thank you

day 187     writing this on my phone so bear with me. Revie fell asleep late and I’m heading for bed. But I just want to thank everyone who reads this blog and follows this project. Thank you for doing the work with me. Sometimes its horribly painful. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for being in love with the world. Thank you for doing your own work in the world. I love you. Thank you for listening, love Natasha

Let’s try and do it right this time

Day 185 and 186

photo by Wilson Alvarez

Earlier, Wil, Revie and I were goofing around, playing, kicking and throwing a ball, running around, laughing.

And suddenly,

my head swam

seeing our small son,

carrying features from each of us,

and some all his own,

running, and jumping, and smiling,

here in our small house, with the wood floor and sloping roof.

I just can’t believe

how after years of loving each other,

we suddenly have someone else to love as well.

And I wonder,

how I could have ever wondered,

if having a child was the right decision

in a world

very near collapse.

Because his sweet heart has the power

to love

much more than I’ve ever been able.

And really that’s my job.

Love him so much that his heart fills up,

and overflows

so it blends with the trees, and the water, and the soil, and the air, and the sky.

THIS is hope.

For the future,

for the people,

for the world.

Revel

is

hope.

And all the babies.

Let’s try and do it right this time.

Thank you for listening,

Love,

Natasha

photo by Wilson Alvarez

By any means necessary

Day 184

photo by Michelle Johnsen

We’re not doomed.

Just made to feel that way.

There are ways to stop this monster in its’ tracks.

They’re trying to build a natural gas pipeline

through some of the last wild-ish spots

in this area.

The few small bunches of acres

where flood waters still tear through

and where small lizards with blue heads,

dart quickly from shadow to shadow

on the sunny rocks.

When I think about that,

the gas companies with their poison chemicals fracturing our delicate and ancient bedrock,

it takes my breath away,

squeezes my chest,

so I feel like someone is either pressing on my ribs or tearing them apart.

And I think,

that is how our own sweet earth must feel,

as she’s torn limb from limb

in this insane scramble for

the last drops of

precious and

irreplaceable  fossil fuels.

We

have

to stop

this madness.

By any means necessary.

Period.

Thank you for listening,

Love,

Natasha

photo by Wilson Alvarez

Michelle Johnsen, thank you for loving the world with your kind heart. For showing me the beauty in the smallest things, with your photography and your writing. It is a gift to work on this project with you, I love you. Thank you for this guest piece tonight.

photo by Michelle Johnsen

What will you be when you grow up, weeping willow sapling?

Will you bend low, dip your hair into the quiet stream, bear catkins?

Gaze at your own reflection, feel the warm sun on your cheeks of bark?

Or are you destined to whistle to a stop on the taut skin of a race horse, a slender switch in the palm of a jockey?

Or you, tulip poplar, so tall and straight and strong; will you grow to the top of the forest, bear your sweet flowers, which fall to my feet and teach me to look up?

Will you lend your unbending strength to those of us who dare remember how to carve you into a canoe?

Or will you become forgotten ceiling beams, baring your streaky red heartwood breast to us below?

Oak fence, did you know you’d survive being clear cut, droughted, burned, blighted, and wilted, just to become a fence? To separate neighbors, be a wall between communication?

When your leaves fell for the last time, did you feel it?

Sweet pine, darling spruce, stately douglas fir, all gloriously evergreens.

Instead of pinecones hanging from you, there are ornaments and tinsel and gifts wrapped beneath you.

Did you guess you’d be sawed from the earth, strung with lights, and propped up in my living room, drying out while waiting for Dad to water you?

Dear baby trees, What do you want to be?

I hope you stay trees.

photo by Michelle Johnsen

 

An ancient alchemy

Day 183

photo by Wilson Alvarez

Chamomile, Peppermint, Lemon Balm, Echinacea. Slippery Elm.

Feeling tired tonight, and a little run down. My throat’s a little sore.

Turning to the plants I trust to keep me well.

Simple herbs, safe enough for a child, which I need since Revie’s still nursing.

Effective.

How many cups of tea have these herbs made? And the other herbs, the millions of green ones covering this beautiful earth? How many remedies have they gifted us with?

Over the years, throughout the course of human history?

How many steady hands have plucked the leaves and flowers,

have dug the earth covered roots from land both familiar and wild?

How many generations had to talk to the plants

before we learned to sit

and listen

to their advice, their properties, their medicines,

their stories?

