Altered Landscape

Springtime comes in tight buds ready to burst forth. I mark the shifting season to warmer days with the cottonwood bud harvest. The nearly sickly sweet smell of resin sticking to my fingertips and busy hands tipping bud from stem over and again. I collect them to infuse for six weeks in oil and make salve, otherwise known as Balm of Gilead, it is one of the best all-purpose healing salves made from this prolific and giving tree. Harvesting only from those fallen bits the wind knocks to the ground, I hum to myself (and really to the tree and birds and just-greening grass) sweet little songs of thanks. I feel my hands reverberating motions from times past, connecting me to other wise-women and wortcunning souls that found the inter-connective medicine in relating with the other-than-human world.

I’m not the only one seeking out these juicy buds. I wait for the recent snowfall to melt so I can gather from the six cottonwood sisters in the back acre near our home. Finally, the sun is out, the snow has cleared, and every twig in sight has been carefully cleaned! Fresh deer scat surrounds. If I’m completely honest, my eagerness drops into a frustrated disappointment. My cheeks flush red and I rattle off some expletive comments about the deer. Once the steam of my indignation evaporates, I laugh at myself. What a funny creature, the human, a long history of thinking that anything we see is truly ours for the taking. The next time I visit the cottonwood sisters I bring slices of apples and sing out songs. I know that it will only encourage the deer to return, but if I can invite the wildlife closer to my hearth and heart, I will. If our backyard can be a haven (even with our dog barking guard) then mote it be.

My relationship with the cottonwoods of the front range has deepened every year because of this harvest. When I smell the resin I am transported into the deep-rooted, grounded, and open-hearted energy of this tree. The years when I am too busy or not in close proximity to a cottonwood budding are deeply felt like I’ve missed a friend passing through town and I won’t have another chance to see them for a year. Of course, the cottonwoods are here year round, I can visit them every day if I like. However, the seasonal changes that tether the shifts in temperature and angle of the sun are what pull me along through the year. These altered landscapes buoy me.

I am an altered landscape in my encounters. I am changed when I step outside. I am a shifting form as I age and most lately, in my transition into motherhood. I waxed warm, full, and heavy like the moon when she fills the night and as my belly waned with the baby in my arms, new seasons have penetrated every fiber of my being. I have never loved so much and I have never felt every moment so deeply. New griefs have swelled in me–ones I knew I would meet and others I didn’t realize would crash so heavy. Time slows and stretches around us. I can feel my ancestors around every corner and a sense of hope, safety, and trust that was elusive in my young adulthood where everything felt like it was either behind me or before me and I couldn’t touch a contented joy in the present. Now I feel like the cottonwood tree, strong, full-bodied, grounded, and capable of unlocking reserves of energy and will to overcome any obstacle. More gentle and giving.

I’m also more vulnerable than I’ve ever been. I live in the land of the bittersweet, of the magnificent beauty, and also so aware of how much there is to lose. Too much. And in this process, I allow myself to cut ties, let go of, and peacefully push what no longer serves me onto the current that flows away, like a prayer on a flower floating downstream. I acknowledge what I’ve sacrificed, willingly, of my body, lifestyle, relationships, and career to raise this baby. I’m open to different outcomes on the plans I had previously laid. My body moves differently and my personal practices of ritual, pilgrimage, and daily habits have shifted, some have altogether been released. Some are stronger than ever. Post-fourth-trimester has been a time of editing, reworking my systems of work, creativity, and self-care to include the little one and recover my own creative force.

It’s meant slowing down. Like REALLY going slow and having a very tentative idea of how the day, week, or any moment will unfold. This realization has been an absolute treasure. To actually live the tempo that my body has yearned for, a pace that I imagine most bodies crave. I have picked up and put down the same project days on end with large swaths of time in-between before it is complete. The baby joins me to pick up the fallen cottonwood twigs. A day later I sit beside him while he plays and I break off the buds. He needs me and so I set it aside for days before I finally get them all prepped and into a jar of oil. We set out again to pick up more sticks and days later this next batch of buds is in oil. I strain an infusion and it’s days before I can decant. Piles of laundry remain just so, in piles, clean and not folded. A dye pot sits dirty on the kitchen floor for a week. The vacuum waits next to the couch. The recycling makes it from the kitchen to the doorway and the next day the porch and the next the bin. So many different tasks stringed together by an ever-shifting attention. And I do complete them! Or, I let them go like those ephemeral flowers floating away from me with an “oh, well”. An orderly chaos. A slow, organic medicine.

We weren’t meant to live in the cultural consciousness that has unfolded, the one that says “do more, be more, consume more, prove your worth” and yet so many of us are wrapped up in the race. It’s dangerous to step out of a moving vehicle. It’s all about learning how to fall, how to let go, how to learn what we can give up on, how to utilize timing. It’s a tender and empowering moment, to “give up”. So often that phrase is used in a negative light like you’re not trying hard enough in some way. The other side is acknowledging the harmful pressure of holding on to something that hurts. Or it could be an offering, a raising up. It’s all about the situation and your own needs.

Like the cottonwood tree, I give up pieces of myself and my previous agendas so that they can be transmuted into medicine, into other avenues of life, particularly this little one’s well-being. I drop these extra branches so that I can fully show up. I don’t lose myself in this act of letting go. I’m more complete because of it. I know that whatever I release like compost will be given back to new life.

Elders in the herbal world often say “This is your birthright” when speaking on plant medicine knowledge. It is our birthright and it’s not just physical medicine, it’s a relationship and a way of life to be right with the world. To be along for the ride on the web of life, to know the neighbors (all of them human or not), to bud in the spring, fruit in the summer, harvest in the fall, and rest in the winter. I’ve learned through years of building relationship with the other-than-human world that a slow tempo is the tempo to move by (while still acknowledging there are times to move swiftly and with purpose). It’s a difficult pace to hold when everyone around you seems to be moving constantly and at such high speeds. Generally though, everyone has to take a break. Maybe the slowness can seep into those moments of pause and help reestablish a new rhythm for others to join. All of us are capable of shifting our world through the act of attention. Giving and receiving is a practice of connection and it doesn’t have to look any one way.

My body, my life, my world is an altered landscape, shifting, changing, expanding and contracting in response to the elements it comes in contact with. I’m holding this ephemeral principle so gently in all of its complexity–a wave of bittersweet, tender pain in acknowledging that everything changes. My heart is so full, sticky and swollen like a bud about to burst forth. I drop the burden of branches I no longer need to hold, I sway in my body, and sing with the wind. I pick up new ways of being and move forward season after season.

written by, and will continue to be written by a real, live human and not an AI program