New Year's Bunny

New Year’s Day, and up pops a bunny rabbit to greet us.

The appearance of wild animals has always been a good omen for me of the endurance of life. When Mum died, two deer wandered across the snowy field ; when our grey cat Gato died, a stag deer stood and watched, then scooted off into deep snow; when our black cat Negra died, a cawing raven landed on a tall elm tree, then winged off into a clear blue sky. Whenever deer, foxes, wolves, turkeys, even raccoons and skunks cross the landscape, I feel a frisson of excitement that the wild is right here outside our window. Now, just after the winter solstice, as the days get longer and a new year is upon us, rabbit tracks in the snow lead to a bundle huddled up facing into the sun, sheltered against the cold wind. The thermometer reads minus 20 Celsius out there,  but it is nice and toasty by the wood-fire in our sunny house.

May the New Year bring health and happiness - and occasional encounters with the magnificent wild - to you and yours.

Festive Season's Ice

With an ironic nod to the holidays, the elements got together to pack a heavy wallop over the festive season - a cluster bomb of snow, ice, pellets, and freezing rain. The landscape became decked in a lethal, startlingly beautiful coat. Nature can indeed cause havoc, as residents of New Orleans, Fukushima, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Philippines, Mexico City, Haiti, Chile, Ethiopia, Somalia, for example, can readily attest with their heavy loss of life from hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, floods, droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions…. For many hundreds of thousands from the Great Lakes to the eastern seaboard, the Christmas week ice storm must have been one long  nightmare with lengthy power outages which continue yet for some. Thankfully though, fatalities were low.

For our visiting friends and us on a convivial Christmas Eve, the scene around us was dream-like and spectacular in its sparkling splendour. A lone deer high-tailed it off up the hill, leaving not a trace as she negotiated the crusty ice without penetrating it. We walked in reverence, as if on glass, treading gingerly, taking in the magical sparkling of the grasses and branches coated in thick ice. The setting sun cast long late-afternoon shadows atop the white surface.

With extended cold and sunshine, the light and ice show lasted for days, a brief power outage proving to be only a minor inconvenience. As we wait for the accumulation to slide off the roof in one momentous crash, we are more aware than ever of the treacherous, beauteous, humbling nature of ice.  

Poet Patrick Lane on looking for the beauty in life

Blue Morpho butterfly

I am currently most of the way through reading There is a Season by British Columbia author Patrick Lane. Gifted me by my good friend Barry Olshen, it is an absorbing read. The author writes in haunting detail of the demons of life that he has struggled with, but a deep appreciation of beauty experienced through  reverence for his garden and the act of gardening shines through the book. I was captivated to read the following, published in the Globe & Mail, on July 5, 2013:

At 74, Patrick Lane remains one of Canada’s most celebrated poets. Last week, he was named to the Order of Canada. And last month he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna – particularly meaningful since the school is just down the road from Vernon, where Mr. Lane grew up and spent his early years scrounging a living. In his address to the convocation, he spoke powerfully of those tough, formative years and, in particular, of an extraordinary incident that has affected his life ever since. It taught him the value of beauty. When he finished, there was silence, followed by rapturous applause.

By Patrick Lane

Back in early December of 1958, I was 19 years old, living with my wife and baby boy in a two-room apple picker’s shack a few miles down the road from here. I had a job driving dump truck for a two-bit outfit that was working on a short stretch of highway just down the hill from where this university was built so many years later. I remember leaving the shack and walking out to stand by the highway in the wind and snow. I stood there shivering in my canvas coat as I waited to be picked up by the grader operator in his rusted pickup truck. The sky was hard and grey. Its only gift that winter day was ice disguised as a fragile, bitter snow.

As I stood there in the false dawn, I looked up for a moment and as I did an iridescent blue butterfly the size of my palm fluttered down and rested on the sleeve of my coat just above my wrist. It was winter, it was cold and I knew the Okanagan Valley where I had lived most of my young life did not harbour huge, shiny blue butterflies, not even in summer. I remember stripping off my gloves and cupping the insect in my hands, lifting that exquisite creature to the warmth of my mouth in the hope I could save it from the cold. I breathed upon the butterfly with the helplessness we all have when we are faced with an impossible and inevitable death, be it a quail or crow, gopher, hawk, child or dog. I cupped that delicate butterfly in the hollow of my hands and ran back to the picker’s shack in the hope that somehow the warmth from the morning fire in the woodstove might save it, but when I reached the door and opened my hands, the butterfly died.