Heat the water, chop the herbs,

pour,

watch the color saturate

turning slowly green, pink,

yellow,

the colors of warm sunsets and fields of grass.

An ancient alchemy.

Now drink.

How many hands? How many plants? How many cups of tea

will it take

for us to find the way back home again?

Listen.

There it is.

Wind through leaves,

and the almost silent stretching

of tendrils reaching for

the sun.

Thank  you for listening.

Love,

Natasha

photo by Michelle Johnsen

Would you be ready?

Day 182

photo by Wilson Alvarez

If you had to leave tonight would you be ready?

If the lights went out, and the heat turned off, and the cars stopped in the streets,

If the world as you know it ceased to

exist.

Would you be ready?

What would you take?

To carry on your back under the cover of darkness?

Baby pictures, keepsakes, old letters, your favorite book?

Sardines, olive oil, a cooking pot, water?

Where would you go?

To your mother’s house, your best friend, the corner store, the woods?

Could you find food?

Aside from the supermarkets with their shiny plastic lined aisles,

where would you look?

Under logs, beside streams, in forests, in fields?

Would you dig roots?

Burdock, dandelion, spring beauty, the starchy corms of grasses?

Could you kill?

Animals fast and strong, and small and wily,

with flanks heaving, eyes flashing in the dim light.

Would you know how to end their suffering, where to cut, how to aim,

to make death come quick, and humane?

Would you make a bow, a spear, a trap a net?

Do you know how?

Could you make a shelter

warm and dry,

with twigs, and sticks, and mud, and bark?

Watertight? Able to contain heat,

a fire, your family. yourself?

What about fire?

Could you start it from scratch? Do you know the woods, soft enough to dent with a fingernail, hard enough to withstand the pressure of spindle on hearth, spinning, spinning, spinning.

Spinning.

Be ready.

Learn the skills of survival.

The way to live here,

gently,gently.

Pack your bags, prepare.

Not because the world is ending.

But because

you want to live like it already has.

We don’t have to wait for collapse,

to walk away.

We don’t have to wait for collapse

to change.

Wildness is waiting.

Go to her.

Thank you for listening.

Love,

Natasha

photo by Michelle Johnsen

Revie’s feeling stuffy with a little spring cold and sleeping lightly.

So just checking in tonight.

Hoping for dreams,

dark and earthy,

sunny, and sweet,

hazy like the grayest fog.

True.

Thank you for listening,

Love,

Natasha

Perspective

Day 180

photo by Wilson Alvarez

Thank you for listening,

Love,

Natasha

Spring

Day 179

photo by Michelle Johnsen

Revel and I walked around his sit spot today. The small park with the ball fields and the vanilla skies that he loves so much.

We ran up and down the small hill a whole bunch of times. Played on the playground, and took a wander through the field and into the small woods.

We kneeled and looked at the vole trails, worn into the grasses long covered by snow. Ran our fingers along them and made squeaking noises- his way of saying “mouse.”

Then we paused to watch the birds plow away from some dogs. 2 beagles, chasing rabbits. Barking and howling as they ran.

We were dazzled by the brilliant feathers of the yellow shafted flicker, boldly colored underneath like the bright lining of a beautiful coat, a flash of yellow through the trees.

And we marveled at the bluebirds wings,

exactly the same color as the early spring sky.

We made sounds like the woodpecker, Downy, Knock, knock, knock.

And waved at the robin red breast looking for worms.

We met a sweet man wearing binoculars,

and talked to a dear friend in the field, working on his garden.

Then Revel nursed,

with the wind ruffling his hair,

nestled on my hip,

and we went home,

waving at the tiny, white snowdrops as we wandered away.

Sweet spring.

Thank you for listening,

Love,

Natasha

photo by Michelle Johnsen

Day 178: The half way mark of The Year

Day 178

photo by Wilson Alvarez

Be patient.

They say.

Time heals all wounds.

It will get easier.

And sometimes they’re right.

Sometimes, when we lose someone, it does get easier. Sometimes, as the minutes, and hours, and days tick by,

the heart heals.

The pain dulls, and in its’ place,

memories remain.

Sweet, and sad, and true.

Death, at least in some way, is finite.

It happens,

and then the living,

keep living.

And the space grows, from the moment of loss onward,

and lends it’s unique perspective,

so the living can heal,

and move forward,

and move on.

I started this project

so I could grieve.

