Christmas 2015

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You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness.

- Terence McKenna

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For me, over these 6 decades come and gone, this season is a triad of "holidays" (holy days). Dec 21 is both the day I mark as the Winter Solstice and my mother Vivian's (RIP) birthday.

Of course these days my mom's birthday is kinda sad as I do miss her, very much. She was such a good soul and having to raise me along with my 2 1/2 siblings must have been quite the challenge.

The Winter's Solstice... aaah... this is me. Long ago I slipped into the life stream of the natural world. And that world is one that exists not just as material but as the core of my heart, mind and soul. 

I love the earth. More than my mom, my family or my friends. 

Nature is all. It is all we have and all that we have has come from her. The life here on our planet is absolutely connected to life everywhere. There is no other, there is but here. Infinite life expands in all directions - macro and micro.

But Christmas... sigh... 

... Christmas was great as a kid. Innocence makes so much believable. But Christmas is like the Kachinas. It dances into the village costumed and caricaturized. Dancing a lie, a myth but telling the story. Only when an individual is old enough are they made aware that the Kachinas are their relatives, their neighbors. The masks come off.

For me the mask came off Christmas when I started doing sweatlodge and traveling with the plant medicines, the entheogenic spirits. 

I can't in good conscience share the "joy" of giving. Our consumption will be our doom. It's as simple as that. While many of my friends understand this, the majority of modern humans are clueless. For 40 years I've been at odds with the society around me. Heck, I've flung my body at that wall more than once.

And it's never been easy! I mean I sure don't want to be the Grinch. I don't want to spoil anyone's enjoyment, especially the children's. So my kids were raised celebrating Christmas. But once we moved into the farm celebrating Christmas became an enigma. It was mid-winter, energy bills are high, I'm raising 2 kids (teenagers!) by myself and I don't believe in it. 

Luckily (?) I've never had an issue being a bit different. It was tough maturing into it but the same process was always involved - "how many sheep does it hold?" Because of me being me fighting to save an old growth forest or being a hippie working for an environmental organization in the middle of conservative ranching country or driving a truck with pot leaves painted all over it when pot was still illegal (ughhh, gross!) takes a certain amount of crazy. The rewards tho'... that's the kind.

AND driving that truck (20' flatbed loaded with tons of lumber) for almost 5 years with no violations shows a certain level of skill. 

I'm not trying to change anybody. I do work hard on occasion trying to change minds - and hearts - but mostly I want to enjoy this lifetime's sojourn on a beautiful planet. A planet I call home and mother.

Merry Christmas!

(self portrait)

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Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.

- Terence McKenna

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Christmas and the Big C...

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“I believe that the very purpose of life is to be happy. From the very core of our being, we desire contentment. In my own limited experience I have found that the more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. It helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the principal source of success in life. Since we are not solely material creatures, it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone. The key is to develop inner peace.”

~ Dalai Lama

Christmas is such a funny season... a holiday dedicated to good spirit and giving... has become for too many, a time of loneliness and despondency, a season that sees a sharp rise in suicide as expectations (whether self-created or pressured from perceptions of demands from the outside world) are not met. I know for me and my kids this will be one of our poorest Christmases. But they are ok with that. Better than I am with it. I feel that pressure of being able to provide, to give more, and failing.

But as with most things it is after all mostly a matter of perspective. I know who I am, what I've done with and in my life and I know that giving is an act that is possible each and every day. So, I go on, knowing that life will go on, that this low will again become a high, a rise in both economic and emotional terms. And I also know that the sense of failure is not a right thing. I have 2 beautiful kids and am gifted with a creativity that amazes me. I have my health and in spite of the negatives I remain a happy person. My friend Greg Burke once told me (many years ago) to know the difference between perception and projection.

Perception is the seeing of what is, of recognizing the subjective nature. Projection on the other hand is seeing but with our own biases coloring that viewing. And for me that very much is what Christmas has become, a matter of perception versus projection.

A dear friend of mine, whom I have never met (such as arises from this wired, wwworldwideweb) has been dignosed with pancreatic cancer. Beth is a very strong woman, a mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend and a sister... I know Beth from the political side of my life. She is one of those activists who goes out and does. She engages and teaches by way of example while she provides a service valuable beyond measure to those she aids. And I know that right now, for her, her family and friends, this is a time where emotions are a roller coaster ride that can leave everyone involved exhausted and exhilarated, all at the same time. (I've edited the post, changing the photo of Beth to one from her gallery on CarePages. At the upper right corner of the webpage is a link to a page on which to register, which you must do. Once registered you may use the link in the same location to visit her board page section. You must enter her name, one word, case sensitive, as follows: BethWehrman. If we volunteers are truly george Bush's 1000 points of light), Beth is at least 200 of those!)