I do not know what strange Santa Anna, Squamish or Sirocco jet-stream wind blew that sapphire butterfly from far off Mexico, Congo or the Philippines to this valley. I only know the butterfly found its last moments in my hands. I have never forgotten it and know the encounter changed me. There are mornings in our lives when beauty falls into our hands and when that happens, we must do what we can to nurture and protect it. That we sometimes fail must never preclude our striving. The day the beautiful creature died in my hands, I looked up into the dome of the hard, cold sky and I swore to whatever great spirit resided there in the dark clouds that I would live my life to the full and, above all, I would treasure beauty. I swore, too, that I’d believe in honesty, faithfulness, love and truth. The words I spoke were the huge abstractions the young sometimes use, but I promised them to myself and, now, more than half a century later, I stand here in front of your young minds, your creative spirits, your beautiful lives, and I can tell you that I have tried.

I told myself that year and in the subsequent years in the sawmill crews and construction gangs I worked with that I would become a writer, a poet, a man who would create an imagined world out of the world I lived in, that I would witness my life and the lives of others with words. The years went by filled with the tragedies and losses that all our lives are filled with. My brother’s early death, my father’s murder, my divorce and the loss of my children did not change the promises I made. There were times I lived a dissolute, irresponsible and destructive life. There were times, too, when I was depressed and wretched, but I continued to believe in spite of my weaknesses and fears. I wandered the world and as I did I wrote of the lives that shared my times. And I wrote of this Okanagan Valley, its lakes and hills, its stones, cacti, cutthroat trout, magpies, rattlesnakes and, yes, its butterflies.

What I have told you is a story. It arose from my life for where else but from a life can a story come? What I promise each of you is that there will come a day or night, a morning or evening when something as rare and fine as a blue sapphire butterfly will fall into your hands from a cold sky, a fearful child will climb into your bed and cleave to you, a woman or man will weep, will laugh, will sleep with you in the sure belief that the one they abide with is governed by a good and honest love. No matter the degrees you have earned and the knowledge you have accumulated, remember to believe in yourselves, to believe in each other. In a world as fearful as our present one, I ask that you not be afraid. Today is merely an hour. Remember in the time ahead of you to hold out your hands so that beauty may fall safely into them and find a place – however briefly – to rest.

Revelation Rock

She exposes herself daily,

revealing beauty, 

radiating light and warmth.

She is ever-present, reflective

facing outward to the heavens,

downward underwater.

By night, she is adorned by stars,

wafted over by Northern Lights,

traversed by the moon.

She is a rock in a quarzite range,

a permanent feature,

an aura, an earthly spirit.

We are born, we dream,

we grow strong, we fade

back in to the forest floor.

Revelation Rock remains.

Germany's Energiewende

As here in Ontario and most of Canada we “fiddle while Rome burns” over the aesthetic value (yes, they are an eyesore to some) of wind turbines on our local horizon, Germany proceeds with its breathtakingly ambitious far-sighted plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80- 95%  and convert to 60% renewable energy from 2010 to 2050. What’s not to like about this national approach, particularly with the emphasis on democratization through local production and ownership?

 

Energy transition in Germany

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Energiewende (German for Energy transition) is the transition by Germany to a sustainable economy by means of renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable development. The final goal is the abolition of coal and other non-renewable energy. Renewable energy encompasses wind, biomass (such as landfill gas and sewage gas),hydropower, solar power (thermal and photovoltaic), geothermal, and ocean power. These renewable sources are to serve as an alternative to fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) and nuclear fuel (uranium).

Piecemeal measures often have only limited potential, so a timely implementation for this transition requires multiple approaches in parallel. Energy conservation and improvements in energy efficiency thus play a major role. An example of an effective energy conservation measure is improved insulation for buildings; an example of improved energy efficiency is co-generation of heat and power. Smart electric meters can schedule energy consumption for times when electricity is available inexpensively.

An example of a comprehensive approach is DESERTEC. This concept looks at dramatically expanding the production of electricity from adjustable solar thermal power plants in southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Linking the electricity transmission networks of these regions would supplement the variable renewable energy available locally with surpluses and adjustable renewable energy sources from other regions.

