reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Category Archives: nature


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light-blue and blonde. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

somewhere around 1984 or 1986 or so i totally splurged on a dress. it had a background of light blue with puffed-up shoulders that narrowed along my forearm to my wrist, like a juliet sleeve. the bodice was fitted and the dress was knee-ish length. it was a pricey $35 and i wore it only “for good”.

i’m pretty amazed thinking about that treasured dress because i am not really a light-blue person. now, i love light-blue sky and light-blue robin’s eggs and light-blue forget-me-nots and the lightish-blue denim jacket that was my poppo’s, but light-blue in general is not a color i wear.

were i to wear it, however, i would have the tones of this photograph…reeds and sky on an early spring day.

i could have stood and stared at the reeds for a long time. as it was, i did stand and stare at them for quite a while, lost in the ballet that was driven by the wind.

and in those moments, i never once thought about what is happening in the world right now, the chaos and destruction. instead, i was dancing with the reeds, immersed in light blue sky and blonde plumes.

at this point, we are finding it necessary to try and escape our thinking minds. overwrought with angst is not a good way to spend time. so we step out of time and hike or cook or write or give belly-bellies to our dogga. we dream of places to go and trips to take and projects to embark upon. we continue to sort and clean out, donate and toss. we don’t – we can’t – spend every single waking moment trying to solve something that we – alone – cannot solve.

somewhere along the line i gave away that light-blue-puffy-shouldered dress. i wonder if someone cut it up for a quilt, much like i will do with a little-house-on-the-prairie type dress i remember absolutely loving in 1982 and which i found in the dress-up-and-pretend bin downstairs. that dress had big layered ruffles – which apparently are back in style. as a person who is now somehow always peripheral to trending fashion, it’s surprising to see flouncy ruffles out and about.

the dirt trail, dancing reeds and unlimited sky don’t seem to care what i wear. their light-blue and blonde gift is not simply lack of apparel-judgment or vogue-couture-wincing.

their gift is what they offer to us in presence. engaged in the ballet, the dress-memories, the air around me, i learn – once again – to stand still in the center of the moment.

and for that i am grateful.

*****

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be a good rollie pollie. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

many, many years ago – when my children were little – they used to play a computer game called bugdom. it was based on perspective from – well – a bug’s life. the actual plot – as i recall – is way too contemporaneous now for comfort but the graphics – at the time – were fascinating and the mac version of this game was amazingly realistic. winding your way between bits of vegetation and rocks, you could feel immersed in bugdom as you – playing the part of a rollie pollie – try to save other bugs – like ladybugs – after an evil and tyrannical ambush of the bug kingdom. like i said, too close for comfort.

i often think about what things look like from a different perspective. it is essential as artists. the trying-to-stand-in-someone-else’s-shoes thing is important to me. things that are affecting bugdom are not just the things that are affecting me. since all of bugdom is interconnected, anything that is affecting one is, therefore, also affecting me. we try not to be so isolated – or cavalier – as to think that the plight of the ladybugs will not affect us rollie pollies.

so i get down on my knees to shoot photographs from a vantage point swinging on a snowdrop or a wild daffodil leaf. i sit on the ground to shoot pictures through the may apples. i take videos of caterpillars on their plane of existence, practically laying on the ground.

because everything changes when your perspective changes – when you allow for a shift in how you are looking at something, when you entertain empathy and compassion – when you stand in another’s shoes.

somewhere in the old romper room do-bee song i’m guessing there’s a line that says “do be a good rollie pollie.”

