Last month, we took this trek; if you missed the post, you can read about it here. We took it then as a celebration, our first foray into the mountains that stand protectively above the valley we call home. It was a sacred pilgrimage into nature after a chilly winter that caused our energies to flag and our stress level to soar.  John Muir once wrote, “Break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” After winter, when the first long rays of sunshine promised the return of warmer weather, Scott and I felt this way. So up the mountain we went.

Today, we trek back up the mountain. But we aren’t going to wash our spirits clean of winter’s decay. We go in preparation for the fight of our lives. For Saturday, we’re joining the millions of people around the world who have signed on to battle a corporate goliath: Monsanto Corporation and their cancer-causing,  genetically modified seeds and nature-killing chemicals. We are part of the collective world organism known as the March Against Monsanto.

I’m not going to go into vast detail here about the evils of this corporation—you can Google Monsanto and learn them for yourself. I will summarize the problem for you, though: Through their creation of genetically modified food crops— particularly corn, wheat, and soybeans—and the invention of specialized herbicides that do no damage to these crops but wipe out any non-GMO crops planted anywhere near the human-created—not nature-created—varieties, Monsanto is killing the livelihoods of family farmers while creating a food supply that not only is less nutritious than nature-created food, but also has been proven to cause cancer and is linked to the stunning weight gain of the American populace (and hence the increase in heart disease and Type II diabetes). These GMO foods are everywhere, even in baby formula. GMOs are ubiquitous as flies. How do you know if you’re eating GMO foods? You don’t, because Monsanto has worked long and hard to ensure you don’t find out, backed by none other than the US Congress.

My biggest fear about GMO seed is that seed by Mother Nature is being wiped out. And once it is gone, it is gone. What happens, then, when a superbug develops that wipes out the GMO seed? Where will we be then? No Mother Nature seed because the GMOs have wiped it out; no GMO seed because a superbug wipes it out. That equals no food—healthy or otherwise. Think this scenario can’t happen? Think again. Superbugs have arisen in frightening numbers—think antibiotic-resistant MERSA, for example. We hear about the superbugs that kill people directly. We don’t hear so much about the superbugs that are running amok lower in the food chain.

How far will Monsanto go to ensure their way of crop production is the only way? The company has actually filed lawsuits against traditional farmers whose fields abut their own when the GMO seed is accidentally cross-pollinated with Mother Nature’s seed. Monsanto then marches in and claims patent infringement. The small farmer is wiped out, all because a breeze sent the GMO pollen wafting across their field.

The USA is rapidly finding it is standing alone beside Monsanto. Countries that have banned Monsanto include Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Madeira, New Zealand, Peru, South Australia, Russia, France, Switzerland, and China. They not only will not permit Monsanto GMO seed to grow in their countries; they ban the importation of US GMO crops. For the record, the vast majority of our exported crops are GMO in origin.

I am frightened about what is happening to our food supply. I am frightened for my children, who are young adults just setting out on the adventure of adulthood. Frightened they won’t be able to feed their own children. Frightened they won’t even be able to have children, because the food economy has collapsed. I want to be a grandmother some day. I do not want to be a grandmother to a starving child.

And so, on Saturday, I will join the March Against Monsanto. I will do this for my kids, for Steven and Robin and Christopher and Janie. The movement has gained  Herculean momentum in the social media the last few days. Monsanto’s stock is dropping rapidly as the movement builds. We are a force to be reckoned with. David beat Goliath. One woman may not be able to defeat a corporate behemoth, but let me link arms with my husband and my sisters and brothers in this fight, and we will be heard.

For me, the fight against Monsanto has been emotionally and mentally exhausting. Fight I must, because our daily bread is at stake. But John Muir was right when he said, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” So today, we trek back up the mountain, to wash our spirits clean, to find a place to play in and pray in, so that nature may heal and give strength to our bodies and souls. Strength we need to embark on this massive act of civil disobedience against a corporate bully.

We can change the system. It’s not too late. But the clock is ticking.

For more information on the March Against Monsanto, or to find a march in your area, please visit the March Against Monsanto on Facebook.

Unless you live under a rock—and since you’re reading this blog online, and since there is notoriously poor Internet connectivity under rocks, I presume you don’t—you’ve probably at the very least heard the buzz about hive collapse. You might not, though, understand exactly what that means.

Across the U.S., beekeepers have reported as much as a 50 percent die-off of their bees in recent months. Other statistics place the bee die-off at closer to 33 percent, but it really doesn’t matter which statistic you choose. They both speak to a dire problem in our environment.

It’s one thing to read statistics about things like hive collapse, and quite yet another to experience them firsthand.

Once, we had a thriving hive just down the hill from our cottage, in the cleft of an ancient sycamore tree. The tree was alive with bee activity; we could hear their thrumming when we’d pass by on our walks. The fragrant blossoms of the California buckeye tree that stood next to the sycamore were always covered in bees, as were the lemon blossoms in the tree beside our drive. Bees would visit our birdbath to take a cool drink of fresh water here where fresh water is scarce most of the year.

Bees drinking from the bird bath, 2012
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

This beehive was important to us, because Scott and I are active backyard farmers. Last year, thanks to Scott figuring out how to keep Spot the Ground Squirrel out of our plants by hanging them rather than planting them in the ground, we harvested hundreds of tomatoes and pea pods, and dozens of jalapeno peppers and cucumbers. Our little garden certainly wouldn’t feed a village, but it kept us in salad most of the summer long. But our little salad farm would not have produced a single tomato or pepper if not for the bees from the sycamore hive, which buzzed from blossom to blossom, pollinating our plants. If you’ve forgotten your high school biology, no pollination equals no fruit.

But the sycamore hive collapsed. Now, when we walk past the ancient tree, all we hear is the breeze whispering its dismay over the loss of the bees.

I could tell you how the loss of our bees has affected us. But I think it better if I show you.

This is what our tomatoes looked like last year, hanging in clusters of bulging fruit:

Clusters of tomatoes cling to the vine in our backyard garden, 2012
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

This is what our tomato plants look like this year—at least, the few plants that have any tomatoes at all on them:

A lone tomato clings to the vine, 2013
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Bees are essential for pollinating our food crops. That’s why so many family farmers keep bees: to ensure their plants get pollinated. When the bees are gone, the plants don’t get pollinated. And when that happens, no fruit forms on the plant. Without pollinators, there would be no corn or beans, no peaches or tomatoes, no eggplant or squash. In short, without pollinators, there would be no food.

