coast, and a few specks of red maple leaves showed their fall colors. I felt chilled. I wished I had brought an extra sweater. Fall is here already! It's beautiful...

Photos from last weeks wild rice harvest:



The long Wisconsin winter

Fall gives a reminder of the incoming white season. The snow will start falling in October, and continue until April. Sometimes it snows in May or June. In the middle of winter, the temperature will drop down to -20 at night. I’m afraid of feeling cold. I want to make peace with the cold, but I’m not sure how.
Maybe this winter will be an experiment, to see how well I can acclimate to change and discomfort.


winter camp at Teaching Drum. photo credit: teachingdrum.org

The moon lit the way to my bed tonight. When I started my walk, I noticed that the light was shining on the woods much more brightly than the night before. I looked up to see that the moon was waxing, and a few stars took shape within my eyesight. I had stumbled through the darkness the past few nights before.

Each night, I slowly make my way on a path compressed down by many people. I feel the ground under my feet, and try to recall the direction and amount of steps to my bed. The subtle shadows of the trees against the night sky guide my way, too. About halfway to my destination, a tree leans against another, and when I am almost there, a precarious branch sticks straight up out of the ground. I’ve tripped over it, in the dark, many times. Every night since I’ve been here, the same animal sings next to same tree. I think it is a toad or a frog. The name doesn’t matter. I’d like to see it during the daytime, but I only hear it in the evening when I make this walk.

I feel comforted and calm within the quiet subtleties of the woods. If I am feeling anxious, I'll take a walk or run in the woods, and then return to the circle with a clearer head.

After the walks, my mind doesn’t spin off into fearful thoughts. I'm not worried about the future, or questioning my self worth. I am worthy just because I am alive, and I am working on accepting that change is a part of being alive.



I've been listening to the song "Far, Far," by Yael Naim a lot these days. It feels appropriate for how I've been feeling lately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvtP9PRvi60

Summer's End at Teaching Drum

It's the end of August, and the weather up here is warm during the day, with cool nights, and few mosquitoes. There's a lot going on right now.

The blackberries and bunchberries are ripe. I've never had bunchberries before until now. They are small red berries that grow in a cluster, on the floor on the woods. They taste mildly sweet, and have a creamy texture. They're fun to just grab when I'm going for a walk.



I am holding a small handful of blackberries. I'm standing still, and the mosquitoes aren't biting! I'm enjoying the weather. There's so much to look at, and I've been taking a lot of photos, as you can probably tell from this blog post.

The wildflowers are blooming, too. When I moved in, I was welcomed into my room with a bouquet of wildflowers.



Some are starting to wilt, now.

I've been working on deer and bear hides, and cooking a lot. I really like the meals here. We stick to a paleo diet. A basic meal at Teaching Drum consists of deer or fish, vegetables/greens, and wild rice. For breakfast we have fruit and nuts. We eat eggs for some meals, that we buy from the neighbor down the road. We cook in bear fat. Yesterday we rendered bear fat, and what's leftover is crispy chunks of fried fat that pretty much everyone loves eating.



I'm at Nadmadewing, in this photo, salting one of the hundreds of deer hides that get donated to the school from hunters, roadkill, or taxidermists. Some are sent out to the students of the wilderness immersion programs for hide tanning.

Ricing Moon begins soon. This is when we gather wild rice, in canoes, out on the river. I started carving my ricing sticks yesterday, and I am almost done. I've never riced before, so I am excited to learn how to do it, and then I can give more detail about the process.

Almost everyone who lives here is really into running in the woods. A few weeks ago, I was training for a 10k. I was running on pavement or gravel. I could not have imagined how fun it is to run in the woods. Before, running was a practice for blowing off some steam, putting on my headphones, getting that endorphin high, escaping from daily stress. With woods running, it's about awareness, and fun. We practice "wolf running." One person leads, and the other people follow behind, mimicking the leader's steps. I went with someone today, and I felt like a kid on an adventure. We were balancing on logs, jumping and ducking branches, and sometimes crawling on the forest floor under tree branches and between ferns.

One aspect that I really appreciate about Teaching Drum is the healing circle. Anyone can call a healing circle to get support from the rest of the community. A circle was recently called because one person asked another person to stop flagging them. "Flagging" is a term used when someone points out that another person is victimizing themself, externalizing, or enabling someone else. We talked about why someone wouldn't want to be flagged. The intention behind a flag, etc. Interesting stuff.
I learned that I have lots of victimization patterns. I've been aware of it for years, but I never called it that. I struggle to empower myself, and let go of thoughts that I'm not good, or don't have anything to contribute.

There's a lot to learn here!

One more picture, and then I'll go.

This is anicha

I finished my first vipassana course a few days ago. A vipassana course consists of ten days of silent meditation, for approximately 10 1/2 hours each day. I had the intention of doing emotional healing and developing a stable meditation practice to help me cope with chronic, and sometimes paralyzing anxiety that I've experienced ever since I was 13. I imagined the course would be difficult, but I could not have imagined how incredibly emotionally painful it would be, and the realizations I could only have by fully experiencing the pain.

