The Free Radical

“We’re still pickin’ at the bones,” explained Richard. “We don’t want the New Vision to stink of carrion, do we?”

Well, certainly not!

I had met Richard Sebastian, a buzzard with a toe bearing the uncanny resemblance to Gautama the Buddha when scrutinized at exceedingly close range, decades ago in an alternative reality having a tangential relationship to my own misshapen imagination. Got that? Richard is an important character in my Muse Trilogy… and here he was happily in flight– with carry-on (carrion) safely stowed– in this reality. Will wonders never cease!

“Jupiter conjuncts the Black Moon today,” he continued. “And tomorrow the Phoenix rises.” Now he’s an astrologer too? Great. “Just a few more gristly bits to go… and then it’s all yours.”

“What is?”

“The future, of course.”

Oh. That’s good. And so we shall see…

Oh look, an eagle, I thought delightedly. Eagle medicine is always a good way to start the day…

And then… Look! Another one– that’s twice as good! They’re such graceful masters of the sky…

When the third one, and eventually a fourth, came on the scene I quickly figured out that them ain’t eagles! Only Turkey Vulture can ride the thermals that effortlessly in such tight spirals in the sky. Wherever Turkey Vulture congregates there’s sure to be significant happenings afoot– or perhaps, a-sky. Somewhere nearby there was a carcass of something big– a deer or better.

Their flight patterns clearly telegraphed the general vicinity of the kill. It was down a steep and heavily-treed embankment from where I stood in the open field beneath the power line. As much as I relished the unique filming opportunity a fresh carcass might provide, I was reluctant to venture into thick brush to search on the hillside. Instead, I asked Turkey Vulture what I might find had I the gumption to go look.

Tight-lipped bastards! They wouldn’t answer. Then I laughed because, of course, vultures don’t have lips. In fact, they have little to no vocal capacity at all. Silence is their way… which is not to say that they were incapable of delivering a clear and precise message– which eventually they did, once I was prepared to receive it.

At first I was excited to know what had been killed and by whom. And I wanted to know who all had been invited to the feast… but Vulture wouldn’t tell me. I silently cursed the riders in the sky as I walked the edge of the ridge upon which I stood hoping to catch a glimpse of the drama below. Alas, the forest was too thick; I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Then it began to dawn on me that Vulture had indeed prepared a message specifically for me… and perhaps for those who read these daily missives.

“Yes. Rather than curse us for what we do not reveal, listen instead to what we do have to say. Foremost, heed this warning: You have not been invited to the feast. Should you choose to forgo caution and prudence, you will become the feast.” Well, that was clear enough, and I must admit that as my journey wore on it was also clear that Vulture was keeping a close eye on me the whole time. Their sky antics were very obviously centred around me. I took the warning seriously.

“A new vision is unfolding,” continued Vulture. “We are here to properly dispose of the old. We know what we’re doing. Your time for accepting and holding the new vision is here, yet patience and care are still required. Meditate on the energy of the Phoenix… and remember River, your brother.”

To readers, that last bit might seem a bit cryptic, and all I will say is that River Phoenix– the actor– was my “brother.” And well, that’s a whole other story.

Don’t they look scrumptious? Especially the bright shiny ones on the left?

Yeah, well… not so much. I’d honestly forgotten how horrible Buffalo Berries are. I had to try one… again… ’cause that’s just the kind of guy I am. I need to know for myself what things taste like. Buffalo Berries are classified as edible. Perhaps from a strictly biochemical scientific standpoint they’re technically edible, but from the perspective of the culinary palate they really suck! Who eats that shit?

“Some do.”

Whoops… wasn’t expecting today’s message to come from Buffalo Berry, especially after my open admission of disdain.

“Um… no offence, but a guy’d have to be really, really hungry to munch down a handful of your offerings.”

“Your palate is presently misaligned with the future to which you aspire.”

“Mine personally? Or all of humanity?”