*****

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the woods. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

it had been two years. two years plus since we last hiked there. after the woods added a high ropes/adventure course we were less inclined to go there, less eager to go hike its trails. the tranquil quiet was interrupted with the sounds of groups on the contrived course, the echoes of planned adventure bouncing off ancient trees and the forest floor.

but the other day – on a blue-sky-slightly-warmer-less-windy day – we decided to go back. because it is still merely early-spring, the course wasn’t yet open, though the staff was there training. one of the guys – suspended in a harness on lines high above us – called down to us, telling us how happy he was to spend the day in the woods.

we set out on our trail, a bit eager to see how things might have changed, how the familiar might be a bit less familiar after so many seasons had passed.

seeing this much-trod-in-the-past place was sheer joy. there is something about knowing the bend in the path, something about knowing where the tiny ponds are tucked in the woods, something about knowing certain trees and where the green glow might be starting.

we took our news-weary eyes and placed them – instead – on the roots crossing the trail, on the rise and fall of our breathing. we focused on spring arriving in the woods in this place where we have spent so much time.

we were – gloriously – nowhere else for a couple hours.

“and into the forest i go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” (john muir)

*****

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the truth of the cattail. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

the sun was getting lower in the sky and was shining through the marsh as we walked past. we hadn’t hiked a long distance that day – only about five miles or so – but we had started late and it was time to mosey home and think about making dinner.

the shadows on the path ahead made me grab my camera to capture a picture. cattails.

their shadows so clear it left little doubt as to what they were, the cattails punctuated the gravel as the end of the trail led up to the trailhead. patterns across the path were spaced like college-ruled spiral notebooks or full and half rests scribed on staff paper.

throughout our hike i kept drawing attention to our shadows on this beautiful blue-sky-sunny day. they changed from a short-stumpy pair of people to two elongated-legged tall people. in every moment, clearly – people. those two people were us, but – were those shadows stamped in time – you could only tell that we were people. nothing more.

what will the shadows of this time look like, later on down the road? when the sun has completely set on a day when the values of this country are no longer upheld, how will those shadows appear? will they show the truth of all this malfeasance? what does corruption look like in a shadow? what do greedy, evil, soulless humans (and i use the term ‘humans’ loosely) look like in their shadows? can you tell they are greedy, evil, soulless?

there is no way to tell – by looking at the shadows of these cattails – the state of their inner being, the truth of the cattail. should we really wish to know we must be careful to discern their health or dis-ease by examining them more closely. we must be willing to know more about cattails and measure their well-being by applying this knowledge. we cannot simply look at their shadows – and not look at them, their environment and their impact on that environment – to determine their vigor, their fitness, their soundness, their dedicated synergy with the rest. the shadows don’t tell the story of stagnant water, dying ponds or an over-abundance of cattails toxically crowding out ecosystems, the risk of flooding or being a prime pest habitat, a dangerous breeding ground of illness.

we must be willing to look at the cattails for what they are, what they represent, how they are sharing space. we must be willing to discern their true impact – good or bad. we must look at the cattails themselves and not their shadowy shadows. anything less could kill the marsh and forever pollute the pond.

*****

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less wrinkles. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

“if i’m laden at all/i’m laden with sadness that everyone’s heart isn’t filled with the gladness of love for one another.” (he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother – bob russell/bobby scott)

when i look in the mirror these days i am struck by the lines around my eyes, the lines etched above my lips, the furrow etched into my brow. i wonder how they all arrived without my noticing, as if – at night, while i was sleeping – a clay sculpting tool had gently drawn lines in skin no longer as resilient as it had been.

i glance at photographs from merely five years ago – and then ten years ago – and am startled to see the difference. but i know what the last years have been and – so – i should not be surprised. these wrinkles have been earned.

for it has been a time.

we all have them – these timelines of challenge or disappointment or frustration or grief.

in the humanness we all share, it would seem prudent to share these heavy burdens, the stuff of life that is made easier with someone else to help lift them.

