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My New Favorite Season: Spring Near Yellowstone

Elk cow and her calf

Hearing robins singing has always been my first sign of Spring.

River with Birch Leaf

We’ve tried to arrange for our shamanic study group to meet in Montana, our home-ground, for almost 20 years. Well, they came this spring! Yay!  And I kinda think everybody pretty much fell in love with Montana’s beauty and wildness. Yellowstone Park, the Yellowstone River and Paradise Valley to be specific.

It’s been a long time since I have visited Paradise Valley and Yellowstone Park in springtime. Starting when my sons were little, we camped in Yellowstone but usually after school was out for the summer, or in the fall. I’d always heard about the incredible spring surge of baby wild mammals and birds there, but I’d never experienced that awesomeness until this retreat. Fall was always my favorite Montana season. I’ve changed my mind, though.

My new favorite season? Spring-near-Yellowstone. Yes. That is a season. Springtime-near-Yellowstone. Not just plain old Spring.

In early May, Mother Earth is waking up in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Waking up in a big way:

  • Her trees sure woke up — fast! In just a couple of days, before our eyes, the aspens and cottonwoods dressed their bare branches in mists of green, then fully clothed themselves in designer-leaf-garments.

Spring Aspen by Matt Lavin

As spring days grow warmer, Earth’s sacred waters awaken. Snow melts. Soft rains come. Rivers swell and fill their banks. The water covers sand bars, willow thickets and ancient boulders. Listen to the sound of a small stream feeding a big river and notice the beauty filling your heart:

Afternoon River Reflections

During the night the land sleeps. Mists cover the bottom of Emigrant Peak in the Absaroka range. With sunrise, the clouds lift to reveal a snowy shawl on the mountain’s shoulders and, as the day warms, her shawl unravels into rivulets that feed the swollen river. Earth’s sacred waters take many forms.

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Mother Earth is waking up with babies. Every kind of wild-fertile-life-explosion-of-exuberance baby: bison calves, wolf cubs, fox kits, fawns, elk calves, gopher kits. Eaglets, goslings, osprey chicks and kildeer chiclets. A hatch of mayflies and a hatch of trout fry, bunnies, ducklings, loonlets and grebelets.

Elk Cow and Calf

Birds mate, nest and raise a brood. Or they just pass through, feeding all around us – energy for the journey.

  • A grebe mother floats by with a brood of grebelets on her back. Two of them are just behind, tucked up against her tail as close as they can be, in the wild, rising waters.
  • Yellow-headed blackbirds sing their water-in-the-throat-joy
  • Dusk brings the chortling call of sandhill cranes, their color that of deer, goose and fallow field
  • Canada geese stand on a snag midstream, high water all around them, calling their distress in not-quite-unison
  • White pelicans glide downriver — a silent line on invisible rolling air-hills
  • Mama eagle brings home a snake, then a rabbit, a duck, a fish — she’s a good provider
  • Nuthatch, woodpecker, chickadee, siskin, finch —  the timbre of bird-song in a meadow swells to a symphony of beats, noise and vibrant texture
  • The cottonwood grove where we met around a fire, is alive with aspen-catkin-fluff dancing in the air to the rhythm of bird-song
  • Above our heads, baby gracklets (made-up-word-warning) strain their wobbly necks from a hole high in an old snag. Their begging calls must fill the parent birds with urgency — bring more bugs! Bring more bugs!
  • A red tailed hawk screams hoarsely from across the flooding river — an osprey answers at dusk

YellowHeaded Blackbird

Our Earth is sacred. There are some places on Earth I can more easily feel and experience that sacredness. The Yellowstone ecosystem is one of those places for me. It is holy ground.

