Shaman’s Belt

Here’s part of my shaman’s belt - well, it’s more for maze dancing than anything else.  It’s finished enough to wear, though I’ll probably add more things to it.  There are twelve triangular bells with cone clappers, two small chains of flared cones, and (not shown) a set of five curly cones and some iron fringe.  The belt itself is an undyed Guatemalan cotton sash.  Heavy but nice and jingly!  There is a picture of the whole thing on the BELLS page of my website.  I’ve updated the site with a few new iron things - a bell, knife earrings, and photo of eight wands.

A couple of days ago, I walked past the hole in the dirt bank where the great horned owl nested earlier this year.  The birds are still around - I sometimes see them perched in a tree or flying up the wash on my morning walk.  This time, in the grass below the empty hollow, I found an egg.  It was cracked but still whole.  A bit larger than a chicken egg, and more round, with a much thicker shell.  It smelled like limestone and appeared to be nearly empty - it was probably infertile and had simply dried out.  I’m still pondering its meaning - a dried-out cracked owl egg, rolling into my path so close to the Full Moon, an object that I’ve been unknowingly walking past every day since the bird nested.  Is there something in my own life that should have hatched this summer, but didn’t?  Or is there something that I had been ready to throw away that should be treasured and given more time?  Might be a good time for a “moon pebble” reading.

Walking Close to Home

Here’s a view from my daily morning walk, a 4.5-mile loop along a dirt road and a rocky, sandy wash.  This area is especially rich in dense forests of very tall ocotillos, which are the intensely green sticks in the photo.

For the last two nights, the moon has been spectacular - a glowing copper crescent falling into blue-gray storm clouds, surrounded by streaking branches of blue-white lighting!  Energizing and life-giving, it is a call to work on what is really important, and to seek out and appreciate all that is living and growing now.  Put aside trivia and idle amusements, touch the living fire and work with it, draw its energy deep and store it.

Pomegranate of the Day:  Fire (yellow and orange ochre, and black manganese oxide).

Mirror-Windows

Here is Antheraea oculea, the Oculea Moth, that I found while photographing ferns.  It is closely related to the Polyphemus Moth of the eastern forest, but lacks the pink shading and the purple band on the hindwing, and has larger forewing eyespots.  The eyespots are little windows - they are bare of scales and you can see through them.  Some species of these giant silk moths have mirrors - eyespots covered in reflective silvery white scales - and some have both.

There is much to see through these windows now, in the wettest monsoon since 2000.  The rain brings colorful caterpillars, metallic jewelled Plusiotis scarabs, many kinds of mushrooms (some rarely seen in the desert), and summer wildflowers that only appear in years of heavy rain.  It is as if the winged windows themselves bring these wonders. 

In bedrock washes, the mirror-pools of standing water attract everyone, and this is the time of year that the jaguar walks north and looks for his reflection in these tinajas. 

The mirror-window is a recurring theme that seems to keep working its way into my art.  Some of my first pieces of iron jewelry were “mirror-window” pendants that held pieces of mica.  They reflected pearlescent light and a hint of color, but you could look through them and see another world.

The Full Moon Shatters into Rain

This full moon brought rain and green leaves.  A glass sphere, its surface frosted and etched by windblown dust, shattered into glistening streaks and bubbles as it poured waterfalls and tendrils of green light.  Amid thunderclouds, the rising and setting moon shone with a clear warm glow, like the swirling, molten sphere that forms as silver or bronze or gold melts in the crucible.  This feeling - a transparent globe breaking over my head, and a molten ball glowing in my hands - has stayed with me for two days.  Something old has broken, and a new seed is rolling into life.  I have so many projects going or evolving that I’m not sure which one applies here, but this moon is surely significant for one of them. 

The hot dry High Summer has passed, and we are well into the desert’s “fifth season” of the monsoons.  Ferns and oak trees put out new leaves, ocotillos grow leafy new branches, pipevines and devil’s claws bloom, prickly pear fruits ripen, and barrel cacti grow ephemeral ”rain roots” and swell before blooming.  This frenzy of growth will last until the equinox, when the sunlight loses its summer intensity, the clouds disappear, and all life dries out and slows down.  For those who celebrate this time of year as Lammas, the beginning of Autumn, I will share a summer project:  a coralbean, two months old, photographed after a thunderstorm.  I scarified/burned the thick red seedcoat on the grinding wheel so they could sprout.  Now I have six tiny trees.

Here’s today’s pomegranate vessel, painted in rare minerals - purpurite, lime green gaspeite, and blue-green dioptase.

Happy Pineapple Cactus Day!

