Cast in white

December 21, 2016

my first memories

were

cast in white

as the glean

hot sun on peeling paint

blinded me

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Recent Entries

Featured

Nov 11, 2018

Juniper Plant Profile

Nov 11, 2018

Junipers have a few distinguishing characteristics. They can be big trees, medium sized shrubs or found trailing along the ground. They can grow at pretty high elevation and extreme climates. Often the tree has needle-like or scale-like leaves. Needle-like leaves are most commonly found on younger plants, but sometimes old branches, and some species retain the needle-like leaves. The scale-like leaves are often found on juvenile leaves or older. I’m sure there is an adaptive advantage to having these different leaf types.

Nov 11, 2018

Oct 23, 2018

Artist Profile: Tilke Elkins + Natural Pigments + the importance of investigation

Oct 23, 2018

I can’t help but react with curiosity to the ways in which artist Tilke Elkins explores the blurry line between what we deem ‘natural’ and ‘un-natural’ through her visual artwork.

In her work, she uses color, story, material investigation, texture and play to give the viewer an opportunity to dive into that blurry line headfirst and not necessarily with the intent to provide definitive answers through that process. Deciding what is natural is not the goal. But, if inviting us to take a second (or third or fourth) look at a ‘thing’ and how we see it and ourselves as belonging or not is the goal, she is certainly succeeding.

Oct 23, 2018

Sep 28, 2018

Wallowas photo diary

Sep 28, 2018

Wildness is so ethereal, subjective, really everywhere. But to me, the wildness found here is about being unobserved by other humans, about being at awe at the earth's doings.

Sep 28, 2018

Aug 14, 2018

Elderberry (Sambucus) plant profile

Aug 14, 2018

On the trail, going steadily uphill, I am followed by a murder of crows hopping from one Devil's Club (Oplopanax horridus) palmate leaf open handed to another. The car sounds disappear and I go deeper into to quiet dampness, and into the company of trees that have seen a lot of change these past 600 years. Ferns, Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum), Wood Sorrel (Oxalis sp.), Salal (Gaultheria shallon) surround me. I put on my green fleece over my Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) and Yellow Dock (Rumex crispus) seed leaf-print dyed silk shirt made by a friend, and then take it off. On, then off. Movement much needed after a week and a half of being sick, I try to walk fast to get my heart rate up. I cry at the sight of the old Sitka Spruce, standing nearly alone towering over a younger forest, and this is even with half of its top having fell off in the 1950's. All around this elder (though this isn't actually old for what these trees should be) I find the 'Elder,' Red Elderberry, in fact. The one whose berries have been found in archaeological middens sites belonging to the long time native human inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest coast.

Aug 14, 2018

Jul 29, 2018

questioning maps and names

Jul 29, 2018

We use lines and maps to our advantage. And sometimes to our detriment. Sometimes we use them to make sure people we don't like stay 'out' or don't get to 'have' what we feel entitled to have, like the right to drill for oil on native lands, or the right to have thousands of acres to herd cattle. Or the right to have access to wild space, or the right to live on the side of the city with more real estate value.

Jul 29, 2018

Jul 20, 2018

Citrus : A plant profile

Jul 20, 2018

I remember the daily glass of Orange or Grapefruit juice I used to have with breakfast growing up. The sweetened and concentrated juices got poured in cold glass jars with ice. My mom would feed my sister and I half a Grapefruit each for breakfast sometimes, covered in sugar to mask the bitter flavor and paired with a special spoon that cuts around in-between the fruit and the white inner skin. Around Christmastime, Orange and Grapefruit would ripen in Florida, and the fruits would make their way up through the South and into local stores. It was common to get an orange in your Christmas stocking, a welcome fresh source of Vitamin C in the depths of winter. I also remember religiously coating my already straw-blonde hair with fresh lemon juice in the summer, sometimes leaving dried pulp in the strands in order to speed up the summer sun's lightening process. Often this left my then long strands snow white by August.