Just for fun, I found some recordings of some of the birds we saw and heard during our retreat. Listen here:

Sandhill Crane

Pine Siskin

Osprey on Nest

Mountain Bluebird

Yellow-headed Blackbird

NOTES:

CREDITS:

  • The River ©Eddie McHugh
  • Recording of American Robin from Slater Museum
  • Aspen Catkins photo ©Matt Lavin
  • River Reflection ©Maureen Shaughnessy (me)
  • Snow Clouds Cloak Emigrant Peak ©Maureen Shaughnessy
  • Elk Cow and Calf ©Maureen Shaughnessy
  • Yellow-Headed Blackbird ©Michelle Lamberson
  • Bird Calls are from Xeno-Canto.org
  • Recording of Pole Creek is by Maureen Shaughnessy
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Just Want to Teach Art-love nd Nature-Love

Boys holding their artwork

I just want to teach art-love and nature-love to kids

I don’t want to get
a teaching certificate
I don’t want to go to art school
I don’t want to leave Helena
I just want to teach kids about
art … that they can make beautiful, powerful art
that changes people’s lives
I just want to teach kids about
nature … that they are part of what’s all around them and
help them truly feel that in their hearts
I just want to help them discover
that they have the soul of an artist and
the soul of a tree or a mountain
inside each of them
literally. that everything is inside and they are in everything.

That’s all.
Am I asking too much?

 

Kids are usually just so enthusiastic about whatever it is they are doing. Loud. Silly. Engaged. Adventurous. Brave. Profound. Empathic. Helpful. Wise.

And even when they seem like they are bummed and struggling, as one little girl did this morning … I can usually coax them out of their shell, even if I can’t always do that for my own self.

As with lots of things I commit to doing … sometimes just before it’s time I get the willies — aka known as “cold feet.” I’m just not in the mood. I think. Maybe I’m overthinking it. Because when I make myself go and do it, I usually have a blast. I get energized. I am in my element. I get in the zone, the flow. Of sharing my gifts. Of connecting with young hearts.

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And, if I can help them be happy, rounded, confident, generous lovers of all of life, then I have done something good.

So … that’s what I want to do with the rest of my days.

Oh. And make my own art.

And see it hanging on people’s walls.

Love,

Maureen

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Budding Artist

Ema Explains her Mixed-Media Technique

Ema Blue spends Wednesday afternoons with me at my studio. She is my unofficial “gallery assistant” and art student. She dusts Tim’s furniture, sweeps the sidewalk, takes Charlie for a walk, fetches me coffee from across the street, and makes lovely sidewalk chalk signs in front of the gallery. Ema is 11 years old.

Ema is meticulous, creative, precise, funny, cheerful, interested, respectful and persistent. I enjoy her company immensely and I truly look forward to Wednesdays.

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For the last few weeks, Ema has worked steadily on a mixed-media artwork. Inspired by the image transfers some of my women friends and I made during one of our Girls Art Nights, Ema started with some image transfers onto a canvas, then used water-soluble colored pencils and collage to complete her piece. I’m always impressed when a young person can sustain interest in a project over a period of days or weeks, and she did on this piece. She finished this one yesterday.

EmaPainting3-imp

I will write another post soon with my thoughts on the image transfer technique we used, and how to enhance the transfers with other media to create something lovely. Hope you enjoyed seeing Ema Blue’s artwork. Please let her know what you think/feel about her painting by leaving a comment below. Thank you!

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Eating Dirt May Be Good For You

Izzy

For most of human history, people chased things or were chased themselves. They turned dirt over and planted seeds and saplings. They took in Vitamin D from the sun, and learned to tell a crow from a raven (ravens are larger; crows have a more nasal call; so say the birders). And then, in less than a generation’s time, millions of people completely decoupled themselves from nature. — Timothy Egan, NYT

When I was a kid, our typical day after school was finishing our homework, doing a few chores, then running outside to play. When dinner was ready, Mom called us in, we did our after-dinner chores than ran back outside.

We had forts in the woods, and forts in the blackberry brambles. Played kickball, kick-the-can, many variations of tag and hide-and-seek with a whole tribe of neighborhood kids. We captured fireflies in jars, investigated ant hills, caught crawdads with plastic cups, chased dragonflies and hunted snapping turtles in the creek (we didn’t hurt them.) We picked wild strawberries, blackberries and plums.

