As spring arrives here in Western Massachusetts, I feel the warmth of March’s sun on my face—and a chill at my back. Not the ghost of winter, but the shiver I feel every time I read or listen to the news.

In the U.S., we are facing rising censorship and silencing. More than ever, we need to remember how to learn in ways that strengthen both our resilience—and our resistance.

In times like these, I return to my practice of Core-Respondence—a way of learning from the world around us that supports both.

Core-Respondence is a practice I developed to help us attune to the wisdom of place, body, and spirit—especially in unsettling times.

In time, I’ll share more about this practice.

Today, I begin with what the crocus teaches.

A Memory of Crocus Joy

One of my earliest memories is of late winter mornings when my mother would urge me to come outside to see the first crocuses poking their heads through the snow along the foundation of the house.

She could barely contain her own joy, and I felt it too, as I knelt down in my snowpants to take a closer look at the purple flowers with their bright saffron-colored stamens.

These were the harbingers of spring.

What can we learn from the crocus in these times?

We may feel as small as a crocus in the face of seemingly insurmountable threats.

But remember—crocuses propagate on their own.

They are activated by the cold, just as we, too, can be stirred into awareness and action by the chilling conditions around us.

We can rise from the ground—together.

And even when we do not appear present, we are still here, underground, our corms (crocuses have corms, not bulbs) quietly storing the resources we need.

Be Like the Crocus

Sometimes we need to be like the crocus.

To remind ourselves that we come back.

We return.

We’re growing in many lands of our beloved Living Earth—like the crocus.

A Season for Strengthening

If you’re underground, storing your resources—that’s okay.

I’ve been doing the same.

A friend, a longtime activist, recently shared:

I’ve been so quiet. The world has been cruel and ignorantly loud. I’ve fought for weeks to find my anchor. I know what that means for me—feet planted to the ground… I don’t know what the answers are, but I’m strengthening myself for la lucha.

We all have seasons.

And like the crocus, we can come back—pushing through the cold soil when the time is right.

What might your corm be storing right now?
What are you preparing to bring into the light?

“Should I stay or should I go?”

It’s a question many people I know are asking—especially in the wake of the 2024 presidential election. But it’s not a new question. It’s one that people labeled immigrant, refugee, or exile have asked for generations.

It is the question of the crossroads—a place of uncertainty, of parting paths, of difficult choices.

I admit, I’ve been asking myself this question, too.

Some people I know are determined to stay in the U.S. They are optimistic about the future—about democracy’s resilience—or feel a patriotic duty to remain. Others simply love the land, the community, the people they’ve grown roots with. They can’t imagine leaving.

But many are leaving—or planning to. Friends have moved to Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Mexico. Some are embracing a nomadic life, seeking safety, or simply a different way to live.

Yesterday, I heard from an African American friend. Her family, she said, is grieving.

“It’s not an option to move a 96-year-old mother without a passport out of the country.”

Another friend has Lebanese parents who were visiting but cannot return home due to the bombings. Their family is now in a painful limbo.

Others can’t afford to move. Or they don’t know how—especially those with children, aging parents, or community obligations.

Some are already under threat of deportation.

So the question may not be just, “Should I stay or should I go?” But also, “Is it selfish to go when those I love can’t?”

At the crossroads, whatever path we choose, we are often met with a breaking.

A breaking of hearts.

A breaking from place, from kin, from past promises.

A breaking of illusions.

And all around us, other forms of breaking:

Trees toppled by wind

Homes lost to floods and mudslides

Cities broken by bombs and fires

So what do we do at this threshold, when we feel immobilized?

There’s one thing that helps me in these moments—and I’ll be sharing more in my walks, workshops, and writings.

Pay attention to the life in the broken landscape.

Notice the woodpeckers and insects feeding from a fallen tree.

The squirrels gnawing the pumpkins we carved and abandoned after Halloween.

The neighbors quietly helping one another—bringing food to displaced families, bailing water from flooded streets, sitting beside those who are grieving.

Even in the breaking, there is always the act of creation.

Poet Stephanie Burt, in her piece “Advice from Rock Creek Park,” offers this:

Almost always better
to build than to wreck
You can build in a wreck
Under the roots
of an overturned tree

We build even as things fall apart.

We move forward even when we’re unsure which path is “right.”

And we pay attention to the smallest signs of life—that remind us we are still here.

 In September of 2024, I moved back to my childhood home — not the house, but the community of Western Massachusetts where I grew up. I haven’t lived here for decades, but it was time to come back, to spend time with my aging parents, and to have an anchor before I set off on my travels again.

I’d forgotten how much I love Autumn. It’s now mid October — at the height of the season’s brilliance — and I still feel a sense of awe looking up at the trees cloaked in burnt and bright oranges, golden and amber, crimson and cardinal red, and even peachy pink. I have tried to capture their beauty with photos, but none does them any justice. The trees are a touchstone for childhood memories, like visits to other places that haven’t changed much over the years. 

But so much has changed.

I remember when Atkin’s Farms was a shack by the side of the road where you could get hot apple cider and cider donuts: soft cake donuts with hints of nutmeg and cinnamon, freshly made and oh so delicious. But now Atkins is more like a Whole Foods operation with the donuts pre-packaged into plastic bags and ready for purchase: plain, coated in sugar, or sugar and cinnamon. Atkins now ships its apples and other products around the world. Everything changes, right?

