Blossoming

Meditation on All Things Wild

O wild rose, bend above my face! . . .
I have only the fire of my heart to offer you,

                                                   --Byher

you are the earth’s soldier of love,

                                       --James Cagney 

your thorns are the best part of you.
                
                                  --Marianne Moore                        

Photo by Daniel Pintilei on Unsplash

Hello Lovelies—

Buckets of gratitude for reading A Woman’s Place Is In the Wild. I appreciate all of you who sustain and help me grow these weekly meditations by reading and commenting or sharing and supporting my work with a paid subscription. Your generosity means the world to me. Thank you for being here.

Did you know you can LISTEN to A Woman’s Place Is in the Wild? Click the play button on the upper right of your screen when you go to the page of this post.

Each weekly meditation of A Woman’s Place is in the Wild is an offering, an evocation of the world around me. You will rarely find me writing about climbing to the top of a mountain or counting the miles I’ve walked as if collecting notches on a belt.

Instead, I want to adventure in.

This is the kind of nature writing needed now, narratives of place—localities, with its root in the Latin, locus, for place—the kind that rise over time out of relationship, that allow us to understand that we are place, too. As the Scottish writer, Nan Shepherd says, “The first law of ecology is that everything is connected to everything else.”

This is my project here.

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Kesäkuu - Waxing Summer Moon - Midsummer - Juhannusta

These long days.

I feel them in my skin, gone brown with sun. In my bare feet toeing clover and dandelion in the yard. In the early mornings, I hear the robin’s cheerily-cheer-up as the forests lifts her skirts to reveal shadows among trees, followed by the surprisingly raucous twitter of violet-green swallows. In the dusky light, hummingbirds arrive; bats twirl.

These cascadingly short nights have been still-cool enough for good sleep, until last night when a warm wind held the heat of the day and I felt summer open her deep embrace.

This year, the garden comes riotously into bloom as Lady’s Mantel spreads wide palms to receive rain and columbine raise arching blue heads. Pansies and violas dot the pathways like tiny birds and a stunning variety of tulips open their pink and purple mouths at the far edge of the yard, along with the tall violet-blue elegance of allium.

Midsummer arrives and with it, roses. They open pink blossoms whose delicate yellow centers signal ripeness to pollinators and so begins a lovely pas-de-deux, as bees and butterflies, drawn to the flower’s nectar and scent, gather pollen to transfer between blooms.

Once each flower has been pollinated, the petals drop, making room for the now fertilized ovules at their base, contained in a fleshy receptacle called the hypanthium, to develop.

In the late summer, the hypanthium swells and matures into fat red rose hips, which become food for birds, chipmunk and squirrels—even bears, who gorge on them in the fall.

Photo by elaine alex on Unsplash

Rosehips last through the deep mountain winter providing an important source of food for forest dwellers; even the wild rose canes can be browsed by deer and moose. Once the hips are digested their seed is dispersed in scat and new plants take root.

In Colorado, wild rose thickets are foundational, quietly underpinning the function of the forest ecosystem, by providing erosion control and shelter and feed for dozens of species across the seasons.

I step out into the warm morning to look at the roses throwing canes from beneath the steps. The flowers are fleeting but their presence reminds me all that is behind the blossom—of the fecundity and fullness of this time of year, of the cycle of life quietly unfolding beath all this beauty.

I have been thinking about what it means to blossom, to open myself to the season, to another, to take something or someone into the heart of me, an act whose cycle and repetition is integral to the life I live.

Living deeply with the seasons, we are all of us blossoming at this time of year, opening ourselves to the thrill union with another, whether a body or being or other deliciously fertile creation, now is the time to germinate.

I am once again hosting Juhannusta, a Midsummer celebration, for friends. On the agrarian calendar, the solstice marks not the beginning of summer but its deepest part, when spring’s quickening has unfurled to flower, the forebear of fruit.

Midsummer is of course the pagan celebration of abundance and fertility and love and so fittingly symbolized by the rose. The fields are planted and there are prayers for a good harvest. But it’s also the night when young lovers might dream of a (as yet unknown) beloved. What summer magic.

My celebration will have summer crowns and pink wine, fried chicken and Mölkky, a Finnish pin-throwing game. I’ve golden lemon curd, in honor of the Finnish Sun Goddess, Päivätär, mother of wasps, and will serve it in a Midsummer trifle made with angle food cake, strawberries and whip cream. We will gather to toast each other and this blossoming time of year; to hold for just a moment, the fleeting beauty of the rose, each taking home a piece of a midsummer dream.

May it be so with you.

Good Solstice, my friends, wherever you are.

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Note: I am travelling to teach next week at Fishtrap and so will be reposting a favorite meditation on the more-than-human world.

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Hold onto beauty, friends, and to each other. Carry hope. And practice being human, practice loving the earth and each other, each day. Thank you for reading.

Big love,

Karen

A Writer’s Note: If these this have brought you outside, or made you stop and look at the beauty of the natural world, please consider becoming a paid supporter. Doing so keeps this work alive.

You can also purchase a copy of Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living here. or order a personalized first-edition here.

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Writing Wild: Ritual

Sunday October 4th 10-3:30

6 Spaces Left

As we prepare to enter enter fall, this daylong workshop focuses on not only helping your understand your own writing rituals (best times + places for inspiration, how to keep coming back to writing over and over) in order to help you feed your creative self, but also on inspiring some new ones. Plus, we’ll take a deep dive in the mystery with an intuitive inspiration hike and using tarot cards to help us access images, stories, poems swimming in our subconscious bodies.

Rollinsville, CO

Space Limited to 8 Women

Full Day Workshop - $150 or $125 when you sign up with a friend.

Lunch + Snack included.

For More Information or to Register

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