Diving Deeper with Sulis

Winter rainbows: poems after a return visit to England

2011-12-31T07:33:17-06:00

Devon dreaming (Sara Firman Dec. 2011)

From my soul sister's feathered nest
under the church bell at the top of town
I took the charmed high street down
to where river and railway ran
right to the Steam Packet Inn:
a compulsion felt as soon
as the story was told
over cappuccino and a fur hat.

'Old Chinese' squawked in my eager ears
words of wisdom on the ocean winds
seagulls telling fishy fortunes.
Who'll dare to dive deeper
into the darkened waters?
Appropriately, wet clouds
gathered overhead and
I followed the Green Man.

Up the winding track towards his hills
running with rivulets of night rains
hummocky as a hobbit's haven.
The old drive to Sharpham
and the spiral stair where
once we stood together
with Innana and toned
our unschooled harmonies.

I couldn't have been happier there
when the steamer came chortling along
tracing the silver ribbon to the sea.
Nothing as lovely as West
Country winter clouds
lit by a soaked sun.
On the far hillside
cows glowed in the grass

Their hooves where the rainbow landed.
Absorbed in glistening pastoral peace
it took a while to fit curve and curve
together making a wedding arch
a perfect bow of bright rain
over the clustered town
so that at that point
I knew I was blessed.

Agape (by Sara Firman Dec. 2011)

My fairy godmothers, kind and wise
in their three-score years and ten,
let the purposeful poetess
out at the foot of the tor -
then circled its dragon's tail
to the rural life museum,
happily out of the rain.

Still, the spell is more powerful
when the green levels are misted -
and somewhere above the flatlands
Avalon is dreaming your shadow
crossed over her soft skirts
slipped into the folds
and never returned.

I began to climb my own smile
into the clouds I remembered,
breathing longed-for strides -
and was soon resting my back
against the old stone,
warm out of the wind

When a love song drifted out to me
on the strings of a hidden folklore
more beautiful than I'd have hoped -
and on the hill beyond,
sheep grazed improbably
around a green heart.

I wrote both these poems in the space of an hour at dawn on 30 December 2011 back in my Ozark forest, having woken with the first stanza of the first one bright on my mind. They highlight the feeling of loving healing that accompanied my return visit to England after a space of four years, the longest I've ever stayed away. Some of you may be able to guess the places they describe ... ?

See also Belonging: a poem written on a train journey from Bath to the sea near Totnes in spring 2007.

Goatfish woman: guest poem by Judith Thurley

2011-12-21T16:13:37-06:00

As the Sun transits into Capricorn (22 December), I'm inspired to share with you a poem by Judith Thurley that delighted me when I came across it in A Wilder Vein (Two Ravens Press). It's a poem about a joyfully wild and sensuous experience, and the very human desire to share that with 'every child, woman and man'.

Solemn Saturn (ruler of Capricorn) turns into Father Christmas at this time of year; or in this poem into Goatfish Woman. For another feminine view of Capricorn, see last year's post Saturn's Gifts. Meanwhile, here is an extract from 'The Road North' by Judith Thurley in A Wilder Vein (p. 134):

'This is a pure and primal experience: a cold bath, a baptism; a surrendering:

I plunge and swim in water come down
from under ground above me;
belly of Donard and Commendagh.
The April river is melted snow,
clear as light. I yelp with cold,
swim under hanging rhododendron
to the moss-cushioned waterfall.

I circle the green pool.

The world is all water crystal light,
all river mountain sky,
and I am goatfish woman:
horn, hoof and fish's tail.
I climb mountains, clamber upwards:
find what I yearn for in the waters
of a green river pool.
I plunge and swim and sing a prayer
that every child, woman and man
in all the round reaches
of the sighing world
will find a clear green pool
to swim in.'

This is my prayer also!

