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Reflections at Sauvie

Yesterday was another cleanup day at Sauvie Island; as much time as I’ve been spending out in the Gorge, I love my little close-in stretch of the Columbia, too. I especially appreciated its convenience since today was a low-energy day, since I didn’t sleep so well as I might have liked last night. Still, I wanted the opportunity to get outside today, and the beach was due for a cleaning.

So it’s getting warmer, and more people are going to be showing up to fish, and also to party. Unfortunately, some of these people will be irresponsible enough to do things like smash glass bottles in the middle of the road and leave their garbage strewn across the sand. I tend to ready myself for anything any time I go out for cleanup. However, when I got there today, there was a woman walking across the parking lot with a paper grocery bag full of aluminum cans. She had taken the time to pick them all up out of the trees lining the beach. We chatted a moment, and I thanked her and went on my way. It’s always nice to see I’m not the only person cleaning up, and it did perk up my mood.

White-lined sphinx moth. Lupa, 2013.

White-lined sphinx moth. Lupa, 2013.

Of course, having someone else get most of the big, noticeable stuff meant that my afternoon was mostly spent with the little, fiddly things like cigarette butts and tiny pieces of plastic. So it was a slow progression down the beach with my trash bag and kitty litter scoop, sifting stuff out of the sand. I picked up enough cigarette refuse, in fact, that I’ve joined TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Brigade; I don’t smoke myself, but I figure if I can get a few more filters and the like out of the landfill, so much the better. It can get disheartening to come back every time and have the beach look just as bad as before, since I can’t be there every day, and there are a LOT of people leaving trash around. But when such thoughts begin to bring me down, I remind myself of the Starfish Story*; trash pickup isn’t as romantic as saving starfish, but the concept is the same: I can’t get to them all, but it matters to this one. And the next. And the next.

While the day was a bit cooler than it’s been, and overcast, the birds were still out in force. I saw a pair of bald eagles, robins, and an osprey, among others, and I could hear the alarm call of a Northern flicker and the song of a winter wren off in the trees. There were even fish jumping out of the river, though I was surprised there was no one fishing today. Amid the twigs and other refuse kicked up onto the beach by the river, I saw white-lined sphinx moth in its last moments, perhaps dying after having mated. I left it where it lay, and a few minutes later a large ship passing by kicked up the biggest wake I’ve seen yet at the beach. When I walked back a little later, the moth was gone, no doubt washed into the water to become food for a passing fish.

Speaking of the water, as I sat and rested at one point, I listened to the river splashing up against the bank of wet sand. I thought about how much quieter it would be here without the traffic on the ocean, and I-5 not too far away, and the planes overhead, and the various vehicles driving on the access road. I thought of how before all that noise, that splashing water might be one of the loudest things there if one were to sit and listen. And I reflected on how the sound of water on land is one of the very oldest sounds in the world, and wondered whether Mars, or any other planet, had had that sound as well.

Toy plane found on the beach. Lupa, 2013.

Toy plane found on the beach. Lupa, 2013.

It’s thoughts like that that make the work so much more worth it. Yes, it’s good to be out with my hands in the dirt making a small difference, keeping bits of plastic and foam from being eaten by fish or, ultimately, joining the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And that’s worthwhile. But even moreso are the moments I get to have when I connect with this place I help to take care of. It’s the only place where I get to be right by the river, the wide and deep and ever-flowing Columbia, the heart of my bioregion. So many things I’ve learned there, and so many things yet to be discovered–and my beach is a keeper of some of those secrets. One need look no further than the outdoors for a Mystery School beyond compare.

Of course, eventually we have to go back to chop wood, carry water, sift styrofoam. By the time my day was done, I had one large garbage bag full, mostly with little things, but also a couple of rusted chunks of metal and an old steel cable fragment. While most of what I find out there is refuse, occasionally I pick up something neat. Today it was an old toy plane, in pretty good condition other than one missing wheel. Usually when I find usable found objects I clean them up and donate them to SCRAP, but this one I’m hanging on to; it’ll go along with the circa 1920 milk glass jar and some other random things I’ve found during my volunteer time. Call it the Land’s “tip” for a job well done ;)

*Which was itself an adaptation of the often-unattributed “The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley.