So it is this Christmas, that even though my bank account sits empty, my cupboards hardly overflowing, the billcollecters howling like wolves at my door, I am thankful, so very thankful for what I have in abundance and that for me to complain would be so silly, in light of what Beth, her family and so, so many others around the world face these days.

And so, dear friends, I ask you all, whatever your beliefs, to offer up a prayer or a good thought, a wish for healing, for comfort and rest and a return to ease from this dis-ease for my friend and fellow MAPster Beth Wehrman, for strength for her family, that this cancer may be vanquished and eliminated.


Merry Christmas.


Here's one for Beth and her family:

More water...

"Til taught by pain, men really know not what good water is worth."

~ From "Don Juan" by Byron

I had such a good time last weekend hiking up that creekbed, shooting the flowing water as it cascades over the rocks, under the rocks and around the rocks, rocks covered in brilliant green moss, autumn leaves scattered around and that sound... that sound of water splashing, gurgling among the stones... under that massive canopy of old maple and fir, hemlock and cedar... that I had to go back. This time I timed it. 45 minutes from house to the turnout along Hwy 58 (just past MP 28). And on another no-rain day!

You'll notice also that there are images here obviously not from that hike. On Saturday I went over to Golden Garden Park early in the morning, right at sunrise. Great flocks of geese flying overhead, silhouetting against the just-past full moon still in the sky, low in the west. I ran into Dave and his dog. Dave is 68, just moved to Eugene from Costa Rica and California. Loves the serenity of "the Pits" in the morning... me too Dave.

The geese pic is from Saturday as well. What they call cacklers (Peterson's Guide calls them "cackling Canada" geese), these guys are voracious vegetarians and the Willamette Valley grass farms are like huge salad plates to them, and they can land in huge flocks comprised of hundreds of birds. This flock was one of those, probably close to 300 birds and just across the field from the house... its a rush to walk up to them and hear the noise they make when they all launch into flight.

And of course the full moon, great mover of waters large and small... I shot that pic Thursday night.

Not much to say today again, I'm feeling more political and when I get off on my political rants I move away from those truths that have grounded me all these years... the truths of land and water, sky and tree and the critters who have no politics, who have no say in affairs that affect them, often directly, often detrimentally. Yeah, I've felt the sting of that "eco-freak" label, folks urging me to freeze in the dark because I didn't support their nuclear power plants. Being called a whacko by folks who think that toxic chemical waste sites with no liners in the holding ponds are ok, even though in my opposition I stood in support of mothers and pediatricians telling anyone who would listen that our community's children were far sicker than they statistically should be... relative to pollutants emanating fom those toxic ponds.

I mean I know truth is relative. So is humor. And war... but the earth? It is always here. The water flowing down these mountains ends up in the sea and rises to the sky only to fall again... and flow seaward again. Like the trees growing skyward eventually fall and turn to soil, their nutrients feeding other trees... nature is transmutable, changing but never changed. I mean there is nothing we have that does not come from nature. No matter how high-tech the gadget, how advanced the technology... it all comes from the earth.

Water and gravity...

"Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet."

~ Carl Sagan

Living in Oregon, at least the western 1/3 of the state, water is pretty much all around. It rains almost 1/2 the year in this part of the state. Our rainy season started early this year and the state prognosticator says its going to be a wet winter. Last winter was fairly dry (of course for us "dry" has a different meaning than say in Las Vegas) but so far this year we're ahead of normal. No complaints here. The early rain put water in the creeks while the autumn leaves are still falling and and the forest is still colorful.

These pictures were all taken along Hwy 58 which follows the Middle Fork of the Willamette (Will-am-ette) River, heading east into the Cascades (and I don't mean the river flows east into the Cascades... talking about Highway 58). The last picture is taken at Salt Creek Falls which drops 286 feet, making it Oregon's second tallest waterfall. I ended up taking some pictures of a couple from Wisconsin (Hi Dan and Sue) out driving and enjoying a really beautiful fall day. Its always fun to play host to out-of-staters, giving them tips on where to go and what to see. Correcting their pronunciation... heh...

I'm not going to get philosophical tonite, I think the images provide a pretty good message. Water is sacred, it can be beautiful and it can be powerful and devastating when it gets moving. We need to honor it, to protect the clean waters we have left. I predicted many many moons ago that some day water would become more expensive than gasoline. I'm sure that prediction was based on hearing others smarter than myself saying something along the same lines but it is coming true. And if we don't smarten up some day we'll be fighting wars over it like we're fighting wars now over oil.