“Both… although ‘humanity’ is incorrect. It is your culture causing misalignment, not anything inherent in your species. Your tastes are currently skewed toward sweetness. Your preference for sweetness is detrimentally unbalanced. Sweetness is a marker for caloric content, but when unused energetically it feeds microbial maladies within your systems. You have largely lost your taste for bitterness.”

“Oh, I can taste the bitterness just fine thanks.”

“You have lost your appreciation for bitterness. Many among you do not begin to understand that your preferences are choices. You are free to choose what you prefer at any time. Many still define their human identity by their specific preferences, and deem that identity to be fixed and immutable. You may choose, however, to acquire certain tastes as opportunities arise– without compromising your essential identity in the slightest. In bitterness you will find healing… and a whole new world of novel experience. Much of the most interesting biochemistry is hidden in bitterness. Explore.”

Yeah, I get it. I thanked Buffalo Berry for the message and walked straight over to a nearby Saskatoon Berry bush, happily discovering a few ripened berries with which to cleanse my offended palate. Ah, much better. Maybe somewhere down the long and winding road I would eventually find Buffalo Berry’s extreme bitterness (although he seemed a rather pleasant chap) to be palatable, but for now I think I’m willing to just stick with things like dandelions to prepare my appreciation for any deeper bitterness.

I returned to the scene of my “crime.” And I was a little surprised by what I found.

As can be seen in the picture above, Wasp decided to tear out the failing structure of this hive. Pieces of “brood chamber” littered the entrance to their dirt cave. The workers can be seen tending to the large chunk in the foreground which is lying upside-down. The other comparable chunk, lying sunny side up, is where I found the Queen. (At least, I assumed that she was the Queen, being about three times bigger than all of the other wasps. Regardless, there was a certain regality about her… reaching well beyond her physical stature.)

“I’m sorry…” I began.

“Meaningless,” she replied.

“But I feel bad… for what I accidentally caused.”

“A waste of energetic resources– this feeling bad.”

“But… but… aren’t you angry with me for destroying your home?”

“Gibberish.”

I was beginning to think that this was perhaps the most alien mind I had ever tried to communicate with.

“Yours is the alien mind,” she replied to my thought, and then continued. “Anger is an intense energy, spurring one’s actions in moments of acute crisis. It does not linger, however, beyond the moment of crisis. Nowhere in the Forest Collective will you find the harbouring of grudges. Energetically, revenge is unsupportable.”

“But don’t you wish to teach me a lesson?”

“One cannot teach what has already been learned. Teaching/learning is swift among us… and it is precise throughout all of Nature. Your consciousness is filled with concepts which have no basis here.”

“Where, exactly, do you mean by here?”

“On this planet.” Well, that was an intriguing answer! “There are currently many manifestations here,” she continued, “who do not find their origin here. They have been installed for purposes we do not understand. Energetically, they secure their right to be here through the agency of the human mind.”

“Whoops, you lost me. Who or what are you referring to?”

“Consider our primary food source as an example: Mosquito.”

“Whoa! Wait… what? Mosquito doesn’t really belong here?”

“More accurately, Mosquito thrives here as a result of human invitation and continued permission. We keep their numbers in check until you decide to banish them from your own minds.”

“Are you saying that mosquitos only exist in my mind?”

“Not at all. Mosquitos only exist here because of your mind. There is a fundamental space in your consciousness which remains unclaimed by Humanity. Many things of alien origin exist in that abandoned space. Mosquito is a physical manifestation of one of them.”

“Whoa! You’re blowing my mind here!”

“Yes, because it’s time.” And she would say no more.

I had just written in my notebook the day before “I am feeling less and less a visitor to the forest as I’ve always been, and finally feel to be an active participant in forest life instead.”

“Not so fast, Niels,” answered the forest. “There’s still the matter of your initiation.”

The fist part of my walk had Whitetail keeping just out of sight, as though the deer were keeping a close eye on me. They’ve taken to making this snorting/whistling sound through their noses whenever I am near. I had heard it before occasionally, but now they do it all the time… like they wish to be in constant communication. They escorted me to the tenements of Ground Squirrel (gopher).