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Eating, Wearing, and Hugging Animals; Or, Why Omnivores and Taxidermists Have Feelings

The other day on my Tumblr, I reblogged a set of images featuring “pet animals” on one side and “food animals” on the other, with the statement “Why love one but eat the other?” in the middle. They were from billboards that ran in Toronto a couple of years ago. The message, of course, is that we shouldn’t eat chickens, pigs, and cows because they’re animals just like puppies and kittens are; it’s an attempt to turn people to vegetarianism or veganism.

Care of BeVeg.ca

Care of BeVeg.ca

I don’t think I gave the desired response. For one thing, I have reasons for not going veg*n. I’m an obligate omnivore due to various quirks of my body and its metabolism; I even have it on doctor’s orders that I need a reasonable amount of meat protein because I tend to get sick otherwise, even on a well-balanced vegetarian diet. And I don’t respond well to attempted guilt trips masked as appeals to emotion, especially when they present only one true way for everyone to do something. So I decided to respond with some non-rhetorical reasons why we eat cows and not cats:

Because generally speaking herbivores taste better than carnivores. Also, we’ve spent centuries selectively breeding cows, pigs, and chickens to be meatier and tastier, while we haven’t done that with cats and dogs. And it’s easier to raise herbivores as food behaviorally, especially because we have bred them to be more docile.

And it’s also cultural. There have been and still are cultures in which dog and cat meat is acceptable; it’s just that in Western cultures, where this sort of ad campaign pops up, it’s not acceptable. If you talk to anyone raised on a farm, though, you know that farm kids are raised with the idea that some of the animals end up as food, and that you can be attached to them and care for them and still accept that fact. If they’re from a hunting family they often learn that the same deer they hunt are also beautiful animals that can be admired, and this doesn’t have to be a contradiction. On a farm, you’re closer to life and death than people who shop at the grocery store and have never raised their own meat or gone hunting. I didn’t grow up on a farm itself, but I grew up in a rural area with lots of farms, and with the reality that if I am going to eat, something has to die, whether animal, plant, or fungus.

I have had people ask me before, “How can you say you love animals when you have dead ones all over your home? How can you appreciate them when you support killing and eating them?” Simple: like those farm kids I went to school with, I understand that death is a reality and an inevitability, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only thing that defines my relationships with other living beings. Just because my existence is going to directly lead to the deaths of certain animals doesn’t mean I can’t have empathy for them and want them to have the best lives and cleanest deaths possible. I support both strict regulations in the care of domestic animals in homes and farms, and strict penalties for animal cruelty. I also support the protection of wildlife; I follow regulations surrounding animal parts as carefully as I can, and beyond what I need to cover personal and business bills I’m able to donate some money to animal-based nonprofits.

And I appreciate all of these animals both in life and death. I am ever grateful for wildlife sightings, urban and rural; the birds outside my apartment make me incredibly happy, and on the occasions I’ve seen a coyote or Douglas squirrel when out hiking, it’s been a highlight of the trip. But I also enjoy the beauty of well-crafted taxidermy that captures the grace and form of the animal when it was alive, and I’m fortunate to know some incredibly skilled taxidermy artists who are similarly appreciative of the wildlife whose remains they’re preserving. In a similar vein, I love how intelligent pigs are, I know what good pets chickens can be, and I think Highland cattle are one of the most adorable species of critter known to this world. But I am also grateful that I have relatively easy access to beef, pork, and chicken and the protein therein that keeps me going. If anything, my appreciation for these beings when they’re alive makes me more mindful of their remains once they’re dead, as well as the processes by which they went from life to death.

Vintage silver fox fur stole

Vintage silver fox fur stole

Is it hypocritical that I do eat pigs and cows and not dogs and cats? Perhaps. But just about everyone has some discrimination as to what animals will be harmed and which will not in order for them to continue living, and making a living. There are dead critter artists who limit themselves to vintage furs, roadkilled bones, and other relatively cruelty-free remains, but who will still happily scarf down a steak made from an antibiotic-stuffed cow that lived in a crowded stockyard and died badly in a factory farm, and eggs from a battery hen in a tiny cage. There are vegans who refuse to eat or wear anything that came directly from an animal, but who wear petroleum-based synthetic fabrics whose manufacture led to the deaths of countless animals through oil spills and factory pollution. Are these bad people? I don’t think so. There are very few people (thankfully) who actively want animals to suffer, and a lot of the rest of us would prefer that animals, even those we kill, were well cared for in life and death. Continuing public awareness campaigns help people to be more informed, even if they aren’t currently in a place where they can, for example, buy only free-range meat or raise backyard chickens for eggs. There needs to be a variety of solutions to match a variety of personal situations.