Which is why I knelt in my garden this morning and gave thanks to that one lone bee flitting from blossom to blossom. In her, I found hope.

Whether you eat a vegetarian diet like Scott and I eat, or whether you’re a meat eater; whether you prefer healthy fare or think chips and hot dogs constitute fine dining, if you eat, the bee die-off affects you, because it affects the plant-based food that is the source of all we eat.

Last week, the European Union banned the neonicotinoid pesticides thought to be the major contributing factor in hive collapse. Here in the USA, we’re taking a different approach, and it is the wrong approach. The USDA has written off these pesticides as being the least of the reasons for hive collapse (despite scientific data that say otherwise). Even the EPA—the agency that is supposed to protect the environment—says they want to spend another two years studying the pesticides before deciding whether to ban them or not.

We’ve already had a 30-50 percent die off. Another two years could mean a 100 percent die off. Where will we be then? Where will our society be when our food crops fail?

Where will you be?

Please send a message to the EPA that the time to take action to save the bees and our food supply is now. Click here to sign Credo Action’s petition to the EPA demanding they ban the use of bee-killing pesticides. And please, if you use any kind of pesticide in your own backyard garden, stop immediately! You’re doing your garden more harm than good.

A halcyon picture, yes? Nature can indeed be this way—beautiful and pacific. But nature is also violent and seemingly cruel. Last year, we witnessed a baby ground squirrel having seizures beneath our deck. Mercifully, it soon died. We’ve also witnessed our neighborhood hawks carrying off baby squirrels to feed to their own chicks in the nest. It’s heart wrenching, even to a person like myself who understands nature’s food chain and the circle of life.

And then, there are the hummingbirds, Mother Nature’s flying jewels. They are a total enigma to me. I love and hate, laugh at and cry over, our hummingbirds on almost a daily basis, because they are as beautiful as a sunset, but as nasty as a case of poison oak.

I am something of a crazed maniac about hummingbirds. When we first moved into our cottage, I would get up before sunrise so I could ensure there was plenty of sugar water out for the tiny birds, because some of them would start showing up at the feeder when first light had barely hit our yard.

Scott thought this behavior a bit … let’s say obsessive. But there was a very good reason for my bizarre, obsessive behavior: back then, I feared hummingbirds.

Yes, the Earth Mage—the woman who walks with Bear at her side, who isn’t afraid of Rattlesnake or Coyote or Bobcat, was once terrified of a two-inch long bird.

Before you label me daft, let me tell you what it was like when we first began feeding our hummingbirds. If I accidentally let the feeder run dry, when I’d step out the back door, I would immediately be surrounded by a cloud of hummingbirds—Anna’s hummingbirds, Allen’s hummingbirds, Costa’s hummingbirds—all furious at me for allowing their feeder to stand empty for, like, two minutes. They would fuss at me mightily, and get right up in my face while doing it. I’m not talking two or three or six hummingbirds, either. I’m talking like twenty. Or maybe a hundred. I couldn’t count, because I’d be too busy trying to swat them away, but the little buggers are faster than imitation syrup running down a stack of pancakes.

Have you ever watched hummingbirds fighting one another? They swordfight in mid-air with those long, pointy bills of theirs. With the humming sound their wings make, they reminded me of tiny Jedi knights fighting the Emperor’s army in Star Wars with their light sabers. They try to stab one another. They do stab one another. It looks painful. I’m sure it is painful.

Which is why I feared hummingbirds. I had no desire to have to try to explain to an EMT or emergency room doctor why I was being admitted with a helmet of hummingbirds stuck to my skull. And in my ears. And, perhaps, my eyes. A pair of glasses seems poor protection from an army of angry hummingbirds.

BUT … those days are gone. We haven’t had large numbers of hummingbirds at our feeder for two years now. Not since Bully Boy moved into the neighborhood.

Bully Boy
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

I’ve mentioned Bully Boy before, but for those of you not familiar with the story: Bully is a two-inch long Allen’s hummingbird. He’s a pretty little bird, green with coppery accents and a bright copper colored throat when the sun shines on him just right. But pretty doesn’t equate with nice. We named him Bully Boy for a reason, that reason being, he won’t let any other hummingbirds near our sugar water feeder. A feeder that seats six, I might add, so there’s plenty of room to share.

Last year, for the first time, we—Scott and I—noticed Bully allowing two female hummingbirds to share the feeder. At least for a while; if they stayed perched at the feeder too long, he would swoop down and shoo them off. But we considered this progress, him allowing them to feed at all. We made an educated guess and assumed these tiny ladies were Bully’s mates. (Hummingbirds are notoriously polygamous.)

Bully’s Girls
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

We resigned ourselves to having a one-man show when it came to the hummingbirds. They may be small, but they’re long-lived: a hummer can live as long as ten years. For all intents and purposes, it looked like Bully was here to stay. I resolved to love him rather than resent him for chasing away the other birds.

Just when I arrived at that warm and fuzzy sentiment, another player arrived on the field, a bird we call Rufous. We call him that for obvious reasons: Rufous is a rufous hummingbird.

Rufous
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Bully Boy is pretty, but Rufous is gorgeous. It’s like standing Brad Pitt or George Clooney next to the average man in the street: there’s no contest in the “Wowzers, that’s one gorgeous man!” department. Rufous looks like a winged, brand-new copper penny with a fire opal throat. I’ve never seen a more beautiful bird, and doubt I ever will.

Bully Boy didn’t take kindly to Rufous stopping by for a snack on his migration route from Mexico to Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. The first time Rufous dropped in at our feeder, Bully was right there, on the attack.

But something unusual happened. Rather than fly off in terror, like every other hummingbird we’ve seen, Rufous fought back.

And he won.

Now, Bully Boy sulks in the scrub oaks as Rufous perches in all the prime spots near the hummingbird feeder. He lets the females feed, as Bully did before him. But now, he is the one chasing off all other comers. And he has a zero tolerance policy for Bully Boy.

Is there karma in the hummingbird world? Is Bully Boy getting his just desserts for being the tiny terror he is?

Bully will be able to reclaim his feeder any day now, I would guess. As I said earlier, this was just a resting point for Rufous on the Pacific Flyway. He’ll be moving on soon, vacating the territory for parts farther north. Beautiful as he is, I’ll be relieved when he moves on. I find I have lost my earlier fear of hummingbirds, and that I have become fiercely attached to my fierce little Bully Boy. He’s become my winged child, and as the mother of a winged child, I don’t like it when other kids beat him up on the playground. Or, in this case, more accurately, at the bird feeder.

