I, Wonder

Posted on June 21, 2019 by Shawndra Miller

Lake Hawea, NZ

A quick program note: I periodically send e-newsletters to my mailing list, with explorations of personal resilience and big-big-picture musings. My heart is full as I share these missives. Click the subscribe portal labelled “Spaciousness: An Invitation” at the upper right, if you would like to partake. (My gift in return for subscribing is an e-book I compiled of my most uplifting and “spacious” posts.)

Here are some previous e-newsletters, for those not yet on my mailing list.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Here’s a photo of just one of the small things that stopped me in my tracks last week.

Damselfly with iridescent wing on my back door

I left the country for two weeks in April to tour New Zealand, my insane good fortune to have the opportunity to travel through one of most beautiful places in the world.

Milford Sound. Dolphin at lower left of frame.

(Traveling abroad feels so weirdly privileged and consumerist. I’m so glad I went, but I had mixed feelings about the way we sort of appropriated another country as our playground, with nature as a thing to be snapped up in a photo and taken home. Yes magazine came just after we returned, with a whole issue dedicated to radical travel, summing up all the issues with business-as-usual touring.)

Rainforest rainbow, Fox Glacier, NZ

Yet I wouldn’t give back the stupefied feeling I had nearly every day, in the presence of these stunning landscapes.

Sea Lions near Allen’s Beach

Since I’ve been back, I’m cultivating wonder daily. Reminding myself to listen, look, sniff, feel, even taste the world. Especially on my morning outings with Opal the poodle.

Things in nature don’t have to be totally grand or far away to stupefy. This treescape against this Indiana sky is big enough to evoke wonder.

Morning walk, here at home

But in a pinch, any old ant will do. (Not pictured: eye-level ant marching up the tree trunk where I leaned this morning).

Teeny anthill. The littlest creatures can move the earth.

I mostly sit behind a desk, but I love to get up close and personal with the beings that share our world. I recently took part in a bird banding day at Mary Gray Bird Sanctuary, and had a chance to briefly hold and release three different birds. Just a second or two of quivery warmth before opening my hand and watching them sail away into the treetops.

Male indigo bunting. Not my hand (but I did get to do the release.)

Meanwhile here at home, I hear song sparrows trilling every morning, and one sometimes shows himself, toward the tail end of my walk.

Song sparrow preparing to trill

Even while pumping gas, I can find a chickadee taking a dust bath in the dirt of a neglected landscape island.

I believe we all can find wonder wherever we are. We actually contain wonder: Consider the fact that our very cells integrated another coevolving organism. At our core we are symbiotic beings. According to Ed Yong’s book I Contain Multitudes, our mitochondria are descendants of ancient bacteria that became integrated into the type of cells that eventually gave rise to all complex life.

Smallest of all, and most wondrous to contemplate.

Where do you find wonder?

Who Makes the Sun Rise?

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Shawndra Miller

Have you seen the gorgeous children’s book Who Makes the Sun Rise, by writer/painter Lois Main Templeton? The concept: A rooster takes credit for daybreak because his call precedes it.

Photo by Kamweti Mutu, via Flickr Creative Commons

We saw the artist’s work last weekend at the Indiana State Museum. Her abstract paintings often incorporate handwritten verbiage into intriguing and beautiful images. (Her story is inspiring—she started creating at the age of 51 and hasn’t stopped, though that was nearly 40 years ago.)

But to that rooster, and his question. I’ve been thinking about how the thing I want to grasp is always just a little farther on. I’m not talking only situations or possessions. I mean: How I want to be is how I am not now. I’d like to be braver, physically hardier, more sure of myself, more centered, more incisive, more evolved. Better.

But: Who makes the day break onto this ideal future self? My present self, with her choice to turn toward everything that is in the present.

I always have the choice to come closer to acceptance, or to distance myself from what is and fixate on some ideal I can’t possibly match.

So who is that elusive future self? The one who will clear out enough mental and physical and schedule space to finish her feckin book. That’s who. The one who will always work to dismantle oppressive structures, who will be properly assertive without alienating, who will see all projects to stunning completion and never get the least bit snippy.

Who will always match inner and outer.

Who will let go of perfectionism once and for all.

See how this future self is so great (embodying all opposing ideals) that she keeps me from loving the flawed being that I am, and will surely remain?

But if I can remember to sink into compassion just for one short moment, I might find that I have just enough courage, and can let go of just enough perfectionism, to do one small thing. Like write for 15 minutes nonstop about something that scares me. Or lift a small free weight. Or say no to one thing I really don’t want to do, so I can turn back to the book. Or say the uncomfortable thing that needs to be said, awkwardly but willingly.