Today was “bloom day” for the endangered Pima Pineapple Cactus.  The plant pictured above is the largest of several that grow in the desert near my house (my cactus website has more photos).  All plants usually bloom on the same day, three to five days after the first significant monsoon rain.  This year, the past five days have been rainy enough to spread the bloom out over several days (they have to have sun at midday for the flowers to open fully), and about half the plants will bloom tomorrow.  The cactus bees - fuzzy gray and harmless - will be delighted.  I’ve been watching these cacti for seven years, and the bloom is a very precious (and nearly solitary) celebration:  The desert hushed and dreaming at midday in the soft, humid sunlight.  Thunder over the mountains, sprinkles of rain, the knobby green cacti scattered like jade carvings over the bare pinkish-orange soil…and the luminous, slightly fluorescent glow of the flowers, the yellow light pouring up out of the earth.

Another cactus discovery made today even more special - FIVE bouncing baby barrels in my yard!  These are Arizona barrels (also called compass barrel or fish hook barrel, Ferocactus wislizenii).  The two in the picture are about an inch in diameter and are probably a year old already, they were just shrunken and hidden in the gravel until the rain.  I love prowling the yard at this time of year, looking for new “volunteer” desert plants.  When we moved in, there were almost no plants here - all the previous owners had “zeroscaped” with weedkillers and thirty years of indifference.  Over the next few years, we added rocks and boulders, searched local nurseries for native plants, accepted gifts of agave and prickly pear from neighbors, and rejoiced with the appearance of each tiny wild yucca, ocotillo, or shrub.  I have planted several salvaged barrel cacti already, but the appearance of seedlings is a sign of true healing for this piece of land.  In this part of the desert, the Arizona barrel reaches its greatest size and abundance, and spectacular “barrel gardens” and dense ocotillo forest are a special feature of the Santa Rita Mountains bajada.  The cacti are typically one to four feet tall and up to a couple of feet in diameter, but a really ancient barrel (well over 100 years old) can be more than six feet tall.  Now that I know they’re here, I will enjoy caring for these new arrivals.

Chubasco!

This is one of several mysterious pictographs in a rockhouse near the Gila River.  The outer circle is pinkish-white clay or possibly chalk (caliche).  The black circle is actually dark purple and is probably magnetite sand.  The red circle is, of course, hematite (red ochre).  The green is malachite (copper ore).  Upon close examination, it appears that the center of the circle was originally black.  All the pigments could have been collected at the same place, and perhaps the picture means nothing more than that - a simple geologic diagram.  Perhaps it represents the earth, or a spring, or an eye, or mabye it denotes ownership.  Such a basic design, universal and intensely personal at the same time, can surely mean many things.  I offer it here as a cenote - a well or spring - for inspiration.

Tonight we had the real thing - a true Sonoran chubasco, or wild monsoon storm!  This one may indeed be the “magic rain” that brings out the sapos (spadefoot toads), makes several species of cacti bloom and wildflowers grow, and revives the ferns.  In the nearby hills, the washes are running (water pouring over granite outcrops, swirling around mesquite roots, and fanning the sand into new patterns).  Today was hot and sunny, well over 100.  At sunset, dark yellowish-gray clouds swirled over the mountains and a huge dust cloud roared off the bulldozed desert just west of here.  Then a blacker cloud arose and completely swallowed the sunset - lightning travelling ahead of the rain had ignited a grass fire.  Finally the rain arrived, blowing fiercely horizontal at first, later falling calm and steady.  (Somewhere tonight, someone will stumble into a wash and be lost in a torrent.  Somewhere tonight, lives are saved at the last minute - desert wanderers are huddled in a saguaro grove, hiding from the lightning, rain washing heat and fear from their faces and mingling with tears of relief.)  Now it is fully dark, with a pleasant drizzle and still some rumbling and flashing that may continue all night as the storm cells bounce around the mountains.  The air smells like wet smoke, aromatic desert plants, damp earth, and most of all, like RAIN.

Full Moon: Eye of the Moth

An echo from yesterday’s post - the triple-segmented seedpods of Agave parviflora, the smallest of all the agaves.  In the U.S., this variety is found only in the oak grasslands of the Atascosa/Pajarito mountains.  We explored a dirt road to the border today and saw several of them.  The miniature seedpods are the size of peas.

All life is dry and hushed, waiting for the rain.  These are the hottest days, with temperatures well over 100 during the day and very little relief at night, since the rocks and soil now hold weeks worth of heat.   I have called this the Rising Moth Moon, because when I lived in the east I associated the full moon closest to the Summer Solstice with the silvery eyes of the luna moth shimmering among the sparks of lightning bugs.  Here in the desert, we have many eyed silk moths, but the only moths of that green color are the tiny Nemoria oak moths.  They too have four “eyes” on their wings, though they are just tiny dots.  The moths flutter in the dust and smoke, attracted to the moonlight, waiting for lightning to split the white sphere apart and release the rain, before the empty husk cracks open on its own.

