Conversations with a Soul (16 page)

Meredith was anxious to solve the mystery of the stranger who had positioned himself next to the artichoke stall.

Meredith and her alter egos have long inhabited English literature, particularly romance and mystery novels. Being there they have instructed us on how to deal with the problem of mysterious figures. Meredith needs to treat the mystery of the stranger as a puzzle. Little by little she needs to pry the mystery open, make connections, find explanations, and expose ambiguity to reason, until the mystery is no more.

But what if not all mysteries can survive such brutal dissection and demand that we simply accept them, whole, as they are, before they surrender their message? We deal with puzzles by resolving them. The greater mysteries, on the other hand, are unsolvable, they simply are! The best we can do is just be open to the wonder moments when the heart skips a beat because just for a moment we caught a glimpse of something, or someone, and, thankfully, awe silenced the questions and paved the way for insight.

In his introduction to
Cannery Row
, John Steinbeck explained his approach to a monumental task in these words:

How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise – the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream – be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book – to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.
⁴²

And thus it is with the gift of mystery.

Most times all we can do is be present, open and waiting.

There’s a great deal of difference between
my history
and
my story
, as there is between your history and your story. My history is merely the structural framework of no great value save to statistical bureaucrats or writers of obituaries.

My story is something very different.

My story is about a vast landscape of my own inner being; the precipitous failures and the long slow clambering back to self-acceptance. Sometimes, defined by the gentle urges to become a truth I am not yet and the glorious, exhilarating liberation of giving myself to something that
really
matters, or, conversely, immersing myself in a moment that is utterly and completely devoted to delight, serenaded by giggles and belly laughs. The story is about dreams and the 'ahaa' moments when new truth, which has been there all along, is recognized and celebrated.

And the questions!

Always the questions, most of which climb into my awareness, uninvited, yet once there, are impossible to dislodge, ignore or dismiss. Questions, as much at home in the concrete world in which I live, as they are in the mysterious silence of a cathedral; questions, which always seem to anticipate a conversation with the Soul.

Then, the mystery of those who have chosen to walk with me; lovers, friends, family members, some to share my journey for a few brief moments, others to be there for the long haul but all a part of my inner world, participants in
my story
.

Like Steinbeck’s flat worms, all this can be destroyed when exposed to the merciless dissection and inadequate answers of behavioural psychology or the cold categories of historical curiosity or the cruel demands of law or political decretum. Wonder takes flight in the presence of the Inquisitor who is driven to dig and pry and catalogue the mystery of my story until barely recognizable; like a once beautiful creature now preserved in formaldehyde and afloat in a bottle. The mystery can be dismissed and what remains can be slotted into shallow and clinically crafted categories. Is every good and noble urge merely the result of a repressed childhood or the pain of having been raised by an overbearing or needy parent? I think not!

How deeply and passionately I have learned to love those rare human beings who, without critical evaluation, have simply honoured the marvellous mystery of my story. My fellow travellers, who accept me as a being shaped by paradox, and legitimately entitled to be who I am.

This is the wonder land that so much can be contained in a single human life, and, if in my life, so too in the lives of others. Thus the wonder of my own being gives way to the recognition that all life is sacred for all living beings have an internal landscape as vast, mysterious and sacred as my own. And when we dismiss someone, for whatever reason, we remove from the cornucopia of life that which is not ours to remove.

I long ago felt that the only way for me to really get to know this world in which I live and with which I am engaged in a dialogue, is to walk the same route each day, and develop a respectful familiarity with its secret life. You will recognize that I was really on a quest to discern the patterns that governed and moulded the world about me. Measured in different ways and described in different terms it’s all about the patterns that admit us to understand the way things are.

Now, several years later, I know where the indian paintbrushes and where the wild snap-dragons grow, even when they have hibernated and disguised themselves as lifeless bundles of dead leaves. I know where the baby rabbits hide from foxes. I know where the seals and sea otters hunt for food and where the sanderlings scurry about looking for breakfast.

I have learned to love this world that constantly changes without - changing.