Notes

Capricorn comes from the Latin caper ('goat') and cornu ('horn') and the Irish mermaid fountain used to illustrate this post might well have been inspired by that, and by the combination of goat and fish that symbolizes this astrological sign. On Skycript, Deborah Houlding writes:

[I]n a creature with the forelimbs of a goat attached to the tail of a fish, the abyss of the ocean is combined with mountainous terrain. This represents a 'cross of matter' between the psyche and its manifestation in the material, drawing the soul out of its collective stupor to confront the challenges of reality and individualism.

A Wilder Vein. Ed. Linda Cracknell. From Two Ravens Press, 2009: An anthology of new literary non-fiction that focuses on the relationship between people and the wild places of Britain and Ireland. This is writing which animates a connection between humanity and the natural world, articulating discoveries and new ways of seeing – writing which is, above all, a meditation on who we are as people in a still-wild world. See more...

[With thanks to Judith Thurley and Two Ravens Press for permission to reproduce this beautiful writing.]

Anything less than truth or trees

2011-12-05T01:00:00-06:00

The post hole by Sara Firman

In drizzle blue as your coveralls

kneeling before a post hole

the holes in your shoes

defiant as you are

stretch and yawn

and deepen

the love

I feel

for the man in the cool hat

careless about anything

less than truth

or trees

(Celebrating the birthday of my special partner Joe 12.5.2011.)

Related posts:

Sun, Moon and Stars

Celebrating my Centaur

Quetzalcoatl the bird shaman

The lost house (poem)

2011-11-02T16:58:49-05:00

This poem uses the imagery of a burned out house to express the desperation and sadness of lost love countered by the hope of eventual healing through time and the regenerative insistence of nature. It was written several years ago after an isolated house occupied by people I did not know burned to the ground.

The house was rumored by locals to have been associated with a meth lab (illicit drug production), and likely to remain untouchable for some years owing to toxic contamination. Other rumors suggested marriage break-up and arson. Truth remains with the trees. Nature and time heal our scars eventually, reclaiming the landscape of our lives.

(The image is not related to this incident and no connection is implied.)

The lost house by Sara Firman (2006)

House on fire:don't save her!
Bright bones to the flames.
Used or abused she became
an expensive addiction.

What she sheltered turned
tinder dry in a drought of tears.
One match to set her alight
and nothing to be saved.

When loves dies she dies.
Ashes like confetti thrown
to the winds of lost hope.
Reaching into the dawn.

Who cared, who saw?
Crystal meth poisoned
or insurance claimed.
Or was she just done?

A traditional revenge.
A marriage to the pyre.
She blew away the pain
in a plume of smoke.

Blackened rocks standing
where her heart once was.
Glass melted into jewels.
No-one will touch her.

Trees will grow round her
like green guardians.
Rains will wash over her.
Sun fire will heal her now.

Another poem about the healing power of fire: Fire Dancer

Ozark insects are exotic!

2011-10-18T10:41:20-05:00

(Click on the image to see a larger version)

Recently I heard another Ozark immigrant say that the reason she moved here was for the insects! Then she explained that it was not so much the terrors of ticks and chiggers (I call them 'chicks and tiggers' to lighten my perspective) but the sheer variety and exotic nature of the insects you can see here in general. Especially if you live in a forest as I do.

Of course, the one shown here is not unfamiliar to most of you. I watched it spend a whole day exploring this pumpkin. I wanted to catch it perching on the top of the stem - which it did many times - but it always seemed to sense I was intent on that and moved quickly off. The other thing you learn about insects here is that they are very much aware.

As the season ends and insects - troubling and benign from a human's point of view - go into hibernation, I give thanks for the wonder they bring to my own life too. I didn't come here for the insects but I can see why someone might. For more insect images by me, see Sounds of cicadas: images and haiku

Ozark Fall Colors

2011-10-07T21:01:10-05:00

a second spring, fall in the Ozarks

the leaves of dogwood, light as rose petals

shiny as ripe plums, the leaves of dogwood

a dogwood canopy, fluttering like confetti

leaves that are letters written on god's wood

a fountain of leaves on a blue, blue sky

sassafras hankies, freshly laundered

flames of fiery sumac against pine

golden sassafras with beauty spots

pink and green tapestry on lucid blue

spirit flower: a glowing purple aster

All the images shown here were captured by me (Sara Firman) today (7 October 2011) on an afternoon walk along the forest trails around the cabin where I live. Click on any image to see a full-size version and soak in the colors.

