The Awesome Beauty of our Mother Earth

🌹 Life begets death 🥀 Death begets life. 'Round we go 🌎

Hello dear one,

For many years, I have made conscious efforts to live closer to the cycles of the Earth, honoring each season and the energy it brings. There is something glorious about the annual transitions between light and dark, when the landscape transforms from shades of green and blue to orange and red, then to brown and grey and white, and finally back to green again.

In this season of Spring, and on this day called ‘Earth Day’ by some, I find myself once again overflowing with gratitude for this bountifully abundant planet we call our home.

original artwork by me

I have created compost, tended seedlings, turned the soil, planted gardens and trees, harvested many an herb and fruit, and then brought it all to market with my friends. I have picked wildflowers and watched them wither and fade into decay on my tabletop. I have tinctured herbs for medicine and salad dressings, made salves from herbs I wild harvested, and brewed wine from fruit growing in my backyard. I have blown wishes and dreams into dandelion puffs, and made many a meal with all local ingredients.

I have hiked forested trails and mountaintops, floated in river bluff canyons and camped on their rocky banks, walked over miles of lava rock and watched freshly flowing lava from my balcony. I have harvested avocados, coconuts, macadamia nuts, racks of bananas, mangos, cacao pods and other tropical fruits whose names elude me. I have made coconut cream from fresh cocos and drank their water from a rough machete’d edge, spilling it down my almost naked body. I have ingested psychoactive plant compounds in the form of leaf, flower, vine and mushroom that have revealed other-worldly layers of reality within me and without.

original artwork by me

I have rode on an elephant, a camel, a horse and a donkey. I have called a few special cats my very best of friends. I have watched robins nest and fledge their young. I have seen river otters play, whales breech, penguins waddle and heard tigers chuff from just a few feet away. I have milked a goat and a cow, held a baby kid, petted a calf, slaughtered chickens, helped track and skin a buck, and eaten warm raw turkey egg yolks fresh from the innards of a soon-to-be turkey dinner at 4 in the morning. I have drank fresh, warm goat milk just after milking.

I have found countless bones and skeletons to place on my altar of life: a coatimundi skull with skin still on it, various sun-baked lizards and dried frogs, a white-tailed deer skull with antlers attached, and a rattlesnake skin all from the Sonoran desert in Arizona; a horse skull and jaw bone from an oak forest in the Ozark foothills, and countless honey bee carcasses with wings. I honor them wildly.

I have taken in vistas from up high and down low: stood at 14,000 feet elevation at the Continental Divide, explored caverns hundreds of feet below ground, and viewed the massive Mississippi river valley from an airplane multiple times. I have relished many a sunset over the ocean blue, cloud-gazed and shooting star-spotted, and have seen 7 unique rainbows within 30 minutes while flying over Hawaii. I have witnessed a full total solar eclipse in 100% totality; light to dark to light again - even the crickets came out for the midday celebration.

What adventures, sensations, epiphanies or otherwise have you experienced while engaging with our collective Mother Earth?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

These memories don’t seem to fully capture the beauty and wonder and awe that Mother Earth has brought into my being. These moments spent with my Mother have been full of bliss and joy, contemplations and musings, pain and suffering. Words can only come so close to the magical alchemy that Earth’s majesty invokes within me.

In touching, sensing and ingesting the Earth, I have been humbled and shook to the very core of my existence. I have been elated and elevated.

I have been transformed.

another original (angled so it shines)

I’d like to share a little piece I wrote many years ago to highlight one my first adventures into the world of gardening. It wouldn’t be until a few years later that I would first have a taste of something I grew myself - which in and of itself is simply beyond description and to me a non-negotiable requirement for every human being to do before they die.

I wrote this in 2009 when I was called Becky, and it was first published here as part of a series in the Dharma Bum Life Program while I was living in San Diego, California. I have copied it here in its entirety with a few minor formatting edits.

Let me know what you think in the comment section below 👇

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In the Garden with Julia Dashe

by Dharma Bum Becky, July 2009

Permaculture presentation by Julia Dashe from the San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project (sandiegoroots.org)

“The first thing anyone should be taught about gardening when they are just beginning, is the process of composting,” Julia Dashe told our group one sunny afternoon while standing outside of the three compost bins at the Morse High School community garden. As we proceeded to ‘turn the bins’ with our shovels, putting air into the mixture, she explained that without the nutrients from the decaying organic matter, the seeds we had just planted could not survive. Compost is primarily formed from green and brown ‘wastes’ – dead plants, weeds, fruit peels, eggshells, dried leaves, paper, soil, a good watering and some mixing. Humidity, high temperature, and red worm castings all come together to produce a beautiful, dark brown batter rich in nutrients to recycle back into the garden.

This important lesson in the growth cycle of the garden can be applied to all of life – the transition from death to life, from destruction to creation, is just as important as the transition from life to death.

Without some form of destruction and letting go of the old, there would be no room for growth and development for the new.

Because every living being and the systems they are a part of go through numerous cycles of life and death in some way or another, ideally there should be no waste produced by the system. One creature’s poop is another’s house, and one dead animal can feed a whole family. This idea is the foundation to the permaculture movement, a 40-year old theory that began in agricultural design and is now flourishing as a completely sustainable approach to food, community and culture.

The Dharma Bums had the privilege to hear Julia speak about permaculture and sustainable gardening practices. She spoke of the vital need to carry on the once-traditional practices of locally grown food, while also incorporating new eco-friendly ‘green’ techniques so we can use our resources more wisely. For example, the current system allows huge industrial farms to economically plant row after row of the same species of corn, leading to the stripping of nutrients from the soil each year. However, permaculture suggests that we ecologically plant a mixed variety of plant species that can cohabitate with one another, allowing a sustainable and mutually dependent ecosystem to develop.

Thus, the products of one piece in the system literally supply the needs of the neighboring elements, while doing little damage to the environment and using less fertilizers and pesticides.

My experiences volunteering at the Terra Nova Garden at Morse High School and the City College Urban Farm in downtown San Diego have been truly life changing. Personally, I discovered that my passion and joy for life are recharged when I am in the garden connecting with all of the living creatures around me.

I feel more alive when I am down-to-earth and meditating on the interconnectedness of all things, observing how there is an entire micro-ecosystem in just one square foot of dirt.

Most importantly, I have taken these experiences out of the garden and into my daily life with the intention of being more mindful about how all of my actions affect the world around me. I believe that by practicing simple techniques that keep the whole system in mind, our society and communities can honor a sustainable approach to agriculture, local gardening, and the entire food system.

~ Dharma Bum Becky

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I would love to hear from you how this landed in your heart 🌱💚🐝

All the Love,

Rebecca

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