California Dreamin'
Calochortus, Calocedrus, Ceanothus. California Dreaming. And dreams of past loves, loves that persist, dreams that bring comfort or longing.
I just got back from a trip to the west coast where I felt as if I time traveled back into an old life, with familiar smells and scenes, seeing California spring yet again. I was met with the camaraderie of old friends, who base out there, and the full greeting by old plant friends I don’t get to see very often these days, and who kept me companion for many years.
I went out to teach sheepskin tanning, fat and smoke style, with my friend Jordan, and another friend Jesse who is a seasoned hide tanning teacher— assisted us. We taught at an ancestral skills gathering I have gone to many times - I’m trying to remember if this was my 4th or 5th Buckeye Gathering, but nonetheless, getting back to Lake Concow, to see how the land is evolving after the Camp fire was a treat. Jesse brought his bell tent and set up a camp for us, where we slept communally with layers of bison and sheep hide, nestled in thick canvas sleeping bags made for car camping. We made an outdoor kitchen by a downed Ponderosa Pine log, 10 feet from a patch of white flowering Trillium, coming out of Pine needle duff. Our friends Jess and Joe camped with us, setting their tent up just down the log from the bell tent. Another friend who also took our class set up by the log as well. And Samuel, the weaver, who has been on the Ground Shots Podcast twice, set up on the edge of our hide camp, which we made right uphill from the lake and bell tent. (Samuel and I recorded the very first Ground Shots Podcast episode sitting at the shore of this lake, on a big log that still remains)
By day, we instructed first time tanners, scraping wet or dry, nudging them to keep moving, pumicing, pushing, stretching. By night, we sat by fires listening to songs, and I’d go to sleep early most nights, before my friends, put in my earplugs so that I wouldn’t be disturbed by their late night arrivals. I slept so hard and deep, on the ground, surrounded by other kin and warm bodies, the ecosystem of people and land, it felt like communal sleeping like this just made full sense. Right, people used to do this. I’d feel the warmth of Jordan’s energy coming in next to me at some point between dreams in the night but rarely fully woke. In the morning, there we all were. I would pull out my earplugs and lay there half asleep listening to the geese and redwing blackbirds singing on the shore, from their Tule and Cattail perches. If Jesse had not woken (someone who doesn’t need coffee and can get right up to life in the morning with full energy) and asked me about my dreams— I would would sneak out, carry my sheepskin vest project and Craig Childs reading project (for research in my southwestern based ecology classes).
Barefoot on soft pine needles, a slight breeze, covered in my black walnut leaf dyed wool poncho and sporting a buckskin skirt I made almost 8 years ago, dyed with black walnut hulls three times now, I’d start the camp stove with some water to boil. Say hi to the Trilliums, who do not grow in Colorado but do in Appalachia, the Piedmont where I grew up but only by the river or on the north sides of rarely remaining intact forest, and on the west Coast of Turtle Island. I’d sit and watch the mist on the water while waiting for my water heating, taking in the quiet, before talking, watching and feeling things I don’t feel readily when I’m not actually in this landscape. I had memories flood back of the years I spent in the Sierra foothills. The charge of how hard it was had dissipated a little, because the good memories I have of the friends I made near the end of my time and the deep relationships I formed with the plants in the region replaced the bad ones of being in seasonal cannibas farm world, the suckhole of blatant land extraction that dragged me through resin and muck for years, and trapped in a relationship with an older man I let go on too long. Those were many years ago. The plant relationships remain, when the human ones are long gone. I spent a lot of time writing and researching about plants during that time, take a gander at the old archives if you’re interested.
I remembered other loves. I dreamed about them. Last Buckeye a few years ago, despite my grief of losing the relationship with my best friend during the pandemic who every plant reminds me of, I fell in love with an old friend from past California wanderings, who I connected with deeply around ecology, geology, waterways and plants. We spent a week after the gathering down the road at Carlos’, the seed collector’s land, turning towards one another a little more every day, with light in eyes, and warmth in shared touch and laughter. It rained that whole week. We had my wood stove and Carlos’ sauna going and would bundle in wool and drive up into the now treeless hills in search of roots to dig despite the cold weather. I remember my frozen hands, wrapped around a digging stick he made me, unearthing Mariposa Lily bulbs and long trailing Biscuitroots with tough leaves and yellow flowers. We wandered and dreamed of taking people up there to show them the gardens re-emerging after the scorching fire that took all the Gray Pines, a midsize Sierra foothill Pine with large resinous cones and spikes that could kill you if they hit your head coming down. That romance didn’t last more than several months, which seemed to be the trend during this time in my life, and this particular one I certainly wanted to continue, though it was merely a fantasy, in the end. He fed me ideas of a future, of collaboration and adventure, and I listened and took it in, thinking, I will believe you if you still say this in a year, and it actually happens, as I’ve become jaded about love, and about what people say, and if someone is showering me with extreme love and hope and dreams very early on, likely they will abandon you later when the high has worn off and the deeper more complex layers of our beings emerge. Often people fall for me quick, get a little obsessed and then pull away a little later on. Sometimes it doesn’t take long, sometimes it takes longer. I seem neat from the outside, with my interesting projects, smile, ideas, stories from years of travel, my crafting and warm earthen aesthetic and ‘energy’ as folks have said. All that is cool, but depth is what I long for, deep heart connection, safety, vulnerability, collaboration, continuity and trust. So it was in this love, short lived, as this man had a family with another, and secretly a coyote, though I was warned by others that he was trickster, and I guess I needed to learn that lesson again — inviting in trickster into my fierce heart. His family came first, ultimately, and so he slowly pulled away, the phone calls less and less, the plans came to a halt, our overnight multi-day walk in Joshua Tree last year awkward and distant.