Elkhorn Creek in SummerWe raised a wild raccoon, lots of polywogs, a few caterpillars, two snapping turtle babies, some squirrel babies and a baby robin. Dug in the dirt, made mud pies, launched ourselves into the creek on rope swings, climbed very tall trees and adventured in the storm sewers. I loved lying on the big hill hear the cow pasture and just watching clouds. I had a secret place under a spiraea bush where I would lie on a blanket to read. Outside.

writing in nature notebooks

What adventure! Totally unstructured. I remember at some point longing to attend a summer camp because some of my friends were going, but I never did. I also didn’t have music or art lessons, extracuricular sports or academic tutoring. We just played (well, we did chores too.)

Life is different for little kids now. It makes me sad to think of how disconnected children are these days, from the natural world.

According to Richard Louv who wrote Last Child in the Woods, “Boys and girls now live a denatured childhood. What little time they (children) spend outside is on designer playgrounds or fenced yards and is structured, safe and isolating. Such antiseptic spaces provide little opportunity for exploration, imagination or peaceful contemplation…

Louv recommends that we re-acquaint our children and ourselves with nature through hiking, fishing, bird-watching and disorganized, creative play. By doing so, he argues, we may lessen the frequency and severity of emotional and mental ailments and come to recognize the importance of preserving nature” — Jeanne Hamming

Deer and Magpie in City Garden

Another excerpt from the book, “Last Child in the Woods:”

As a boy, I was unaware that my woods were ecologically connected with any other forests. Nobody in the 1950s talked about acid rain or holes in the ozone layer or global warming. But I knew my woods and my fields; I knew every bend in the creek and dip in the beaten dirt paths. I wandered those woods even in my dreams. A kid today can likely tell you about the Amazon rain forest—but not about the last time he or she explored the woods in solitude, or lay in a field listening to the wind and watching the clouds move. — Richard Louv

Help me organize my feelings ...

What can we, as teachers, parents, grandparents, and friends of children do, to make sure kids connect with the natural world and reap the benefits of unstructured outdoor, nature-based playtime?  Well, take some action. Any action. Here are 10 things:

  1. Here is an awesome list of resources and ideas, right here. Start with that.
  2. Next, download this guide, “Together In Nature.”
  3. Or … start by just getting outside. Anywhere outside.  With your kids. It doesn’t have to be in a wild place. Be random. Be playful. Let your kids lead the way. Explore. Be curious. Be refreshed.
  4. Splash in the rain.
  5. Go out at night with your baby in your arms.
  6. Take a nap with your child on a blanket in the shade.
  7. Grow some of your own food with your kids.
  8. Push for more nature-based education in schools.
  9. Help create green spaces in your urban community.
  10. Explore your city so you know where the natural places are.

And yes, eating a (little) dirt can be good for you — for your immune system and for the playful sprite inside every one of us.

Jaime-and-ema-imp

LINKS

 

 

 

 

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Nutritarian Adventure … How are we doing?

Healthy grocery list

Healthy grocery list

Well, it has been a little over a year since Tim and I embarked on our Nutritarian food adventure, and I thought it would be a good thing to write an update on how it’s going. So … ummm. Well. It’s going okay. Not perfectly. But we’re doing pretty well with it. The reason we started eating this way (the Dr. Joel Fuhrman way) is because of my health. I wanted to feel better. I wanted to do something about the rheumatoid arthritis I’ve had since I was in my early twenties. Something more than I had already been doing all of my adult life. Yeah, I had managed it, but it would flare up with a monster-roar every once in a while and really kick my butt!

So, although he doesn’t have health issues and can eat just about anything, Tim agreed to help me change my diet by changing his too. Otherwise it would have been just too hard to eat differently than he does.  We were very strict with the Eat to Live food program for the first 3 months or so, then we switched to the Eat for Health version, which allows some leeway and is, for me, more of a long-term sustainable way of eating. Tim still eats foods that are definitely not on the list of Nutritarian foods, and I have allowed myself to make some different choices some of the time. I believe that is the only way we can eat this way for the long run.

At first, I noticed a huge improvement in the level of joint pain and other health issues seemed improved. Not totally, but enough that I convinced myself last year to stick to the Nutritarian food program as long as I could. I now can feel it in my body when I have a couple of days of eating too many grains, especially refined grains. Or too much sweet stuff. I worried that if I had something like a homemade cookie, or a piece of fruit pie, that would throw me totally off of the diet and I’d backslide down into the pit. But that hasn’t happened. I think being really strict the first few months was what made it possible to “cheat” once in a while without going overboard. I know what it’s like to feel better now. And I know it’s directly connected to the food I eat.