Mnemosyne's Pool of Reflection

2011-10-03T08:14:50-05:00

One symbol, perhaps above all others, holds a crucial significance for everyone in search of wholeness: the well. From the terrestrial world it leads down into darkness, to the treasure of pure feminine consciousness - we are each blessed with our own well.

From Sitting by the Well (recordings of Jungian analyst Marion Woodman)

After listening to the first disc in this wonderful collection, which offers a guided meditation to visit one's own well, I was reminded of a story I wrote long ago. Below is an extract in which my own imagined well of remembrance is described. It's part of a creative memoir inspired by my love of water. More extracts to come.

*****

Just before I drifted into a slump of self-chastisement, a cat walked in, announcing its arrival with an upbeat meow. It paused for a moment surveying the room and me, holding my eye with its golden gaze.

Cats have always been able to get through to me, to restore my affectionate nature and joie de vivre. Sadly, I had not been reliable enough lately to be adopted by a cat. I got the distinct feeling that this one had come to show me the lie of the land.

Sandy brown and muscular with an expressive tail that he held high as he walked, my companion was both dignified and matter-of-fact in his demeanor. Pulling on some light clothing, while the cat wandered about inspecting the room for changes, I was ready to step outside.

We went through the breezeway and out of a door at the opposite end to where I had entered the night before. Pushing the swing door, I wondered briefly how the cat had come in; but that cat, I soon found out, could do things it was not helpful to question. Sweeping around to the left from where I stood on the verandah was a distant mountain range, and I saw snow on one of those peaks.

Apparently, the verandah encircled the house and its roof of tin, festooned with passionfruit vine, had a long curve to it that held off the strong sun. Steps led down to a sandy fringe where the cat now stood looking quizzically up at me. As I came down the stairs, he trotted off along a sandy path to the right through a grove of feather-leaved, sweet-scented acacia trees.

The path was lined with rocks so full of color and fossil-like markings that I was momentarily distracted, but the cat called me on. Alerted by the cat's call, my ears caught a low warbling song coming from somewhere ahead of us. The rock-lined path suddenly grew up into a wall broken only by a wooden door set into a flamboyant arch....

Before long, I was scrambling down rocky steps built for giants towards the sound of pounding water.

Simba had slipped off somewhere, as if he knew that I was now sufficiently intrigued to press forward alone. All kinds of unfamiliar plants reached out towards me from the nooks and crannies of the rocks: mostly foliage but an occasional cluster of flowers whose colors lit up the murky places in my brain. Rounding a sharp, almost perilous bend, an unexpected sight brought me up short.

I was standing to the back of an enormous, flat rock ledge. Now I saw that I had climbed down into a kind of canyon which held the cool moisture of water that allowed those plants to thrive. To my left, a surprising fall of iridescent water dropped about fifteen foot down to a trough it had carved out of the rock, and then gushed away into the undergrowth. Below that was an almost perfectly round pool with a lip of rock that was surely man-made.

From the rock ledge where I was, a substantial wooden ladder with good handholds made it possible to descend to the pool. Sitting on the rock lip to dangle my legs into the water, I was surprised to find the water warm. In places where the light came down through the greenery making the water appear greeny blue, I could just make out the sandy bottom of the pool. It did not look deep and I was mesmerized by the shifting patterns of the reflections.

Looking up at the rock ledge from which I had descended I noticed that some letters had been carved into its underside, almost invisible unless you were in the pool: Mnemosyne's Pool of Reflection. Things were beginning to feel very unreal to me, as if I was in a children's adventure story, right down to the cryptic clues.

I sat contemplating this and watching some large bubbles surface at irregular intervals on the far side of the pool. Maybe the unnatural warmth of the pool came from a hot spring? ...