The distance grew to the point that this year when he showed up to the gathering where I taught tanning, he did not even come greet me hello right away. Before, he drove all the way out to Nevada to walk with me and friends in the Ruby Mountains, feeding me dreams of hopes that we’d continue to do this kind of thing, giving me the kind of nurturing and affection he offers his children, one of which he had to be both mother and father for in the first 8 years. He held me like his child in tenderness, allowing my laughters and tears the space the needed to be accepted, and yet as a lover, and we shared the joy of speaking what we know about the land, and our curiosities. He took me fly fishing where I got a hook stuck in my leg. That trip was a moment of relief in a multi-year period of wretched grief, where I thought everything was going to be ok. But it was also an illusion. I think I knew the whole time it wasn’t going to last, with the complexity of his family situation I also wanted to respect, and my ultimately not being ready to deeply open my heart again to someone else after being left by a person I wanted to tend to long term. Really I just didn’t want to be someone’s side thing, or second priority, or occasional lover without commitment to a greater vision. I’ve had other occasional lovers, and it worked because my life circumstances were different, but in this case, it wouldn’t for me. I wanted and still want, home in place, deeply rooted, with daily life love in the little ways it makes a hearth, and sure other ventures with other loves is neat, but without the center anchor, that kind of thing doesn’t make sense to me.
So I see him out of the corner of my eye at the gathering, with one of his children that many people have asked if it was mine, even this year— and knew I would have to be the one to go find him. Why do people do this kind of thing to others’ hearts? Pull them in, convince them of safety, feed them dreams, and then go, without clear explanation, or take it all back. It makes it hard for me to believe anyone, or anything they say, any amount of praise, I love you or affirmation, that those things aren’t just selfish and hormonely driven, but truly deep authentic feelings. So after a day or two, I go find him in the dinner line, looking like Huck Fin, dressed in linen overalls, a plaid wool button-up underneath, barefoot, curly wiley hair, an old fashioned small brimmed wool cap on. He holds his young son’s hand. People are swirling all around, getting condiments on their rice and kraut, and I tap him on the shoulder. I am wearing my long dark red dress, covered in yellow scarves dyed with coreopsis flower I painstakingly dyed this winter with proper scouring and mordanting and days of boiling for rich color. He turns to see me, his eyes glowing with attraction and he hugs me for a good minute, kisses my shoulder, tells me I smell good and that he missed me. We unlock, walk to the condiment table, exchange a few more words about the gathering, people move all around, and then I skip off and don’t sit and eat with him. The whole gathering was like this, little moments, mostly initiated by me, some closeness and touch, some talk about life, but no deep conversations about the state of the heart or any plans to adventure again. He mentions his family most conversations and things they are doing. I seek him but don’t seek too hard because I guess I’m not supposed to. He doesn’t say goodbye when he leaves, he gathers his blanket from the barter faire where he had his handmade wooden benches and stools on display, made from Ceanothus burls, Walnut and Yew wood, and even though I’m standing just across the way, he doesn’t come over. I turn away just for a moment, and he packs his van and goes. I could have walked over there. But I don’t chase people who don’t prioritize me. I’ve learned my lesson on chasing where I’m not wanted. I can’t do that to my heart again.
(been taking a photography break- but here’s a photo of our digging a few years ago in the hills I describe, during one of my land photo documentation sessions)
I think we never stop loving the people we have loved. Even when they want you to move on and it may even make them uncomfortable to know you still do. But these are things that we cannot just force away. The longing is always there somewhere, and can be ignited by the smallest things like a smell, or a texture or a breeze. In this case, this short-lived love flooded back memories of this time, Beltane as our anniversary of deeper connection. I had dreams while sleeping next to my friends, of that lover, of other lovers, of also really weird and dangerous things that woke me in the night glad it wasn’t real. Other dreams I woke from and wished they were real. Its so interesting how in this culture, we can get so deep with someone and then completely ignore them as if they don’t exist or pretend that our hearts don’t still feel things. But we do. What I wanted the most with this person was continuity and friendship, as we deeply connect intellectually and I am lit up by connecting this way with people, who share vision and who want to discuss the fabric of ecosystems we find ourselves in beyond the perceived linearity of time moving one direction. So I mourn that we cannot keep that kinship, as having had a romance changes what is allowed, and even though I resist a lot of gender binary, at the end of the day I am perceived as a woman in this culture, a threat in this scenario, presenting in a particular kind of culturally feminine way (though I’m queer, and question constructs of feminine and masculine being these set objective qualities but more fluidly subjective to time and place and land), I cannot be ‘one of the boys’ going out hunting and fishing and hiking with a man who has once cared for me in a way that wasn’t platonic. This is one of those cultural rules.