Water for Life

Enjoy the pics, if you want to purchase prints of these images, contact me: allan_e@efn.org

And, as always these images are mine, reprint with permission only, © Allan Erickson, 2007

Further on up down the road...

"Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am-- a reluctant enthusiast...a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So go out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, and bag the peaks.... and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over your enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box... I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."

- Edward Abbey

And isn't that the truth. Part of my early meandering was based on the sense that I needed to be outdoors, in the wild places, the free places, the places removed enough that I knew human contacts would be rare if they happened at all. The central coast of California was a great place for me to start anew down such a path after my military tour ended. Wide open beaches and remote mountains, oak forested foothills, clear streams and psychedelic sunsets all were blessings upon a hungry spirit and here there was bountiful room to roam. I thirsted for discovery of new places. More than once I've found wonderful, grand places because I just had to go around one more bend in following a remote creek, over just one more knoll to see what was on the other side...

I've read somewhere that in using our public lands, 90 % of hikers utilize only 10 % of the trails. That leaves a lot of room for those of us in the other 10 % of hikers... especially when the trails I follow are only deer trails.

My habit of hiking alone always bothered my friends and family. But I had found that it is in the being alone that one gets to know one's self. And truthfully, for me, being alone was never lonely.

"The right to be let alone is the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued in civilized man."

-Justice Louis D. Brandeis

I would often spend a few days at a time - usually during the week when everyone else was working - camped up a small creek in the Sierra foothills near Pine Flat reservoir east of Fresno. It is a magnificent place with a 40 foot waterfall and a swimming hole 15' deep and at least 40' in diameter. In the winter time the roar of that creek at that waterfall when the rain is heavy is unbelievable. The flooded creek shoots out and hits a bowl of water-worn bedrock halfway down to the creekbed below, where it shoots out a second time into the big pool. The surrounding canyon is very steep and the creek takes a 180º turn here - oak and pine forest on one slope, rock and scruffy grass on the other forming a huge bowl - and it reverberates the thunder of this cascade so that the body actually feels the pressure of that constant hammering of water against stone. It never failed to make me smile.

But that same creek in the early summer when things were green and flowers bloomed... blue tailed skinks, bobcat and mountain lion, redtail hawk, newts and turtles and lots of snakes and lizards and clean water... perfect for swimming on a hot day. There are bedrock mortars there too. I find them everywhere I go in California. And because I know tribal folks, family now, these grinding stones remain a reminder of the otherwise silent history around me. And knowing the genocide that took place throughout the Sierras and the rest of gold country during the California Gold Rush I always tread lightly, acknowledging those old ones who loved and knew this land in a way that I would never be able to come close to matching. Their attachment was generations old... The bones of their ancestors were now the limbs of trees and the blades of grass. So... alone? Nah, I was never alone. In solitude I found the trivia of the day was not always exciting but occasionally was surprising and was always enjoyable.

To watch an ouzel bounce its way up a stream or river in its endless search for food... and then to follow it and find its nest, always in some remote crag pretty much inaccessible to any predator, is to wonder at the creation itself. The ouzel is a way cool bird, John Muir called it his favorite. To hear an ouzel's song is to understand why it would be Muir's favorite.

Solitude in nature is for me the ultimate meditation. Through the cycle of a day the sublime going-ons in nature is far less sublime when the details are scrutinized, when hours are spent watching who comes and goes and what they are about in their comings and goings. Life slows down, breath takes a deeper slower rhythm and you can hear everything... I learn that the fat field mouse with the nick in his ear lives in the rocks under the rootwad of that sycamore and that there are one heck of a lot more quails (sisquoc) in this canyon than I thought when I first sat down on this boulder. Contact with nature has a familial intimacy. Camped in one place long enough and I see the mouse and the cottontail rabbits, the turtles and hawks all have their routines. In fact they are, on occasion, observed to be enjoying themselves, acting like they live there... like they have a role equitable with that of any other, even the humans who so easily ignore them and occasionally shoot them.

So, while the good families that only a little more than a century ago lived in these places I've come to love and to consider part of my territory are here no more, I still share this with them, this cycle of light and darkness, this place of warm sunshine and cold water, this land, this earth that has given so much to get us to the place as a nation we are today... and I wonder... did they as they sat here grinding acorns or seeds, maybe gramma watching the babies as they splash in the shallows of the creek, did they have a sense of me, as another there, in their place, in their time?