The Wildness of Spring
As predicted it is in the mid-50s today and going to the mid-60s for St Patty’s day here in Colorado. Mother earth will be wearing some green tomorrow along with all the Irish and pseudo-Irish like me. Hey, I figure I’m half Norwegian and I know there was a lot of mixing back in the Viking day; I’m certain to have some of the “raiding blood” in my veins along with some of the Celtic from the Emerald Isle. Anyway, that’s my story and I”m sticking to it!
Did you feel the impact of the dying Moon yesterday and the zap of the new? She was reborn out of the heart of the Sun at 3:01 pm MDT. I felt her birth pangs pretty strongly with a restless night and wild and crazy dreams. I’m glad I’m through that one more time and can get on with all the excitement the waxing Moon will bring.
Speaking of wild, Don’s essay on his harbingers of Spring yesterday included a call from the wilder side. I must be feeling that call as well; every place I look and word I read has some reference to wildness too often buried and ignored in the overly domesticated world we now live in. Of course, this is a choice we make. We can stay safe and snug in our artificial world of light and sound, a tasteless and scentless environment of air-conditioned tameness, or we can join Don on a hike, whether in Colorado on the Section16/Palmer Trail or wherever you live. The wild is never that far away that we can’t choose to join and run with it. A deer in our yard this morning seemed to want to come right up on the deck and join us; maybe the wild are hearing the call of the tame!
I’m reading a collection of William Stafford poems selected and introduced by Robert Bly: “The Darkness Around Us Is Deep.” Just the title says a lot. I found this remark by Bly on the subject of domestication and wildness particularly apropos: “The artist owes language to the human community but owes his or her breathing body to the animal community. Every poem we write, every day we live, we think about what we owe to each. By knowing what to take from the world of culture and what to give back, what to take from the world of animals and what to give back, we become adults.” And this applies to more than artists, poets. We all have breathing bodies; we are closer to the wild things “out there” than we might sometimes wish to think! When do we free ourselves to “walk on the wild side”? It is good to stop talking and start walking!
Or, as Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ in “Women Who Run With the Wolves” writes: “Go back and stand under that one red flower and walk straight ahead for that last hard mile. Go up and knock on the old weathered door. Climb up to the cave. Crawl through the window of a dream. Sift the desert and see what you find. It is the only work we have to do. You wish psychoanalytical advice? Go gather bones.” She is referring here to plumbing the depths of the psyche – exactly where the wild things run. And what better way to do this than in the depths of the physical as well!
Gaia, Mother Earth, is a wild Goddess. She is fiercely protective of her children, all whom she bears. Read what She did to Uranus, Father Sky, through Cronos and his adamantine blade when she learned Uranus was hiding away her offspring!
It’s a beautiful day here in Colorado. What are you doing today to get in touch with the wildness in you? Whatever it is, be careful out there!
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Men and The Goddess 
In Ali Brown’s business retreat we learned that the important work for your business is to work on yourself, to ‘plumb the depths of the psyche.’ How wonderful it would be if we would all stop the world and get off for a moment, enjoy Nature in her Springtime glory, stop and look back at the deer practically on the deck, watch the different birds who are returning. Just for 1 breath a day, live in the wild and not under fluorescent lights, we might remember that we are all one, not separate, not ‘better than’ or ‘lesser than’ and that we are all a part of the Nature we enjoy. The wild me just might be the real me!