But when the day comes that Bully reclaims his throne, if he has learned a lesson about bullying and decides to let clouds of hummers dine in our backyard after all, I’m going to be very careful when I go outside. I have no intention of having dozens of the original angry birds mob me because I’ve accidentally let the feeder get too low. I’ll go find a coyote or a rattlesnake to hang out with instead.

I’d feel a whole lot safer.

Bee is one of three cats, cats who have been, up to this time, used to being able to graze on kibble throughout the day. Challenge #1: Diabetic cats cannot be allowed to graze; therefore, cats living in the same house with a diabetic cat cannot be allowed to graze. Sounds easy enough—just don’t leave the food dishes out. But do you have any idea how much of a ruckus one cat who thinks he’s hungry (even if he isn’t) can make? Now, multiply that by three. You’d think we were stringing them up and pulling out their toenails one by one, judging from the noise coming from the house. Good thing we don’t live in town and/or have neighbors who live too close by.

Po, in a bag
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

That aforementioned kibble is another problem. Challenge #2: Diabetic cats should not be fed dry kibble because it’s too high in carbohydrate. In fact, I’ve learned, vets who treat a lot of diabetic cats say that NO cat should be fed dry kibble because it can lead to diabetes in cats who are genetically programmed for the disease. So far, feeding Beetlejuice wet food has been easy. He loves anything chow. But Little Lucy Bit hates the stuff. She only wants to be fed the kibble she’s eaten since she fell out of the kitten bush two years ago. And Po, our Siamese, wants both. Which means I’m fixing three different cat meals, a dog meal, and my own breakfast all at the same time. Five different meals, and that’s before I’ve even had my coffee. Methinks I know now why cats have a reputation as finicky eaters.

Little Lucy Bit
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Beetlejuice has always been a bit of a bully when it comes to eating. He eats by the philosophy, “What’s yours is mine, what’s mine is mine.” He always would take a few bites out of his food, then push Bit and Po out of the way and munch on their food. Challenge #3: In a house where the only interior doors are between the living room and bathroom and upstairs between the two bedrooms, locking the pushy cat in the bathroom at chow time becomes a necessity. It’s the only way be ensure Bee eats only his carefully doled out portion of food and doesn’t steal from the other cats—both of whom have at least some food (kibble) Bee is not allowed to eat. The problem is, Beetlejuice quickly came to associate me going into the bathroom with him being fed. Now, neither Scott nor I can walk in there without tripping over the cat who is careening between our legs to get there first. Can you say, “Tripping and falling hazard”?

Challenge #4: Giving insulin.  Fortunately, I learned to administer injections years ago when a relative needed assistance with Interferon shots. The human patient knew enough to hold still. The cat? Not so much. It’s been a lot of trial and error on my part, learning the best way to give Bee his shot. Fortunately, I think I’ve got it worked out now.

But giving a cat insulin doesn’t mean all will be well. Especially in the beginning, a diabetic’s insulin and blood sugar levels can vary widely. Even though I was administering Bee’s shots to the letter as my vet instructed, last night he had a crisis. Challenge #5: Despite a caregiver’s best efforts, diabetic cats can develop life-threatening complications, like insulin reactions. Last night, Beetlejuice developed hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). It happened so fast we didn’t even realize there was a problem until suddenly his hind legs wouldn’t support him. His eyes glazed over, and he started breathing erratically. It was Scott who realized what the problem was—his father was diabetic, and Scott recognized the signs of hypoglycemia. I quickly fixed Bee some food, carried him and the food into the bathroom, and set him before the dish. Weak as he was, he started munching, slowly. He’d eat a little, then rest his head in his dish, like he was taking a nap. Then he’d shake his head and eat a little more, and the cycle would repeat. Meanwhile, I’ve grabbed my laptop and am frantically searching the Web for what to do to keep my sweet kitty from dying right before my eyes. Bee stabilized by the time I found out I (a) did the right thing by feeding him, and (b) if it happened again I should rub Karo syrup, sugar water, or honey into his gums to give him a quick sugar boost.

Beetlejuice’s hypoglycemia occurred late enough in the evening that, on most nights, Scott and I would have been in bed asleep already. I thank the Cat Gods we stayed up late last night, because I have no doubt in my mind Bee would not have survived the night, he was so sick. Which leads to Challenge #6: You have to always be vigilant with a diabetic pet, and realize his/her time on this earthly plane could end at any time. This is going to be the most serious challenge for us. We are used to being able to take off to go hiking or camping at the drop of a hat. We certainly can’t go camping; Bee needs his twice-daily insulin shots. And even if we could teach someone to give him his shots, I couldn’t leave him with a cat sitter knowing he could go into insulin shock and die if the least little thing happened to get his blood sugar out of kilter. I can’t have Bee dying on someone else’s watch, especially not one of our (adult) kids’ watch.

I have frequently said in this blog that I consider all life sacred, that I do not think human life is above the lives of our animal brothers and sisters.  Beetlejuice’s illness has made me stop and think seriously about that conviction. But after thinking about it, and talking to Scott about it, we are still in agreement with that conviction. Beetlejuice’s life isn’t disposable. We will do what we can to keep him as healthy as we can for as long as we can, even if that means foregoing the camping and all-day hiking trips. Bee is our brother on this planet. He is a family member. He deserves and will get the best care we can give him until the quality of his life forces us to reassess what is meant by compassionate care. We will not throw his life away as if he were a disposable razor simply because keeping him alive might be inconvenient to our accustomed way of living. Beetlejuice has to adapt. So do the other cats. And so do we.

I’ll keep you posted on how our precious cat does.

When I was a little girl, my family used to make an annual migration to the East Coast to visit relatives. I loved visiting them all, but my favorite stop was always at my Aunt Flossie and Uncle Tottie’s peach orchard, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Aunt Flossie was my mother’s sister, and when I was small, I wanted to be just like her when I grew up, mostly because of her vegetable garden. It was immense, and for some reason, even as a child I could see that growing your own food was magic—perhaps especially so in my aunt’s case, because she was able to grow just about every vegetable and berry imaginable in soil that was almost pure sand. I remember raiding her garden nearly every day during our summertime visits and gorging myself on yellow pear tomatoes, boysenberries, and big, fat, purple grapes. She never seemed to mind me and my siblings doing this, and I don’t ever remember picking a plant clean, no matter how much fruit I picked from the vines and bushes.