A Line Between Worlds

Yesterday we went for a drive along the U.S. - Mexico border south of the Huachuca Mountains - a journey through oak grassland that glows like a bowl of light, ending at cliffs and a spring where we hunted for ferns and watched butterflies.

Here, the border is a steel wire no thicker than the black line on a map.  It is not an ecological or geographical boundary.  Streams and ridges cross it, as these photos show.  Black bears cross it and venture south a few miles, passing jaguars that are headed north on their own explorations.  Some people think of it and imagine a locked gate.  Others see an open door.  In some places, you can look at both sides and see a mirror:

In others, you can follow one of the earth’s exposed ribs and feel its connection to mountain ranges north and south:

On this day, we were there to greet an old friend, the honored guest whose annual visit traditionally begins on San Juan’s Day, June 24:  MONSOON!  As the hours passed, we saw the haze soften the sunlight, felt the humidity rise, and watched thunderheads gather over the Mexican mountains.  (Somewhere down south, in the thorn forest where coralbeans are tall trees,  it is already raining…)  But north of the Huachucas the clouds disappeared, and in Tucson it will stay hot and clear for at least another week or so, as the moon waxes hard-edged and glittering in the dry air.  And we feel blessed to be able to watch these ancient patterns unfold from so many beloved places. 

Summer Solstice

Midsummer, 105 degrees!  The coralbeans shown above are blooming now - I took the photos on Sunday.  The toxic seeds are typically bright red but sometimes they fade, like the ones in the photo.  In the Mexican thorn forest, Erythrina flabelliformis is a tree, with wood that is strong enough to use for tool handles.  Here it is a “natural bonsai”, a tangle of spiny shoots growing from a “root” (actually the trunk, only a couple of feet long) that is usually hidden deep in the rocks.  The plants never get more than a few feet tall because they freeze back in cold winters.  The bright green heart-shaped leaves appear after the flowers wither and the fat pods begin to ripen.

The solar oven got a workout today, including key lime ”sun pie” with a crust made from homemade graham crackers.

There is a myth found all across northern Europe, from England to Russia, that ferns “bloom” on Midsummer night, and whoever finds the flower will gain the power to find treasure under foxfire (phosphorescent glows from swamp gas or the wood-rotting Honey Mushroom, Armillaria mellea).   “Fern seed” confers invisibility.  Where did this myth come from?  Obviously ferns don’t have flowers or seeds.  Is the story just another joking tale of biologically impossible “nonsense magic”, or does it conceal something else…an older yet very real power associated with ferns, to be revealed only to those who understand what to look for?  Perhaps the “flower” is a mysterious light or a secret spirit, and the seed is its gift.  Perhaps the “flower” is merely the fire that appears on the hearth when ancient tree-ferns are burned in the form of coal.  What “fern flower” do you seek on this night?  What seed will you carry with you into the autumn twilight and the winter dark, what secret treasure that only you can see?

Here is probably the most common and drought-resistant of our desert ferns.  Astrolepis cochisensis is abundant on marble or limestone ridges, in company with cacti, ocotillo, and agave.  Like all ferns, it is born in water.  Its presence in such a place is earth-magic enough for anyone, yes?   Its leaves, like all members of its genus, are dusted with glistening white star-shaped scales.

Crescent Moons

Last night’s crescent moon was a thin silver wire or a fishbone needle.  Tonight it is a cat fang.  Tomorrow it will be the curved, sturdy claw of a bird of prey, a cat, or a mud turtle.  I have collected these crescent symbols for a long time, but today I expanded the list and played around with the words as if they were runes or a pebble oracle…still a young idea, like the moon itself. 

Yesterday morning I walked along a gravel wash and surprised a barn owl that was roosting in a canyon hackberry tree.  I watched it circle the wash and fly to a grove of desert oaks.  Its white moon-face glowed in the sunlight, and its soft, puffy wing feathers were paler than the sand.  I have walked under the oak trees that it sought (I could feel its brown eyes seeking the deep shade under their evergreen leaves) and its flight was a reminder that I want to see them again on another day.  In the desert, barn owls live in old mine shafts and eroded holes in the earth.  They are more strictly nocturnal than the other owls, and previously the only glimpses I’d had were of the one that occasionally flies over my front yard at night, a glimmer of white and a chilling hiss that is gone in a moment.

Today we hiked among thousands of agaves, sotol, yucca, and ocotillos that crowd the dry limestone hills on the east side of the Empire Mountains.  In the hot dust, among limestone boulders, I found the egg pictured above - it is the same size and shape as a great horned owl’s egg, but it belongs to a desert tortoise.  It is hardened and ready to hatch.

Two round, white gifts from the earth, reminding me to look to what I am incubating, what light I am reflecting during this Moon, what unexpected journeys will be possible.