“so on we go/his welfare is my concern/no burden is he to bear, we’ll get there.”

but this last decade.

as is woven throughout the history of this country, the extraordinary of abject cruelty and its ugly head raise up and shock our belief in equality and kindness. this last decade.

the hypocrisy of institutions supposedly dedicated to the love of one another – to goodness – to compassion – shifts the ground under our feet and we have been gobsmacked by the betrayal. this last decade.

our very own communities have quaked, stormy, seismic shifts forming a crevasse between us – not merely a difference in opinion, but a difference in basic morality. we reel from the impact, from the air that is sucked from our lungs as we grok this. this last decade.

last week. my birthday. d’s homemade card next to my early morning coffee. the pink tulips from 20. dogga’s momma-kisses. the call from my girl and her husband. and that moment my son handed me a tiny carrot cake – remembering. i felt the light, the easing of the load, the gladness, the love. each time.

i do not understand the dedication to cruelty, to evil intention, to undermining others, to destruction, to the bandwagon of every-man-for-himself-every-woman-for-herself.

“it’s a long, long road from which there is no return/while we’re on the way to there why not share?”

i wonder how it might all be different.

i suspect there’d be far fewer furrows and creases and wrinkles.

“and the load doesn’t weigh me down at all. he ain’t heavy. he’s my brother.”

*****

NURTURE ME © 1995 kerri sherwood

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what will happen? [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

“sometimes hope is a radical act, sometimes a quietly merciful response, sometimes a second wind, or just an increased awareness of goodness and beauty.” (anne lamott)

he burst back in the front door exclaiming, “you have to go see!!”

for good reason.

the day lilies had poked through the leaves and dried stalks and, in the middle of all that brown – tucked up against the old brick wall – there was green.

the brick wall holds the warmth of the southern sun. nestled in that garden, the day lilies – an ordinary plant with nothing froufrou about it – were encouraged and nurtured. and so, even in the cold temperatures and the occasional snow flurry, the day lilies responded. gleefully. and their rising out of the dirt, their bright green of newness, gave me – us – hope. spring is here.

it would seem that people are not much different. there is a spring for ordinary people – with nothing froufrou about them – who are encouraged and nurtured. there is hope.

this country – filled with ordinary folks – has generally prided itself – congratulated itself – on its stance on human rights, on altruism, on its generosity of safety net programs. the melting pot that is the populace has been supported by a democracy that upholds humane values of fairness, equity, legality, goodness, kindness.

but it appears now we have been congratulating ourselves on something that was ticking its way out of existence, being usurped by intense greed and corruption, shallow conscience and deep-seated hatred. this source of our national pride is disintegrating right in front of us – being poisoned and stifled and ripped to shreds – and now it seems demolition is seconds away.

and there is nothing that the sun, the warm bricks, the insulating dry leaves and brush can do.

what will happen to the day lilies?

“hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. you wait and watch and work. you don’t give up.” (anne lamott)

*****

WATERSHED © 2004 kerri sherwood

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trifecta. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

it’s still there. at the bottom of the deck steps – stepping onto the patio – it is still there.

i don’t know where it came from, but suddenly this white heart appeared. it was at the end of a week when i really-really needed a heart to appear.

it is snowing right now as we work to write blogposts ahead. snowing! i honestly cannot think of anything i would like more at this moment.

tucked under a quilt, gazing out the window, the snow’s quiet is extraordinary. like after yesterday’s intense wind we just needed the blissful silence of a soft snowfall. it is calming my heart. the little vibration in my chest i can feel sometimes is absent. i know that any accumulation of this snowfall will be gone in a day or so – as the temperatures are expected to warm up – but for right now, it’s perfect.

while sorting through and cleaning out file cabinets and the attic upstairs i stumbled upon the binder of music i used for two of my recordings – let me take you back volume 1 and 2. they are both solo piano recordings of songs from the 60s and 70s. i put it aside, surprised to find it – particularly in that drawer – but continuing to work on the reorganization/purge.

