Author: maggiebird

Bristlecone Pine

| maggiebird
Bristlecone Pine
Watercolor by Margaret Sloan

This summer I got to meet the bristlecone pines of Great Basin National Park in Nevada. They live precariously above 10,000 feet between rock and sky. The oldest have been there on the mountain for thousands of years. Some have only a thin strip of bark sheltering a living cambial layer; only that bit of xylem and phloem spirals up the dead part of the trunk to the branches that are still alive.

The trees clasp the rock, seeking out the little bit of soil they find there. They stretch branches of tight, bunchy needles to the sun. I thought they seemed as if they were a conduit between the planet and the sky. When the wind whistles through the short green needles, surely the mountain can feel the branches shiver through the wiry, grasping tree roots.

I fancied the trees spoke to me in long, slow, booming voices. I can’t tell you what they said. Perhaps they just let me know they exist, and that they knew I exist. I know this sounds all Tolkieny and Entish, but when faced with these weathered Methuselahs in the thin air above 10,000 feet, a person thinks these things.

Blogger  Susan Miller posted this quote from  In the Global Forest by Canadian botanist Diana Beresford-Kroeger:

“If we go into the forest, we enter a cathedral of creation that we cannot fully understand and that we should not touch. If we go into the forest, we’re blind, deaf and dumb.  We’re blind because trees have perfected the photo-reception of sunlight while we haven’t. We’re deaf because we can’t hear the long sound waves of the movement of trees. We’re dumb because today’s best chemists cannot make some of the chemicals produced by trees. Simply put, we should never forget that as a species, we’re all connected through trees.”

I only made 4 studies for the painting at the top of the post. Once I started the final piece, the painting pretty much just fell out of the paintbrush onto the paper.



Caught between a hoof and a trunk on Election Day

| maggiebird

I voted, although I’m not sure I really liked any of my choices for leaders. Propositions? Equally as difficult, except for 21. Yes to save California State Parks!

Remembering

| maggiebird

After the wildness of Halloween, the racing and running, the sugar high, the monsters and witches and goblins and ghosts, the next day seems so quiet that I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. It’s a sign that I’m still alive, my heart still pounding the drum that keeps me moving. And I think of my ones, gone on ahead where no heart beats to remind them of life.

Amidst all the Halloween fright fest and fun, we shouldn’t forget that the holiday, or observance, or whatever you call it, is really about remembering the dead. Cultures like Mexico, that celebrate Dia de los Muertos, haven’t forgotten that. Some of my best memories of the small Mexican town in which I lived were at the cemetery on November 1 and 2. The warm night, the smell of basil and marigold and candle wax, the soft sound of women chatting, of a band playing a song at a graveside. I thought it seemed so comforting to visit the folks who’d left this earth. And I wished my culture had such a celebration.

Galina Kraskova, a modern-day heathen, writes in a guest blog on Pantheon:

At Samhain we are reminded that to neglect our honoring of the dead is to stifle their voices, smother their stories, invalidate the tangled tapestries of their lives. It is to commit a crime against memory, piety, and honor.

People all over the world honor the dead during this time of year, calling the celebration by different names. All Saints Day. Dia de los Muertos. Day of the Skulls. Dziady. It’s important to them.

Because we’ve all lost those we love, and seek somehow to find them.

Samhain

| maggiebird

Halloween seems to be the lighter version of a much older celtic festival, Samhain (pronounced Sa-wane). We don’t celebrate the date in quite the same way that the old ones did (or maybe I should say auld ones?), with quite the same darkness. We’ve given it mostly over to children, or childish (some say boorish) behavior.

But deep down I think we know what this time of year means. We have a genetic memory of the wildness and the mystery of the season when the daylight shrinks and the night ascends. We’re entering a season of uncertainty. Of cold, of darkness. We forget, those of us living in this blessed Mediterranean climate, that in other parts of the world, the night, and the cold, awakens during this season and stretches out over the land .