Jul 20, 2018

Jul 5, 2018

Joshua Tree photo diary + Sun Ritual + sheepskin tanning

Jul 5, 2018

I visited Joshua Tree for a couple of reasons. I was headed to take a sheepskin tanning class with a friend, Maya Beth. Though I have tanned sheepskins before, so honestly I was needing time with other skills folks, women, and doing something with my hands, with others. Its a part of my soul that hasn't felt as fulfilled these past few years as the road brings you to concentrated times of this work, when my life used to just be working on projects living in community all the time. I've home based some out of Nevada County, CA, but I haven't found many folks to do this kind of work with together. I find myself driving hours and hours chasing that precious time and usually it is pretty worth it.

Jul 5, 2018

Jun 28, 2018

Utah photo diary + Sundial Medicinals' Apothecary

Jun 28, 2018

month earlier this year, which proved beneficial for a lone traveler in the desert. The weather was perfect, it even included a few rainstorms during the journey. If you read my post last year from the same trek, you'll see that I traveled through a heat wave and even got a flat tire out in Canyonlands. During this event I was aided by an elderly experienced boon-docking nudist couple (they weren't nude when they helped me, but they run a nudist campground in Arizona).

Jun 28, 2018

Jun 13, 2018

Creosote Bush, Larrea tridentata: A plant profile

Jun 13, 2018

Larrea is also incredibly efficient at reserving water for itself due to harsh temperatures and long periods without rainfall in the desert. As with other plants that have resinous leaves, Larrea's are adapted to retain precious water for its photosynthetic needs. The resins protect the plant from the harsh environment, and it is these concentrated powerful resins that give the plant its greatest medicinal qualities. Mature plants are extremely tolerant of drought. Rising temperatures and recent droughts in the Southwest have actually increased its populations because of this plant's adaptability. When it does rain, the plant takes as much opportunity as it can to absorb the moisture, and the leaves and new branches almost feel succulent to the touch. When it is hot out and hasn't rained for awhile, you can approach one of these bushes and think that it is practically dead- even the newest of branches will break off with clear tree-limb like 'snap.'

Jun 13, 2018

May 20, 2018

Rose Family Plants: A Plant Profile pt. 1, featuring Multiflora Rose, Rugosa Rose and Blackberry

May 20, 2018

While I harvested the flowers, berries, leaves and roots from this ever unfurling / scaling back / unfurling hedge of aromatic wonder woven between the living spaces of my cobb outhouse, the communal outdoor kitchen, our gardens and my cobb cottage home, I also spent just as much time 'cutting back' the 'chaos' being rightfully poked and prodded in return from the protective bramble. I'd spend hours in the humid air gloved covered in thick-canvased Carharts trying to carve paths into the center of giant groves to get the best berries, or cutting them out of and digging them up from the edges of garden beds we allotted for annual food or perennial herbs. I'd find enclaves where the birds made nests, or the deer made tiny beds to rest. I realized through this relationship with pokey and sharp brambles, and my tendency to stay away from parts of the farm that I could not traverse because of the thickets of prickle, that there was a purpose to these hedges.

May 20, 2018

Apr 11, 2018

'The Cottonwoods,' Populus : A plant profile

Apr 11, 2018

I am unusually drawn to Cottonwood. The smell of the sticky golden resin that can be found on its buds, petioles, and sometimes leaves is one of my favorites that exist in our world. This love is so great that I wear a perfume made with Cottonwood resin as a base. I rub the salves I make from this plant on my skin and face just to feel what I feel when I smell it. Its a scent, like all scents, that ignites the bypassing of language and goes directly to that primal place of ancestral connection beyond just our human kin. Maybe I love it for that, for that immediate place it takes me, that kind of forget the small talk and the everyday menial sense of things and be in this feeling that our bodies are one part of a greater whole in time and space.