The term

This term was the title of a 1980 publication by the German Öko-Institut, calling for the complete abandonment of nuclear and petroleum energy. On the 16th of February of that year the German Federal Ministry of the Environment also hosted a symposium in Berlin, called Energiewende – Atomausstieg und Klimaschutz (Energy Transition: Nuclear Phase-Out and Climate Protection). The views of the Öko-Institut, initially so strongly opposed, have gradually become common knowledge in energy policy. In the following decades the term expanded in scope; in its present form it dates back to at least 2002.

Energiewende designates a significant change in energy policy: The term encompasses a reorientation of policy from demand to supply and a shift from centralized to distributed generation (for example, producing heat and power in very small cogeneration units), which should replace overproduction and avoidable energy consumption with energy-saving measures and increased efficiency.

In a broader sense this transition also entails a democratization of energy: In the traditional energy industry, a few large companies with large centralized power stations dominate the market as an oligopoly and consequently amass a worrisome level of both economic and political power. Renewable energies, in contrast, can as a rule be established in a decentralized manner. Public wind farms and solar parks can involve many citizens directly in energy production. Photovoltaic systems can even be set up by individuals. Municipal utilities can also benefit citizens financially, while the conventional energy industry profits a relatively small number of shareholders. Also significant, the decentralized structure of renewable energies enables creation of value locally and minimizes capital outflows from a region. Renewable energy sources therefore play an increasingly important role in municipal energy policy, and local governments often promote them.

Status

The key policy document outlining the Energiewende was published by the German government in September 2010, some six months before the Fukushima nuclear accident. Legislative support was passed in 2011. Important aspects include:

·                    greenhouse gas reductions: 80–95% reduction by 2050

·                    renewable energy targets: 60% share by 2050 (renewables broadly defined as hydro, solar                     and wind power)

·                    energy efficiency: electricity efficiency up by 50% by 2050

·                    an associated research and development drive

The policy has been embraced by the German federal government and has resulted in a huge expansion of renewables, particularly wind power. Germany's share of renewables has increased from around 5% in 1999 to 22.9% in 2012, reaching close to the OECD average of 18% usage of renewables. Producers have been guaranteed a fixed feed-in tariff for 20 years, guaranteeing a fixed income. Energy co-operatives have been created, and efforts were made to decentralize control and profits. The large energy companies have a disproportionately small share of the renewables market. Nuclear power plants were closed, and the existing 9 plants will close earlier than planned for, in 2022.

She doesn't belong to me...

Exactly six weeks after our black cat Negra left the land of the living – yes, on a Wednesday -  I found myself wandering in a mystic trance under the canopy of massive hemlock trees in Killarney Provincial Park. The dappled low late-afternoon sunlight through the trees was beguiling. My fellow walker David sensed my need for space and contemplation. He said my feet danced over the ground as I stepped as if on air. As I looked up through the trees beyond the sinking sun to the blue sky above, a resplendent yellow-leaved trembling aspen glittered with a beckoning aura, surrounded by the towering hemlocks.

The ravens had come calling when time came for Negra to depart. Here, they came again, led me to this hallowed old-forest grove, releasing her spirit to the great beyond. As we left the forest and canoed back out into the bright light of the lake, a loon surfaced just ahead of us then dived into the depths once more.

When I got back home after our intoxicating, magical days and nights in the back-country of Killarney, the Naxos marble stone that I placed at Negra’s head above where she is buried had vanished. Another animal probably took off with it to furnish her den. That’s OK. After all, she doesn’t belong to me. She belongs to the earth.

Numen: The Nature of Plants

This original article was posted on www.Mercola.com on September 14, 2013. The points contained are a crystallization of my own belief in the vitality of plants and our synergy with them for our food, our medicine, and our soul.

By Dr. Mercola

Numen is the animated force in all things living, and this is strongly demonstrated, although often taken for granted, in plants.

Even our DNA contains much of the same material found in the plant world, which gives new meaning to the idea of healing plants.

It’s a scientific fact that is explored, fascinatingly, in the documentary Numen: The Nature of Plants. As Bill Mitchell, ND, naturopath and co-founder of Bastyr University stated in the film:

“You’re as much carrot as you are a kangaroo, as you are a bird. A lot of that DNA, that memory comes from the very origins of life.”