The boroughs (burrows) were all aghast with excitement and distress… and it had nothing to do with me. As I stepped into their frantic midst I quickly learned what all the hubbub was about. A very large bird of prey (predominantly brown) flew up from the ground where evidently it had been feasting. Ground Squirrel was lamenting the loss of one of its community members. I did catch the bird’s flight on my GoPro, but it was too far away to be of any practical use for lifting a suitable photo. The incident was just a quick reminder that although the forest’s main attitude is one of playfulness, it may become deadly serious in an instant. Right, note taken.

Shortly thereafter I came across a patch of scarred earth on a tiny hillock. A particular plant that had been mostly uprooted piqued my curiosity. I tugged it free from the place where it still clung in vain hope– little did I know that them were load-bearing roots. Those roots were helping to support the entrance to a wasp’s nest… which I quickly found out as a wasp landed on the back of my hand and immediately proceeded to sting me. Ouch!

It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. Fortunately, instinct had me immediately back off as I assessed the situation. Suddenly there was a whole bunch of wasps angrily milling about, looking for someone to sting. I must apologize for the poor quality of today’s picture, but I was very hesitant to shove my GoPro too close to the entrance where the wasps maintained their vigil. I only got stung the one time as I stood a couple of feet away filming my would-be attackers. It seems that as long as I showed no further aggression toward their home, they were willing to let me off with a mere warning. Right, note taken.

The sting on the back of my hand swelled up to a bump just slightly larger than a mosquito bite and was more annoying than actually painful. I took that to be my official forest initiation… not too bad; I can live with it.

KA-BOOM!!

I was only about 3 minutes into my walk when a huge explosion ripped through the forest morning. The silence had certainly been broken. It was definitely louder than your average gunshot, but I have no idea what had actually occurred. I just knew that the forest was awake and getting chatty.

Things seemed pretty much back to normal after the previous day’s eery silence. The only variance I could still discern was a certain lack of coherence in the forest voices. No one’s message was particularly clear or forceful… that is until I consulted the dead.

The skeleton pictured above is either the remains of an adult elk or a young dragon cut in twain by Excalibur… but definitely not a unicorn. I’ve actually been walking past these remains for months, but this was the first time I caught the white flash of bones out of the corner of my eye.

They say that “Dead men tell no tales.” Not true for elk, though. Well, perhaps “tales” isn’t quite right. This dearly departed, rather than delivering a message, just sort of etherically nudged me and said “Tell ’em about the buffalo.” Kind of an odd thing for a dead elk to say. I knew what she meant though. The “message” was a continuation of what Alfalfa had expounded on a few days ago.

It was about the folly and sheer insanity of our culture’s insistence on totalitarian agriculture. Nothing depicted that insanity more glaringly than the fate of the North American bison. For thousands, perhaps millions of years, giant herds of bison roamed the Great Plains. Anthropologists put their numbers between 30 and 60 million at any one time. That’s a lot of buffalo! A single buffalo can weigh upwards of 2000 pounds. That’s a lot of protein! In fact, if you care to do the math, that’s more protein than you’d find in the entire modern human population of North America! Who was feeding all those buffalo?

Of course, that’s the point. No one fed the buffalo. No one was tending the herds. They ate the wild grasses and shrubs which naturally grew in the plains, nothing more… and in terms of stored protein, they exceeded our own modern human populations. In the past 40 years, anthropologists have all pretty much agreed that no culture in the history of the world has ever worked harder than ours meeting its survival needs. We have abandoned nature’s wisdom and efficiency to pursue a pathological taste for unending toil.

Just food for thought.

Something is definitely up.

The forest was nearly silent the whole time as I made my way as I normally do. At first it seemed that the lack of wind might account for the quiet. Nothing moved. But then I noticed that beyond a few birds and insects there was nothing; the forest was strangely silent. How often had I walked these woods without squirrels shouting from trees, or grouse playing peek-a-boo, or ravens announcing my presence to the world? There were always little encounters, incidental things– but not today. It was the kind of silence that gets your attention.