The green man takes on the colors of autumn. We can hear his voice in the crackle of leaves and fire. Some Wiccans say it’s the end of the time of the Goddess, and the beginning of the time of the God. Other people say that Samhain is the night during which the veil between the dead and the living is the thinnest, and that on this night the dead can cross over into the land of the living.

In this country, tonight is given over to wildness, to running loose in the autumn night that’s only just beginning to feel the taint of winter. It’s given over to costumes, and candy, and spooky stuff on every street. And kids know that the veil is thinnest tonight, and that what’s behind a plastic mask just might not be their beloved sister or brother, or the neighbor kid, but rather, someone dead who’s joined the hubbub of living kids, if only for an evening. And perhaps we know it too, as we willingly give out treats, just in case that cute kid in the the princess outfit is really not just a cute kid. She might really have been a princess.

While you’re waiting for or hiding from the little goblins and tinkerbells and obiwan-robot-vampire-princesses to come knocking at your door begging for candy, here are some Halloween links for you to explore.

50 best blogs for wiccans

The Witch of Forest Grove

Dante’s Worlds

Wyrd Designs – The Walking Undead

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The dreadful ghost

| maggiebird

A comment by a friend reminded me of a song I’ve sung for years; The Dreadful Ghost. It’s a beautiful, spooky song of ghostly revenge. It’s a typical girl meets boy, boy leaves girls when she gets in trouble. But in this story, she comes back from her grave and gets him. Gets him good.

I fell in love with the song “The Dreadful Ghost” 11 years ago when I heard Debra Cowan sing it at a session in Boston. It’s not very well known; only a few singers have covered it. I eventually learned it from Dark Ships in the Forest by John Roberts & Tony Barrand, but the version I heard Debra sing is still my favorite.

I wish I could find the whole song somewhere to link to this blog. But here are the lyrics to The Dreadful Ghost, courtesy of Golden Hind Music. If you like old fashioned folk music of the English persuasion, I highly recommend you check them out.

Addendum: Last night Debra sent me a link to this song.

Thanks Debra!

Nature in the raw

| maggiebird

In suburbia, we have a love affair with the natural world. And in the best human fashion, we’ve bestowed upon large animals, especially dangerous large animals, special spiritual appeal. We take them as our totems, our spirit guides, our “other” selves. We like to think we walk with the wolves, lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my.

Perhaps we do this because we need to confer the power of their hairy, scary hides onto our naked, shivering skins. Because without our weapons, our sticks and stones, spears and guns, we’re pretty helpless against other mammals. We’re the weak little brothers and sisters, easily damaged, spindled, folded, and mutilated. Even a mere house cat is able to fight us tooth and claw, and indeed, puss often wins the battle.

Let’s face it, non-human mammals are fierce. They are scary. They are dangerous. They bite, claw, and kick. Many of them can kill us with a single swipe.

When I lived in Northern California, I spent a fair amount of time wandering in parkland and timbler land with my dog, a smart yellow lab mix. On our regular rambles, we passed a bear tree. The bear had scratched the bark, shredding it to three feet above my head. Thankfully I never saw the bear, but they did sometimes show up in folks’ garages along the edge of town, eating the dog food or nosing through the garbage.

One day, while wandering through fields of ripening salmon berries, huckleberries, and bramble berries, the dog, running ahead of me, stopped in her tracks. The ridge line of fur along her back bristled up and, although she whined, she would not let me pass her on the trail, body blocking me until I turned away.

And even I, with my useless human nose, could scent the animal. It was a ferocious scent. I don’t know what kind of large animal it was, but I was not willing to find out. The dog and I slunk to the trail that led most quickly to the street, where, once again on human tarmac and turf, we felt safe. And very lucky.

For a scary natural history Halloween, I suggest you listen to Red Tooth, Red Claw at To the Best of our Knowledge. Who knew that chimpanzees want to rip off your jaws? Or that tigers could embark on revenge killings?

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Halloween heights

| maggiebird


Saturday night we drove up a mountain to a party in the San Carlos hills. Up a steep narrow road, and I don’t do so well driving up (or down) steep narrow roads. So this is a Halloween story for me.