but later – when it was time to go back downstairs i brought it right into my studio. i called d, flipped the binder open and started to play snippets of well-loved songs from our teens and twenties. i have this feeling that we could spend hours going through those songs, singing, reminiscing. and we might just do that. it was a balm to actually play – play!! – it’s been sooo long!! – and thinking of us singing along together makes me happy. maybe it’s a good snow day thing to do.

i will eventually bring the white heart inside. it will go with other heart rocks we have – or – maybe – it might go into my studio.

it is like a trifecta of goodness – the white heart, the snow, the binder.

i won’t question any of it. maybe divine intervention is just that way.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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in like a lion. [kerri’s blog on flawed wednesday]

it was a stunner of a day. brilliant sun, azure blue sky, wisps of clouds, hardly anyone else on the trail. we were in heaven. we needed to be outside, to go move, to see the beautiful river trail coming to life. they were easy miles to hike – we had to stop ourselves and turn around or we would have gone way too far.

the wind just arrived. just now. like a switch, it went from stillness outside to the swirling of wind, the noise of wind, the worry of wind. writing this ahead, it is saturday and extreme weather has and is taking its toll on the country. we have had a wind advisory and wind warnings now for days. we have been alerted.

i laid awake last night for hours. the rain and wind woke me up, but the state of things kept me up. the trees falling are only one of many things on the current angst-list.

i know that it is important to keep things in somewhat of a balance – to shimmy over to the side of seeing beauty, feeling peace, being present, particularly during these obscenely chaotic times here. but the things that are happening to this country are real – they are actually happening, and, as a citizen of this country, i wonder where it is that there may be an outer limit. my fear – one of the nightmonsters – is that there is no outer limit. cruelty knows no bounds and as noam chomsky is quoted, “…evil doesn’t even begin to approach it.”

if it gets too windy as we write we will move into another room, for right behind our pillows is a very tall pine and my imagination is working overtime. i can feel the vibration in my chest vibrating, so i know that i am on alert. this is an all-too-familiar feeling these days. we are all often in fight or flight mode now, it seems. acute stress.

the day after this day of brilliantness we had another hike, though shorter. we sat on the deck and soaked up the warmth, sipped wine, talked about inane topics that kept us strayed away from current events. we had a couple other days of early spring weather before the in-like-a-lion kicked in. i’ve always been heartened by the out-like-a-lamb and, each year, pretty much depend on it…full-fledged counting on this idiom.

i wish the same were true for the state of our nation. that even though march – less than two months into this corruption – came in like a lion – it would go out like a lamb.

but you can’t count on folklore for the weather or politics. both are chaotic and neither is haphazard. one is natural, and is a result of the interactions of scientific systems; the other is deliberately machinated, a result of amoral strategy and self-serving intention.

one has the potential to be a lamb. the other is just aggressive, with high kill rates.

in researching it is curious to me to read – now that we are talking about aggressive creatures – that the deadliest creature on earth is the mosquito. i’m guessing that many people are not aware of this and, to them, sans any research or factoids, the mosquito is merely a noisy nuisance. in reality, the mosquito – as a creature – poses the most mortal threat to humans.

sounds like this new administration. and i’d venture the same guess – that many people – particularly those who – with fox-jacked-up anger – threw their votes onto the dysfunctional red bandwagon – sans any research or factoids – are not aware and, to them, the noise is just that – noise.

the wind is picking up outside.

soon now, i will move into the next room.

because a real threat is a real threat.

*****

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goldening steps. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

the tree lit up as the sun began to sink. oranges, reds, it was golden, the moon next to it, hanging out in the late just-sprang-forward afternoon sky.

we were sitting on the deck in our adirondack chairs – on an unexpected beautiful, warm day. it was the first time we sat outside in the sun since november.

on the same day, we took a hike in the woods, our spirits lifting with each step taken without cold wind in our faces. though we hike on very cold days with very cold winds, this was a glorious day. golden, for sure.

and nature is the only essence with which to credit this golden day. nothing else. no one else.

though the White House et al credit themselves with “the golden age of america [is here]” it is beyond delusional and a disgusting display of fealty from the capitulating folks this prez placed into powerful positions. stripping rights, freedoms, safety from the populace, putting the economy into chaos, hunting down immigrants to whisk away into oblivion, cutting helping programs that aid people so that 1% might get richer, turning our nation into a pariah no longer trusted by the world…newsflash…this is not the golden age.

we are not the elite. we are those people who wish to collect social security, who wish to have healthcare through medicare or the affordable care act, who wish to afford groceries and housing, utilities and upkeep, who wish to have income-based repayment plans for the criminally predatory decades-long student loans that have been reigning our finances, who wish to have economic stability, who wish to travel without fear of stigma, who wish to live in a country with principles based on equality and compassion, who wish our gay adult son and our childbearingyears daughter to have rights and freedoms for their own decision-making about their relationships, their health, their bodies, any children they may or may not choose to have. i’ve said it before – we are the masses. we feel this.

but, just as the moment when an olympic athlete climbs atop a podium to collect a gold medal for this country and you can feel it down to your toes, we can also feel all the vile program cuts that hurt others, the deliberate and aggressive bigotry directed at others, the loss of trust, security, and safety, the absolute betrayal of members of the populace by this cruel administration. it is the darkest of times – for each of us, for this country. light is sinking lower, deep into the horizon. we are heading into the sunless rule of authoritarianism.

it is not just what affects us that affects us.

so how do we collectively influence the actual color of these days? how do we actually golden up these times – this “age” – for real? what magic wand do we wield as a people, together? what steps – pushing back – do we take – for those we love and – in the biggest and most inclusive picture of this nation and this world – for people who will never know who we are?

maybe our collective empathy and our raised voices will help. every step we take forward – speaking up, speaking out – even against the coldest of winds – is a step – a goldening step – taken for democracy.

*****

FIGHT FOR THE LIGHT FOR OTHERS – EVEN IF THEY DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE. (you make a difference © 2003 kerri sherwood)

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slow-blinking with the opossum. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

it seemed to trust us as we approached on the trail. this sweet opossum calmly stayed where it was even as we got closer. eventually, it ambled into the brush nearby, but, still, really close. we spoke to it in hushed tones, trying to reassure it that we meant no harm. i took a couple of photographs as it slow-blinked at me from under some grasses. it was a wonderful start to our hike, grounding us and pushing worries back.

“get outside!” kristy always ends the wander women video with this directive. she and annette have created a lifestyle of activity, of the outdoors, of community, of simple values. i’d venture a guess that we could be fast friends. they do not concern themselves with fashion or decorating trends or competition or vast material possessions. instead, their living is based on the certainty of mortality – of doing the best they can, the most they can, exploring and tapping all the goodness out of each day.

we were at REI the other day. we pored over backpacks and all-things-trail-friendly. we studied sunshirts and sleeping pads. i purchased two pairs of toe socks for hiking – my toes have issues with each other inside my hiking boots so we are hoping that these will help – in lieu of bandaids and walking funny. we are dedicated to our trails, even the local ones. tapping as much goodness out of each day seems a good plan, particularly in light of all the uncertainty that surrounds us.

i’m not sure how we could handle everything going on in the world if we did not get outside. even cold wind in our faces makes us feel more alive, more centered than anything else might. these days of beautiful weather have been gifts and – for a few minutes here or there – have helped us to set aside our worries and angst about the direction of this country.

i happen to know – really – that the sweet opossum did not have the same fixation on the state of the nation. it merely had basic needs to be met…safety being one of the most basic.

i suppose we are much like this critter. from somewhere high above – looking down at us – we probably look much the same. cautiously watching as others approach, trying to discern whether or not they are safe or if they pose a threat. retreating to the underbrush, slow-blinking at the intruders – still trying to discern their intent, whether or not they will interact.

it sounds a lot like going to the grocery store these days.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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