Remembering the Places of Childhood

But this nostalgia we have, this memory of places of the past–what is it that we miss? Do I miss the shack, and waiting out in the frigid cold for the hot cider, or do I miss something else?

There’s an important detail from this memory that I must acknowledge: the conversation. People worked at that farmstand. I don’t remember their names, but they would chit-chat with us as they served us the cider and the donuts. And they would remember us. Doesn’t it feel good to be remembered–to feel that sense of belonging in community?

When I go to Atkins Farms now, the checkout folks don’t remember me, and how could they? I’m not a regular customer. I’m sure they do remember the regulars. But this pang of not being recognized–of being “just another customer” as I hear the scanner bleep my bags of donuts–reminds me WHY we develop such strong associations for place.

We’re not just connecting with a physical site but the interrelationships we recall with people and of other beings (the birds, the trees) associated with it. The site links us to past-present-future all at the same time. When we go back to the changed place, how can we honor the interrelationships?

At Atkins, I simply struck up a brief conversation with the checkout person. They didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them, but that little exchange was my way of recognizing them. These little interactions are like our offerings to the place. They honor its “spirit.”

If the place you remember didn’t have any humans around, perhaps you felt the connection with the trees. The building. The way the sky looks at a particular hour. Acknowledge it. Speak out loud. Honor the relationship.

To find stories, we need to dig deep. Let’s think about the metaphor of “digging deep” — are we digging for the stories of the dead whose voices have not been heard? Are we digging for “treasures”? 

Perhaps we can also think of the digging as an act of planting seeds, in the company of others. 

When I lived in Baltimore for two years, having been offered a consulting job that pulled me from Miami, I joined my neighborhood community garden. The garden was a haven for me–and a place for sharing stories. 

Baltimore is often talked about and treated as a dangerous city, a murderous city, a backwater city. Yet what happens when we stop talking ABOUT cities in this abstract way and gather stories with local residents, together, side by side?

While we’re working — planting seeds, shoveling compost, weeding, harvesting — we’re sharing stories.

I’d heard about community gardens where each person has her/his own plot of land. Yet the Mt. Washington Community Garden was different. We’d all take turns doing various tasks in our community garden, led by a small group of experienced and mostly elder gardeners who advise us on the tasks for the day.

We’d garden together, on Wednesday evenings or weekend mornings. I preferred working on Wednesday evenings, beginning at 6, when the air would begin to cool. After reading the whiteboard mounted to our garden shed, which listed the the tasks for the day, I’d pair off with a more experienced gardener, learning by watching and doing.

One day I might be shoveling compost. Another day I’d focus on planting seeds or replanting and watering delicate new plants into comfortable new homes in the soil.

In the garden, we had a workshop on composting, where we learned how to take better care of the soil. And from this lovely, rich soil, sprouting from seeds, have emerged the tomatoes and yellow squash and Japanese eggplants that I enjoyed during my last summer in Baltimore.

“Place” include the living soil — not a static fixed soil. It is the soil over which people share stories: the soil where stories grow.

A community garden is one way to open ourselves to the web of life: our neighbors, human and non-human. And it is also the way to dig into meaningful stories, gathered alongside the carrots and turnips, and shared.

How do we think about paths? When we envision journeys — including life journeys — it seems the default is to imagine a path. What about thinking of the journey as movement along a body of water: a river?

During the cruise, I shared my presentations about Florida’s natural springs, its centuries-old history of canoe-making, the first (legal) free black settlement in the U.S. (Fort Mosé in St. Augustine), and other topics.

This trip was particularly special for me, because it started and ended in Jacksonville, Florida, where my great grandparents built and lived in a cabin in the mid-to-late 19th century, right along the coast of the St. John’s.

Just before my trip, I wrote to my uncle about the cabin, and he told me that a new cabin (a replica of their cabin) had been built in its place, and the land remained undeveloped because it was near a shell mound–evidence of the Timicua and other indigenous peoples who once called these watersheds their home.

Minglings

Moving along the river–like the steamboats and canoes of long ago, I had time to reflect on the river as a way of thinking about our life journeys.

Often we use the metaphor of the “path” to describe our personal journeys, as if we are forging a path through a wild world, making our way alone. Yet the river reminds us of our interconnectedness. Florida springs feed the river, and it branches off into many tributaries. It always finds the path of least resistance, and keeps moving, flowing …

Like water, our life journeys are always merging and blending with those of others. They are linked to the journeys of our ancestors and those of others who have lived wherever we might find ourselves.

Flow

As much as we might want to “fix” ourselves to a particular place, time or destination, the water reminds us of the importance of flow–flowing with the journey. We don’t necessarily need to pick up a symbolic machete and hack our way through the underbrush.

When we imagine our journey as a river’s journey, we can open ourselves more fully to the unexpected, and allow ourselves to feel and recognize the “hidden springs” that fill our heart and keep us going.

Rivers and Memory

The great poet Langston Hughes wrote about rivers in his famous poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” I reflect on this poem as I mourn the three Black Jacksonville residents who were shot recently in a hate crime, the gunman ending the flow of their lives. His poem reminds us of that our path is never isolated. We are part of collectives of the here and then and the here and there. 

We continue on our journey, but we are all coming together from other waters, mingling with the lives and memories of others.

Wrote Hughes:

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.