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Evolution, Stars, and Nature's Bounty
As you read this, I am traveling in the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, the source of Darwin's Origin of the Species. Immersed in the beauty of land turtles, finches, Marine Iguanas, and mythic sea birds like Albatross and Blue-Footed Booby, I am listening: listening for insight into our future evolution. Listening to messages from the sea. Listening for the sounds of the stars. I had intended simply to share David Waggoner's poem, "The Silence of the Stars," with you during my travels. Then, in amazing synchronicity, I was gifted with a "music of the spheres" experience in my garden, showing the beauty of being present and observant in the worlds we inhabit. My story follows the poem. The Silence of the Stars When Laurens van der Post one night In the Kalahari Desert told the Bushmen He couldn't hear the stars Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him, Half-smiling. They examined his face To see whether he was joking Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men Who plant nothing, who have almost Nothing to hunt, who live On almost nothing, and with no one But themselves, led him away From the crackling thorn-scrub fire And stood with him under the night sky And listened. One of them whispered, Do you not hear them now? And van der Post listened, not wanting To disbelieve, but had to answer, No. They walked him slowly Like a sick man to the small dim Circle of firelight and told him They were terribly sorry, And he felt even sorrier For himself and blamed his ancestors For their strange loss of hearing, Which was his loss now. On some clear nights When nearby houses have turned off their televisions, When the traffic dwindles, when through streets Are between sirens and the jets overhead Are between crossings, when the wind Is hanging fire in the fir trees, And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove Between calls is regarding his own darkness, I look at the stars again as I first did To school myself in the names of constellations And remember my first sense of their terrible distance, I can still hear what I thought At the edge of silence where the inside jokes Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic, The C above high C of my inner ear, myself Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are: My fair share of the music of the spheres And clusters of ripening stars, Of the songs from the throats of the old gods Still tending even tone-deaf creatures Through their exiles in the desert. [from Traveling Light, by David Waggoner] Nature's Bounty, Nature's Beauty Who would have guessed that gopher tastebuds run to the Italian? This spring I've lost 40 garlic bulbs, 3 enormous bunches of garlic chives, and a precious Daphne plant to resident gophers (they left the kale and arugula). The looming vulnerability of my summer garden, especially while I am traveling, caused me great stress. I've been gardening for 38 years in peaceful coexistence with the critters. My gardening philosophy has always been "If the soil is healthy, the plants will be healthy, and there will be enough for all of us." That worked well except for the summer that squirrels stole 200 green peaches from my single tree-leaving me five to eat and infuriating me no end-and this spring. If I were a perfect practitioner of non-violence, I wouldn't kill a mosquito, let alone consider trapping a gopher. However, I have my attachments (fresh heritage tomatoes) and my limits. So I watched online videos, set the traps, moved them around when I was unsuccessful, and prayed. I was thrilled to discover a gopher snake in the yard, and spoke hopefully and encouragingly to it: if it stayed around, eating the many moles, mice, and gophers making hundreds of holes in the hills, the trapping dilemma would be solved and I'd be off the hook. A week and a half went by and I didn't see the snake. I kept setting traps. I kept praying that my young plants would be left alone. Then I discovered the snake in my compost bin, happily warming itself between two folded layers of black groundcover cloth. I watched it all day. I removed mouse traps that might catch the snake by mistake. I praised it. The next day I caught a gopher! Not finding the snake, I tossed the dead gopher into the field hoping the snake would find it, and not knowing whether this snake would consume a dead animal. An hour later I was working in the garden when I noticed the snake moving. I ran to get the dead gopher, and managed to toss it about five inches in front of the snake. Then I held my breath. The snake appeared to be oblivious, then turned its head and stuck out its tongue repeatedly, moving closer. The snake curled over and around the gopher. I watched as the snake opened its jaws (they unhook), grabbed the gopher's head, and began dragging the dead animal under some bushes. But not very far! Squatting down, I was able to peek under the leaves and observe the whole amazing process. This snake's one-inch head and thin body seemed no match for the gopher's seven-inch long, fat and furry carcass. Yet the snake seemed to inhale the head, muscling the body further and further in. It shook its tail periodically, in displeasure that I was so close, but kept eating. It had devoured the entire body, feet, tail, and all, and muscled the whole gopher carcass back though its throat and into mid-body, in just 20 minutes. I hadn't "heard the stars," but I had seen something I'd never dreamed I'd get to observe. Being present with the world, we can open our consciousness to the infinite beauty and grace of nature. Slowing ourselves enough to see, we can listen and remember what our ancestors knew. Knowing the world around us, we can step into our futures whole-heartedly. I am reminded of what the 13 Pacific Grandmothers, meeting in Hawaii this spring, explained: "When the People 'found' these Islands, they actually did it this way...They clarified their Vision. They aligned their Vision. They stepped into the canoe, and all paddled in unison, and they drew the Islands to them." May we also draw our evolution towards us with clarity and in alignment with the unity of one heart! Meg Beeler Earth Caretakers  | | Supported on All Sides |
"The ancient Goddess traditions had no sacred texts or dogmas: instead, their mystics learned to read the book of nature. Understanding how the earth's cycles work, how change occurs in nature, and how mother earth designs co-evolving, interdependent systems can help us be better designers of the changes we want to see in our own life and the world." -- Starhawk "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to the rest of the world." -- John Muir
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