Which brings me to the last part of my Tumblr response:

Does that mean you should give up veg*nism and eat all the animals? Of course not. Nor does it mean that we should try to change American and other cultures to make dog and cat meat more acceptable. What it does mean, though, is that the above questions do have different answers, and a lot has to do with a person’s background and experiences in life. It’s not a simple situation.

I know, I know–there will be people who see this and say “Yes, it IS simple–don’t kill animals, period!” To that, I am going to have to agree to disagree for a variety of reasons. It is almost impossible to live a life that does not end in the deaths of other living beings, animals included. If your aim in life is to reduce the number of animal deaths as much as possible, then I wish you the best in it, and I respect you for it. But there are those of us who do to one degree or another have to and/or choose to benefit from the deaths of non-human animals, and our solutions to ethical conundrums may be different. I do agree there are plenty of people who aren’t mindful of where their meat and leather come from, and maybe they’d go veg*n if they really thought about it.

However, the assumption that anyone who eats meat and other animal products, or who is a leatherworker or taxidermist or similar artist, or who otherwise uses animal products–the assumption that we obviously haven’t thought the issue through enough, that we lack compassion, that we love animals less than a veg*n? I don’t agree with that, and neither would many of my omnivorous/leathery/etc. companions. Just because someone’s stance on an issue isn’t as extreme as yours doesn’t mean they’re acting from a place of ignorance, and I feel this fallacious argument in general is a big error in the discourse surrounding a lot of controversial topics.

Really, what I’d love people to take away from this is the idea that each person has their own relationships with the non-human animals we share this world with, whether they’re members of Pheasants Forever or PETA. And those relationships can’t be minimized to single sound bites; each one is the product of a unique lifetime of experience and thought and emotion. I feel this is a crucial thing to remember if we’re going to do anything other than argue and throw up defenses against each other. Even if we don’t agree on everything, we still have the potential to learn from each other, and at the very least have a more civil discourse over a complex, sensitive issue that affects far more than ourselves.

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Recent Hikes in the Gorge

The past few weeks I’ve been rekindling my love affair with the Columbia River Gorge. Sure, I’ll travel out to the coast with my partner every few months, and I’m planning an overnight trip with a friend to the East Oregon desert later this month. I love exploring new trails in the area, and I can’t wait until the snow’s melted enough around Mt. Hood that I can revisit some of my favorite places there. But the Gorge has always been my first love here, and it’s there that I continually return, year after year. I’m especially fond of the Oregon side, west of the Cascades. I never get tired of the basalt cliffs covered in Douglas fir and Western hemlock, the red-tinted ground bursting with wood sorrel and sword ferns, and the air filled with the spring sounds of Steller’s jays, winter wrens, and Northern flickers, among many others. Still, the eastern deserts, and all along the Washington side, I find more and more places to explore and appreciate.

Eagle Creek Trail, Oregon. Lupa, 2013.

Eagle Creek Trail, Oregon. Lupa, 2013.

I’ve been there three times in the past two weeks. First, I headed up the historical Eagle Creek trail, one of the earliest modern hiking trails in the Gorge. It’s one of the busiest trails in the area, and I must have seen close to twenty other hikers even though it was the middle of the week. I’m especially cautious as there are some narrow points; one stretch in particular overlooks a sheer drop, and there’s only a steel cable set into the rock on the inside of the trail to hang onto. I tend to only go on dry days; there have been deaths from people falling when the trail was slick with rain and ice. Still, if you can handle the vertigo it’s an absolutely stunning hike up into Eagle Creek’s canyon. This time I only went as far as Lower Punch Bowl Falls, where I watched a water ouzel splashing and diving in the water for a bit before turning back.

A lot of hikes I just spend stomping around, exploring the terrain and maybe taking a couple of cell phone pictures. However, this time I took my good camera with me, and got some nice shots here and there. The one I chose to share isn’t one of the best; it’s out of focus further back. But it was the only one I got with the sunlight streaming through the trees, and I was quite grateful for the change from winter’s rains. Apparently everyone else there was, too, since the birds were singing up a storm, and the trilliums were just opening their white and purple petals. I could still see snow in the upper parts of the mountains around me, but with sun and the temperature near 70, I could feel myself warming up and drying out.