I remember being in the garden with Aunt Flossie one time, and she accidentally brushed against a bean blossom that had a bee on it, and got stung. “Stupid bee!” I remember shouting. “I wish you’d all just go away and die!”

My aunt gently shushed me. “It wasn’t the bee’s fault,” she told me. “I was careless. The garden wouldn’t be here if not for the bees, and without the garden, we would not eat. They aren’t stupid. They are a blessing.”

I was perhaps five or six at the time, and I was receiving my first lesson in ecological co-dependency, although I’m sure not even my aunt would have called it that at the time. But she was right: without the bees, there would have been no garden, no sweet, sweet boysenberries and pear tomatoes, none of her fabulous green beans and pattypan squash.

Aunt Flossie also made my favorite dessert ever: squash custard. It was sort of like a cross between a crème brulée and pumpkin pie filling, and it was the most mouth-watering treat anywhere. This often followed a dinner that included blue crab cakes. You couldn’t live on the Eastern Shore, let alone right on the Choptank River, like Aunt Flossie and Uncle Tottie did, and not eat blue crab until you were blue in the gills.

Yes, Aunt Flossie was my undisputed hero, but my Uncle Tottie was pretty cool, too. He was nearly twenty years older than my aunt, and I don’t remember a time he wasn’t deaf as a post. At least, he pretended to be; he always seemed to be able to hear Aunt Flossie, and she was very soft-spoken. He used to spend his days out in the orchard, doing whatever it was a peach orchardist did. He’d come home when my aunt rang an old-fashioned dinner bell hanging outside their back door. After dinner, he’d fall asleep in his chair while I brushed his thick, curly, white-as-snow hair. I loved brushing his hair.

He’d read to me sometimes. Usually, from National Geographic magazine. Or at least, he’d tell me stories: we’d look at the pictures together, and he’d make up wild tales to go along with the pictures.

Uncle Tottie died my first day away at college. He was in his nineties, and died of old age, basically. Aunt Flossie developed terminal brain cancer about six or seven years later and died not long afterward. I miss them both to this day.

Back to the question I posed at the beginning: if you could do something to honor your childhood hero, what would you do? For me, the idea for how to honor Aunt Flossie came more than twenty years after her death.

One day, my mother was cleaning out a closet and found something she’d forgotten she had: the love letters my aunt and uncle wrote to each other when they were courting back in the 1920s. She gave them to me, knowing the special relationship I had with them. To this day they are probably that one thing I’d want to grab if I had to evacuate the house quickly. The letters were so loving and tender, and such a reminder that, at one time, life moved at a slower and simpler pace. I still love to read them when life becomes too hectic, too stressful almost to bear.

I was a freelance journalist at the time, but the idea of writing a novel was becoming an overwhelming obsession. When I read through the letters for the first time, I realized I was holding the beginnings of my dreamt-about novel. So, I set out to write a love story.

But darned if the characters in my book wouldn’t cooperate! Or, perhaps it was Flossie’s ghost who didn’t want me to write her story. Either way, I realized halfway through the first chapter that while Grace and Otto, the main protagonists in Redeeming Grace, had personalities much like Flossie and Tottie, their story was not going to be the same.

In my book, Grace finds herself having to protect her much younger sister from their increasingly abusive father, Luther. My aunt never had to protect my mom from their father; my grandpa was a kind and loving (and sane!) man. But that doesn’t mean my aunt wasn’t a fighter; if Aunt Flossie ever felt an injustice was being committed, boy could she stand up on the side of Right! I remember in one of her letters to Uncle Tottie, she chided him for not treating a young black man with the respect she felt the man deserved. I don’t know what the whole story there was, because my uncle’s letter to her in which he told her about the encounter was not in the set of letters I got. But apparently he said something racist to the young man, or treated him in some sort of undignified manner. Whatever it was my uncle said or did to the guy, I’m quite certain he never made that same mistake again after reading that letter from my aunt!

The fictional Grace and Aunt Flossie share a strong faith in God. But even though both my aunt (in real life) and Grace (in my book) were the daughters of  rather old-order pastors of strictly patriarchal churches, both were strong believers in the Divine Feminine. In their time—Grace’s in the book, and my Aunt Flossie’s throughout her life—there wasn’t talk about the Divine Feminine, about Goddess, as there is today. Robert Graves’ book, The White Goddess, which arguably began modern day exploration of Goddess theology, hadn’t been written during Grace’s lifetime, and my aunt never read the book. (I know this, because I also have a list of every book she ever read in her life. She was obsessive about this list, and The White Goddess isn’t on it.) But both my aunt and my character recognized Goddess energy, even if they didn’t, or couldn’t, call it that.

I have been criticized for writing a book that is “anti-Christian.” Oddly, most of this criticism comes from people who have not yet read the book; apparently some people do indeed judge a book by its cover, or its title, at any rate.  Yes, Redeeming Grace illustrates how biblical text can be taken out of context and used to justify all manner of atrocities against women. That is a major theme of the book. But I don’t for one moment think my Aunt Flossie would have read the book and called it anti-Christian. In fact, I believe she would call it pro-God, because Grace never waivers from her faith despite the abusive rantings of her father. Instead, she summons up all her strength and calls on God—the god of Naomi and Esther, the god of Ruth and Na’amah, to help her at a time when her very life depends on that strength.

No, my Aunt Flossie would not have criticized. She would have applauded. And she would have felt honored.

And that makes me very, very proud.

Terrorism and persecution come in many guises. But what if the man terrorizing you is your father, and what if he’s doing it in the name of God?

The tragic deaths of her mother and two younger siblings have left Grace Harmon responsible for raising her sister Miriam and protecting her from their abusive father, Luther, a zealot preacher with a penchant for speaking in biblical verse who is on a downward spiral toward insanity.

Grace marries Otto Singer, a man twice her age, both for love and to keep Miriam out of Luther’s reach. But Otto has a terrible secret he is unable to share with Grace, a secret he has kept for more than twenty years. Otto believes he is responsible for a tragic accident that claimed the life of a young woman named Lily Marshall and left his brother Henry brain damaged.

Luther believes God has abandoned him when he loses not only his daughters but also his church and his home. He devises a plan to get back into his God’s good graces—a plan that puts both his daughters’ lives in danger.

An act of nature brings Otto’s secret to light just as tragedy strikes, unleashing a maelstrom of demons that threaten to destroy the entire family. Will Luther succeed in carrying out his crazed plot against his daughters, or will an unlikely hero step in a rescue them all?

