Rabbit Brush' Golden Flowers Time
By the natural calendar, autumn arrives now, in the southwest, with chokecherry picking, making chicos (horno roasted sweet corn), roasting and drying of red and green chiles, mud plastering of adobe buildings and restoring trips into the mountains. The long pinion fires which will not go out until spring, have not yet been lit. The short fire cook and smoke but are not yet needed for heat.
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My cousin Bud Jeffries receives his Indian name:
Washedo, Bright Shining Face of Evening Light.
A true harvest Son name.
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Staking or marking with string, the medicinal roots, barks and berries which will be gathered when the green plant tops die back with the first frosts and before the snow falls hiding where you thought the plant lived. Beginning to make the house, barn, fence, field and ditch repairs, taking care to think of us all; the songs, dances and prayers that life might go on 'in a good way'; the waters; the four-leggeds; those that swim, crawl, fly and move very slowly; the homes; the stored seeds of seven years; the Spirits of Place; the ancestors and those yet to come, and of us, the two-leggeds.
These things and more take up their place in our new songs. We recount the days.
Crepe Myrtle's Bloom in the Great Heat
Regardless of climate, August bounty and harvests begin with remember once again, that picking and gathering 'in a good way' is made up of noticing and remembering SO many things. Traditional things like picking and storing, pickling and freezing, drying and bundling abundant fragrant herbs, sweet fruits, uncountable vegetables, red and yellow fleshed melons; blue, white, yellow and red corn..some with white eagles in flight; greens and beans; bushels of tomatos...all things and beings that our ancestors and relatives brought forward...all kinds and sorts of bounty from the cultivated and wild garden coming forward to meet our song..and to participate in their/our interactive winter give-away ceremonies of meals, teas and medicines, songs and offerings..'good medicine', food and nourishment to us, the two-leggeds and all other living things.
These things and more take up their place in our new songs. We remember the ways.
From the Northern Alder Thickets
Walking the Wild Smoked Salmon of the Pacific Northwest back from the spring catch for the winter sustenance and enjoyment of us, the sacred two-leggeds from the sacred ones who swim..From harvesting the cranberry bogs and wild rice fields, from braving the thorny wild Florida sour orange, picking tiny, dry astringent wild plums; to the myriad of undocumented plant, leaf, fruit; the rock bottom stream, the 'eye of the Mother Earth' spring and her issue, the thin mossy rivulet; the moist clay floored cave; the found hair and dry grass woven nest, the nut and mushroom littered forest floors; the natural places..raucous with sound and movement..stilling at our approach until we slow and allow our Indigeneous and unique song to to tell our story and to restore confidence to the native dwellers.
These things and more take up their place in our new songs. By these things we live.
