offerings everywhere
This little bundle of once-was-life-will-be-again is here, in this moment, on purpose.
Little offerings, everywhere.
There’s a narrow path between the little yurt where I live and the stream that runs through the middle of everything. It curves toward the garden first, then swings by the wrought iron table and chairs there for eating and writing and just being in the trees, in the sun, above the ground. There’s a little circle there too where we’ll sit with a fire from time to time, depending on what’s happening in the world, our lives, our hearts, on what’s happening here.
The path continues past the circle, past the table and chairs, past the cherry tree and the maple.
As though interrupted by an urgent thought, the little path turns sharply west toward the water. If you are to keep going straight, though, that’s where the bed of wild irises has made home. Beyond them, a dozen more plants show their color above the brown earth already, early as it is. And there, tucked in like it has been there all along, belonging, cozy and snug among the crunchy leaves of last autumn and the fresh stems of spring, is a bundle of tousled fur.
The fur is spread gently, like a little mat against the earth. It's grey and white with a bit of brown too. I first noticed it as I was making a trip to the stream, my eyes catching something familiar — there so still, like it would always be.
But I know better. That little bundle of once-was-life-will-be-again is here, in this moment, on purpose.
An offering.
If you were to reach your face near to the earth, drawing your nose close to the offering as you might to a flower, you would see the fur was fine and strong, each strand shorter than the iris shoots coming up around them. You would see that this is almost an organized affair, that the fur could have been arranged gently against the earth with time and care, probably by another nose, maybe one that belongs to someone nearby.
↔
Do you know, though…
To some people, this path I've described, the circle and table and trees and patterns of plants could mean near to nothing.
Because sometimes the story happening here is beyond reach. It’s become somehow an alternate reality, not quite the tempo of the space our minds keep.
This is often true for me. On the days that it is that way, beyond reach, the path itself is dusty earth, unblessed by the green that covers the tones of grey and brown and black that tether me to the life beneath my feet.
On the days that it is that way, an alternate reality, I neglect the path as I walk it, figuring it somehow less valuable for its lack of above-ground life, as if the story of my feet and the steps of my loved ones mean nothing at all to this place.
In that mind, the trees, the barren vines, the fallen limbs and twigs and rough edges of leaves are all just scattered bits of consciousness. How could I begin to draw them together and see something worth attending with my mind? I've far too much to do.
And yet, today, I can see it all. Thanks to this offering. Is this a blessing for the earth, for the iris patch, or for me? Aren’t we all in this together?
“The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is ‘look under foot.’”
- John Burroughs
It might’ve been one of the dogs — the clever one, a wolf-dog — whose nose pressed these fibers toward the soil. He knows what he’s doing.
The first winter I lived here, we bonded. Every once in a while (every month or so, let’s say) I would pour my blood into the earth here. It’s an ancient feeling, offering ourselves back to earth — bath, blood, spittle. I suppose the pup was paying attention, as a wolf-dog might. So when it snowed, a good heavy snow that lingered — more than ten inches, more than I’d seen in this part of the world for sure — he found my blood where I offered it back to the ground. There was a place beneath a long-fallen log where the heat of the life thriving beneath it had melted the snow just beside it. It was there I could avoid dissolving the glorious white blanket and pour my blood straight into the earth. The next morning, I woke and walked out into the snow for my morning wander. (I cannot help but wake every morning and put on all my layers and move directly into the snow when it is here. It meets me so deep and clear. I long for its crisp freezing gift.) Just at the foot of my stairs, before I could even take a step on the ground, I found an unexpected gift.
I might not have noticed her but for the crimson streak that fell across her breast. Otherwise, she blended well into the snowy blanket, speckled as it was with twigs and leaves and life. An opossum, my dearest. An offering.
She had been placed there. There were no signs of death nearby, no blood in the snow, no mess, no fuss. Just a precious life presented like care before me.
I didn’t know how to appreciate it then. It felt out of place, my body only months into adapting to this precious, living, day-to-day reality of dwelling in the woods.
“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery…”
- Annie Dillard
Truth is they’re everywhere, the offerings. Most of them in languages I don’t speak. Most of them in tempos I don’t register. Most of them in realms I can’t see.
But they’re here. The mama robin reaching for a string, the inner bark of the poplar tree, a bit of moss to make her nest. The northern water snake, winding her way across a fallen trunk to find the perfect ridges in which she’ll rest to catch the sun, soaking in her energy like we all might learn to do. And even the rooster who’s recently been dropped at the end of the road, presumably to die a distant death rather than a close one. This afternoon he stood proud as ever when I pulled up, pups in the car, and greeted us. Diligently attending his responsibilities, even at the edge of the forest (a surely unfamiliar environment), he announced our arrival, his presence, our mutual gathering here in this place, for this moment.
Little offerings everywhere.
Dare we look?
↔
I first wrote about the fur weeks ago. It remains intact today as the leaves of the dwarf crested iris make moves around it, even through it. As I go about my day, rushing to and from work and chores, carrying water for a quick cup of tea or to finally wash the dishes, I feel blessed by its presence, its meaning to me, and the reminder that I am not separate from but essential to its magic.
Our offerings and those offered us are not limited to the wide open spaces, the damp earth, the rich woods. They are present in the hallway, at the mailbox, on the bookshelf. They are living beneath our fingernails, at the corners of our eyes, in the fault lines of our hearts. These are the ways we know we are alive together here, that we will never, not ever, be alone. And that the world we shape is ours to make with the robin and the snake, with the pups and the roosters, with the music that echoes through the house and the children racing down the hill, and with the prayers we ourselves offer when we wake in the morning and as we go to sleep at night.
When she visits me
(it is not often now)
I make a simple offering…We do not talk but listen
(to some quieter things)
Like the movement of clouds,
phantom freight trains
that connect, and ride low
across the evening sky.from Muse
by Ellen Grace O'Brian