Creatively, I’ve been stymied. It isn’t that I don’t want to write, have writer’s block, or that I don’t know where I’m going with my newest Work in Progress (WIP). It’s that I simply don’t have time to write because of other things that have had to take precedence. By the time I finish my daily rat race, I’m too exhausted to write.

Scott’s battling his own demons. His blood pressure has been way too high for comfort, despite his faithfully taking his blood pressure medication.

Beetlejuice
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

But the iceberg that is sinking our Titanic hit this past week. First, our car needed major (read: expensive) repairs. Then, our beloved Beetlejuice kitty got very sick. We took him to the vet, and found out he has diabetes. The enormous vet bills for diagnosing him and getting him started on his insulin, combined with the car expenses and everything else have stretched us to the breaking point, financially, physically, and emotionally.

Then something happened that has cheered us immensely. We got a sign things were going to start looking up. A snake sign.

Sunday afternoon, the cats were paying an inordinate amount of attention to something outside our living room window. We live on a very steep hill; reach out our window and you can literally touch the railroad tie wall holding up the hill. Anyway, when we went to investigate what had the cats so excited, we discovered an enormous gopher snake was right outside the window. I dashed to get my camera, only to find the battery was completely dead after my photographic frenzy up on the Angeles Crest Highway the other day. I was disappointed, but too enchanted with the snake to really worry much about taking her photo.

Today, when we got home from picking up our sick Beetlejuice from the vet, we walked into the house to find one of our other cats, Lucy Bit, acting all weird on the windowsill. I looked out, and there, once again, was the snake! And this time, my camera battery was fully charged.

Here she is cautiously peeking her head out from between the house and the wall:

Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Working her way across our front flower garden, keeping close to the wall, behind Salamander Sassafras, the Smoky Mountain bear:

Working her way around our Peace Pole:

Photo by Smoky Zeidel

And wrapped around our honeysuckle bush:

Photo by Smoky Zeidel
Snake by Mother Nature

Isn’t she gorgeous? ( ♬ Isn’t she lovely? … Isn’t she marvelous? … ♬ )

But why do I take her to be a sign?

While admittedly a lot of people don’t like them, snakes have long been portents of good even while representing the duality of good and evil. Snake is adaptable; she sheds her skin, shaking off the dead and emerging fresh and new. Because of this, Snake is representative of change, transformation, especially in Hindu and other Far Eastern mythologies.

Snakes will bite, of course, but only if threatened. (Threaten me and I just might bite, too!) Having photographed even rattlesnakes up close, and having never been bitten, I can attest to the fact they don’t bite if they don’t feel threatened or cornered. They’ll slither away rather than go on the attack. In Ojibwa and other First Nations mythology, snake is a symbol of patience because of this flight-not-fight trait.

Snake is also a symbol of awakening kundalini, a reservoir of creative energy originating at the base of the spine.  The image of a coiled snake suggests a spring and conveys a sense of untapped energy. In Hindu tradition, kundalini awakening and moving up through the body leads to enlightenment.  In Shamanic tradition, this awakening leads to wisdom, and is something that isn’t experienced until midlife or beyond. (Hence, we don’t often marvel at the wisdom of youth.)

While my creative frustrations, Scott’s high blood pressure, Beetlejuice’s diabetes, and our ancient car’s woes aren’t exactly evil things, they certainly fall on the bad side of a good/bad dichotomy. But mythologies from across the globe say when Snake comes around, things are bound to change. Snake means we’re about to figuratively shed our skin, and things are going to transform. It may take patience on our part. It may not happen overnight. But things will get better when Snake is around.

But even if Snake doesn’t work miracles, she’s very beautiful. I’m glad to have her around for no other reason than that.

Full from our feast of a picnic, warmed by the sun and cooled by the soft breeze, it was hard not to doze off on our blanket as we lay beneath the towering Jeffrey pines at our favorite picnic area on the Angeles Crest.  Both Scott and I wrote in our journals a little bit, Scott jotting down ideas for a new poem and me making random observations about the natural beauty around us, but even putting pen to paper couldn’t keep our eyes open, and soon we both drifted off.

We didn’t nap long, for Tufa had other ideas about what constituted proper after-picnic activities, and sleeping wasn’t one of them. Since sleep is no match for a five-pound Chihuahua, Tufa soon succeeded in getting both of us up on our feet. We loaded the blanket, picnic basket, and our journals back into the car and set off to explore the Pacific Crest Trail.

The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) is not nearly as famous as it’s eastern cousin, the Appalachian Trail. Neither is it as well defined. In her book, Wild, Cheryl Strayed writes about her experience hiking the PCT, and expresses her frustration at losing the trail in places. While Strayed didn’t hike the trail here in the San Gabriels—she started her trek farther north, outside the town of Mohave, where the Sierra Nevada begins—as Scott and I search for the trail, Strayed’s frustration becomes my own.

Even though the sign pointing to the picnic grove parking lot proclaims it to be parking for the Pacific Crest, the trail played hide and seek with us. Finally I find what appears to be a trail blaze across the road from the parking lot. I hurry over to the spot, only to be greeted by this:

Photo by Smoky Zeidel

I turn to Scott, puzzled. “How can they close the Pacific Crest?” I asked. “What do through hikers do?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe catch a ride to another point on the trail?”

That seemed like cheating to me. Or it would have if I were a through hiker. But on this day, I wasn’t a through hiker; I was a day hiker. At least, I was trying to be.

We crossed the road once more and headed toward where the mountain continued to climb, just to the right of the picnic area. “I think I found it!” I called to Scott.

“No, I think it’s over here!” he called back.

Truth be told, it’s hard to tell what’s a trail in terrain like this. Pine needles and rock blanket the forest floor. There are very few shrubs. Everything looks like trail.

Where’s the Trail?
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Our “trails” converge about 200 feet up the mountainside. Here we find a more defined path, and take off in what we presume is the right direction. We’re encouraged when we come across a lone hiking boot cast off to one side.

I always wonder when I see a lone shoe at the side of the road. I’ve even been taking pictures of them, hoping to write something about the phenomenon at some point in time. Maybe the owner of this lone boot got a sore foot. Maybe it was from a spare pair, tied to his backpack, then lost without him knowing it. Maybe a coyote stole it.

Farther down the trail we come to a Y. The right fork leads along a bluff above the road; the left fork climbs away from the road. We take the right fork, but it dead ends at one of the two ski areas on the Crest. We turn back and take the left fork.

It is here we come across the mate to the lost hiking boot. At this point, I’m clueless as to the fate of the hiker. I read a book about a year ago about two sisters who hiked the Appalachian Trail barefoot. Maybe this guy read their book, got inspired, and ditched his boots. In two different places. Go figure.