Speaking of warm and dry, last week I headed out to Catherine Creek on the Washington side of the river, starting to get into more dry, deserty terrain. This is the best time of year to go there, as the meadows are packed full of wildflowers, over 80 species thereof. My visits to Catherine Creek have historically been adventurous. The first time I had to run a couple of miles back to the car as one of the few thunderstorms I’ve seen in the Northwest came rolling in from the south. And then when I went with my partner the following week, we ended up getting horribly lost and had to bushwhack our way down the slope to get back to the parking lot, avoiding poison oak and thorns all the way.

Grass Widow, one of the iconic flowers of Catherine creek. Lupa, 2013.

Grass Widow, one of the iconic flowers of Catherine creek. Lupa, 2013.

This time was thankfully uneventful, at least in that regard. Once again I decided to be my amateur photographer self, trying to get better shots of the flowers than I had last year. So I didn’t make it more than a couple of miles in a loop, but I did have a lot of fun snapping shots of the flora (and occasional microfauna). Again, the birds were out in force–juncos, swallows, scrub jays going “VWEET! VWEET!”, and even a hairy woodpecker tapping away at a pine tree. The flowers might get all the attention here, but the little flying dinosaurs are nothing to sneeze at.

I will admit that I was a bit disappointed there were no storms this time. I used to be absolutely terrified of storms when I grew up in the Midwest because we were always told at school to watch out for tornadoes. Since I moved to the west side of the Cascades in 2006, though, I can count on one hand the number of wind and thunder storms I’ve gotten to see–two in the desert, and one on the coast. I always manage to be out of town when the rare storm hits Portland, too. Still, I was grateful for the warm and sun again, even if I did bring a plastic bag to stash the camera in if the rain managed to make it across the mountains.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon back in Oregon. When I’d gone to Eagle Creek, I noticed there was another trail across a suspension bridge while I walked from the parking lot to the Eagle Creek trailhead. I’d made note of it and decided to check back another time, and yesterday was the day! Turns out the bridge connects with Gorge Trail #400, which parallels (and in some places replaces pieces of) the historic Columbia River Highway, the first highway through the Gorge to Portland. The sign pointed to Tanner Creek three miles ahead, so I decided that’d be my turnaround point. I’d left the camera at home this time since I wanted to do some serious trail-stomping, but since it was already almost 2pm by the time I arrived, I figured six miles would be about right. (Admittedly I did take a few wildflower pictures with my phone, like the one to the left.)

Red-flowering currant along Gorge Trail 400. Lupa, 2013.

Red-flowering currant along Gorge Trail 400. Lupa, 2013.

This was a fairly relaxed hike; other than a few steep spots and switchbacks it was relatively level. The only downside was the noise–since the Columbia River Highway has been joined by Interstate 84, the traffic noise is much more significant. The only time I mostly couldn’t hear the noise was whenever I’d be right next to one stream or another, and even then the passing semis were loud enough to be heard. Still, the beauty of the trail more than made up for it, and it was surprisingly lonely out there. The only times I ran into other people were at trailheads–for other trails. Maybe people just don’t like the traffic, but I think I’ll be spending more time on 400 myself.

I did get some really good wildlife sightings. As I was sitting for a late lunch, a pair of juvenile bald eagles flew overhead low enough that I could hear the wind woosh through their feathers as they banked, and their appearance sparked alarms from wrens and a large pileated woodpecker above me. I got to see another ouzel bouncing along through Tanner Creek when I rested there before turning back, and there were robins fighting like crazy over little bits of territory. I think the highlight of my day, though, was when I was walking back in the late afternoon, almost to the trailhead again, and I stopped next to a slope of small moss-covered boulders to get a good view of the Columbia. As I did, I heard the call of a pika amid the rocks. I really love pikas. I think they’re adorable, like little furry squeak toys. I also get the sense that they’d be very indignant if they knew I thought about them that way.

Stomping around all those trails got me to doing some research on the area. I found out, much to my delight, that the Eagle Creek trail connects to Wahtum Lake, which is at the foot of Chinedere Mountain, one of my very favorite places (here’s a write-up I did of my last backpacking trip there this past August). It’s about 26 miles round-trip, so about a four-day time commitment since there are some steep spots, and it apparently has some fantastic waterfalls along the way. I’d love to spend the summer conditioning myself and then do a late summer backpacking trip (anyone interested in joining me?)