Herbalism Is the Oldest System of Healing on the Planet

The use of plants as medicine is one of the only forms of healing that’s embraced by every culture and ethnicity, and that has endured since ancient times and is still in use today in most areas of the world.

What makes this all the more intriguing is that how and why plants work is still largely a mystery. Modern science can uncover cells, molecules and atoms, but science cannot fully explain the healing nature of plants, or the intricacy and complexity of life.

One only needs to view the amazing time-lapsed photos of sprouting seeds and flowers blooming in the video below to appreciate this…

Herbs, Like Foods, Are Complementary to Human Health

In the past I have regarded herbs, in many cases, as an alternative to drugs, useful for treating various symptoms but not to treat the underlying cause. I have since revised my opinion on this quite significantly, and now realize that herbs can help support your health from a very basic level, just as foods do.

When I interviewed Donnie Yance, who is a clinical master herbalist, he explained that foods and herbs share quite a few similarities, including being pleiotropic - which means they produce more than one effect.

This is expanded on in Numen, which explains that the complex mix of chemicals in plants work synergistically to address underlying imbalances in your body that may lead to disease.

As herbalist Matthew Wood said:

“It is very seldom that herbs are strong enough to kill germs. A few of them can, but then they become drugs. Killing germs isn't how traditional medicine works.

It works instead by changing the environment, working to address imbalances in organ systems and tissue states, not targeting a specific bacteria with a single chemical extracted from a plant or synthesized in a lab.”

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, you could walk into a drug store and find hundreds of herbal extracts for sale. Upwards of 90 percent of the population at that time knew how to use the medicinal plants growing in their backyards to treat common illnesses and injuries; they had to, as this was virtually the only ‘medicine’ available.

With the rise of what is now known as conventional allopathic medicine shortly before World War One, herbalism slowly fell out of favor and became to be thought of as folk medicine. Rather than viewing nature as the source of healing, as had been done for centuries, people began to view drugs and other ‘modern’ healing methods as superior.

We’re Now Separated from Our Natural Roots

When you shop for food in a grocery store, you’re completely removed from the natural process used to grow your food. And in many cases, that ‘natural process,’ too, has been transformed into an industrial process that is at the heart of mass food production.

This is but one example of our increased separation from nature, a state that often leads people to feel significantly unbalanced. Said Ken Ausubel, CEO and founder of Bioneers:

“If there’s been a single disconnect in Western civilization, it’s this idea that somehow we’re separate or distinct from nature, when in fact the opposite is true… we’re connected to the ecosystems around us and we can really only be healthy when the land and the air and the water around us are also healthy. And if they’re not, it’s going to show up in our physical well-being.”

Now, with the US spending more on health care than any other industrialized nation, while at the same time experiencing soaring rates of chronic disease, it has perhaps never been more evident that our disconnectedness from nature is backfiring.

Environmental Pollution Is Poisoning Humans, Too

Infertility, immune system disorders, obesity, and other chronic illness are on the rise, and it’s becoming very clear that environmental chemicals are at least partly to blame. Yet, there is still a reluctance to acknowledge that when you poison nature, it is akin to poisoning yourself. The average American has 148 chemicals in his or her body, and this chemical exposure begins in your mother’s womb.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, like phthalates and bisphenol-A, are interfering with hormones and linked to the rise in male birth defects and testicular cancer in young men. You’re exposed not only when you use products containing them, but plastics containing these chemicals are dumped into the environment, where the chemicals enter waterways, with unknown effects.

“At the molecular level we’re wreaking havoc, and then that cascades up to the cellular and organism and ecosystem level,” said Martha Herbert, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Healing Is About Wholeness, Not Parts

Modern medicine excels at treating emergencies and certain serious illnesses, like bacterial infections, yet often misses the mark when it comes to healing other more subtle, yet no less devastating, conditions.

Physicians often rely on lab tests and blood work over the patient’s own words, and may use this information as proof that nothing is wrong, when in fact the person still feels tired, foggy or depressed. Part of the problem is the breaking down of a whole person to a set of parts and evaluating each organ in isolation from the rest of the body. Another part is ignoring the bigger picture, which is that lab tests do not give the whole story of a patient. As Tieraona Low Dog, MD, said:

“I think the truth is many people have a kind of soul sickness, they have a soul pain, a spirit pain. And you can’t find it in laboratory values, you can’t find it in a scan, but in no way does that make it less real.”