Photo by Smoky Zeidel

We are encouraged, for this, at last, seems to be a real trail. The view of the marine layer below us keeps my eyes pulled to the left. Not smart, as the trail is very steep and footing precarious. Precarious for me, at least—Tufa is scrambling around like a mountain goat, dragging Scott behind her.

Photo by Smoky Zeidel

We round a curve in the trail and—dead end.

We scramble up the mountainside to what looks like another trail—dead end.

We scramble farther up the mountainside to what looks like yet another trail—dead end.

We keep doing this, scrambling up, up, up. I’m gasping for oxygen; this is our first trip to the mountains this year and our bodies have not yet adapted to hiking at high elevations. I notice that while my lungs are working overtime, my heart isn’t racing. I’m even able to take the time to admire and photograph the brilliant red snow plant that is starting to sprout. I’m in pretty good shape, physically, and I silently give thanks for the steep, hilly neighborhood in which I live and walk.

The beautiful, parasitic snow plant
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Finally, we scramble up one last time and find ourselves, suddenly, at the top. All points from this one lead back down (some much more rapidly than others!). I sink down to the ground, both pleased with the climb and perplexed we still haven’t found the trail.

But then I notice something. The ground on which I’ve collapsed is covered with a green groundcover which, upon closer examination, I discover to be a type of lupine. Teeny, tiny lupine; the smallest lupine plants I’ve ever seen. And, at the sunniest edge of this bald, one of the plants has blossomed.

Tiny mountain lupine
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

I am enchanted. This, then, must be where the faeries live, for only faeries could grow such exquisite, tiny lupine gardens.

After vowing to return in a few weeks to this mountaintop in hopes that that rest of the lupine will be blooming, we head back down the mountainside. We don’t so much scramble as slide, and almost before we realize it we’ve slid past both the lost hiking boots and back into the picnic ground. We get back in the car and head up the Angeles Crest Highway.

But only another two or three miles. After passing through two tunnels carved in the mountainside, and being taunted by a sign that reads Bighorn Sheep Area yet seeing no bighorn sheep, we suddenly come to a barricade. Road Closed. No Exceptions, it reads.

“Bummer,” I grumble to Scott. Our plan to travel the entire length of the Angeles Crest Highway is a bust.

But as Scott starts to turn the car around, I catch a glimpse of a sign out of the corner of my eye. “Stop!” I cry. Scott stops. We look closer, and then both burst out laughing.

Pacific Crest Trail, the trail sign reads.

Fortunately, I’ve never bought into that piece of rural Appalachian mythos. We have so many great horned owls in our neighborhood, and now, even saw-whet owls have moved in. I love it when the owls sing me a lullaby at night.

So when I awakened yesterday morning, eager to start the day because Scott and I were going on an adventure, hearing the owls hooting softly in our grandmother oak tree sounded like a good omen, not a bad one. I shook Scott awake—or, more accurately, I let Tufa pull the blankets off him—packed the picnic lunch I’d spent the previous day preparing, loaded the car, and off we went. Our destination this time: the Angeles National Forest, up the Angeles Crest Highway.

It had been nearly four years since we drove up this scenic highway. In late August of 2009, the Station Fire broke out in the Angeles National Forest and consumed more than 250 square miles of forest and chapparal. Much of the highway was closed for nearly two years after the fire as the road had to be rebuilt and mudslide areas stabilized. I remember this fire so vividly, because we could sit on our back deck in the evening and watch the mountains across the valley burning. It was both horrifying and fascinating to watch.

I also remember how it grieved me. We’d taken many day adventures into these mountains, many of which  you can read about in my book Observations of an Earth Mage. We avoided the mountains because we feared what we would find.

In my head, I understand fire as a weather phenomenon. Scorching hot temperatures plus the arid conditions of these Southern California mountains plus Santa Ana winds create the perfect conditions for fire. I understand that. I also understand that many ecosystems depend on fire to keep them healthy. Dead brush is cleared away to allow healthy young plants to take root and grow. Nutrients are recycled. Certain conifers are dependent on fire to release the seeds from their cones. These are just a few benefits of fire. (There’s a really good article about the role of fire in a conifer ecosystem here.)

Still, I wondered. What would we find?

A thick marine layer blanketed the LA basin and San Gabriel Valley as we headed for the mountains we could not see, so thick was the fog. We began the steep climb up Highway 2, the Angeles Crest Highway and immediately plunged into this marine cloud. It was both eerie as a Halloween night and beautiful as an Ansel Adams photograph. It didn’t take long to find burn damage. Almost the entire forest was nothing but black skeletons dancing in the fog.

Fire damaged forest on a dark, foggy day
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

We wondered about the occasional tree left standing, surrounded on all sides by death. How did these trees survive? Several appear totally untouched, if you look closely at the photograph. Do trees have guardian angels?

Then we took a closer look at the rocky ground beneath those skeletal trees. There was a chaotic explosion of green beneath the burned trees! Native yucca and ceanothus (California lilac) carpet the mountainsides, either unfazed by the fire or allowed to sprout anew after the blaze. So, too, have the exquisitely-scented Scotch broom. Their sunshine yellow blooms light up entire hillsides. I know I shouldn’t be so happy to see these invasive plants. They’re growing where they shouldn’t. But they’re so beautiful, it’s hard to invoke environmental rage at their growing here.

Scotch broom and yucca grow on the rocky mountainside beneath the fire devastation.
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

We are ecstatic; the mountains are green, not black! And we know with certainty the trees will return. It will take decades for the forest to return to its former glory, but barring any further monster fires, it will happen.

We continue our steep climb. The cloud cover persists at three thousand, four thousand, five thousand feet. At times Scott has to slow the car to a near crawl, visibility is so poor. Then, suddenly, we burst through the marine layer and are embraced by a massive blue sky so clear that, momentarily, we feel upside down with the clouds below and not above us.

And we notice something else: the forest here has not burned. It is as green and lush and massive as ever, with towering Jeffrey and Coulter pines tickling the sky. We breathe a collective sigh of relief, Scott, Tufa, and I.

Above the marine layer
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Our favorite picnic area is just a few miles from where we burst through the cloud cover. An ocean of clouds kiss the sides of the mountain below us. An ocean of blue sky above; an ocean of clouds below. We picnic on a blanket spread over a carpet of pine needles, stuck between the two seas. Even the woosh of the wind sounds like waves crashing against the shore.