I shared a piece of land, a meditation hall, a dining hall, and a dormitory with about 40 other people. At the beginning of the course, we turned in our electronic devices and reading and writing material. We agreed to not in engage in physical exercise, and we agreed to practice noble silence, except to ask questions to the teachers. Noble silence means to abstain from communicating with others through speaking, eye contact, or touch. These guidelines were set in place to make it easiest for us to clear our minds.

On the first day of the course, I rose at 4am and walked to the meditation hall to begin my sitting practice, as according to the daily schedule, and directed by the teachers.
By the afternoon, I was in the midst of a battle in my mind to stay awake, and I was failing. I was forcing my eyes to stay open, even though we were instructed to sit with them closed. My whole body ached intensely. A heat and throbbing pulsated in my head. My neck and back ached, but the most pain was in my legs. My stomach began to turn, and I felt the urge to throw up. I wanted to run out of the room screaming and crying. When I was almost to my breaking point, a gentle bell rang for a five minute break. I pulled my body up and out of the room, crying, my mind wrapped up in fearful thoughts of my possible inability to complete the course, and guilty feelings for wanting to give up so quickly.

I approached the assistant teacher, asking for guidance, and when she was available I entered her room. She sat on a mat on an elevated piece of the floor, and I sat on a mat below her. Her room was cold, and lit with an orange light. She smiled down at me.

"How are you doing, Wren?"
"I am struggling a lot. I can't stay awake in the meditation hall, and when I am awake, my whole body aches intensely. The pain in almost intolerable."
"If you have this much physical pain, you must have experienced a lot of emotional pain in the past. There's a lot in your subconscious, and it is coming out, like pus."
"But, the pain, I can't handle it..." I start crying again.
Then she said, "Why did you come here?"
"To.. learn to relax."
"Then you have to do the work to get there. You have the tools. Don't give up. Give this technique a fair trial, complete the full course, and then decide afterward if you want to keep practicing vipassana."

I thanked her, and then left. Something clicked in my mind. I understood that the only way I could heal all my emotional pain of anxiety, anger, and sadness, was to observe it completely, in my body, and in my mind. I thought of the phrase, "The only way out if through." I felt a lot of empathy for anyone who had ever run away from something good for them because they were afraid of facing the work that would have to be done to get there.

I returned to the meditation hall after a tea break. I feared my lack of ability to focus, and handling of the physical pain. I pulled up my strength, and sat, my back and neck straight, my eyes closed, my mind focusing on the air entering and exiting my nostrils. I did not fall asleep. I did the work because I knew then how important it was.

Lessons in Meditation Become Lessons in Life

Over the next few days, I learned some important lessons. The first one was about equanimity. In meditation, it’s a tool used to observe bodily sensations, and not make the pain "my pain." I was told that equanimity means not wishing for unpleasant sensations to cease, and not wishing for pleasant sensations to continue.

I also learned about Anicha. Anicha is Hindi for impermanence. I think of the phrase, “This too shall pass.” While we sit, we learn to practice scanning our whole body for subtle sensations, such as itching or tickling. I observed many intense urges to scratch an itch rise and then fall away.

On the 6th day, almost all my bodily pain was gone, and I started experiencing pleasant, subtle, vibrating sensations sweeping all through my body. I felt like my body was dissolving into everything around me-an experience I’ve never had.

By experiencing all of these different sensations in my body, I could learn to use the tool of Anicha when emotions come up. When I am experiencing anxiety, my breathing is very rapid, and I feel like I cannot get enough air. I’m overtaken by a handful of negative, self defeating thoughts. I remind myself, “This is anicha.” It will pass, and it does.

I learned that I have spent most of my life living in the past, or worrying about the future, not experiencing reality as it is, and wishing I was somewhere else, doing something else.

The head teacher of the course was a man from India, named SN Goenke. Goenke said that it is easy to logically understand the concepts of impermanence and equanimity, but they cannot be applied in day to day life unless they are experienced through the body, because the body and mind are linked.

We're not Alone in the Darkness of our Misery

On the last day of the course, Goenke recited the meditation, “May I be happy. May all beings be happy. May I pardon anyone who has ever hurt me. May I be pardoned for ever hurting anyone.” Many people cried; releasing hurt feelings, forgiving, and extending love and compassion.
I felt so much compassion for those 40 other people surrounding me, who I never spoke with until the tenth day. I felt sadness to say goodbye to these people with whom I had shared this healing experience with, and after talking with others in the course, I found out that everyone else was struggling too. How often I think I am alone, but I’ve come to realize that we all have the same needs and the same struggles.
It was when I reached Chicago, to catch a bus, that I realized that I would be surrounded by the same kind of people.

We’re all just walking through life as though in a darkened room, grasping for something to hold onto, or looking for light, so we can come out of our darkness.

For me, my house is often filled with darkness, but now that I have some tools, I think I will open the window and let some light in.

When my bus arrived in Wisconsin, I went to the green bay and put my feet in Lake Michigan for the first time. The weather was cool and windy. I found myself wondering about the future-the next months I would spend at Teaching Drum, but then I drew myself back into just appreciating being at the green bay.

The future is always unknown. This is anicha. This is the change and flow of life.