#26 This is the same dragonfly from post #15, but I’ve learned something new. Looking back to that day sitting on that dock watching dragonflies that day in Colorado wondering since it was a man-made pond which looked to have dropped in volume lately, and a two-meter swath of mustard colored moss formed …
#25 That Native Wisdom is directly related to ‘enchantment’ is something I’ve ‘known’ regardless of my ability to explain it. I recall early discussions about the different proposals to “Protect Greater Canyonlands”. On hearing Jonah Yellowman tell stories about the area with such impact and depth, I thought that this is different. Protecting this area …
Earlier this summer, I noticed something struggling in the center of a Rabbit Brush bush. A grasshopper seemed tangled in twigs and leaves. Although I don’t need more grasshoppers, I reached in to help it. I discovered that it was being held in the grasp of praying mantis. As I was working on this book …
Photo: Broad-Bodied Chaser/Monk’s House/Rodmel, England. Today, I was writing about being at Monk’s House, where Virginia Woolf lived with family and friends, where her ashes are scattered. I realized exactly where they were scattered because in this enchanted world, an amazing dragonfly, a Broad-bodied Chaser, flew circles around it. (Dragonflies carry the souls of the …
#22 I took these photos of spreadwings on a rope hanging from a massive cottonwood tree at the town pond this time last year. Terry and Louis, our son from Rwanda, and I were there having a picnic. They were the only dragonflies I saw that day, and the last of the year. Technically, spreadwings …
#21 Photo: This dragonfly—an unfamiliar meadowhawk, I think—was caught in a spider web on the fence lining the elevated walkway running through Tuckahoe Creek Park in Henrico, Virginia, near where our son, Louis Gakumba, lives with his kiddos, Malka and Sheja (age 6 and 4). I thought the dragonfly was dead until I pulled it …
#19 Photo: My friend, @kelindquist thinks this might be a female blue dasher. A few days ago, before breakfast with friends, I wandered out into their field. In my dragonfly trance, I found myself gravitating toward the pond in the distance. Had I not been there before, I might not have known there was a …
#18 Terry’s photo from yesterday of a large snapping turtle. My re-birthday. Not my birthday marking the day my mom pushed me out and I took my first breaths. But a year since my heart surgery marked not just a transition but a new beginning. Which somehow it did. Terry asked first thing this morning, …
#17. Photo: A Meadowhawk. Note the tiny bumps covering his eyes—‘facets’, I believe. Dennis Paulsen, my dragonfly mentor, once told me that the more he learns about dragonflies the more enchanted the world becomes. Experimentation, testing, analysis of natural phenomenon does not lead to ‘disenchantment’. We cannot explain away all the magic, no matter how …
#16 Photo. After mating a different Blue-Eyed Darner laid in the moss. We were wrong, thinking he was dead. A month after emerging from the water where he’d been the past four years, the Meadowhawk spent his days hunting gnats and looking for a mate. Today, the competition was fierce, more males patrolling the pond …
#15 Photos: What I think is a Blue-Eyed Darner (Rhionaeschna multicolor) I pulled out of the moss. And, my favorite, my fingers, the dragonfly having flown the microsecond before I snapped the photo. Staying with friends near Ridgway, Colorado, I took a walk through tall perfect grasses down to an irrigation pond, looking for dragonflies. …
Photo: A magnificent Flame Skimmer which seems to have been attacked, possibly by a bird. Although his wing muscles are exposed, he flew off undaunted. First, one lone Great Mossy Darner. Within a minute, two meadowhawks and an unknown (I really need to learn the damsels) dancer on the short twigs poking through the pond’s …
#13 Photo: my first Widow Skimmer of the season. Quite beat up, wingwise, which didn’t seem to affect his flight. He did seem to rest a lot, when compared to the two others I watched. Seeing the Widow Skimmer yesterday at the town pond was just one element of an incredible day, which didn’t begin …
#12 Photo: Night before last, just before dark. A few days ago I read that a recent poll showed that 7 of 10 people believe in angels. (https://www.sltrib.com/news/nation-world/2023/08/01/do-you-believe-angels-about-7-10/) Last year, 81% of those asked said they believe in ‘God’, down 6 points from 2017. Of those, 58% said that the god they believed in was …
#11 Webs lingering from last night. Yesterday, I zoomed into my first meeting as a member of the board of the Center for Humans and Nature. (Check https://humansandnature.org) I met Brooke Hecht, the Executive Director at a conference a few years ago and have since been to a few gatherings. Broadly speaking the organization fosters …
#10 This past week, between a number of meaningful and exciting and thought-provoking social interactions, I’ve pecked away at what might become the introduction to my dragonfly book. I’d been working to describe an Verigated Meadowhawk’s emergence after spending from its nymph case. (Dragonflies have ‘incomplete metamorphosis’, going from egg to nymph directly to adult—no …
#9 I took the photo last night around 8. The temperature hovered still, around 100. I wonder how heat affects the color of light. Years ago, during my obsession with Richard Jefferies leading up to the book Terry and I did together, rediscovering The Story of My Heart, I came across the book, Cosmic Consciousness, …
Photo: The Mantis and the Grasshopper. I once gathered blue paint chips to make my own cyanometer to document the different colors of the sky. Now I think I’ll start collecting colors of green. This week, I was struck by two different and spectacular shades. A few years ago, I heard Wade Davis, the amazing …
#7 “In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.)” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitare Yesterday afternoon, while reading on the patio, drops of sweat dotting the pages, I thought I’d check my email and oh, google a few things. Then I caught myself. One …
(A Verigated Meadow Hawk cannot spread COVID. It is however the ‘messenger between worlds.”) Yesterday, I tested positive for COVID. Not so surprising since Terry’s had it for two weeks since catching it at a wedding. In ordinary or disenchanted reality, COVID seems to have originated in a Chinese market where both a “racoon-dog” and …
Enchanted has two different aspects. First is that I’m enchanted when I experience something so surprising or beautiful or exciting or breathtaking or or or…that I get lost momentarily, I lose myself. Or something is enchanted—a world, a life, a forest, a moment, an ‘evening’—when it has a ‘magical’ dimension, characteristics which science cannot explain, which …
This past winter after committing to ‘my mission’!, I started dreaming up specific projects focused on re-enchantment. My book was—and still is—at the top of my list (how to tweek it to move more firmly in that direction. I now ‘know’ that I’ll know what needs to happen with it.) Mountainflim, the Telluride festival held …
#2 B. More background. The root of this goes back three decades. I was in a writing workshop led by that great Montana writer and teacher and friend, William Kittredge. He said, “my job is to help my students find that one story they’ll tell over and over again the rest of their life.” “How …
“#1 of what?” I wasn’t sure either until yesterday. Exactly ten months ago, having closed me up after performing open heart surgery on me, Dr. Sharma found Terry in the waiting room and asked her, “why is he not dead?” Hearing this later freaked me out. Now, after walking a hundred miles recovering, therapy sessions, …
I’ve neglected my website for a year. It’s been nearly a year since discovering and surgically (September 1st last year) dealing with my clogged coronary arteries. While my abandoning website and dealing with my heart correlate time-wise, my heart issues may have caused, been responsible for my ignoring my website. I’m back to it now, not because I …
Podcast Dr. Jennifer Verdolin was kind enough to read my book, Mary Jane Wild: Two Walks and a Rant, and interview me on her podcast. “Often we forget that we human beings are animals. Wild Connection: The Podcast is where Dr. Jennifer Verdolin investigates our similarities and differences with other animals, what we can learn, and …