Apr 11, 2018

Apr 1, 2018

Oil and Rust V: My Grandmothers Gave Me Plants

Apr 1, 2018

Listening to Elizabeth Cotten on repeat the past two days has me missing home, the south, the swampy weather, the spring ephemerals, the smells of a freshly warming greenhouse in spring. I don't think I'll ever not long for home the way my body does for this place, where my ancestors have tended land in different ways for many generations. It really is in my blood. My family has passed on the love of plants generation after generation and the 'green thumb' seems to run in our genes. I just don't feel right not tending plants in some way. There's something to be said about people inheriting the good and bad things our ancestors did into our own bodies.

Apr 1, 2018

Mar 15, 2018

Self-care on the Road #2: Practicalities & a note on churning

Mar 15, 2018

There are giant gas rigs in between America’s ‘fruit basket’ groves, pumping away, with political signs every few miles noting that farming was NOT the cause of water shortages. It's all an immense overwhelming facade of extraction, taking all the water, taking all the topsoil, taking all the gas deep down in the earth. The hunger for churning, for turning over, for turning time into an energy that can be used to propel forward, progressing towards something we do not know what. Propelling is life, but as a species in a culture of excess, we aren't encouraged to use this propelling force we churn wisely or carefully.

Mar 15, 2018

Mar 5, 2018

Yerba Santa: A Plant Profile

Mar 5, 2018

Yerba Santa is a plant native to California, parts of Oregon and other species are found in the Southwest usually found at lower or mid elevations. It was given the name we currently use meaning 'sacred herb' by settlers that came to the region and noticed it's regular use amongst native groups who had lived here for thousands of years.

Mar 5, 2018

Feb 15, 2018

'The Redroots,' Ceanothus: A Plant Profile

Feb 15, 2018

Ceanothus is the genus of a group of plants in the Rhamnaceae or Buckthorn plant family. Several species in this genus go by the common name, Red Root.

Feb 15, 2018

Feb 1, 2018

an attempt at self-care on the road : an expansion

Feb 1, 2018

n my Ground Shots zine #1/2 'Working in Resins,' zine, I included a cut-and-pasted little quick and dirty list at the end, with words on how to stay sane on the road. I don't think I have all the answers to that, and certainly feel like I am still figuring it out myself. But, I decided I'd put together some more thoughts on this since so many folks want to travel but don't know how to start, or feel the weight of fear that comes with thinking something bad could happen out there.

Feb 1, 2018

Jan 19, 2018

A spell for the year

Jan 19, 2018

sit here looking out the window, with my typewriter next to me, my books and papers scattered about, covered in writings and maps of ideas and projects, goals and research. My coffee in a handmade mug, half written letters waiting to be finished, packages waiting to be sealed and sent. The pages of books are marked and folded for me to go back and reflect on chosen information, directed at writing projects and ideas unfolding.

Jan 19, 2018

Jan 14, 2018

FLIP, DIG, TURN the dirt

Jan 14, 2018

dirt story, dance

flip turn dirt dirty buried redneck dirt neck sun neck dirt flipped aired open.

Jan 14, 2018

Jan 9, 2018

Persimmon : a plant profile

Jan 9, 2018

Persimmon is a small tree with a luscious edible orange fruit, technically a berry. The word 'Persimmon' is an alteration of a word originally coming from an Algonquian language of the native Powhatan of coastal Virginia meaning 'dry fruit' due to its tannic skins. Persimmon is wild in the southeast United States, and a planted edible cultivar of the West coast. Different Persimmon species are also native to parts of Asia, and southeast Europe. Persimmon has a cultural tradition of use in many parts of the world including the Middle East, Spain and parts of the Mediterranean.

Jan 9, 2018

Dec 7, 2017

Pinon Pine : a plant profile

Dec 7, 2017

The Pinon Pine tree is responsible for the creation and survival of the cultures that inhabited the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin as early as 6,000 years ago according to the archaeological findings of Pinon charcoal and nutshell remnants found in old cave dwellings (Lanner). This includes the Great Basin dwellers of Washo, Shoshone, Paiute and the southwest dwelling Hopi, Zuni, Pueblo, and Navajo. Bountiful Pinon shaped the creation stories, the physical objects of everyday life, and was the main source of food for Native peoples who dwelled on these lands, and still dwell on these lands. How each group and culture used and treated the plant varies according to location and time. There is no denying the importance of this tree, a fairly new inhabitant of the western deserts of the United States in geological time.