A sinuous shadow slipped between some rocks opposite me and a shiver of fear broke my reverie. I did not know the first thing about snakes, or any other wildlife for that matter, and would have to do something about that. Making my way back up, I noticed that the sun which had been high was now falling fast to the west.

A loud gong sounded from the house and I knew we were being called in: we? Taking the direct route back to the house, a long rectangle of white-painted brick extended greatly by the broad verandah, I strolled round to the front. The driveway, marked by white-flashed rocks, looped loosely back and forth between trees before heading off into the far distance. Vibrant pink bougainvillea spilled out of the spaces.

Close to the house, the air was infused with the delicately mixed scents of orange, coffee and pepper trees. The metal banisters that ran up the side of the entry stairs were alive with mystical creatures, and wound round with living purple clematis. As if in continuation of this tale were the wrought letters over the top of the stairs that spelled out 'L...U...L...A...H...Lulah' .

I noted with pleasure that whoever had done the lettering I kept finding, loved the shape of words as much as their sound. The magic words traveled across space and time, leaving a dreamy trace in my mind like a jetstream in a clear blue sky. There are many ways to tell a story and not all of them are discernible to the incurious eye.

Extract from An African Avalon by Sara Firman 2001

Found objects: natural art

2011-09-29T17:37:58-05:00

Outside the cabin where I live chimes, windspinners and other hanging art catch the light and breeze of the day. Inside, I like to create mobiles from found objects, like the two pictured here. The feathers catch any air movement and turn them also.

Both mobiles have masks of death in them, the first a skull (as yet unidentified) and the second a turtle's shell. A metal coyote belt-buckle and hematite pendulum allude respectively to the calls of darkness and the wild blood in all of us.

Author of Soulcraft Bill Plotkin says: 'The Underworld Journey awaits those who already hear mystery whispering in their day and night dreams, in unusual occurrences and encounters, in water or wind, and whose profound longing is to sense and navigate life by these deep currents'. The mobiles remind me of those currents.

Tom Crockett's book The Artist Inside also talks of exploring the images of sleeping and waking dream states for creative expression (finding, arranging, altering and making). These simple practices connect me with place and with deeper levels of meaning in my engagement with the land and its beings.

Homage to a tree: logres (poem)

2011-09-16T18:43:01-05:00

Logres by Sulis

After a despairing
moon
I circled
the clearing
clambering
over the fallen
trees
the fallen
nights
the once shining realm
fading

Decaying
white bells
a glimpse of
ladies tresses
an orchid orchestrating
the fall
in amongst the low
moss of memory

The kingdom
severed
from inspired contact

The purity and glory
of Logres driven away
by rejection
arrogance
loss of faith
a sudden pervasive
decay
withering the land
strange mists obscuring
vision

Impossible
to have missed this
this beacon of life
rooted and reaching
unscathed
ancient
rite
here.

Rains came and left a subtle colorwash of fall on the understory trees of the forest this week. A friend's note, scribbled on a the back of a cash receipt, and telling of the location of special plants he knew I'd appreciate, had been neglected. So I set out to find them, orchids called ladies tresses, fading fast. And I found something else I'd forgotten!

This tree is only a short distance from my home. Unlikely many of its fellow grandfathers and grandmothers, it has survived terrible storms since I came to live here four years ago. I like to think it is rooted in that preciously pure otherworld that the Celts called Logres, hidden from view now by the mists of our human delusions and hubris.

I will kiss this tree every day if I possibly can.

[The opening and ending photographs were taken yesterday; the snow image was captured earlier this year.]

For other tree poems see

Heartwood

Viriditas

Solace of Trees

Questing for Healing Waters: California to Oregon

2011-08-27T15:12:24-05:00

Native americans often called hot springs by names that translated as some variant of 'medicine springs' - they recognized the healing value of these mysterious warm waters. The pacific northwest is blessed with a profusion of springs and a recent visit there reminded me of a journey I took a decade ago at the start of my water quest. Here it is, with updated links.