I think I may revisit Catherine Creek next week; there are some parts of the trails I haven’t been to yet, and it’s one of those places where the wildflower show up in stages so there’s always something new. And then, of course, out to the desert, where I’ll be in good company visiting the John Day Fossil Beds which I’ve been meaning to get to for AGES. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a few more pictures from the past couple of weeks (as with all the pictures on this blog, you can click them to make them bigger.)

Dead fir tree covered in lichens, Eagle Creek. Lupa, 2013.

Dead fir tree covered in lichens, Eagle Creek. Lupa, 2013.

Small shelf fungus of unknown species (suggestions?) Lupa, 2013

Small shelf fungus of unknown species, Eagle Creek, open to identification suggestions? Lupa, 2013

A not-particularly-good picture of the hairy woodpecker I saw, but I rarely get wildlife shots at all, so you get to see this one. Lupa, 2013.

A not-particularly-good picture of the hairy woodpecker I saw at Catherine Creek, but I rarely get wildlife shots at all, so you get to see this one. Lupa, 2013.

Ponderosa pine cone and needles. Lupa, 2013.

Ponderosa pine cone and needles, Catherine Creek. Lupa, 2013.

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Letting Go of Therianthropy For Good

Back in 2007, I published my second book through Immanion Press, A Field Guide to Otherkin. When I started the project in late 2005, I was feeling pretty confident with my first book due to be out soon, and I wanted to follow it up with something awesome. “Well, why don’t I take a shot at the book on Otherkin that everyone’s been threatening to write for years?” I thought. And so the challenge was set. Little did I know just how much I’d bitten off!

It took me over a hundred surveys, countless footnotes, and gods only know how many hours banging my head against the computer, and it was by far the most difficult book I’ve written due to the sheer amount of information I had to wrangle from scratch. But it happened, and as far as I know it’s still the only book wholly dedicated to Otherkin as a general topic (as opposed to an entire book on one specific type of Otherkin, or a book that mentioned Otherkin in the context of a different topic, etc.)

Which makes it tougher for me to make the decision to take A Field Guide to Otherkin out of print at the end of this month, because it is the only book out there. There are plenty of good websites and online resources available, but some people really like the format of a book (dead tree or ebook, your choice). And I know I’ve managed to fulfill most of my goals with it, primarily in offering a basic introductory guide to the subject matter at hand. I’ve gotten lots of emails and messages and in-person comments since it came out from people who have found it quite useful in exploring their own identities. Each one has shown me that, to an extent, I’m doing my job as a writer.

But please allow me to be selfish for a moment. Every book I write is a piece of artwork, every word infused with a bit of myself. And, like so many authors, my relationships with my books change over time. The books remain the same, but I am constantly moving and evolving. Even in the time between when a manuscript is turned in and when the book goes to press, I cease to be the exact person I was when I wrote it. Meanwhile, the book remains a snapshot of the time period in which it was written, a reflection of the knowledge base and headspace I brought to that project.

Some books age better than others. Unfortunately, Field Guide feels like it isn’t keeping up very well. A lot of this is because I feel it’s a flawed work. For all the effort put into it, and for all the help it’s done people, I could have done a better job.

I took on the project before I had proper research training, and so even as a qualitative review, it’s lacking. The 140+ surveys I got were a pretty meager representation of Otherkin as a whole. Even though there weren’t as many resources for Otherkin when I was writing it seven years ago as there are now, I might have been able to get a less biased sample to work with, since I spent more time on Livejournal than anywhere else at the time. And yes, I’m well aware of the many typos and other errors in the text. That’s one of the downsides of publishing with a small press; while Immanion is pretty damned good for what it is, human resources are stretched more thinly, and so it can be harder to find professionally trained editors and proofreaders to work on a part-time scale.

Not that the blame lies entirely on the publisher; far from it. I wasn’t as experienced a writer as I am today, and if I were writing it now, there are a lot of things I would do differently, and not just with more careful editing. Part of it is simply that the community and its ongoing  dialogue have changed and expanded over time, and I’d have a lot more to present to people as far as who and what Otherkin are, what their concerns and perspectives are, etc. And it’d be better written, too. The bulk of the writing happened in 2006, and I’ve had the better part of a decade since then to refine my craft, both with writing and with research in general. And, of course, I’ve grown and changed as a person, which always affects creativity; who here can say they’re the same person they were seven years ago? The Field Guide was written at one of the most challenging times in my life, and I think that affected its quality. Since it came out, I’ve moved several times, gotten divorced, changed careers entirely, and shifted my spiritual focus, all for the better; maybe a 2013 Field Guide would be a better book. It would certainly be different, just as I am different now.