Dec 7, 2017

Dec 6, 2017

Point Reyes & the privilege of finding peace

Dec 6, 2017

Nov 11, 2017

a nevada moment

Nov 11, 2017

gold miner in the tub

talks of an empty grave

Nov 11, 2017

Sep 30, 2017

a summer of Fire in the west

Sep 30, 2017

Sep 12, 2017

Wind/Storm/Wild: a wilderness solo

Sep 12, 2017

During the solo, the time is fully inner dialogue, a ride along the contours of the inner landscape. The outer landscape is illuminated. It reflects the terrain of the inside. You either fight it or embrace it or a little of both. There are times of lonlieness or fear. Of creating monsters out of nothing. Out of seeds of the past, or of unresolved shadows. Or culturally trained fears of chaos and death. At the same time, the most inspiring thoughts and ideas come from the smallest of reverberations in the inner landscape. This happens when allowed the space to drift and imagine without interruption from other humans or the distractions of the highly stimulating modern world.

Sep 12, 2017

Sep 2, 2017

Signal Fire residency and 'Ground shots'

Sep 2, 2017

his past summer I spent over a month with Signal Fire's Wide Open Studios summer immersion program, a kind of activist / wilderness study / artist residency that ventures out onto wild lands backpacking or establishing a basecamp from which to work from. We traversed the Wallowas, Bitterroots and Pioneer Range spanning across Oregon, Idaho and Montana. Often, we had to change hiking routes and trip plans because of the many fires raging that those ranges. We were challenged with with daily creative projects, deep plays and reading assignments to inform our sense of place and art practice.

Sep 2, 2017

Jul 22, 2017

old ways at Jim Croft's in northern Idaho

Jul 22, 2017

The Crofts include Jim and Melody, amazing craftspeople who settled in northern Idaho in the early 70’s. They have watched various other back to the lander neighbors come and go, but they have remained. Every summer they host visitors and also hold classes on making medieval books from the ground up.

Jul 22, 2017

Jun 24, 2017

good medicine, moab, mormons: travel notes

Jun 24, 2017

I sit inside drinking hibiscus coolers, refrescas; while the immense heat fills the bright land. It is shades of jagged burnt ochre, hued by the occasional cerulean green vegetation that hugs the land close. The view distant and vast. This landscape is as far from what I am most familiar as it gets. The dry air sucks the moisture right out of your mouth, your eyes even. The immense sun with no humidity as a barrier. But, as soon as you get in the shade it is pleasant.

Jun 24, 2017

Jun 20, 2017

Great Basin travel notes

Jun 20, 2017

Here, in the desert, you are just a spec of dust on the surface of things. Everything can hear you, or nothing can hear you. You can disappear so easily. Fry if you break down in the summertime, or freeze if you get lost in the winter.

Jun 20, 2017

Jun 12, 2017

home as a purgatory of remembrance

Jun 12, 2017

Here I am sitting in the belly of it: the thick floor to ceiling windows that guard from the outside world line the container. The winds that ruffle the floating plastic across the runway don't hit me, I just watch from within. The windows that allow the sun in to warm my face, my swollen and tear stained cheeks, eyes red. The belly of the beast is an airport that jets us across mountains, too fast past fields of the plants and rocks that can tell us their stories. Productivity, access, interconnectedness. The irony of being able to visit, see, vision and move. Often I think interconnectedness is a good thing. It is, and and it isn't. Rushing too fast past. I thought I learned this lesson on the camino, where, it all hit me as my grandmother was on her deathbed thousands of miles away. The pain of my feet was the pain of the earth necessary to feel. Feeling it heavy as the cars moved too fast avoiding the connection required to really witness a place in all its subtleties, for the sake of unending productivity.