Water is a traveler on the blue planet. Flowing water carves monuments from rock, alters boundaries between land and sea and, frozen as glaciers, scours the landscape. Water weaves together all living and non-living things in an intricate tapestry of color, light and movement. It is so much a part of us and our routines that we often take it for granted and forget that water, a gift of nature, is life. From Healing Waters by Lynn Keegan & Gerald Keegan

In the summer weeks as the moon moved from Aquarius to Pisces at the start of the millennium, I set out on a quest devoted to celebrating water. Traveling from my home at that time on the coast of Southern California up through the Pacific Western states to Northern Washington and back again, I found many reminders of our absolute dependence on this life-giving, sustaining and inspiring substance. As a newly trained practitioner of aquatic bodywork, I wanted to explore water's elemental force in the wild.

The gravitational power of the moon, combined with movement of the earth causes the rise and fall of massive expanses of water in oceans and fluctuations in tides. It also influences the flow of sap in trees and affects our own body fluids. I planned to take time to feel these cycles and interconnections, whether camping in mystical rain forests, soaking in bubbling hot springs, gazing at rushing rivers and still lakes, or walking beside a fog-enshrouded ocean.

Urban conglomerations are often guzzlers and polluters of precious water. At home in Laguna Beach*, I never swam in the sea since sewage run-off frequently resulted in dangerous bacterial counts. Returning from this journey through Mammoth, California, I saw the disturbing beauty of Mono Lake with its exposed columns of tufa and pearly shores. In the last 50 years, to satisfy the needs of Los Angeles 250 miles away, its water level had dropped about 45 feet and its salinity was greater than that of sea.

[* This summer 2010 Laguna Beach was named among the cleanest beaches in America and received the most 5-star ratings in Orange County from NRDC. I'm especially happy for the seals and sea lions who often had to be rescued and nurtured back to health at the marine mammal center there.]

We need clean water to drink and bathe in but turning the tap makes us complacent about its daily supply. In service to our ever-growing needs and numbers, water suffers. And where water suffers, we eventually suffer also. The planet and our bodies are made largely of water at around 70%; it moves through both carrying whatever is dumped into it.

[Sampling sweet potable water from a northwest spring was a rare and special pleasure on this journey. More about finding potable spring water.]

Native Americans made few trails in the northwest wilderness, preferring to travel quietly between coast and inland by canoe. They frequently visited the numerous hot springs, honoring them for their healing powers. I journeyed more noisily by truck and appreciated the rest stops at some of the same sacred watering holes.

Harbin Hot Springs in Northern California is where I had learned my aquatic healing art. The hot (115 F) and cold (65 F) natural plunge pools set in the hillside are my favorite meditation space.   Alternating between these pools, your body settles into a deep calm as breathing, circulatory and immune systems balance themselves. Afterwards you can dip your toes in the antiseptic arsenic bath, stretch out on a bench and relax some more.

Moving on north into Oregon, there was the delightful stepped series of rock pools from very hot to warm at Terwilliger Hot Springs - a pity only that late-night revelers had left their beer bottles to catch the morning light. Near Terwilliger is Coyote Lake, created by one of many river dams and showing man’s uncertain influence, at once striking in massive rock-and- water grandeur and suspect in ecological effect.

At Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon, I paid homage to the source at the Magic Pool where water bubbles to the surface at around 180 F, too hot to sample. But you can bathe in rock-ringed Meadow Pools overlooking the river, sample the Medicine Wheel Tubs, or steam in a little hut set over boiling waters.    Alongside the river runs a rickety but still-functional wooden aqueduct that generates all the electricity for the community there. The same river provides delightful cold dips and is filtered for drinking water.

Walking among redwoods and rain forests in Olympic National Park, Washington, I was struck by the upward energy of these massive trees drawing moisture from their deep roots up bark-bound capillaries to the open skies. Trees are the lungs of the earth and an important part of the hydrological cycle. The deep woodland trails took me to so many special water sites.    Water and trees seem to go together.