One thing I took away from Dr. Furhman’s books was this: if not being able to have a cup of coffee everyday (or a glass of wine, or whatever) might be the thing that prevents you from making this a lifelong dietary change, then have your cup of coffee. It won’t kill you. So, I give myself, with grace and softness (not with guilt) to have pasta once a week. Or a piece of sourdough toast every now and then… or a danged homemade chocolate chip cookie! (Tim can eat all the cookies he wants and it doesn’t seem to affect him. Envy …)

Early on in this adventure, I made a Nutritarian grocery list using Evernote (with the checklist feature) which syncs to all of my devices. So I always have the list on my cell phone when I am shopping. It really helps to just look at the list, check off the things we need, and stick to it — at least 95% of the time.

Soba Noodles with Stir Fry Greens

What’s in our cupboards also helps — we don’t keep stuff around that we’re not supposed to eat. We save that for eating out, or in Tim’s case, for stopping at the Dive Bakery on his way to work in the morning.

We could do better. Always. Sometimes I just crave red meat. Rare bison steak. Or elk steak. Sometimes we have that. But way less often than before I started this program of better health.

At the top of this post is my grocery list, and it’s for you to download if you’d like. If you click on the grocery list, it will open in a new window as a pdf file and you can save that to your computer. This won’t work as an Evernote checklist, but if you print it out, it might help you know what to buy on your grocery trips. You could also make your own list in Evernote, or in some other list-making app on your own phone.

Let me know how you’re doing in the comments. Let’s do this together! Good luck. 

 

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Girls Art Night was a Smash Hit

Smoosh Book 25

Smash. Smoosh. Squish. Mash. Moosh. Mush. Stuff … Oh, the things you can do with an old book!

Smoosh Book 1

Smoosh Book 24

At our monthly Girls Art Night on March 27th, we altered vintage hardback books into Smoosh Books (my take on the official Smash Journals.) There were eleven of us mooshing, drilling, gluing, smooshing and stuffing away at 1+1=1 Gallery. We enjoyed tea, wine, and yummy finger foods. It was a great group of women friends — lots of comraderie and chemistry, laughter and concentration.

Smoosh Book 14

If you want to try a Smoosh Book yourself, and you live in Helena, let me know in the comments and maybe we can get together in a smaller group sometime soon to make more smoosh books. Otherwise there is a How-To towards the bottom of this post. 🙂

I have a few vintage books left (I’ve already cut the spines off.) And lots of stuff to stuff into them. I will bring the “ingredients” to our Girls Go gathering in October. What do you think of that idea, my sisters?

Smoosh Book 12

Maybe one of these will be a diary of your journey to health. Or a baby book. A collection of family recipes. A book of quotes or a “commonplace book.” A trip journal. A wedding planner, a place to record things your kids say …  Whatever you use your smoosh book for, it will be wonderful once you smash it full of your stuff.

SmashBooksLookingAhead-imp

Here’s my mom’s Smoosh Book: I love that she picked the old children’s story collection, “Looking Ahead.” She is going to fill it with stories of her life. Cool!
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Your Smoosh Book doesn’t have to be perfect. Or finished. It’s a work in progress. This kind of “journal” or scrapbook is great if you’re like me and don’t have the time or personality to do elaborate scrapbooking. The way scrapbooking has changed, it’s the last thing I want to do … I remember when a scrapbook was an album of plain pages you glued things onto — like photos, birthday cards, autographs, paper dolls, ticket stubs, pressed corsages, leaves and flowers. Remember photo-corners? Or LePage’s glue with the red rubber tip? (I know. I know. I’m dating myself. Oh well.)

Smoosh Book 4

A Smoosh Book can be kinda funky and alotta fun. When you first make the book, you can sort through the old book’s pages and keep the ones you like, recycling the rest. Try incorporating comic book pages, other special papers, translucent papers, seed packets, tiny bags, cellophane bags, glassine envelopes, ribbons, stickers, cards, and any other kind of envelope or pocket.