So I could finally stop ignoring the sadness weighing heavy in my heart,

constricting my airways,

casting shadows where there should be only sun.

I thought I would be able to choose my grief each day, like picking an outfit for the day or doing my hair.

I thought I could give it my attention and turn away.

Move onto the next sorrow,

gain clarity,

align myself with other’s who are fighting and

figure out where, and how,

to fight

myself.

But now, looking back,

I was so naive.

The water is poisoned, the air is toxic, the soil is contaminated. Many people are suffering. The land and animals are suffering. Corporations run our government and the world. They are not alive. They do not protect the interests of things that are alive.

And guess what?

This kind of grief does not go away.

This kind of loss is endless,

cruel in it’s generosity,

unending,

and incomprehensible.

Living in the world right now is like building your home on quicksand.

You keep trying to arrange the furniture, make dinner, put the kids to bed, make love,

and all the while,

bits are falling away beneath your feet,

the very foundation keeps melting and shifting so

it is impossible to know where you stand, or figure out how to fix the problems, or reinforce the foundation.

And some days it feels like,

what’s the point of even building a house,

when the world is crumbling beneath your feet?

I set out

to set this grief free

to unleash it from where it hides in the dark

and transform it into action, positivity

and good.

I wanted to be cleansed.

But now?

A burning heat remains.

A fire in my belly, a dryness in my throat,

an itching in the palms of my hands.

There is so much loss.

Never ending universes of loss, and death, and extinction and murder.

And sadness.

And now I’m just so fucking mad.

Because you know what happens when you give your attention?

Spend moments and days,

watching, and studying, and thinking about, and talking too, and crying over, and mourning?

You fall in love.

Harder and more intensely than you ever have before.

The gray of your sadness contrasts against the brilliant colors of the Monarchs, and the honeybees, and the gorillas, and the rhinos, and the elephants, and the passenger pigeons, and the bison, and the wolves, and the frogs, and the snakes, and the lizards, and the birds,

and even the people.

This world is beautiful. This earth is a gift. There are a million miracles right beneath our feet.

And I can feel myself gathering up,

courage,

and getting ready,

for actions,

that will match

this brilliant burning passion

I have in my heart.

So no, this grief never ends.

You can’t mourn the loss of all our fresh water

and move on.

You can’t mourn the loss of the fish, and air, and soil, and the oceans

and move on.

You can’t mourn the systematic genocide of our planet

and get over it.

And why would you want to anyways?

Instead,

we need to hold it.

The grief, and the sadness,

the anger, the fear.

And when it wells up,

let it pour out,

in sobs and wails,

in screams and shouts.

It is insane to go on living normal lives

as the world burns down around us.

Hold the grief, and the sadness and the fear,

strong,

with both hands

and don’t let go.

It won’t pull you under.

It will lift you up,

high,

higher than you’ve ever imagined,

so when you look down

you’ll see all earth’s creatures

far below.

And you’ll love them with a burning love you’ve never felt before.

And you’ll fight for them,

because they are you

and you are them,

and we are here together.

This is Day 178

The half way mark of The Year.

This grief does not go away.

It only grows.

But I am not afraid anymore.

My boy Revel is 18 months old today.

The world I have to give him is broken.

We can’t mourn the systematic genocide of our planet and get over it.

But we can fight it.

Or die trying.

I’m sorry.

Please forgive me.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for listening.

I Love You,

Natasha

photo by Michelle Johnsen

The ghosts are walking

Day 176

photo by Wilson Alvarez

The ghosts are walking.

Huge bodies, shaggy heads,

roaming.

Paw, and hoof leave no print,

but they are there just the same.

Grazing, and hunting,

mating,

raising babies.

Turn your head, quick,

in the fading light

and you almost catch them

staring at you

eyes glinting in the half dark,

breathing small clouds

and puffs,

trying to catch your scent.

The ones we’ve lost.

The ones who should be here still.

Some gone forever.

And some, waiting,

patiently,

until it’s safe to come out again.

You used to live here,

and I hope one day you will again.

I’m sorry.

I love you.

Thank you.

Please forgive me.

Passenger pigeon

Eastern Elk

Woodland Bison

Red Wolf

Gray Wolf

Moose

Carolina Parakeet

Heath Hen

Ivory Billed Woodpecker

Black Bear

Mountain Lion

And so many more.

How alive are the living

when we live

surrounded by ghosts?

Thank you for listening,

Love,

Natasha

photo by Yank