Speaking of time, since it has been out since April of 2007, a lot of the information is out of date. Online resources come and go, and lot has happened in the Otherkin community in the past several years. So why don’t I just make a second updated edition? When I first wrote the book, I was sure I’d update it in a few years. I just needed a little time away from the whole Otherkin “thing”, to take a break after having been part of the community to some extent since the late 1990s. Problem is, I never really came back from that break. I got burned out, and while I still liked hanging out with my friends who happen to be ‘kin (and yes, I still want to come to the PCon meetup because you people are awesome!), I never got back into the community-at-large again.

So now here I am in 2013, and I have a confession to make: I no longer identify as a therianthrope, and I haven’t for quite some time. I’ve sat with that reality for a while, checking in with myself and making sure it wasn’t just a phase. But no, it just doesn’t fit any more; it’s not a framework that explains me. There’s still a piece of me that I feel resonates more with wolf than human, but at this point I don’t think it’s anything more than a bit of creative personal narrative, part of the ongoing myth I tell about myself. For me, the wolf is a metaphor, a piece of spirituality internalized. Sure, I’ve always leaned toward the personal mythology hypothesis of “what are Otherkin”, but the idea that I am fundamentally not human on some level just doesn’t fit. I am a human animal, 100%, just with a particular connection to the idea of “wolfness”. Call it an inner connection to my totem, or a super-charged “favorite animal”; either of those fit me better than “therian”, or “shifter”, or any of the other terms that set animal-people apart from humanity as a whole.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t regret exploring myself in the Otherkin framework. For the time, well over a decade, it was what fit best in explaining that resonance with “Wolf”. It was a fascinating interpretation of reality that allowed me an outlet for exploring imagination and flexible identity in a way that is usually reserved only for the play of children. Sure, there are those few who take it to the point of impaired functioning and enabling of some unhealthy mental patterns, but there are also plenty of people who have an Other identity and still manage to be quite well integrated into consensus reality, even if they aren’t quite happy about the current state of affairs. If nothing else, interpreting my wolfness as therianthropy was a fun way to take play seriously, if that makes sense.

But my head’s just not there any more, and my heart’s not in it, either. I can’t really force myself to write a second edition for the hell of it, either. It’s hard to write about something I’m not passionate about. You can look back at all the books and other writings I’ve created over the years, and you can see where my heart was at that time. And it’s gone in very different directions in the past few years.

Finally, to be quite honest: I’m tired of talking about Otherkin. Even before the book came out, it’s what most podcasters and other interviewers wanted to talk to me about, and even today it’s a frequent topic when people ask me about my writing and spiritual work. Never mind that for years I’ve been writing extensively on my work in neoshamanism, on animal and plant and fungus totems, on ecopsychology and bioregionalism and a whole bunch of other things that I am deeply fascinated by. Invariably, people want to talk about the Otherkin thing (though to be fair some of them wanted to talk about other things, even if Otherkin ended up being a dominant topic). It was fine when it was still something that I identified with and was actively working with, but I feel like my later work has been somewhat overshadowed by the topic of Otherkin simply because I “wrote the book” on it.

I don’t want to be the only person to have written a book on Otherkin, and it’s not just to get out of having to talk about it in interviews. I had hoped that once Field Guide was out, it would entice other writers to make their books happen. Just because there’s one book on Otherkin out doesn’t mean there can’t be others; and diversity of voices gives a topic more strength. (And I wanted more reading material, dammit!) Maybe with the book out of print, someone else will feel they can fill that niche now.

I know I’m taking away a resource by pulling the book out of print, even if it is imperfect. But it’s not the only resource out there. Even if there is a scattering of broken links here and there, Otherkin.net has always been one of my favorite resources. Otherkin Alliance has, for several years, offered a good collection of essays along with an active and well-moderated forum. Dreamhart.org is run by one of the most reliable long-time members of the Otherkin community, and features a relatively recent wiki that’s undergoing current expansion. And while O. Scribner hasn’t written a book per se, the excellent writings on this page are, in my opinion, essentially an ebook in several parts.

And there are plenty of other people besides these writing on Otherkin, on blogs and websites and the like. Hell, Otherkin are even being discussed in terms of social justice on Tumblr. I know for a fact you all can find lots to work with without my book being in print any more. The internet has the added benefit of being easy to update, unlike a dead tree book written by someone who’s already stretched pretty thinly.

To be honest, I think there are people out there who could do a better job at writing a book on Otherkin, even better than a carefully overhauled second edition of the Field Guide; for all the reasons I’ve stated above, I’m not that person. Even with the flaws I still like the book. But I think it’s run its course, and rather than try to patch up its imperfections and put forth something I’d still not be happy with, I’d like to see someone else take on that project.

Finally, please don’t take my moving on from therianthropy as a personal worldview as a wholesale denial of the entire concept. I am not the arbiter of anyone’s identity but my own. My path is taking my further and further away from “Lupa the therianthrope”, but that doesn’t mean you have to follow me. Nor should you use this as an excuse to tell other people who do still identify as Otherkin/therianthropes/etc. that they’re wrong. Let each person set their feet and their will wherever they choose.

As for me? I’ll keep exploring the world around me and finding my place in it with every hike I take. And I’m happy to keep talking about the work I’m doing today on a variety of levels. One door closes, another opens, and I’m taking that first step through.

(I mentioned A Field Guide to Otherkin is going out of print the first of May. I wanted to give people time to grab a copy while they were still available; I have a few left here, and the page also has links to other sites that may have a limited number left. Yes, there will be copies available a while after it officially goes out of print on May 1, since shops will need to sell off their remaining stock. Give it year and even used copies will be selling on Amazon for exorbitant prices, since only a few hundred copies exist in the world. So now’s your chance!)

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Coming Together in Our Sorrow

Note: This is my contribution to the April edition of the Animist Blog Carnival; this month’s theme is “Ceremony and Community”.

Back in February when I was at PantheaCon, one of the workshops I presented was on ecopsychology and its relevance to the neopagan community. There’s a good deal of overlap between the spirituality of nature-based paganism and the secularism of ecopsychology. Both focus on strengthening relationships with the world around us, particularly the nonhuman portions thereof. They each utilize the outdoors in meaning-making activities, to include personal rites of passage and other ceremonies. And both have an emphasis on a systemic view of the world, to include one’s own community (human and otherwise).

At one point I mentioned the works of Joanna Macy. An environmental activist, Buddhist, and author, Macy is considered one of the foundational writers on ecopsychology. It’s not just because she helps readers to appreciate the environment, though that’s certainly an integral part of her work. What she does that’s so unique, though, is that she actively creates spaces for people to express grief over the loss of places, species, and other natural phenomena. Through frank and gentle discussions of grief and our relationships with it, and rituals such as The Council of All Beings, she’s offered up a series of tools for us to begin opening up to feelings we may have long suppressed.

In this society we’re allowed to grieve if a person close to us or whom we admire deeply passes away and is lost to us. It’s even understandable, as far as many are concerned, to feel a deep sense of loss and sadness at the death of a pet. And few would fault us for feeling depressed after losing a job or a home. But there’s less room on a societal level to feel grief for a place that’s been taken away, or a species that has gone extinct. We might be allowed a “well, damn, that sucks” if we read about it in the paper. And perhaps we might get away with a sigh of remorse when we drive by an open field that’s being torn up for yet another suburb full of little boxes made of ticky-tacky (or big McMansions made of the same). But those who openly grieve for the loss of a place or species or river are seen as “overly sensitive hippies” at best, and perhaps mentally off beyond that. Why grieve over progress? Why, that new strip mall going in will provide badly-needed minimum wage retail jobs! And don’t cry over that butterfly that’s gone extinct; see, there are dozens more in the garden. What’s just one more gone, really? And who cares if you can’t eat the fish out of that river? That’s what the supermarket is for.

When I wrote last year about the death of the place that raised me, the complete destruction of the tiny field where I played and explored as a child, I got so much support from people here and elsewhere. I heard numerous stories from other people who had had similar experiences, who shared that grief with me in their own words. I heard the fear and worry of those whose special wild places still stood, but were threatened with development and other encroachments. For once, I felt as though I had been heard, and that there was nothing wrong with me for feeling so much loss for a bunch of cedar trees and garter snakes.