Who makes the sun rise? Into that new dawn, shining bright? My present flawed self, with her choice to act—even if the action is less than well executed, even if she doesn’t know for sure what the hell she’s doing.

Agency, isn’t that what we all need? A sense that we are somehow making life roll on, creating the future. Which we are. We make the day break anew every day. Through the smallest of choices.

So I’ll join that rooster and say without apology: I make the sun rise.

Dances of Universal Peace

Posted on January 5, 2018 by Shawndra Miller

On the first day of 2018, I joined a circle of lovely souls in sacred movement and song. A friend took me to the New Year’s Day Dances of Universal Peace meetup in my town, and though I knew only a few people there, I felt a marvelous kinship with everyone.

In Dances of Universal Peace (aka “sufi dancing”), I learned, participants make the music themselves, taking beautiful, mystical pieces from many spiritual traditions. We sang (and clapped and stamped), while members of the group rotated duties on guitar, drum, shruti box, and piano.

Not a cell phone in sight. What nourishment for my analog self. A couple songs in, I felt positively incandescent. It seemed like the other participants were aglow as well.

In the intro to one of the first numbers, I learned that the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas has a passage in which the disciples ask Jesus what is required of them. “Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give to charity? What diet should we observe?”

Jesus said, “Don’t lie, and don’t do what you hate.” (A succinct mantra for someone who craves authenticity and alignment in 2018.)

Some of the dances were energizing, some mesmerizing. In the sweetest ones, like “May the Lady Bless and Keep You,” we offered each other a blessing through our words and motions. With winter-chapped hands clasped to each other’s, we sang into each other’s eyes.

At one point I started to cry from the intensity of it. The joy of holding space for such a living breathing thing as peace. And how rare it is to really behold someone else’s beauty, and shine one’s own soul fully.

Here’s a rousing one we did, singing to Govinde and Radhe (Krishna and his beloved, whom I blogged about earlier this year). The video is from elsewhere but captures the spirit of Dances of Universal Peace. Note the big smiles. I can testify that it is nearly impossible to keep a smile off your face while singing, spinning, and slapping hands.

Watching this, I’m already itching for the next meetup, which I’m told will be a “Zikr,” a meditative evening: slow movement, singing the names of God. Trancy. I’m so there.

This is definitely an energy I want to keep with me in 2018. It seems more important than ever to find ways to connect with each other and Spirit, and to nurture both body and soul.

How does that look for you? Are you trying anything new this year to increase your joy and resilience? I’d love to know what you’re doing to nourish your sweet spirit.

One Resolution

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Shawndra Miller

Twenty-four years ago, possibly to the day, I made this drawing in a sketchpad.

Crayon drawing I made Dec. 30 or 31, 1994

The picture started from a doodle. I didn’t know I was drawing an alien and spaceship till they emerged.

I did know that I felt quite alien myself, and had all my life. As I went into 1994 (at 27 years old) I was trying to integrate this understanding of myself. I wrote “Hail Earthlings” as my greeting to the rest of the human race, closed the notebook and moved on.

Pre-social network days—and I’m not even sure I was on the Internet much in 1993—I didn’t realize how many others felt (and feel) this sense of being “other.”

In this connected age, we aliens have started to find each other. We’re getting bolder about showing up in all our freaky glory.

I think of the admonishment some of my religiously-brought-up friends often heard as they headed to school: “Remember who you are.” Meaning, behave yourselves, represent the family and the church, be shining examples of godliness, etc.

Well, now we are remembering who we are for real. And it isn’t about good behavior this time, but about authenticity.

Any other weird kids want to come out and play?

It turns out that being authentic is actually the way to be “godly”—if you believe, as I do, that we are all born with spiritual gifts that yearn to be expressed. The only way to move closer to our Divine nature is to truly be ourselves, to align outward action with the truth of who we are on the inside.

What’s more, that’s the best way to participate in the healing of the world.

What a revelation. What a resolution.

Let’s not close the notebook on our weirdness. No more modulating what we do in a doomed quest to fit in.

“Let your freak flag fly.” That was the guidance given to a friend recently, the same friend I had counseled, “Just do you, and you’ll soar.”

So how about it: Want to “do you” in 2018?

Let that be the one resolution that you keep. Let 2018 be the year of freak-flag-flying and remembering… and healing the world through the authentic expression of our beautiful kaleidoscopic gifts.

