True Love and Restoration

Recently I was asked to give a talk on the subject of love. Strange as it may seem, the first love I turn to is the love bunch grasses. They hold the soil together on the hills of my home terrain.

The New Mexico feather grass has one big seed with a really sharp point and a long feathered thread attached to the top. As the seed ripens and dries, the thread, sometimes 6 inches long coils and creates a spiraled feather. The grass seed detaches from its perch and floats away to a bare patch of ground. The sharp end of the seed drops to the ground. The spiral feather catches the wind and winds around in circles, drilling the seed into the Earth. It’s perfect and beautiful. This is what I love.

I have a great love for the body of the Earth, her crevices and critters, and for the dance of interdependence; the ritual of transformation and harmony throughout her oceans and landscapes.

Many people have lots of passions. Me, I really just have this one. My love of the living being of the Earth.

I have this memory of when I was seventeen years old, interviewing for colleges and being asked what I saw myself doing in the future, what I wanted to study. I can still see in my mind the vision I had of this ditch in the ground. I was looking down at a gash of bare soil. I knew that it needed healing, but I didn’t know what the problem was or what the solution would be...(read more of this blog post and about the internship)