Help.

The Wild Mushroom

Well the sunset rays are shining

Me and Kaihave got our tools

A basket and a trowel

And a book with all the rules

Don't ever eat Boletus

If the tube mouths they are red

Stay away from the Amanitas

Or brother you are dead

Sometimes they're already rotten

Or the stalks are broken off

Where the deer have knocked them over

While turing up the duff

We set out in the forest

To seek the wild mushroom

In shapes diverse and colorful

Shining through the woodland gloom

If you look under oak trees

Or around an old pine stump

You'll know a mushroom's coming

By the way the leaves are humped

They send out multiple fibers

Through the roots and sod

Some make you mighty sick they say

Or bring you close to God

So here's to the mushroom family

A far-flung friendly clan

For food, for fun, for poison

They are a help to man.

Gary Snyder

It's time for Hen of the Woods.

Gary Snyder, Things to Do Around a Lookout

 ... Wrap up in a blanket in cold weather and just read. 

Together.

FOR the CHILDREN

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

    stay together
        learn the flowers
                go light

Gary Snyder

Happy Birthday, Gary Snyder

ON TOP

All this new stuff goes on top

turn it over, turn it over

wait and water down

from the dark bottom

turn it inside out

let it spread through

Sift down even.

Watch it sprout.

A mind like compost.

Gary Snyder, born on this day in 1930

Thanks.

Firchau, Drew, The Explorer, 2009

A wise man once told me not to be frustrated by misunderstanding ... either by others or your own ... "Most of what we say and do is misunderstood."

That's difficult to handle.

But true, I guess.

Language is just sound. We give it meaning only after we "hear" it, and that only happens if we truly "listen."

But then ... we're doing the "listening."

As I get older I feel that less and less of what I say and do is authentically understood. Especially when I attempt the conveyance of compassion or care. Silence is often taken as apathy.

Russell Chatham was fond of the saying, "Most people get it wrong." He speaks of the authentic ... the real.

Attempts.

Adjustments.

Sincerity.

Unforced.

Substance.

Understanding.

There's a Chinese proverb that I heard Gary Snyder recite once that says, "The one who understands does not speak; the one who speaks does not understand."

Be still.

Listen.

A good one ... for 5th graders and their teachers.

Wives and husbands.

Sisters and brothers.

Friends.

Smoochers.

Co-workers.

Carl Jung ... “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

Van Morrison ssang ...

Chop that wood
Carry water
What's the sound of one hand clapping
Enlightenment, don't know what it is

Every second, every minute
It keeps changing to something different
Enlightenment, don't know what it is
Enlightenment, don't know what it is
It says it's non attachment
Non attachment. non attachment

I'm in the here and now, and I'm meditating
And still I'm suffering but that's my problem
Enlightenment, don't know what it is

Wake up

Enlightenment says the world is nothing
Nothing but a dream, everything's an illusion
And nothing is real

Trust.

Hope.

Believe.

Confide.

Balance.

The most important thing my mentor taught me during my first year of teaching was to "teach, help them and then let 'em go. Let 'em surprise you." Thanks Trisha.

Trust.

The unattainable attempted. The journey is the destination.

Understanding? Knowing? Absolutes?

If you're on the path, just keep walking.

I love this clip from A River Runs Through It.

Drew ... "Dad, sometimes you just need a big hand in a little hand."

Thanks, Drew.

Beware.

Beware of anything that promises freedom or enlightenment – traps for eager and clever fools – a dog has a keener nose – every creature in a cave can justify himself. Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.

Gary Snyder, from The Gray Snyder Reader

Those.

There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. 

They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work.
And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. 

At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. 

There are those who do both, they drink tea.

Gary Snyder

Off.

Our skills and works are but tiny reflections of the wild world that is innately and loosely orderly. There is nothing like stepping away from the road and heading into a new part of the watershed. Not for the sake of newness, but for the sense of coming home to our whole terrain. "Off the trail" is another name for the Way, and sauntering off the trail is the practice of the wild. That is also where, paradoxically, we do our best work. But we need paths and trails and will always be maintaining them. You first must be on the path, before you can turn and walk into the wild.

Gary Snyder, from The Practice of the Wild

Awake.

At the far end of a trip north

In a berry-pickers cabin

At the edge of a wide muddy field

Stretching to the woods and cloudy mountains,

Feeding the stove all afternoon with cedar,

Watching the dark sky darken, a heron flap by,

A huge setter pup nap on the dusty cot.

High rotten stumps in the second-growth woods

Flat scattered farms in the bends of the Nooksack

River. Steelhead run now

a week and I go back

Down 99, through towns, to San Francisco and Japan.