Then … silence. The waves of wind come to a sudden halt, and we hear nothing at all.

The silence becomes too much for the birds. We hear a mountain chickadee’s haunting song coming from just beyond the picnic grove.

I grab my Kindle Fire and quickly turn on my IBird Pro app. I brought the device specifically to do one thing: see if I can lure birds in close enough to see them clearly. I find the mountain chickadee page and hit the song button. Immediately, the device starts to echo the song of the real bird.

What happened next was magical. Within a minute’s time, four or five mountain chickadees are hopping around in the lower branches of the Jeffrey pine closest to our blanket. They sing, then call. I alternate the sound coming from my Fire between the song and call of the chickadee. I’ve conjured up an entire chickadee choir.

We are enchanted. I turn off the Fire, and soon, the chickadees flit off into other parts of the forest.

We feast on gluten-free pasta salad, fruit, gluten-free crackers and organic peanut butter. Tufa is too busy chasing lizards to be tempted by the food. We eat in peace.

Picnic in the pines
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Our adventure doesn’t end with a feast on a blanket, perched on a mountaintop above a sea of clouds. In fact, the adventure is just beginning, for next, we’re going in search of the Pacific Crest Trail. More on that next time.

Thanks to Will at the blog site Sitting in the Woods for inspiring me to try luring in birds with my birding app. Brilliant idea, Will!

To read more about Smoky’s and Scott’s adventures in the wilderness, visit my Observations of an Earth Mage page, and the page about Scott’s and my co-authored book, Trails.

 You can read excerpts from my novels and short stories by clicking on the widgets at the bottom of this page.

If you enjoyed this blog, I invite you to subscribe by email via the link on the right. If you’re on Facebook, you can like my author page by clicking that link; if you’re on Twitter, you can follow me by clicking the Twitter link. I follow back. Thank you.

Spot the Ground Squirrel, technically, is a California ground squirrel (Otospermophilus beecheyi).  Spots live in burrows they excavate themselves. Sometimes the burrows are communal. More often they are not. Spot is not fond of travel. Rarely does Spot go more than 160 feet from his home burrow. Even when Spot appears to be trying to hitch a ride in our car, as he did a few years back when we were camping in Yosemite.

Spot, in our car.
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Babies are born in the spring. Since the infants are baby Spots, they are technically called Polka Dots. Okay, maybe not technically. But that’s what Scott and I call them. They are itty bitty and as cute as can be.

Polka Dot eating poppies
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Spot lives in a variety of habitats. We encounter Spot whenever we go to Yosemite, or Kings Canyon, or anywhere else in the Sierra Nevada. I particularly love this Spot, as s/he is obviously a nature lover. I mean, I’d live in the Sierra Nevada if I could.

But Spot also loves the beach. We encountered this mama Spot near Pebble Beach up in Big Sur just recently. She scurried out of her den and then ran up to about three feet from where I was sitting, oblivious to my being there, to gather moss with which to line her den. I could have reached out and touched her.

Spot, gathering moss at the beach
Photo by Smoky Zeidel

Which leads to another thing about Spot: she is opportunistic. Run into her in a picnic ground and she’ll try to steal your sandwich right out of your hands. Spots aren’t afraid of humans in the least. Shoot, our backyard Spot isn’t even afraid of my dog, Tufa. And why should she be? She’s bigger than Tufa.

Spot isn’t afraid of Tufa, but she does bark an alarm call when our neighborhood red-tailed hawks take to the air. One year, we had a hawk sit on our fence railing above an entrance to Spot’s den, just waiting for the Polka Dots to emerge. When they did, the hawk would swoop down and grab one, then carry it off to feed the little hawklets in the nest high in one of the ancient scrub oaks on our hill.

Upsetting as this was to witness, it was also fascinating. That year, we had an explosion of Polka Dots, and the hawks fed well. The next year—probably because of the decline in Spot population due to hawk predation—the hawks practically disappeared from the neighborhood, moving to a place with a greater number of Polka Dots. This allowed those Spots that survived on our hill to reproduce without fear of the Dots being eaten, and our population once again swelled, which brought the hawks back … a neat little illustration of how the Circle of Life works. Mother Nature is fascinating that way, isn’t she?

Ahem. Back to the neighborhood Spots. The bane of my poor Scott’s existence, to hear him talk about it. Why? you may ask. Perhaps I should let him tell you. Here’s an excerpt from his essay, “I Hate Squirrels,” which appears in our book, Trails: 

As an adult, I’ve lived in apartments in the city. I’ve never owned a home and never had a garden. Well, now that I think about it, I once had a small vegetable garden when living in married student housing in graduate school. But I was so exhausted then, so brutalized, just a ghost of myself, I recall very little about my student garden. I do, however, remember this: it quickly died.

After meeting Smoky, and ultimately marrying her, things changed. I was madly in love. I looked at the world with new child-like eyes. And I had a renewed interest in long-forgotten pleasures, like gardening. After moving into the shack on the hill, I was determined to recreate my childhood garden. I planted tomatoes in the ground. Three of them. When finished, I looked at these little plants and said, “It is good.”

Feeling happy, proud of my accomplishment, I went inside to eat lunch. Apparently I wasn’t the only one eating at the time. When I finished lunch, I returned to my garden to gloat over my new tomato plants, but found only three short naked stems in the dirt.

So I tried another plan; I planted three more tomato plants, not in the ground this time, but in pots. I reasoned that, when necessary, I could move the pots around. Maybe that would confuse the squirrels, and they’d eventually lose interest and forget about eating. I know. Stupid. All went okay for one day. The second day, just to keep them guessing, I moved my three pots from the back of the shack on the hill to the front. I could hear the high-pitched, ear-piercing barking of squirrels in the background. Bad sign. Like before, I went inside to eat lunch; when I returned, I found three short naked stems in each pot.

So I got another idea: I bought organic squirrel repellent and three more tomato plants. I removed the three short naked stems from the three pots, planted my three new tomatoes, and scattered the foul-smelling repellent around each one. Apparently this repellent was made from dried blood and it’s suppose to scare the hell out of the unsuspecting squirrels. It looks much like old-fashioned freeze-dried coffee crystals. I was hopeful. It’s suppose to work. It didn’t.

Next, I went to my local hardware store and bought plastic mesh to put over, around, and under my pots. The squirrels, of course, had no trouble gnawing through the mesh. I ended up spending so much time rescuing frantic squirrels caught in the mesh that I completely forgot about my tomato plants. And, once free, the happy squirrels ate them anyway.

