Yoo-hoo! I'm back!

Yes, Life intervened, and it has been a full year since my last post. Sharing my blog address with 'my' Heart & Hands families this month has prompted my return to the keyboard.

This past Sunday my husband and I were joined for lunch at Glendalough (our cabin on Wabamun Lake) by my daughter Rose, her partner Ze'ev, Ze'ev's parents Ida and Ilya, and their friends Jhana and Sacha. I've decided that Ida, Ilya, Jhana and Sacha are Wildlife Magnets, after listening to their tales of Close Encounters (and seeing the Evidence on Ilya's digital camera!) during their recent travels through Banff and Jasper National Parks. While sitting at the table we were graced by a visit from a flock of splendid white pelicans. I spotted them out on the lake, and they entertained us by soaring and landing quite close to the shoreline in front of Glendalough--thrilling!

The first time I can remember seeing a pelican in the wild was in the San Francisco area, possibly in 1971. For most of my life I have thought of pelicans as quite an exotic bird, like an albatross, or a scarlet ibis, perhaps. I wondered if my imagination was running away with me, when I thought I saw one on Wabamun Lake sometime around 1997 (someone's pet pelican had escaped, perhaps?). I shared my astonishing find with a local Old Timer who confided that, sure, pelicans can be seen in the area just about any old time. Apparently, wild pelicans really do 'belong' in Alberta, nesting and breeding here each summer. They became endangered, largely due to human and industrial disturbance of their nesting sites, and provincial legislation and 'management' since 1978 have helped to increase their numbers. Today their population is regarded as stable, although their colonies are said to be sparsely distributed around the province. (See the following website for information.) http://www.srd.gov.ab.ca/fishwildlife/speciesatrisk/selectedprofiles/whitepelican.aspx

I'm trying out the notion of beginning each blog post with a Nature Note, in imitation of Liza Dalby in her book of essays, East Wind Melts the Ice: A Memoir Through the Seasons. Liza is a scholar of Japanese culture, and the author of Geisha, as well as other books. She begins each essay with a cryptic statement from an ancient Chinese almanac that divides the year into 72 seasons of five days each. Liza muses about possible origins and meanings of these pronouncements (for example, June 16 through 20, "The mockingbird loses its voice"), and discusses features of weather, flora and fauna that she has experienced during each of these 'mini-seasons,' while living both in Japan and at her home in northern California. Thus, my pelicans!

The Chinese pronouncements bring to mind the names of some of the moves in the Tai Chi set ("part wild horse's mane;" "grasp bird's tail;" "carry tiger to mountain"). Liza speaks of the interplay between yin and yang through the seasons of the almanac. She argues--and I completely agree!--that the solstices and equinoxes mark the heights, rather than the beginnings, of the four seasons. Therefore, this Friday, June 20th is the apex of our current summer--it began May 5th, and autumn will enter August 5th. Winter will come in on November 5th, and spring, on February 5th. I invite you to try it along with me--see whether your experience of the seasons resonates with this new set of dates.

Liza begins her memoir and her year in the spring, the season of the earth's awakening. So Rudolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul begins with The Spring Festival, Easter. Here is Steiner's meditation (from the translation by Ruth and Hans Pusch), given for this, the eleventh week of the year:

In this the sun's high hour it rests
With you to understand these words of wisdom:
Surrendered to the beauty of the world,
Be stirred with new-enlivened feeling:
The human "I" can lose itself
And find itself within the cosmic "I."

Power to those Pelicans!!!