A Wet and Mushroomy Autumn Equinox

"Rain", watercolor on paper, 2010

Days slip through my fingers, soggy with rain, spilling one into the next like

overfilled buckets. I can't catch them or mold them into being reasonably functional

vessels of time, they seem to expand or contract easily and not at my command. 

I hear myself using the word "challenged" to describe my current state of being, 

and feel comforted with the knowing that it takes an earthquake to build a mountain. 

Not that I am hoping for a new mountain to form, or that I want another earthquake

(we've had tornados, a hurricane, and an earthquake already this summer), but I trust 

that the skills and strategies I am using to move me through the challenges will be 

useful additions to my toolbox. 

With the hurricane came flooding, roads washed away and houses floated downriver. 

Our town was spared anything too horrible, we lost a few roads and the river ran fast 

and brown and high for many days. 

Rain is so often a gift to the late summer garden, but the plants are bent down flat, 

or leaning sideways, or succumbing to mildews and root rot. They seem a perfect 

reflection of how I have been dancing through life lately, full of hope, reaching 

towards the sun on dry days, but laid flat the next by yet another tropical deluge. 

The constant wet has caused an extraordinary bloom of mushrooms and fungi, 

delighting the squirrels who perch in trees and nibble mushroom caps like pizza. 

Each day a new kind or color emerges from the forest floor, my friend, Boo, found 

these amazing green mushrooms, have you ever seen these?

Emerald mushrooms - photo Alexandra "Boo" Cherau

In just a small bit of the moss garden, quite a variety appeared one day. 

A toad lily graces the woodland garden, 

but I've missed so many of its stories as my 

woodland listening chair is too wet to perch on. 

The mushrooms and constant rains has meant high mold spores in the air and mildew smells in the house to which I am quite allergic. I've been cleaning, clearing, and

organizing to find the bit of cloth that turned green or a table leg with white spots 

forming. Ugh, THIS is one source of my challenge of late. I do see the gifts however, 

as there is nothing quite as wonderful as cleaning every surface of the house to

welcome in the new season. I am impatient for cool days and wood fires to dry me 

and the house out. 

After a whole weekend of cleaning, I decided I must finally make the lamp the 

dark corner of the kitchen was dreaming of. 

I didn't think I had done much art as I sat down to write this post, but I found 

that I have been stealing moments to scribble in a sketchbook, and these have added 

up to a few drawings to share. Below is an idea for a RavenWood sign for the end of 

the road - the raven in the rectangle - another drawing took shape behind it.

A few pages of tree forms:

 When I journey deep down inside myself, I find the root people. Always, in the 

dark places, they look out and remind me. What, exactly they say is nothing 

translatable in words. Their message is a slap of thunder in the middle of the night, 

or a shooting star, or the owl that awoke me last night in the tree right outside. 

They invite me to slip into a cool pond on a full moon night and breathe silver-blue 

light with frogs. Lately I have wanted to steal away in the night, dig down under 

the big hemlock and find the entrance to the root-world. I imagine a great council

of beings dreaming there around the fire, beating drums and singing the earth around 

the sun. Luckily I have my magic pen that can take me there in an instant, for I haven't quite found the right digging stick to get me there for real. 

Oh, and lastly, the chipmunk that Pasha brought inside today just scurried under 

my feet, answering my question of whether s/he had escaped while the door was 

open all day.... what now?