At Lake Quinault, the water color is the result of an unreproducible interaction of light, bottom sediments, suspended minerals and algal blooms most beautiful in early morning or late afternoon. The dramatic drop of Sol Duc Falls nearby, showed how over geological time the river’s path has made deep sideways slashes through the softer rock.   Elsewhere, rock had been split asunder by slow glacial power.   Water is powerful.

In the Olympic National Park there a popular spa resort, Sol Duc Hot Springs (98-106 F), opened in 1912 by white folk but long before that known as the ‘land of sparkling waters’ to the Quileute Indians. Its mineral-rich waters left my skin feeling silky and my body deeply cleansed. Full of happy families it was a bit busy for me but still worth the visit.

Not far away, the sea fog broods over a tree-quilled shore. Huge trees felled inland, carried by rushing rivers and washed out to sea are repeatedly bashed against rock and sand. Now they lie like mammoth white bones in a beach graveyard. The Quileute Indians were daring whalers. The rich north Indian culture also thrived on plentiful salmon.

They believed that if Salmon Beings were treated with rituals of due respect, their spirits would return to the Salmon House under the sea, acquire new bodies and make sacrificial runs the next year.   But their fishy spirits are fragile. Owing to overfishing, damming and cutting trees too close to river banks which caused silt to clog spawning sites, salmon stocks are shrinking.

After the wild and wet habitat of Olympic National Park, I crossed by ferry from Port Townsend to Keystone, enjoying the islands at sunset and hoping for dolphins.   These playful creatures often come to mind when I join my ‘water family’ for aquatic trainings, which was the focal point of this journey north. In the woodland seclusion of White Stone Retreat near Sedro Wooley, WA, I practiced aquatic Healing Dance.

[White Stone Retreat has since moved closer to Portland and remains a center for aquatic bodywork in the northwest. This summer I had the opportunity to visit and train there again. Read more ...]

Healing Dance focuses on the waves and spirals that naturally arise when a human body allowed to move freely in water. After days in the pools we'd fire up the wood-burning sauna and feel our bodies running with ticklish streams of sweat. The moist darkness seemed almost as sacred as that of a Native Indian Sweat Lodge - a rite of purification and renewal that was considered to cleanse body and soul.

Moving back down south I called at Sierra Hot Springs (Gamdotalo’tha’Anal to its first native discoverers) in Northern California, set in an alpine valley 5000 ft above sea-level. The Temple Dome Pool housed under a gleaming geodesic copper roof bubbles natural hot water at 105-108 F through its soft sandy bottom. Out on the edge of the woods you can soak for hour after calming hour in the lithium vapors of the Medicine Pool.

A little further on around Lake Tahoe the rain set in, making chaotic music on the roof of the truck while I slept. I thought how water assails our senses -- the smell of a rainstorm throwing up the fragrance of wet forest pine or desert sage, the feel of droplets, ripples and waves against our skin, the taste of salt on an ocean mist, the sight of foam gushing over rocks. Traveling through the mountain storms I looked for rainbows.

The last night of this water journey was spent in Mammoth at Benton Hot Springs where the campsite boasts private redwood hot tubs. So I lay immersed in the hot water, watching the sun go down and the moon and stars come up over high desert grassland. I pledged my allegiance to Water in all its diversity. I decided to make this kind of journey an ongoing part of my life, with water as the focus of my quest.

And so it has continued.

Sara Firman writes on spa-retreat (Vision Spa Retreat), aquatic bodywork (Aquapoetics), and this year joined a group of others passionate about promoting the healing value of natural mineral waters in the US.

[For a more detailed account of hot springs with special reference to the pacific northwest, read Sean Patrick Hill's introduction to an unpublished book on the topic 'Smoking Waters'. Download]

Summary of the route taken (summer 2000, approx. 3000 miles): Laguna Beach, CA > Harbin Hot Springs, CA > Breitenbush Hot Springs, OR > Terwilliger Hot Springs, OR > Olympic National Park, WA > Sierra Hot Springs, CA > Lake Tahoe, CA > Benton Hot Springs, CA > Mono Lake, CA > Laguna Beach, CA