Jun 12, 2017

May 19, 2017

plants stories from the sagebrush salve

May 19, 2017

This is the fourth year that I will be making some version of what I was calling 'Desert Wound Salve' in the past. The plants I lend stories to here in this post are some of the plants included in the salve I make. I tend to collect stories in my mind of the plants I love, and want to make my medicine filled with stories and layers of connection.

May 19, 2017

blog archive

2018
- Nov 11, 2018 Juniper Plant Profile Nov 11, 2018
- Oct 23, 2018 Artist Profile: Tilke Elkins + Natural Pigments + the importance of investigation Oct 23, 2018
- Sep 28, 2018 Wallowas photo diary Sep 28, 2018
- Aug 14, 2018 Elderberry (Sambucus) plant profile Aug 14, 2018
- Jul 29, 2018 questioning maps and names Jul 29, 2018
- Jul 20, 2018 Citrus : A plant profile Jul 20, 2018
- Jul 5, 2018 Joshua Tree photo diary + Sun Ritual + sheepskin tanning Jul 5, 2018
- Jun 28, 2018 Utah photo diary + Sundial Medicinals' Apothecary Jun 28, 2018
- Jun 13, 2018 Creosote Bush, Larrea tridentata: A plant profile Jun 13, 2018
- May 20, 2018 Rose Family Plants: A Plant Profile pt. 1, featuring Multiflora Rose, Rugosa Rose and Blackberry May 20, 2018
- Apr 11, 2018 'The Cottonwoods,' Populus : A plant profile Apr 11, 2018
- Apr 1, 2018 Oil and Rust V: My Grandmothers Gave Me Plants Apr 1, 2018
- Mar 15, 2018 Self-care on the Road #2: Practicalities & a note on churning Mar 15, 2018
- Mar 5, 2018 Yerba Santa: A Plant Profile Mar 5, 2018
- Feb 15, 2018 'The Redroots,' Ceanothus: A Plant Profile Feb 15, 2018
- Feb 1, 2018 an attempt at self-care on the road : an expansion Feb 1, 2018
- Jan 19, 2018 A spell for the year Jan 19, 2018
- Jan 14, 2018 FLIP, DIG, TURN the dirt Jan 14, 2018
- Jan 9, 2018 Persimmon : a plant profile Jan 9, 2018
2017
- Dec 7, 2017 Pinon Pine : a plant profile Dec 7, 2017
- Dec 6, 2017 Point Reyes & the privilege of finding peace Dec 6, 2017
- Nov 11, 2017 a nevada moment Nov 11, 2017
- Sep 30, 2017 a summer of Fire in the west Sep 30, 2017
- Sep 12, 2017 Wind/Storm/Wild: a wilderness solo Sep 12, 2017
- Sep 2, 2017 Signal Fire residency and 'Ground shots' Sep 2, 2017
- Jul 22, 2017 old ways at Jim Croft's in northern Idaho Jul 22, 2017
- Jun 24, 2017 good medicine, moab, mormons: travel notes Jun 24, 2017
- Jun 20, 2017 Great Basin travel notes Jun 20, 2017
- Jun 12, 2017 home as a purgatory of remembrance Jun 12, 2017
- May 19, 2017 plants stories from the sagebrush salve May 19, 2017
- May 8, 2017 sadness and the sea May 8, 2017
- Apr 28, 2017 yuba poem Apr 28, 2017
- Apr 20, 2017 An unexpected death in the redwoods Apr 20, 2017
- Apr 2, 2017 Safer Apr 2, 2017
- Mar 14, 2017 gathering branches from the far and wide Mar 14, 2017
- Feb 27, 2017 tan oak study and the alchemy of understanding through process Feb 27, 2017
- Feb 20, 2017 Post-Imbolc Ode to Lingering Darkness Feb 20, 2017
- Feb 14, 2017 s t o r y o f p l a c e : oil and rust II Feb 14, 2017
- Feb 5, 2017 Why Care about the Land? Feb 5, 2017
- Jan 6, 2017 Resilience is Bristlecones Jan 6, 2017
2016
- Dec 21, 2016 Cast in white Dec 21, 2016

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