Integrity

Posted on December 4, 2017 by Shawndra Miller

Integrity: noun

1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.
3. a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship’s hull.

In the documentary* Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, a health worker talks about the integrity of traditional people who inhabit the high Himalayan desert. The villagers, she says, take care of the land and water. They know not to throw rubbish in their waterways. In fact, there is no such thing as rubbish, because everything they gather is used to the fullest.

“See how good the villagers are?” she says, contrasting their lives with the decline of values (along with air and water quality) after this remote region of India was developed.

Ladakhi woman, photo via Pixabay, Creative Commons license

The film shows how the Ladakhis’ quality of life deteriorated after roads linked pristine “Little Tibet,” as the region is called, with the Indian plains. Ladakh had been a cooperative, sustainable society, based on traditional Buddhist values and the principles of interdependence. But once subsidized products, Western ideas/images, and tourism hit the region? It all changed rapidly.

Small farmers struggled to compete with lower-priced items trucked in from elsewhere. Villages dwindled as young people left their ancestral lands for paid employment. People began competing for scarce resources, where before there had been plenty for all, even with a brief four-month growing season and precious little rainfall.

With competition came enmity for “the other,” as insecurity became the new normal. Ethnic tensions, crime, and poverty, which had never before been an issue, began to taint the larger culture.

Then there were those waterways, which all became polluted around the cities and towns (where more and more people lived in housing developments completely disconnected from water sources.)

You could say it became harder to have integrity, both in terms of ethics and in terms of wholeness/soundness. And this is the state of much of the world, wherever global consumer culture has taken over.

What struck me about the film—even more than the clear contrast of Before and After documented by the venerable Helena Norberg-Hodge—was its demonstration of what human nature really is.

Were the villagers “good”—as in “better than” westernized society with its throwaway mentality and penchant for soiling everything worth protecting? Thinking this way puts such behavior on a pedestal.

But integrity is not some snooty, hard-to-reach thing involving self-sacrifice and personal pain. It is about wholeness, about choosing to act in ways that are aligned with our highest path and purpose.

Looking at footage of Ladakhi villagers laughing and singing as they help their neighbors harvest grain, you don’t get the sense that they are having hard time adhering to lofty principles. They’re simply acting in a way that makes total sense, that preserves life.

In other words, they live in a culture that nurtures alignment with true human nature, which wants to express itself through collaboration and interdependence—with other human beings and with the entire natural world.

Our culture is skewed to greed and self-interest, but this is not “human nature.” How hard is it to approach wholeness in a fractured culture? Really damn hard. You have to be willing to swim upstream, to pay attention, to make countercultural choices.

We have been taught to think that humans are inherently selfish. But voices like Norberg-Hodge challenge that notion, and tell us that we’re looking at humans in an artificially warped setting. Take away the subsidies, the dehumanizing images, the denigration of simple life with its wholesome collaboration, and something else might have a chance to emerge. Something based on a sense of belonging.

Until that day, we have to nurture a consciousness shift within ourselves and each other, toward alignment with our truest integrity.

*Note: See my earlier post about Norberg-Hodge and the need for relocalization.

More Kinds of Beauty

Posted on November 9, 2017 by Shawndra Miller

I’m happy being a little bit behind-the-times when it comes to pop culture. OK, I’m really really out of it. There are times when friends’ Facebook posts completely mystify me. Most current films, shows, games, musical groups etc. are not really on my radar. I don’t have cable, or Netflix, or Spotify. I rarely go to the movies.

For entertainment we get DVDs from the library, and we watch our favorite PBS shows on the membership passport website thingy. With subtitles. I might be a little bit old in that regard, though I like to think I’m a woman in my prime.

I guess I sort of live under a rock? A rock made of writing and yoga, home life and books, plus a certain fringy kind of work that totally charges my battery. Weird kid rides again.

But now Pink. Pink is on my radar. Pink, I know and love.

Come to think of it, I know none of her latest stuff. No matter. Here she is talking (to her daughter and all of us) about courage, and art, and opening people’s eyes to more kinds of beauty. A sister Weird Kid. Have a listen if you’ve ever felt like you’re swimming upstream.

Feel the Hum

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Shawndra Miller

More and more I am drawn to sound and music as healing forces.

It might be because I am drawing inward to “hear” the vibration in my body more and more often. There’s a hum, if I get quiet enough to notice. So I experience the healing effect of an instrument or voice as a vibrational quality that can be incredibly powerful.

Rachel Bagby, in an audio conversation with TreeSisters, suggests that we stand next to a moving body of water and hum. It’s a way of reconnecting, and shifting out of our customary ways of seeing/being/speaking. We become part of the world instead of continuing to feel separate.

She says that as you join with the companionable sound of the water, your voice won’t be alone. And by humming, you don’t enter the arena of performance anxiety that so many of us associate with the word “singing.”

I have been playing with this all week, as I cross bridges over “the run” that intersects the golf course where my dog and I walk (early early, pre-golfer!).

This photo was taken in March, but you get the idea.

It feels good to hum and tone and tralala with water sliding by below me. In the privacy of the morning, this practice lifts me.

So does a transportive concert of Tibetan and crystal singing bowls, cello, tabla, throat singing, and flutes. (This happened Sunday, courtesy of the Irvington Summer Music series, which brought the mesmerizing Ron Esposito and his ensemble here from Cincinnati.)

So does moving through yoga postures with the support of a didgeridoo, drums, flute, and mbira (thumb piano). (This happens on the fourth Thursday of every month at my beloved yoga studio, when Adam Riviere from Playground Productions joins us with his instruments.)

If I allow these experiences to fill me, they each have the power to rearrange me. I come away different, reverberating in oneness. Sometimes a headache will disappear, or I will simply feel more shimmery and alive.

Do you have any sound or music practices that change you for the better? Tell us about it in the comments!

P.S. If you’d like to experience the healing power of sound this weekend, and you’re local to Central Indiana, come check out the Blooming Life Wellness Event happening 11-3 Saturday, May 27, at Trader’s Point Creamery. Adam will be among the musicians offering live music with yoga, and there is even a kirtan (call and response musical experience.) The event is free, family-friendly, and happens rain or shine—I will be there!

“What Would Gene Stratton-Porter Do?”

Posted on May 18, 2017 by Shawndra Miller

After years of saying, “We should tour the Gene Stratton-Porter homes,” we finally visited two historic sites in the northeast corner of our state last week. We went to Rome City and Geneva to tour homes inhabited by Gene Stratton-Porter, an early 20th century author/conservationist/nature photographer.

You can be forgiven for not knowing her name, though she was beloved by our grandparents’ generation for her romance novels set against the backdrop of a disappearing wilderness. Even most Indiana residents are unfamiliar with the work of our state’s most widely read female author of all time. But in her day, she was embraced by enthusiastic fans all over the world.

Portrait of Gene Stratton-Porter, via Creative Commons

Stratton-Porter married a well-to-do businessman who must have been a brave man to wed such an independent-minded woman. She “shed social conventions like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon,” to quote a book I’m reading about something completely different.

Hubby didn’t want her to explore the vast Limberlost Swamp, though they lived right on the edge of this intriguing wilderness. At that time the marshland (later to be drained for farming and drilled for oil) was dangerous uncharted territory—teeming with Massasauga rattlesnakes, boggy muck, swarms of insects, and the occasional unsavory character.

Limberlost Cabin in Geneva, where Gene Stratton-Porter began her writing and photography career. Her many-windowed conservatory is facing us.

But Stratton-Porter’s love of the natural world compelled her, and in the end her husband relented, accompanying her on expeditions to photograph wildlife and collect specimens.

Her best-known book A Girl of the Limberlost, among others both fiction and nonfiction, brought this place to life for people worldwide. One of our guides told us that she’d worked out a deal with her publisher: I will write you a crowd-pleasing story as you require (heavy on nature details), and then I will write a nature book of my own choosing. Rinse. Repeat.

She helped build this low stone wall around Limberlost Cabin, with openings for wildlife.

We learned that she wore what was considered mannish clothing, that she served her husband dandelion and horseradish stew with hambone (he dubbed it “fodder”), that she organized a bucket brigade the night her husband’s businesses were threatened by fire while he was away. This woman was, in modern parlance, fierce.

I went on this trip mildly interested in her as a part of Indiana’s literary history, having read A Girl of the Limberlost sometime back. But I came away as full-on fangirl. I jokingly told a friend that my new philosophy should be “What would GSP do?” (except for the ironic not-driving thing—apparently she was afraid to drive, and in fact was killed in a car wreck at age 61).

So, what would she do?

She’d hyphenate her name as her nom de plume, well before the time when women commonly retained their family names.
She’d drop out of high school, but attend Chautauqua meetings for her own edification.
She’d monitor all the bird nests on her family’s farm as a child, honing her powers of observation and her connection to wild creatures.
She’d teach herself photography, developing early box-camera pictures in a bathroom that she converted into a darkroom.
She’d purchase a piece of land on a mile of lakefront, and design her own home, and supervise its construction, rowing across the lake every morning to check on the workmen. (Husband came on weekends.)

Wildflower Woods on Sylvan Lake, the house that she designed and used as creative workshop.

She’d collect stones from her friends’ travels, from all then-48 states, and build a fireplace using them, creating images in the stonework’s artful placement.
She’d sleep with cocoons, so as to be ready when the butterfly emerged. She’d live in a houseful of winged creatures. (Later, she would write of her realization that the only ethical way to interact with these creatures was in their native habitat, so presumably she no longer kept them indoors.)

Where she slept with cocoons. Note them hanging from the bedframe and gathered on her bedside table.

She’d be exacting in the execution of her creative vision. If a photograph didn’t come out right, she’d return as many times as it took to get the one she wanted. No matter how treacherous or buggy the territory might be.
She’d carry on with her work even as literary critics and scientists alike dismissed her; she’d see herself as a defender of the places and animals she loved.

From What I Have Done with Birds:

“This is the basis of all my field work—a mute contract between woman and bird. In spirit I say to the birds, ‘Trust me and I will do by you as I would be done by … I shall not tear down your home and break your eggs or take your naked little ones from the nest before they are ready to go … I shall come in colors to which you are accustomed, and move slowly and softly about, not approaching you too near until your confidence in me is established. I shall be most careful to feed your young what you feed them; drive away snakes and squirrels, and protect you in every way possible to me. Trust me, and go on with your daily life. For what small disturbance is unavoidable among you, forgive me, and through it I shall try to win thousands to love and shield you.’”

I found loads more information on this fascinating figure in an Indiana Historian article. And of course we bought several books that I’m looking forward to diving into.

In the shadow of Wildflower Woods cabin, looking over Sylvan Lake.

Picking Up the Healing Trail (Guest Blog)

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Shawndra Miller

It’s been a while since I hosted a guest blogger. This week the marvelously observant Katherine Hauswirth, a nature writer from Connecticut, contributes this post. (She also invited me to write a piece for her blog, and it will come out soon!)

Guest post by Katherine Hauswirth, author of The Book of Noticing: Collections and Connections on the Trail.

Today, Shawndra is allowing me to visit her blog and contribute my own words, and I have gratefully received some words of hers to share at First Person Naturalist. I’ve gotten to know Shawndra a bit through her writing, and was drawn to her work because of its clear awe of nature—the topic I like best. Her admirable, dual tagline of Writer/Energy Worker conveys connection—connecting words, ideas, people with ideas, energies, the body with the mind and the soul.

Shawndra introduced me to the work of Gaian teacher and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy. She wrote about her here. Macy talks about “The Great Turning”—shorthand for our current age, one that’s suspended between a society shaped by industrial growth and the possibility of a new one that is life-sustaining. I examined Macy’s words a bit in The Book of Noticing: Collections and Connections on the Trail, which launches this month:

Macy transmits hope for our ailing world in many ways, but she wonders aloud about the direction in which we will collectively turn. I, too, am unsure, but I seek out comfort in gestures of both adoration and action performed by those who, like Macy and me, are smitten with love for the world.

I continue to hold out hope that the many smitten folks out there will help our world to turn in the right direction. But today it occurred to me that love for the world also acts as a tonic for me, personally. I need to be smitten with that love in order to heal. And by “heal” I mean to feel like I am whole, like I am closer to my best self.

I had recently been sick with a minor illness, and while I was “cured,” in the sense of no longer coughing and sleeping more peacefully, I still needed to heal. The illness seemed to spark a pattern of not caring for my needs very well (or could it have resulted from such a pattern?). My schedule was off; my mind was off; my spirit was off.

For me, time to myself and time in nature are essential for thriving, and if I can get both at once, all the better. So, despite a long to-do list, I’ve been taking myself on walks.

At the start of today’s walk I was tense, ruminating about a million pending chores and the little annoyances of family life that were stacking up in my mind like dirty dishes. Soon, though, I was happily distracted by a pair of Mallards in the cemetery pond. The female was curious about me, and floated quite a bit closer than her spouse dared. I watched her rubbery orange feet paddling for a while and moved on.

A drab-looking sparrow looked much more exciting when I trained my binoculars on her—I could see bright yellow marks by her eyes. (Later, a little research suggested she was a White-Throated Sparrow). An Osprey couple has taken up residence at Pratt Cove, a freshwater tidal marsh, on the same platform that yielded chicks last year. The female called from the nest in her familiar, high-pitched whistle. And front and center across from the viewing deck nearby sat a Mute Swan on her sizeable, cushy-looking nest, her neck folded over her body, her eyes idly watching her mate, who meandered the channel.

White-Throated Sparrow courtesy of John Flannery on Flickr

Healing feels like expanding. I am no longer “trapped” in the container of my intellectual mind, with its thoughts bouncing off the walls noisily. I am using all senses to connect with the larger world. I take it in and feel refreshed, open to new possibilities.

Awesome “side effect”: I think more generously about others when I have had these restorative moments.

Nesting Mute Swan courtesy of Mike Scott on Flickr

We all lose the trail sometimes. We forget to even take the time to figure out what we need. When we get our feet back on the healing path we feel more whole and hopeful. And we have more to give.

How lovely, this spring, to turn toward the sun and to watch the natural world turning in the same, light-loving direction. No doubt there is much to do for Mother Earth, but spending time with her is, in and of itself, a crucial act of love. As usual, she bestows much in return.

Katherine Hauswirth’s writing focuses on connection and contemplation inspired by the natural world. She has been published in Christian Science Monitor, Orion online, Whole Life Times, and Connecticut Woodlands. Her blog, First Person Naturalist, reflects on experiencing and learning about nature. Her awards include artist residencies at Trail Wood (Connecticut Audubon’s Edwin Way Teale memorial sanctuary) and Acadia National Park, and first place in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition. She lives with her husband and son in Deep River, Connecticut. Her book, The Book of Noticing: Collections and Connections on the Trail, comes out later this month.

Preserving Timeless Arts

Posted on April 13, 2017 by Shawndra Miller

Last weekend I had two encounters that felt like variations on a theme.

One was at Kheprw Institute, where we were discussing Charles Eisenstein’s book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. Kheprw co-founder Imhotep Adisa suggested that our over-reliance on technology compromises our more intuitive ways of communicating and knowing.

“Reality is not limited to that one way of knowing,” Im said, speaking of scientific inquiry and measurable phenomena. (Besides: Who determines what’s worth being measured? Who sets up the arbiters, institutions, and gatekeepers of scientific findings?)

It’s definitely possible to communicate instantaneously without benefit of a text. Many of us have had that experience from time to time. And for those of us in the energy work arena, merging with someone else’s energy field is a skill we cultivate.

But the more we rely on texting to do the work of instantaneous communication, Im suggested, the more we atrophy our native abilities.

Speaking for myself, I know that distracting myself through technology can seriously gunk up my intuition. To be quiet and still enough to sense information differently, I have to spend time away from the addictive barrage of information and communication.

Later it struck me that Im’s words had their parallel in an earlier encounter, with a friend who’s devoted to preserving another dying art: traditional willow weaving. Viki Graber, a fourth-generation willow basket weaver, spent the weekend constructing a living sculpture at Salamonie Reservoir.

The tunnel will grow thicker and more elaborate with time.

We drove up to see her, and she told us about the project. She received a grant from the Indiana Arts Commission to build living willow structures at three parks this year.

IMG_2064 (480x640)

To make her baskets and sculptures, she grows her own willow bushes—14 different species!—on her property in northern Indiana. For this project though, she harvested wild willow shoots from along the lakeshore. She planted these in the ground about eight inches deep along the muddy bank of a pond, where they should take root. She bent the willow into a tunnel, complete with round windows.

Me and my old friend Viki

For the next few years she will come back to weave new growth into the structure. A true collaboration.

Viki is passionate about sustaining traditional folk art in general (and willow-work in particular). She wants to keep these skills alive and pass them on to the next generation, and she loves to teach others.

As a functional artist, Viki makes beautiful objects that people want to use. Surely we all have the aptitude to create beauty for each other, whether that’s through physical creations or acutely attuned knowing.

Penney Peirce, in her book Frequency, suggests that we are all equally sensitive, with the very human ability to feel and sense and know things instantly. It’s just that some of us are consciously sensitive, and others unconsciously so.

I would add that some of us, like Viki and Im, are consciously invested in preserving useful, beautiful, timeless arts that the dominant culture tends to devalue.

What traditional, lost, or dying arts/skills call to you? Where do you make your mark in preserving ways that aren’t supported by our acquisitive go-go-go culture?