Nature Awareness Journal #2

 

Living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I am surrounded by natural scenic beauty.  It’s everywhere I turn and I can’t help but feel a bit spoiled and rich.  Lake Superior is only a two- minute walk from my office and my favorite beach a 15-minute drive out of town.  I live 30 minutes “in-land” and am blessed with the opportunity to own property where I can have my gardens, raise animals, lose myself in the vast magical woods of my backyard, and take my dogs for long walks on the numerous hiking trails that begin just outside my door.  Wildlife is abundant and although there are others houses that dot my private road, I still enjoy a relative semblance of solitude and privacy.
 

I spend the majority of my lunch hours exploring places that have been my favorite haunts for more than 20 years in the city where I work but no longer live.  A person can never go wrong spending quality time with Lake Superior in all her serene and turbulent moods.  One of my favorite hangouts during the past year has been Park Cemetery, a place brimming over with nature and history located smack dab in the middle of an urban neighborhood of a small northern town.  That place serves to remind me what I always knew as a kid growing up in a much larger city three hours south—that nature is all around us and we don’t have to take long day-trips to the country or state parks to immerse ourselves in it.  Nature’s voice can be drowned out by the traffic and city noise, but she still speaks to us…we only have to learn how to tune in to a different frequency.

Nature Awareness Journal #1

      Keeping a Nature Awareness Journal is not a requirement for completing the ADF Dedicant Path, but now that I have made the commitment to complete the course, I believe it's important to document every step on this journey.  

      In Week Five of Michael Dangler's DP Through the Wheel of the Year, we are asked to find a nature spot and I have chosen my own property for that.  However, to prevent myself from developing tunnel vision, I have expanded my attention to cover areas that exist outside my own property lines and in doing so, have made the commitment to do a weekly (maybe more) litter patrol out on the many trails I hike with my dogs.  There’s garbage everywhere—lots of teenagers like to party back in this area because of the isolation it provides and it seems that people think that nature is their own personal junk yard and dumping ground.   One day when I was out biking along a trail that goes by the river, I found a garbage bag full of soiled diapers...:(

      From Michael Dangler: “Nature awareness has three facets: the awareness of nature as it exists around us physically; the awareness of the spirits of nature and their relation to us; and the awareness of the Earth Mother herself, and the other deities who are also her children, and the relation of these beings to ourselves...It is simple to say that we do not exist apart from nature; it is harder to see this in our everyday lives.”

      My dog Jackie and I heading down the trail…

      I don’t know what this is called…a Pond? Bog? Swamp?  Whatever it is, I love it.  I sense that it embodies a male energy so I have lovingly named it "Bernard" or "Bernie" for short, in honor of my great-grandfather who died in 1914.

       
 The kind of trash I find all the time…

This 5-gallon bucket was a great find…much easier to carry than a garbage bag.

I have a thing for cemeteries…

 Jackie and I headed down to the river...

 

Sacred Grove - Summer

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Lughnasadh/Lammas Ritual

I performed my first Core Order of Ritual (COoR) this morning in honor of Lughnasadh.  I had originally planned to celebrate this high day out in my woods, but the forecast was calling for rain, so I played it safe and set everything up on my small indoor altar.

Here are a few thoughts on the experience:

1.  For my next High Day, I am going to memorize the entire ritual.  I don't like having to shuffle papers and reading from a ritual "script" felt clumsy and awkward.  I would want it there in case I got lost or needed to use it as a memory prompt, but I was so busy concentrating on reading the words and trying to find creative ways to free up my hands so I could light the candles and make offerings, that a great deal of the ritual's meaning and emotion got lost.

2.  I need to bring more offerings.  What I gave didn't feel like it was enough.  (Offerings were homemade baked bread, herbs, flowers, and greens from my gardens, and an alcoholic beverage I made from the strawberries I picked at a local farm this past June). 

3.  I didn't draw an omen because I haven't decided upon a divination system yet.

4.  I forgot to wear my ritual shawl.

5  Although my altar was beautiful, it's small and I would have preferred to be outside.  It's a perfect place for my morning and evening devotionals, but for a High Day ritual, it began to feel claustrophobic...I prefer to have enough room to stretch my wings.  

      It may sound like I'm only focusing on the negative, when in fact there was a great deal of positive things that came out of it.  I learned what I need to change and improve upon for my next ritual, but more importantly, I realized how much I actually enjoy doing it.  I get to be an active participant instead of someone stuck sitting in the pews and bored to death.  I feel like I've crossed a major hurdle. 

Second High Day Explanation - Lammas/Lughnasadh

Butterfly

Sacred Grove - Spring