Heights didn’t use to be so scary for me. When I was young, I would have fairly skipped along a scary trail like the one in this video.

But now, even watching the above video makes my stomach scream “mama” as it tries to crawl up into my throat. But I keep watching it. It’s a cheap thrill.

The wikipedia entry for acrophobia, or fear of heights, says this phobia (really? a phobia? It’s not that severe, really!), this panic at being at altitude, may be caused by a “dysfunction in maintaining balance.”

Balance. Right. Recently I don’t have any.

Perhaps it’s my diminished vision—the once perfect eyesight becoming blurred and astigmatic. Or perhaps it’s my increasingly increased body type that’s throwing me off balance (yeah, just a little top heavy). And who can keep their balance in a sedan going up a mountain on twisting, rain slicked roads? No wonder I squealed like a little girl.

That night, we made it to the top of the mountain just fine, despite my trembling and shaking and shouting “Watch out! We’ll go over the edge!” The mathematician, who was driving, was not amused.

A warm and delightful house full of musicians and dancers awaited us, and once during the evening I even stepped out onto the narrow deck, where, high over Sili Valley,  I watched the pre-Halloween storm passing over the bay.

And when we left the party in the wee hours of the morning, I walked down that mountain, hugging the hillside, and enjoying the fresh air. I didn’t get back into the car until I got to the flats.

Something at the window

| maggiebird

I don’t know how you’ll interpret this picture. Well, frankly, we never really know how anyone will interpret any picture. But some have more meanings embedded in the symbols. This on is more ambiguous. Are the children evil shades? Or just locked outside while their mother gets some needed rest? Either way, it’s scary.

A darkened window and someone peering in is one of those things that scare me witless.

True story (and aren’t they all?): While I was designing this painting, I was home alone. Alone on, yes, a dark and stormy night, the first one of the season. I was merrily drawing away in the silent house, enjoying the sounds of the storm, when something started knocking at the window. Jeepers creepers and yikes-a-bunga! I about lost my teeth from fright.

I don’t have cats anymore, or any pet to be a watcher for me, so I simply closed the shades, locked the doors, and hunkered down at my drawing table to work. Every so often there would be a clonk at the window, or on the side of the house. The motion detectors detected nothing. At least, they didn’t turn on the security lights, so I didn’t go investigating. That’s scary movie rule #1: girls should not investigate strange noises outside, alone, in the dark!

Yeah, I have to admit, when the mathematician got home, he investigated (he was not fed a steady diet of scary movies as a child, and as a result, does not know scary movie rules), and found the summer shade had come unhinged from the plastic sleeve that holds it against the wall, and the wind was blowing it around, and every so often it knocked against the house. No ghosts.

But it was a good cheap thrill while it lasted.

The ghostly hitchhiker

| maggiebird

Doesn’t every town have a ghost that hangs by the side of the road? If you stop, she gets in your car, you set your gps to find her house, and when you finally get her where she says she’s going, she disappears.

It is a scary thought, as you’re driving down a pitch black road, to imagine seeing something or somebody in the flash of your headlights. I’ve never seen a ghost walking, but once, late at night, I saw an antique truck—1940’s model—on the highway in the rain. I spied it in my rear view mirror, and I remarked on it to myself, because I’m a sucker for old cars. Then it disappeared.

I don’t mean it changed lanes, or turned away, or even turned off it’s lights. It simply ceased to be in my rear view mirror. Not proof of a ghost, I know, but needless to say, I hightailed it home, ran into the house, and burrowed under my covers (with the cats), which is, of course, the safest place to hide from apparitions. You know that, right?

Niles has a version of the classic hitchhiking ghost, which makes sense on that winding, unlit road. Frankly, I find the hitchhiking ghost legend sort of tragic, especially the versions in which she disappears just as you bring her to her parents’ house. I mean, couldn’t she stick around long enough to give them a clammy hug? They miss her, for God’s sake.

For more on this classic story, go here. It’s good write up (veracity excluded), but I’ve got to warn you that if you frighten easily, do NOT look at the rest of this website.

More Ghosts in the San Francisco Bay Area