Smoosh Book Sarah and Joyce

To use your Smoosh Book, add written passages, poetry, quotes … lists of stuff you’re doing/planning/wishing, recipes, pressed flowers and leaves, feathers, seeds, labels, photos, doodles, menus, tickets, found lists, anything you can think of.

Smoosh Book 10

Use ribbons or binder rings to tie the book together so you can add pages as you find cool stuff (like envelopes.) Your book will grow as you use it. Eventually it becomes stuffed with stuff. And looks like it’s exploding and that’s totally okay. You can add bigger binder rings if it gets hard to turn the pages because you’re adding so much stuff.

Smoosh Book 3

Here’s what you need to make your own Smoosh Book:

  • Old hardback book from thrift store
  • band saw to cut off the spines
  • power sander to sand the edges where you cut
  • drill to drill holes through the entire book
  • clamp to hold the book covers and pages together while you drill
  • paper punch for miscellaneous papers — use one you can line up to match the holes you drilled
  • envelopes, extra blank papers, etc to fill the book
  • ring binders (preferably large) or ribbons, twine, leather cords, shoelaces
  • duct tape (for your new spine)
  • spray adhesive or dry-mount glue to attach pockets and envelopes that are not bound in to the book
  • washi tape, other tapes
  • white acrylic paint or gesso to paint over text where you want to be able to write
  • flat wide brushes, either bristle or foam, for painting
  • bits and pieces from the list below, or whatever you have around

Basic Instructions to Make Your Own Smoosh Book: 

  1. Cut off the spine of your hardback book with a band saw. Watch out for metal staples. If the spine has staples, just cut a little more off to avoid the metal.
  2. Sand off the edges to make them nice and even.
  3. Separate the pile of book pages from the front and back covers.
  4. Make a new “spine” using duct tape attached to just the two covers. This will keep all the loose stuff inside your book.
  5. Go through the pages of the book and pull out all the pages except the ones you want to keep. This will make your book much “thinner” at this point.
  6. Decide what other papers you are going to add to your book. This can include large envelopes, flat bags, pockets, other types of papers …
  7. Cut the extra papers to size and put them where you want them in the book.
  8. Add the other papers such as envelopes where you want them. Don’t worry about everything lining up perfectly. It’s okay to have some things sticking out. These act like “tabs” later.
  9. Clamp everything together on a work table, and using your power drill, drill 3 holes through the whole mess.
  10. Put it all together with ribbons, ring binders or whatever you have decided to use to attach.
  11. Now you’re ready to start gluing things into your Smoosh Book, then adding your words.
  12. Above all else, have fun!
cutting spine off of a book
Use a band saw to cut off the spine of your hardback book

Below is a list of ideas and inspiration:  things you might want to stuff in your Smoosh Book as it grows …

  • lunch box notes
  • love letters
  • wine labels
  • restaurant menus
  • chopstick papers
  • flattened match boxes
  • any kind of food label
  • receipts
  • concert and theater tickets
  • travel tickets
  • baggage claims
  • old photos
  • autographs
  • ribbons
  • scraps of special fabric
  • doilies
  • valentines
  • rick-rack
  • trim, ribbons
  • twine
  • business cards
  • postcards
  • seed packets
  • glassine envelopes
  • packaging of any kind
  • feathers
  • leaves, flower petals
  • drawings, doodles
  • airmail envelopes
  • buttons
  • lace
  • pet photos
  • manilla envelopes
  • tassels
  • recipes
  • poetry
  • old calendar pages
  • those square slide holders
  • tiny brown bags
  • cd protectors
  • singles record covers (remember those?)
  • quotes
  • shoelaces
  • patches
  • bookmarks
  • found papers
  • grocery lists
  • clear photo pages
  • report cards
  • paper clips
  • bandaids
  • washi tape
  • masking tape
  • any kind of tape
  • vintage advertisements
  • certificates
  • luggage tags
  • sheet music
  • Monopoly money
  • playing cards
  • postage stamps
  • ledger book papers
  • I could go on forever … please add your own ideas in the comments below the post. I’d love to hear what you’re thinking of and making.

More photos. Click to see them larger: