Another dream.
I’m gently bathing a roadrunner. I can feel the weight of the bird in my hands and the softness of it’s feathers. I am careful to lather and rinse it’s bosom, beneath it’s wings, around it’s fragile neck. It’s larger than a normal roadrunner; the size of a small peacock. It’s plumage is a soft white rather than the common speckled brown. It’s calm in my hands as I massage and wash it’s whole body. There is a kinship, an innocent love, a familiarity.
Animals, plants, stones, and seasons return to us as guides over and again in our lifetimes. Just as we know our human friends through continual support and gaining amity, to truly know an ally is in the return, the reoccurrence of contact. Sometimes, perhaps, it occurs just in symbol or thought that the magnetism of an ally’s character can help steer our choices or actions.
I grew up very near the desert southwest in Tarrant County, Texas where the roadrunner was the mascot of my elementary school. It wasn’t uncommon to see these quick birds in the backyard or crossing quiet roads, though, it always felt there was a touch of luck in catching a glimpse. One minute there, the next quickly disappearing behind tall grass or some weathered lumber.
As a child, I prided myself on being fast like a roadrunner; sprinting to win races on field day. I found satisfaction in the accomplishment of a blue ribbon because I had been born with asthma. First place in a sprint somehow symbolized a control over my respiratory illness. Through my dedication to get to the other side of the field I felt I won a battle against disease. While the asthma has faded, my competitive nature still thrives and my love of crossing land with nimble feet endures.
Native peoples of the desert southwest have viewed the roadrunner as a sacred animal, bringing good luck and protecting against wicked energies. They are strong and resilient birds whose diets can include, on occasion, venomous rattlesnakes and scorpions, alongside the more consistent meals of insects, lizards, rodents, fruit, and other birds. Perhaps the most interesting thing to note is the zygodactyl shape of the roadrunners foot; an X. With two toes facing forward and two facing back, the roadrunner’s tracks inspire a touch of bewilderment and inspiration. Imagine trying to follow which way an ‘x’ track is going; hence, from a mystic angle the roadrunner is considered a defense against malignant spirits.
Another common name for the roadrunner is chaparral bird. Enter plant ally Larrea tridentata of the Zygophyllaceae family. Chaparral, or creosote bush, is a very resinous, drought-tolerant shrub. Chaparral uses it’s cloning capabilities to propagate as we’ve seen with the oldest known creosote bush in the Mojave Desert, named the King Clone. It is nearly 12,000 years old. Talk about perseverance! This is a powerful energetic medicinal; an adaptable spirit able to regenerate in it’s singularity, clone after clone. Larrea can support us in enhancing clarity and fortifying boundaries to moving towards our higher capabilities.
Like many resinous plants, it has a strong resistance to bugs and other prey. The volatile oil it naturally produces creates boundaries that protect it. When we use chaparral medicine as a guide, we can imagine our own regulating qualities that support and preserve us from unwanted attention. Just like the X tracks of the roadrunner, we can cover ourselves with veils. And, just like the roadrunner that can travel between places with this protection, the pervading scent of Chaparral can easily move through the air via the aid of water.
After a rain, Larrea‘s aroma permeates the air. If you’ve lived in an area with Chaparral, you know this experience. Imagine the influence this would have just like any other familiar scent that sparks remembrance. Scent takes us on a short journey from the present to another time that is familiar and cleanses our mind of whatever was currently shuffling around up in our noggin. Rain cleanses us, scent cleanses us, and the two together is an opportunity to distill a crispness to our experience, a periphery to elevate perception.
In places of drought, water is cached away in edges, crevices, vegetation, and beneath the soil. We can find it on the fringe of the day; catching dew from plants before it is evaporated by the sun. These borders, where water is gathered and dispersed in cycles, are where we can seek lucidity with our intuition. In Celtic shamanic tradition the mist is a dynamic place of portal between this world and the other. It’s in the foggy margins that we are propelled to seek nourishment and deeper knowing. In the desert southwest, the magnetism between water and heat makes waves in the air, pools of sweat on our skin, a seeking with a thirst. The mirage of water prompts us forward. The heat in the desert can suck us dry and draw out of us a new perception, if however, a bit hallucinatory. We can keep our wits about us and hunt out where the water hangs. Near the cottonwoods we build our homes, we drive our cattle to the creeks. We build swimming pools and lakes. The birds build their nests close to that of the beavers and the toads. Life is drawn towards water, exists because of it.
So, what does the heat pull from us? We seek shade. We are propelled to move until we find it. What is the quality of that movement? I go outside and I seem to dance the flow of water. The heat makes my energy somewhat low, but I am moving what soothes me, currents of the water in my body echo out with the insects. I dance water in places that feel hot and dry. I cool myself off by engaging with the heat, becoming an edge, a taproot of water; it is smooth, direct, working away at my borders. What sort of energetic shift does it take to become an animal of the desert? How do we preserve water in our actions? How do we conserve ourselves against the heat? I imagine the roadrunner, camouflaged in it’s terrain, speeding from bush to bush in it’s seeking of sustenance.
The dichotomy of fire and water are wrapped up in the potentials of Chaparral, as well. When I take a few drops of Chaparral essence, I sense a rooting into my sternum; a place of knowing and strength near the heart. The moving waters of my emotions are coiling around the fire of action. This is a deep clarity and a calmness that moves me forward with a grounded sense of purpose. Elongated breaths that expand and contract. Like the terrestrial power of the roadrunner who is fierce in it’s movements, Chaparral’s essence seem to echo this intention; from here to there with confidence.
With Ephemeral Movement, grounding into the self doesn’t always come before grounding into a place. Sometimes, I let the movement and the improvisation settle me into where I am at physically and then where I am internally unfolds. I make an agreement to listen to the place and the body, see my surroundings, and move. But, in the return to a place I’ve danced before, there is a familiarity and comfort of the known. The same confidence we can gather from knowing our internal landscape can also come from a pilgrimage or interaction with a familiar landscape in the world that offers an assurance of where/who we are.
The landscape I danced around as a little girl is filled with memories, sensations, and familiar flora. Crab grass, henbit, crepe myrtle, blackberry, bull thistle, yellow bitter weed, burrs and stickers; plants stereotypical of my childhood that I haven’t seen in years. Returning to them has a significance, like seeing an old friend. I adore all these plants and the way they persevere in the landscape and in my memory. This landscape is an ally to me now. I notice that the plants that are the most hardiest are the roughest, prickly ones. The kind that get stuck to your pants when you brush by or need gloves and a sharp blade to remove when overgrown. Their boundaries are clear. This assuredness of boundary is kin to that of chaparral and of the roadrunner.
These guides are a continuation of the examination of the symbol ‘X’ and the shield we build in our communities. In the previous post about Gebo, the X was an exchange focused more on reciprocity. Of course, it is essential that give and take should be balanced. However, if you do not know how to say ‘no’, how can you truly ever say ‘yes’? Becoming sure of what truly feeds us, what we need for ourselves, what our highest motivations are, is crucial to the gift-giving power of the X. Just as the X shows an exchange of energy, it also illustrates a boundary. This symbol is powerful in supporting our needs for space when we stand behind it rather than beside it, like the shield of the hero who can take rest behind it’s partition.
If we are the roadrunner, we clearly lay out a trail that says, “Don’t follow me.”; If we are the chaparral, we show through our self-sufficiency that it is a time of self-guided direction. If we are a bull-thistle radiating out to the sun in a familiar backyard, we say, “Hey! Don’t step here!”. There are times in our lives where we must be more bristly; when our boundaries are a bit farther out than normal so that we may ‘clean house’ with the rinsing waters of space and time. If you exchange too much without feeding your inner desire and drive, you offer up a pathway for discomfort and disease that can harm in subtle but lasting ways. Take the time to bathe the white roadrunner of your spirit, smother yourself in the smoke of burning chaparral, let the rain cleanse you, let aroma take you on a journey, sprint with direction to a landscape that feeds your soul, put out your bristles when you need alone time, move yourself through the heat of high noon with a force. Seek and meet allies that support you. Say ‘no’ when you need to and ‘yes’ when you want to.
My only request is that you say ‘yes’ to sunscreen and ‘no, thanks’ to stagnancy, because we all know still water is a birthing ground for mosquitos.
Keep discovering new edges, expanding your periphery, and establishing healthy boundaries.
Happy Summer Solstice!
Ephemeral Movement 
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