Both sides of the path to Point Joe are covered with mock heather, coastal buckwheat, and my favourite, California coastal sage. In early springtime the field is a canvass painted in shades of silver and green, redolent with the heady scent of sage. Come the thirsty season of summer, the greens become a drab, motley collection of browns and greys. Most of the bushes look like bundles of dry kindling with precious little scent of anything. Then, with late fall and the gentle rains, new shoots sprout. Buds on the cat-tails and pussy willows start to swell and soon the wonder of life calls forth green shoots. A transformation is under way. A pattern is being lived out and soon the life that flows through the dead branches will reveal itself in leaves and flowers.

This world, my world, has returned as I knew it would.

In April a short but spectacular wild flower season puts on a show. The indian paintbrushes come out of hibernation, blossom for a short while, then germinate and hide their seeds in the earth for the next season. Even the cymbidium orchids that live around my home in the Del Monte forest take their cue from changing seasons as to when to rest and when to put out their spikes.

This earth is a living matrix that participates in a constant ebb and flow of life
in order that life may continue
. So secret and critical are some of these patterns that we are only now learning that tiny changes in temperature can have a devastating impact on glaciers and ice shelves, changes that have the potential to destroy the life that depends upon stable ice packs.

Right alongside a small creek and under the shelter of some scrub oak, a grove of horsetail ferns have taken up residence. Now, it’s not as though this was some sudden decision on their part. Horse tail ferns grow from
rhizomes, and who can say where they come from? Apparently, these rhizomes can grow to become huge, sprawling 'creeping rootstocks' and may even
outweigh the above ground growth by a ratio of 100:1.

Some rhizomes are happy to sprawl about on the surface of the earth; some make a home for themselves just below the surface, whereas others love to burry themselves deep underground where they are safe from conditions that would kill most other plants. Nearly indestructible they allow rapid re-vegetation even after a severe fire. Because of this deep sanctuary that cheats death some botanists think that horse tail ferns have been around since the age of dinosaurs.

Now, something that has survived as long as that deserves respect, although I have never seen a horse’s tail that resembles a horsetail fern! To me, they look more like bottle cleaning brushes, but who am I to argue with the botanists who assign names?

The botanical name for horsetail ferns is
Equisetum
, from the Latin,
equus
,
'horse', and
seta
, 'bristle, animal hair' Strictly speaking, one could also add,
sylvaticum,
from the Latin,
sylva
, 'woods, forest', and
aticus 
'habitat'; hence we arrive at the delightful title of
Growing-in-the-woods-wild-horse-tail-ferns.

Some interesting claims have been made for the medicinal qualities of these ferns ranging from a dire warning about the poisonous nature of the plant to those of a certain Nicholas Culpepper, a popular seventeenth century herbalist, who wrote:

…
horsetail's beneficial properties (include) stopping bleeding, and treating ulcers, kidney stones, wounds, and skin inflammation. It is very powerful to stop bleeding, either inward or outward, the juice or the decoction being drunk, or the juice, decoction or distilled water applied outwardly... It also heals inward ulcers.... It solders together the tops of green wounds and cures all ruptures in children. The decoction taken in wine helps stone(s) and the distilled water drunk two or three times a day eases and strengthens the intestines and is effectual in a cough that comes by distillation from the head. The juice or distilled water used as a warm fomentation is of service in inflammations and breakings-out in the skin.
⁴³

Personally, I would err on the side of caution, especially since Carolus Linnaeus, another seventeenth century Swedish botanist and physician, observed that: ...
This species, among others, forms excellent food for horses in some parts of Sweden, but that cows are apt to lose their teeth by feeding on it and to be afflicted with diarrhoea.

Yet, for all their colourful history and almost indestructible rhizome rootage, horsetail ferns are as subject to the pattern of changing seasons as any other plant. Horsetail ferns need water, which is why they grow alongside the creek in the first place. During the dry summer months the water level in the creek falls to a mere trickle and the ferns disappear, becoming simply a handful of green sticks protruding from the ground. Walk by in July and you would never guess that anything rich and green grew here. Then, with the first autumn rains, the creek begins to flow again, and the bristles return to cloth the stems and justify the name of horsetail. By the time late spring comes around, the rainy season has all but gone and the horsetails are once again reduced to green sticks sans 'horse hair'.