After I look longingly towards where his van was parked, feeling sad I didn’t get a goodbye even, my friend Jesse comes up to me and says, to not give my energy where it is wasted. The lack of goodbye should tell you everything you need to know. This coming from someone who has broken plenty of hearts himself, and now on the other side of things. Another person tells me that their avoidance and distance, means they deeply love you and just cannot, and its a way for them to protect themselves and their heart when they have to keep their agreements elsewhere. I guess I understand that, I have to be cold and distant in places I don’t want to, but I have no other choice, or at least I think that, because my heart is important to me.
I go back to our hide camp, and lean into the warmth of my friends, and the beauty of the sheepskins and how much I love tanning them. I sleep deep every night in the den of the bell tent, dreaming close to those I have kept kinship with over many years of time and space, but the night after I didn’t get a goodbye, I didn’t sleep well. I had anxiety. I kept waking, tossing and turning. I kept worrying about going back to Colorado, and questioning why I stay somewhere I don’t have this same kind of friendship web. I look at myself and ask why I have stumbled along so much in life. There have been times I have been very sure, and have stepped directly towards what I want but for whatever reasons, those are the people and places, projects that I then lose.
I lean into the warmth of the love that I can safely have, with my friends who do show up for me. Who do keep on tending to my heart, checking on me, make time for me, follow through and who still there 10 years later. Who have stayed with the trouble through tricky times and we have morphed together in our changes and transformations. I lean into the warmth of the Yerba Santa that I get to say hello to again, the tenacious and fierce Scotch Broom blanketing the hills post fire overwhelming ecologists and TEK folk who think it shouldn’t be there. I lean into seeing Death Camas, Deergrass, Blue-eyed Grass, Ceanothus, Western Azalea, Alder, Dogbane, and Trillium here again. I lean into the familiar scent of the Deerbrush Ceanothus, whose green twigs smell of wintergreen when crushed, and remember despite the lonely years on weed farms, she was always there, waiting for me to smell her twigs or musty spring flowers. Even in deep winter, in the days of rain and dreary, she held onto some leaves, that I would watch dance along still fishless rivers due to the mines from the 1800’s depositing mercury in them. I lean into the love of the Incense Cedar which grows mostly in the Sierra foothills of California but also on the coast some too, and into Oregon, a tree that is just right here, Calocedrus, California-Cedar.
(Myron and one of Highlander Kris’ goats, who was bred from one of Callie Russell’s goats, who will be on the next Ground Shots Podcast episode!)
Calochortus, Calocedrus, Ceanothus. California Dreaming. And dreams of past loves, loves that persist, dreams that bring comfort or longing.
Before and after the gathering, I see my old friend Nina and her new baby, living in a tucked away cabin surrounded by California Bay trees, Blue and Black Oaks, a cabin with perfect sideways light as it was built by an artist originally who painted in the space. A friend who I have known since she was 18, just away from home, soft, Cancerian, but fierce and stubborn, whose now a powerful midwife harnessing that nurturing yet boundaried love into advocating for herself and other folks who birth in a culture that does not honor the sanctity of their bodies and hearts. She made a nest for me to sleep in when I visited, placing in the nest an original copy of Gary Snyder’s ‘Manzanita’ chapbook, Martin Prechtel’s ‘The Smell of Rain on Dust’— a perfect companion for my grief that is often uncomfortable for others, and Mo’s zine ‘Weave the Water in the Wood’ on birth, death, and weaving. I stayed with her on my way in and on my way out, being reminded that I am continuously loved by someone somewhere, even when I am alone. I take a piece of all this medicine with me and I cry my way back to Colorado, on buses and planes and hiding in bathrooms, feeling unsure if I should stay due to complicated people relations, even though the land calls to me deeply. So it was, a medicine moment in California, a moment of revisiting past lives and love, and it was healing, healing a past era that I am slowly unwinding, sifting and sorting out to be a more whole person today.
Endnote. I’m teaching field ecology courses this season. Some are coming up super soon if you feel like last minute jumping on a class in Unaweep Canyon (4 days) or on the side of the Grand Mesa (7 days). There will be one class in August as well at 10,000 feet. We will weave story, somatic knowing, plant ID, wild tending, and play into our time together. We will talk history, ecology, naming and relationship. Sign up and come hang with me in person. I’m also reviving an old herbal project I used to do and sending out land capsules in August and again in the fall this year, you can pre-order a share now of seasonally made herbal medicine. I am going to be renting an apothecary workspace this season where I have room to work with all these medicines. To stay rooted in relationship, the amount of shares I’m offering is small, so I will be limiting the quantities. I’m practicing a lot more boundaries around when to limit myself these days. That said, I hope to send out medicines from the Rockies and beyond, some roots, flowers and fruits.
I love how you write. The emotion just pours through.