Category Archives: People

Wassailing the Orchard

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There must be thousands of ways and reasons to light up the long dark nights of winter. In the western islands of Europe, where most of my ancestors hail from, they lit bonfires in the orchards and wassailed the trees. Wassail comes from the Old English meaning “to be hale” or “be whole”. The islanders toasted the health of the trees and asked for an abundance of next year’s crop.

Unfortunately, my ancestors didn’t do a good job of keeping this tradition alive when they came to America several centuries ago. But why should that stop us? Wassailing is too much fun to lose in the dim recesses of our ancestral past. How does one go about reviving a vague agricultural tradition? Well, there’s quite a discussion about wassailing on the web. We are not alone! It’s ironic and encouraging how well modern technology works to preserve archaic practices.

So, we cobbled together a wassailing ceremony to bless our little orchard of apples and apricots here in the high desert. We lit a fire, ate popcorn, drank hot spiced cider and shared it with the tree roots. Each person thought of a blessing or a wish as they visited each tree and tied a piece of yarn to a branch. We sang wassailing songs, and made noise to drive away any bad spirits. Finally, our youngest family member climbed the strongest tree and left a piece of toast dipped in cider high up in the crown. Afterwards, we huddled around the fire as the cold night settled around us. No one wanted to go inside. We couldn’t stop watching the sparks drifting up toward the crisp stars.

Next morning, I crossed the frosty grass to admire the trees festooned with scraps of yarn — the cheery affirmation of our relationship. We take care of the trees, they take care of us. I thought about how every bright strand secured a wish. The orchard will glow with our benedictions until spring birds take the faded yarn to build their nests.

 

The Archive of Voices

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A mature forest absorbs sound. The bark, the leaves, the duff, the moss, the needles … don’t bounce sound waves along — they consume them. The hush of a dense forest can be thick with centuries of voices left by passersby. Walking along a trail near Santiam Pass, you might not hear those ancient voices but you can sense they’re there; the laughter of native children, the singing of shepherds, the newsy gossip of women picking huckleberries …

Whoa. Hold up there. It wasn’t all that warm and fuzzy.

For all their deep green beauty, I sensed a minor chord in these woods cloaking the Cascade crest. This section of old Indian trail made me uneasy. At first, I chocked it up to my “pronghorn” personality — I like wide open spaces. But maybe I was sensing some dark aspect of the human history of this route?

When I got home, I researched the Indian trails in this part of Oregon. No surprise that these paths were used for commerce. Everyone wanted to trade for something they didn’t have. During the 1800s, the Pacific Northwest offered everything from salmon to buffalo hides, obsidian to trade beads, horses to slaves.

Wait. Slaves?

Yes. As it turns out, the native people of this region practiced slavery among themselves long before Lewis and Clark showed up. The Corp of Discovery passed through the “greatest emporium of the Columbia” between Celilo Falls and The Dalles where slaves were a high ticket item. Other slave trading centers existed at Willamette Falls and the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers.

The trail I followed near Santiam Pass fed into a network of tracks the Klamath people used to bring slaves to the Willamette or lower Columbia markets from the south. Once the Klamath people acquired horses, they were a holy terror when it came to raiding Northern California’s Pit River and Shasta area tribes and carrying off their women and children.

Since slaves often try to escape if they think they can make it back home, the Klamath marketed their excess captives as far away as possible. Who knows where you’d end up if you were “sold down river” on the Columbia? Back then, you might as well have been shipped off to another continent. How many people trod north with little hope of returning?

Next time I walk that trail high in the Cascade range, I’ll understand better where the melancholy notes come from, now that I’ve roamed deeper into the archive of voices.

New World Latkes

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Our Thanksgivings will never be the same. I suspect this might be true for many American families who experienced the rare and fortuitous cooking collision of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving this year. What a feast! The Thanksgiving potluck we enjoyed included Latkes, the traditional Ashkenazi Jewish potato pancakes. While the turkey roasted, we savored hot fried Latkes smothered in sour cream and apple sauce.

Latkes strike me as the perfect Thanksgiving appetizer. You can eat them with your fingers, they’re delicious, and they symbolize a profound horticultural circle between the “New World” and the “Old World”. I find potato history fascinating, but in case you don’t share that peculiar passion, here’s the saga in brief.

Spanish explorers show up in South America and find everyone eating these weird starchy tubers. The Spaniards acquire a taste for spuds out of necessity and stock up on potatoes for their long return voyage. They introduce the folks back home to the lowly potato which gradually gains favor. The new tuber becomes a staple crop in Eastern Europe where the Ashkenazi Jewish people incorporate it into their recipes. Since frying potatoes transforms them into highly addictive substances, the confluence of Hanukkah — a holiday celebrated by frying foods — and potatoes was a match made in heaven! Latkes were born and eventually came to America with the Jewish people.

Of course, Jews aren’t the only folks who love potato pancakes but their version of the dish might be the most well-known in America, for good reason. The sweetness of the apple sauce, the sour of the cream, and the salty fried potatoes create a synergy of flavors that resonate, and make my taste buds deeply thankful.

God’s Magpie

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 Between
Your eye and this page
I am standing …

Bump
Into me
More.