I felt like Wile E. Coyote trying one stupid idea after the next in an effort to catch the Roadrunner. The culmination of each episode was Wile E. frozen in midair having just walked off the edge of a cliff. The Roadrunner always won.

But Scott is smarter than Spot. (That’s one of the reasons I married him.) Last year, he started planting tomatoes in those upside-down planters and in hanging pots.  Our tomato crop leapt from one edible tomato in 2011 to 546 in 2012. Needless to say, our tomatoes are hanging again this year.

And Peachy—that’s what we call our little peach tree—has beautiful, untouched fruit plumping up on her branches. At the suggestion of … someone, I don’t remember who, we hung a bunch of CDs from the branches. They spin and reflect light, and Spot seems to hate them. She stays out of our tree. We may actually get to eat a peach or two this year, fresh from our tree.

Living with Spot the Ground Squirrel is challenging, for sure. But when I look at our towering scrub oaks and take in the scent of flowering buckeye and lemon trees, when I fall asleep to the coyotes teaching their pups to howl and awaken to the soft hooting of a great-horned owl, would I want to live anywhere else?

Do I even have to answer that question?

Happy Earth Day, the birds sang. Happy Earth Day, I replied, and I bowed deeply toward the avocado tree to the south, then to the rising sun in the east.

Today is one of the most sacred days of the year for me, even though it’s a relatively new observation and isn’t a religious holiday in the strict sense of the world. I remember the first Earth Day so well. It was 1970, and I was a high school freshman.  I bought a copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, because I’d heard it was the book that first drew attention to the looming environmental crisis, so it seemed a fitting read for the day. I asked my mother if it was too early to plant flowers in front of our house as a celebration. If I remember right, we ran to the hardware store and bought a few pansies to place in the earth. It was still too chilly in Northern Illinois to plant much else.

But sacred? Is that perhaps too strong a word for a day that doesn’t bring mail delivery to a stop and that isn’t marked by a special feast? I don’t think it is. I’m the Earth Mage. I can call it sacred, and here’s why I do:

The earth is a life-giving organism. Without her rich soils, her clean waters, her oxygen-rich atmosphere, there would be no life. It’s okay if you think that’s pagan-speak. It is. But it’s not in conflict with belief in the Judeo-Christian god, the Hindu gods, the Great Spirit of our indigenous peoples, or any other deity. This is how the earth was created, by whomever or whatever it was created—to sustain life for all its inhabitants.

As a life-giving organism, Planet Earth deserves our reverence. It isn’t by accident she’s called Mother Earth, Mother Nature, Gaia. She feeds and sustains us, as a mother should. We’re all children on this planet. None of us will survive if the planet stops providing.

When the first Earth Day occurred all those years ago, few of us had any idea just how sick the planet would become by the second decade of the twenty-first century. We’ve pumped so much carbon into the atmosphere we’re beyond the safe level of CO₂ in our atmosphere. Our water is so polluted it’s undrinkable straight from the source. The earth itself, her rich soils? Largely depleted by monoculture.

Don’t get me started on the industries that are killing our beloved planet with their lust for money and power. Think Exxon Valdez, and the BP oil spill in the Gulf a few years back. Think Monsanto, with it’s development of GMO seeds and their war on organic, non-GMO seed. Do you think Monsanto cares about our earth? Does this answer your question? “Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.’s job.” ( Philip Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications; click the link to read more unbelievable quotes by and about Monsanto.)

How about the fast food industry, and the role it plays in destroying our planet? The great rain forests of the Amazon pull CO₂ from the atmosphere. They breathe it in, breathing out oxygen—oxygen the two-leggeds and four-leggeds of the planet need to survive. It’s a delicate balance: we breathe out the CO₂, they  breathe out oxygen. Neat little trick Mother Nature devised. But we’re cutting down the life-giving trees at an alarming rate and replacing them with what? Agricultural land that raises beef cattle, mostly for the American fast food industry. Think about that the next time you buy a hamburger. Trees died to put that cheap (and not very nutritious) burger in your hand.

Do I sound harsh? I hope so! Because Earth Day is nothing if not a call to action. If you walk this earth, you cannot afford to be complicit, and this is exactly what you are if you sit by and do nothing.

So today, ask yourself, “What am I doing that is harming the earth? What am I doing to help Her?” Can’t think of anything to put on that “Help” side of the tally? Here are just a few things you can do:

• Go vegetarian. Completely is fabulous, but if you cut meat out of your diet only one or two days a week, you are helping.
• Plant a vegetable garden. I love the Grow Food, Not Lawns images you see around the Web. Use heirloom seed! Seeds of Change is a good source for these. Don’t look for a GMO label on seed packets; you won’t find one. You will find, however, heirloom seeds and seedlings are almost always labeled as such. Home grown food tastes so much better than store bought and is more earth friendly if for no other reason than you cut out the transportation costs of getting the food to market.
• Plant a tree. No, it won’t replace the number razed in the Amazon during the time it takes you to plant it, but every tree helps.
• Support your local farmers market. Many of these small farmers produce organic food. Less chemicals in your food means less in your body, and less money in Monsanto’s pocket.
• Get outdoors and take a hike! Yes, that’s the Earth Mage motto. (You can read more about being an earth mage yourself here.) Why is this important? Because you’ll fall in love with nature. With trees and birds, with streams and oceans and prairies and mountains. There is nature everywhere, even in big cities. Take a hike and fall in love with nature. People want to protect what they love.

Today my friend Mare Cromwell is hosting an event on her Messages from Mother Facebook page. During the day she’ll be posting information about people who have made a difference in the environmental movement and suggestions for Earth Day activities. There will be a raffle; I’ve donated copies of both Observations of an Earth Mage and Trails. Other authors and artists have donated prizes as well. Stop in, learn something, maybe win a prize. Just click on the book cover to the right.

Don’t forget to download your free Earth Day 2013 gift from my publisher, Vanilla Heart Publishing! This Earth Day anthology, available as a pdf from Payloadz, contains excerpts from Trails and Observations of an Earth Mage; VHP’s Nature’s Gifts anthology; and excerpts from several other VHP authors, including Malcolm R. Campbell, author of Bears: Where They Fought and my co-author in the tongue-in-cheek piece about lightning safety, Jock Talks … Lightning Safety.as well as excerpts from other writings by other VHP authors. It’s a great gift. Gift means free. You can download it by clicking on the book cover.

Celebrate Earth Day. Be enchanted. Be an Earth Mage. Come.