Different silences have different qualities. This wasn’t the type of hushed silence that ensues after a dramatic event. No, this was more anticipatory, the kind of situation where you completely stop moving, you stop chewing your food, you momentarily suspend your breathing– because you’re straining for just the merest perception of what might come next. Senses on alert, the forest was waiting for the (other? I missed the first) shoe to drop. Something was up.

Even as I strolled through the ground-squirrel tenements, they didn’t bother yelling at me, as they always do, to warn each other of my presence, even as I watched them scurry down into their hidey-holes. Whenever I stopped walking, there was only the constant whine of mosquitos trying to fill the empty spaces. I journeyed on with my only question written on my sleeve: What’s going on? But nobody was forthcoming with any answers.

After a couple of hours of this, I wondered “How can I write a whole message only about silence?” It seemed like a bit of a stretch even for me. I’d already picked the title “And the Forest Held Its Breath…” and then I began to encounter wild onion– everywhere. There was a natural and mildly humorous association between eating wild onions and subsequently holding one’s not-so-fresh breath thereafter. Of course the forest isn’t actually that neurotically self-conscious… but I have an article to write, dammit!

Wild onions are extremely abundant in these parts. They are most easily identifiable when in bloom… which is right now. They produce hanging clusters of pale purple flowers amidst what appears to be nothing more than a sparse clump of grass. If you dig them up, their roots reveal their onion character in a reddish bulb that tastes as mild as a shallot and has a soapy texture. The greenery is also very mild in flavour. If you want some real onion zip, however, it is surprisingly found in those little purple flowers. That’s what I usually select for myself… and sometimes they’re burn-your-mouth hot! As you may have noticed, I usually go straight for the flowers. Being the sexual organs of plants, I figure that’s where the more interesting substances are to be found. Even as you pick fresh onion flowers, you may notice specks of yellow pollen dotting your fingers. Pollen is an extremely nutrient-dense food.

There, I thought I was done. I was very nearly back to the truck when the same deer I encountered the day before was apparently waiting for me. This time he patiently waited as I dug out my camera and approached. He stood his ground determinedly as I walked toward him. I thought “Ah, now I’ll find out what’s really going on.” And that’s when he asked me “What’s going on?” That threw me for a bit of a loop! I told him I didn’t know. He continued to stare for a moment, clearly disappointed with my answer, and then bounded away…

And still, something is definitely up…

Let’s see… First, I had a little dance with Grouse, but she didn’t have much to tell me. Then, I nearly walked right into Whitetail Deer. We eyed each other suspiciously at very close quarters, neither of us betraying any fear or even concern. I tried to strike up a conversation, but he wasn’t in the mood. Shortly after that, a very large eagle circled above me for a moment. As I dug in my pack for my GoPro, Eagle vacated the sky and did not return. The critters are curiouser and curiouser… as I’m accepted into their forest family.

Yesterday, I spoke of the recalibration necessary to resonate with the forest’s myriad messages– namely through the ingestion of rose petals and the likes. Today’s message is along the same lines… but also takes a new direction.

Pictured above is a lovely field of “weeds,” mainly alfalfa and clover… and various blossoms caught between my toes. It was Alfalfa who spoke up… additionally representing Clover, Dandelion, and Yarrow to some extent. These are some of the forest’s most prolific weeds. When they crop up in our yards and gardens, we certainly recognize them as such.

Alfalfa’s main message is a reminder that these varieties of indigenous plants are far more more nutritious and well-adapted than virtually all of the other foodstuffs we choose to cultivate. Alfalfa’s tone was nearly mocking as he spoke of our cultivation techniques. We zealously remove highly nutritious plants to replace them with our inferior, ill-adapted preferences which henceforth require our near constant attention and labour to bring them to successful harvest. Furthermore, the so-called “weeds” rather than depleting the soil, they enrich the soil and give it superior structure… and they are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. At the very least, Alfalfa urges us to utilize the weeds as proper fertilizer for our preferred crops. Instant fertilizer can be made by placing any of the weeds, but especially alfalfa, in a blender with non-chlorinated water. Use the green slurry liberally as highly available nutrition for plants not as well-adapted as the indigenous.