All America south and east,

Twenty-five years in it brought to a trip-stop

Mind-point, where I turn

Caught more on this land rock tree and man,

Awake, than ever before, yet ready to leave.

damned memories,

Whole wasted theories, failures and worse success,

Schools, girls, deals, try to get in

To make this poem a froth, a pity.

A dead fiddle for lost good jobs.

the cedar walls

Smell of our farm-house, half built in '35.

Clouds sink down the hills

Coffee is hot again. The dog

Turns and turns about, stops and sleeps.

Gary Snyder

Both.

There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.

Gary Snyder

Goodbye.

Hansen, The Forest, The Stream, and The Wanderer, 1973

A WALK

Sunday the only day we don't work:

Mules farting around the meadow,

                            Murphy fishing,

The tent flaps in the warm

Early sun: I've eaten breakfast and I'll

                              Take a walk

To Benson Lake. Packed a lunch,

Goodbye. Hopping on creekbed boulders

Up the rock throat three miles

                              Puite Creek –

In steep gorge glacier-slick rattlesnake country

Jump, land by a pool, trout skitter,

The clear sky. Deer tracks.

Bad place by a falls, boulders big as houses,

Lunch tied to belt,

I stemmed up a crack and almost fell

But rolled out safe on a ledge

                              and ambled on.

Quail chicks freeze underfoot, color of stone

Then run cheep! away, hen quail fussing.

Craggy west end of Benson Lake – after edging

Past dark creek pools on a long white slope –

Lookt down in the ice-black lake

                             lined with cliff

From far above: deep shimmering trout.

A lone duck in a gunsightpass

                             steep side hill

Through slide-aspen and talus, to the east end,

Down to grass, wading a wide smooth stream

Into camp. At last.

            By the rusty three-year-

Ago left-behind cookstove

Of the old trail crew,

Stoppt and swam and ate my lunch.

Gary Snyder

It's sandwich time.

Sprout.

All this new stuff goes on top

turn it over, turn it over

wait and water down

from the dark bottom

turn it inside out

let it spread through

Sift down even.

Watch it sprout.

A mind like compost.

Gary Snyder

Hiss.

Walcott, Whitebark Pine (Pinus albicaulis), 1931

Burning the small dead

branches

broke from beneath

thick spreading

whitebark pine.

a hundred summers

snowmelt        rock        and air

hiss in a twisted bough.

sierra granite;

Mt. Ritter—

black rock twice as old.

Deneb, Altair

windy fire

Gary Snyder

Now.

Our bodies are wild. The involuntary quick turn of the head at a shout, the vertigo at looking off a precipice, the heart-in-the-throat in a moment of danger, the catch of the breath, the quiet moments relaxing, staring, reflecting – all universal responses of this mammal body.

The body does not require the intercession of some conscious intellect to make it breathe, to keep the heart beating. It is to a great extent self-regulating, it is a life of its own. The world is our consciousness, and it surrounds us. There are more things in the mind, in the imagination, than "you" can keep track of – thoughts, memories, images, angers, delights, rise unbidden. The depths of the mind, the unconscious, are our inner wilderness areas, and that is where a bobcat is right now. 

I do not mean personal bobcats in personal psyches, but the bobcat that roams from dream to dream. The conscious agenda-planning ego occupies a very tiny territory, a little cubicle somewhere near the gate, keeping track of some of what goes in and out, and the rest takes care of itself. The body is, so to speak, in the mind. They are both wild.

Gary Snyder, from The Practice of the Wild

Snyder.

From 1991 and The Lannan Foundation Writers Uncensored series, Gary Snyder presents "If Trees Could Talk" ...

Hiss.

Nalbandyan, Autumn Morning at the Campfire, Relaxation, 1959

Burning the small dead

branches

broke from beneath

thick spreading

whitebark pine.

A hundred summers

snowmelt rock and air

hiss in a twisted bough.

Gary Snyder

Light.

Doisneau, Punished Child, 1959

FOR THE CHILDREN

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light

Gary Snyder 

Everything.

FOR the CHILDREN

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light

Gary Snyder

Know.

PINE TREE TOPS

In the blue night

frost haze, the sky glows

with the moon

pine tree tops

bend snow-blue, fade

into sky, frost, starlight.

The creak of boots.

Rabbit tracks, deer tracks,

what do we know.

Gary Snyder

Compost.

All this new stuff goes on top

turn it over, turn it over

wait and water down

from the dark bottom

turn it inside out

let it spread through

Sift down even.

Watch it sprout.

A mind like compost.

Gary Snyder