Unfortunately, conventional medicine is not well equipped to deal with these types of emotional pain or other underlying conditions that modern medical tests miss. This is also evidenced by many physicians’ complete lack of attention to lifestyle factors that could be influencing their patients’ health, like sleep, stress, and diet… they don’t tell you that a trip to the farmer’s market for healthy food and perhaps some herbal preparations may hold the cures you’ve been searching for.

Nature Is the Source of Healing: Whole Plant Medicine

Most synthetic medications are based on compounds in plants. Scientists cannot create these substances but must, rather, try to make copies, But in their synthetic models they often end up with compounds that your body doesn’t recognize and doesn’t know how to handle. As Herbert explained:

“You target a particular chemical and you hit it really hard, and the system is expected to just have the response that you want it to have, but actually you have all these other effects… we call these side effects. They’re not side effects, they’re effects, they’re just not the ones you wanted.”

A plant, however, is a complex of thousands of biomolecules, many of which are countervailing, so if there’s one effective compound that may have a toxic effect, it usually contains a countervailing compound so that it doesn’t harm your liver, for example. It’s the interplay of chemicals that make the plant work, which is why you can’t study herbal medicine by isolating a certain element; you’ve got to study the whole plant. This is what conventional medicine is largely missing.

Of course, the ultimate ‘herbalism’ is the food that you eat on a daily basis. Dark green leafy vegetables, herbs and spices are excellent sources of antioxidants, anti-inflammatories and anti-cancer substances that can dramatically influence your health. Christopher Hobbs, clinical herbalist, put it well: “The real medicine is hiding in the produce department.”

You Can Feel the Power of Plants Every Time You Walk in the Garden

There’s a deep connection with plants that many people feel intrinsically when they walk into their garden. This connection continues when you use plants for healing, including when you prepare tinctures or teas from herbs, which you can do in your own kitchen. According to many herbal experts, this relationship with plants and nature is nearly as important as the herbal medicine itself.

As herbalist Rosemary Gladstar said:

“I think one of the most unique places about herbalism and modern herbal healers is that we still maintain that deep connection with the plants. We're not looking at just single components as being the magic bullets in our bodies. There's still a deep prayerful relationship, whether you go to the plants and consciously pray or you have awareness with them, or just the way you are with them when you're harvesting them or making your medicine or even giving the medicine. There's a deep connection with the spirit of the plants. It's not just that there is a chemical constituent that will cure your condition; it is the relationship that the plant has to us and how those plants have served as our healers for literally thousands of years.

For anyone who works with the plants, whether you're gardening, or just being with them, backpacking with them a lot, that experience of having a plant communicate with you in some way happens. It takes you by surprise at first, but the plants want a talk to us, they want to help us.

They work on so many different levels in our bodies. Yes, they can work just as chemical constituents, but that's the least potency that they have… when you develop a relationship with plants, that kind of sacred plant medicine will happen. Just by working with them, they begin to speak to you and you begin to hear them. It happens when you garden. You know, when people go into the garden, they transform. That's why so many people garden. They go into that garden and they begin to feel things and be different, and in a way that's plant spirit medicine at its finest.”

10 Steps You Can Take to Harness the Healing Power of Plants

After watching Numen: The Nature of Plants, you may find yourself driven to deepen your relationship with the natural world. If so, here are 10 tips to do so:

1. Learn to identify three medicinal plants you don't already know that grow in your region and learn their uses.

2. Add at least one of these herbs to your garden or to pots on your windowsill.

3. Make a tincture, tea, syrup, or salve. Or make one of each!

4. Harvest and dry mint, lemon balm, calendula, nettles, or any other plant growing in your region.

5. Find a plant to sit with quietly each morning for a week; draw the plant.

6. Identify one healing skill you would like to have but don't, and find a way to learn it—perhaps by taking an herb class, or re-certifying in basic first aid or CPR.

7. Make an herbal first aid kit.

8. Organize local healers for emergency response in your community.

9. With medicinal plants grown in your region, learn how to treat one condition that you and/or someone in your family struggles with.

10. Join United Plant Savers, which aims to protect native medicinal plants of the US and Canada.