~ Hafiz

I’ve heard it said that our eternal life intersects our mortal experience every moment. We’re seldom aware of it but every now and then we’re offered a glimpse of this expanded dimension. It’s possible to come around a bend and … surprise! Your eternal nature greets you — your forever friend. Something like this happened to me when I met Hafiz for the first time.

Hafiz lived in the garden city of Shiraz in ancient Persia. He left his earthly body in 1389 AD but his physical departure hasn’t stopped him from scattering his crazy, funny, spiritually sane ideas over the earth like a continuous meteorite shower for the past six hundred years. Why hadn’t I encountered this luminous outpouring before? I must have been ripening toward an appreciation of Hafiz’s shoot-the-lights-out approach to celebrating the Divine.

Why
Just show you God’s menu?
Hell, we are all
Starving —
Let’s
Eat!

~ Hafiz

Hafiz and I met unexpectedly — of course. He wouldn’t have it any other way. On a summer road trip from Northern Nevada to Colorado Springs, I stopped at a Trappist monastery outside of Old Snowmass in the Colorado Rockies. Saint Benedict’s is both a working ranch and a retreat center. The monastery cultivates hay, contemplative prayer, and silence. They also have a small bookstore which is where my rational mind said it was going. (I’ve always been a fan of Thomas Merton — a Trappist monk — so I figured I’d buy one of his books.) My heart, however, suspected this rationale was  a bunch of hooey. My real reason for visiting was a fascination with the monk’s commitment to keep conversation to a minimum. Writers tend to cherish places where silence has the upper hand.

I followed the gravel road to a cluster of buildings sheltered in a grove of fluttering aspens and gregarious magpies. No one else was around. Walking up the path, I followed signs to the bookstore and opened a heavy door. Peering in, I saw light from a wall of tall windows washing over shelves and tables loaded with books — my heaven.

Thomas Merton made a good showing among the metaphysical titles, but so did Mother Theresa, the Dali Lama, and Rumi. The Catholic monks of St. Benedict’s had eclectic taste. It was a contemplative’s candy store. So many points of view! So many prospective guides! I told my mind to shut up — and my heart to speak up. I was honing in on something …

Next to Rumi lay a mustard yellow paperback with frilly Victorian-style graphics. This? It looked a little stuffy and academic. I was skeptical. 

I almost judged the book by its cover but something compelled me to look inside. After reading a smattering of poems, I fell under Hafiz’s spell. He made me laugh. He made me think. He showed me the hidden world in plain view. Here was my beloved in a future life; a brother from before we were born; a companion I’d always sensed but never known.

I put the money for the book in a small wooden box the monks had left for that purpose and hurried outside. I needed a place to land. A few wooden camp chairs waited beneath the aspens. A magpie alighted on the back of one and then took off. I nestled into that chair. It looked across the high mountain valley toward Mount Sopris. Taking a deep breath, I opened the book and dove in …

 I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through —
Listen to this
Music.

 *
Why complain about life
If you are looking for good fish
And have followed some idiot
Into the middle of the copper market?

*

The
Great religions are the
Ships,

 Poets the life
Boats.

 Every sane person I know has jumped
Overboard.

 That is good for business
Isn’t it
Hafiz?

See what I mean? No piety here, but an infectious honesty whose cackling irreverence reveals the sincere reverence of a true pilgrim. That summer afternoon, I wandered in these heady poems for hours as thunderheads billowed above me unnoticed — until it started pouring.

The rain reminded me that I needed to continue my journey but I left that remote valley far richer than when I arrived. I’d spent the better part of a day touring eternity with my new friend Hafiz, the Sufi magpie. What an eye-opener.

Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere,
Don’t always agree it’s real,

Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door

 My address is somewhere else.

 ~ Hafiz

(Some critics claim Daniel Ladinsky’s English translations are more Daniel than Hafiz. For me, it doesn’t matter. I admire the teamwork between the 14th century mystic and the 20th century craftsman. Together, they rock.)

Fiddle Reincarnation

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In my next life, I want to come back as Michael Doucet’s fiddle. What could be better? We’d have the perfect relationship. Laugh together. Cry together. Ça c’est tres bon!

I know it’s a crazy idea but Cajun fiddle music does something to me. My family’s not Louisiana French. I’ve never been east of Cheyenne, Wyoming, (let alone Lafayette,) and I don’t know how to Two-step — yet. But Doucet’s music rearranges my stiff modern psyche into something deliciously malleable. I love surrendering to the ancient conversation between Creative Source and human hands. I’ll do almost anything to follow that musical trajectory.

I used to think the solution was to marry a fiddle player. Immerse myself in the music. But I realized, sooner or later, I’d grow jealous of the fiddle. Why just listen to those melodies? I want to make them.

So let me be the fiddle — poised between the impulse and the note — singing that sweet, soulful song.

 

(Photograph of Michael Doucet courtesy of the Rosebud Agency.)

Yellow Willow River

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The willow are waking up along Camas Creek in the Warner Range. On a windy spring day their glowing stems undulate down the drainage, a yellow flowing river.

The willow are the first to talk about the coming of spring. Sometimes their stems color up before the snow is gone. They’re thinking about catkins and leaves. They’re thinking about trailing their roots in the thawed creek and the yellow-headed blackbird tickling their upper branches with its song. They’re thinking of the Paiute basketmakers harvesting their straight stems before the leaf nodes swell. Will the elders come with their sharp knifes and old ways?