Additionally, all of the above-mentioned “weeds” make for excellent trail nibbles while venturing through the forest. Dandelion leaves, roots and blossoms are all highly nutritious. Folklore surrounding clover suggests that red clover blossoms (which are usually actually purple) help purify the blood, whereas white clover blossoms purify the lymph. Yarrow flowers taste exactly like a strong cough drop and work as a breath freshener, a remedy for colds and will induce excessive sweating when deep cleansing is required. Alfalfa is highly mineralizing for both soil and consumers. Its blossoms range in colour from lilac to the deepest purple bordering on black. I can’t resist the nearly black ones; I gobble them up enthusiastically… with an anticipatory eye on purple’s penchant for transmutation– I am becoming the forest.

As I continue my daily forest adventures I’m learning more and more that I am walking through a living food-producing machine. The abundance is everywhere… if we just care enough to see.

I eat a lot of flowers. And I’m pretty sure that I eat more wild roses than anything else.

Usually, June is Wild Rose Month. This year, it seems, the rose bloom will last well into July. As yet, there is no sign of it beginning to abate. Already there have been more roses than ever before!

I really don’t know the actual nutritional profile of rose petals… but that’s not why I eat them. Roses have long been associated with the human heart. The soft pink colour of sun-bleached wild roses is the colour associated with the “High Heart” or the spiritual heart on an energetic level. (This is different from chakras, wherein green is the colour associated with the heart chakra. Chakras are an old– and becoming obsolete– energy program based in fragmentation.) By eating rose petals as I enjoy my forest walks, I am attuning myself to the forest around me through the universal energy of the heart. I listen through the heart. I receive these Daily Forest Reports through the proper attunement of my heart. Rose petals are essential food in my books.

Wild roses is where it’s at. Domestic varieties cannot hold a candle to their wild counterparts… either in flavour or energetic vibrancy. The fragrance too is far superior in my opinion. Every year I gather bags of wild rose petals for the brewing of a very special beer, as can be seen in the picture above. I collected three such bags for this year’s Rose Petal Cerveza… which will be going into the bottles any day now. Consider this your invitation to Beerfest 7 which happens in October at my place in Fairmont Hot Springs, BC, Canada. The whole world is invited, and yes I do have 7 billion beers… approximately.

Next time you stop to smell the roses, pluck a few petals and taste them. Allow their subtle energy to work its magic in opening you up to a whole new world of esoteric experience.

It’s been a snaky year already.

Snake energy creeps up on you. It slithers in among the cracks and crevices, where first it’s not noticed. It’s not hiding, for it needs the warm sunlight in order to function. No, snake just very easily limbos under the radar, until opportunity finds him out.

The snakes have been surveying the ruins. So many “civilized” structures, built on shoddy premises, are crumbling down now. The irony is that it was Snake, the third character in the Garden of Eden, who goaded us into this civilizing enterprise in the first place. And now Snake’s return dryly asks “And how’s that working out for you?”

My daily adventures had brought me to a place where three snakes laid coiled in the sun. I had never encountered more than one snake at a time before. This was highly significant.

Three is primarily a creative number; it adds the third dynamic to otherwise simplistic relationships. As already mentioned, Snake was the third character in the Garden, shaking things up… with unpredictable consequences. Three is a sexual energy, the raw power of new physical creation. On that front, Snake is most obviously phallic in nature– identifying with the male creative impulse.

In the ever-pristine realm of new creation, it is the feminine who holds the connection to raw, undifferentiated creative energy. She is the one plugged into the unquantifiable Source. It is the responsibility of the masculine to shape and define how the raw energy will be expressed. The masculine role is to bring structure and detail. As many of the old structures crumble to ruin, Snake challenges us to shape something completely new, and to be prepared to work out the details as our new creations come to life and demand a better refinement.

Finally, Snake speaks of rebirth, even in adulthood, as it is required to shed its skin. The old is stifling and restrictive, and it may be safely discarded. Nature will quickly recycle the old worn-out skin. But this time, as three strike out together, a new collaboration promises a brand new journey of unprecedented growth.