I wish I’d had that sort of support twenty years ago, the first time a wild place I’d grown to love was leveled. That time, as I got off the bus that brought me home from junior high, I saw the entire field and forest behind my home torn to pieces and a big, ugly bulldozer sitting amid splintered tree trunks and raw, open earth. I was utterly and completely devastated. I fell to pieces inside, not just because my woods were gone, but the thing that had given me so much stability as a badly bullied child had disappeared. I was re-traumatized when the only response I got was “Well, the developer in charge of the new subdivision that’s going in had her favorite woods torn down when they put the high school track in, so she knows how you feel” and “Well, that’s progress; they’re supposed to be building some nice houses in there. Maybe we’ll look at them once they’re ready to sell”. Nobody understood why I couldn’t get over that shock, and why it was such a big deal that a half an acre of weeds and trees had been torn down.

It has taken me two decades to recover from that early loss. I fell down deep into a pool of depression for much of my teens, doing my best to put on a happy face while feeling sorrow I had no words for, and no one to offers words to even if I’d had them. when I discovered paganism, I at last found people to whom nature was an important thing, but so often in abstracts and images and symbols rather than direct contact. It wasn’t really until my path took me closer and closer to the physical world, as “spirit” and “material” blended and lost their boundaries, that I finally healed the connection I had with wild, open, outdoor spaces as a child. I couldn’t have done it without the support of countless people over the years who listened and spoke and conversed–and yes, that includes you readers here on Therioshamanism.

And that’s why I feel it’s important to talk about these losses, not just with facts and figures and calls to action to protect places halfway around the world, but the more visceral, personal connections and losses thereof. We need to know that it’s okay to feel these things, and we need to know that there are others who support us and care for us in those times of need. More importantly, that support and story-sharing can help us move through that grief and sorrow. Even if we don’t engage in formal rituals, just the telling of the tale to a caring audience can be ritual enough in and of itself. Sometimes speaking or writing the words is enough to help us move through the pain, and transform ourselves in the process. Sometimes all we need to find safety in community with others is a quiet, listening presence, a safe space held by strong, gentle hands.

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Oak Moss Lichen as Totem

Lichens are a unique set of beings. Rather than being a kingdom of their own, lichens are a combination of plant (either algae or plant-like cyanobacteria) and fungus. While it is possible to separate the plant and fungal parts of a lichen in a laboratory, and some of these plant and fungus species also live independently, for all intents and purposes lichens are singular beings rather than colonies.

I’ve long paid attention to lichens when I’m outdoors. Part of this is because they’re really good indicators of how polluted the air in a given location is. Lichens are very sensitive to airborne pollutants as they gain some of their nutrients from the air, and the more lichens you see and the bigger they are, the healthier the air is. I also try to take care to not step on them, as they take a long time to grow back.

Oak Moss Lichen. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

Oak Moss Lichen. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

But from a spiritual standpoint they’re also fascinating! When I’ve worked with the totems of lichen species, I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon. Sometimes the lichen totem itself shows up; other times, I work with the totems of the individual plant and fungus species that make up the lichen. I’ve even had meditations where the lichen switched back and forth between the forms. I haven’t noticed a pattern, such as older species of lichens preferring to stay singular. Each lichen totem has its own preference, and for the purposes of my writing I’m going to refer to each one in the singular from here on out.

One of the lichen totems that seems to like shapeshifting is Oak Moss Lichen (Evernia prunastri). As a singular lichen totem, Oak Moss is bold and rather extroverted, a rather intense totem to work with. Oak Moss are fairly opportunistic lichens; they’ve often been accused of killing trees because they tend to grow on trees that are already sick or dying. The totem is similarly intrepid, and has on occasion egged me on when I’ve come to a tough spot hiking and taken a moment to rest and check in with the spirits of the landscape. Oak Moss’ plant and fungus totems, on the other hand, are fairly shy and retiring; they often hide behind a sort of “veil”, and I find this is a common trend with the plant/fungus derivatives of lichen totems.

Oak Moss, though, often switches forms to demonstrate a point. For example, when I went to my beach along the Columbia River last week, I spent some time simply hanging out with the locals, as it were. I’d been thinking a lot about the complexity of human communications and relationships, and I got into a conversation with Oak Moss about this.

See, it’s really easy for people to turn each other into one-dimensional characters. Sometimes this is just out of sheer efficiency. I don’t need to know the entire life history of the person who rings up my purchase at the grocery store, though we may exchange a few pleasantries as we interact, and I may find out that they have three children and like mint chip ice cream at least as much as I do. It’s not really necessary to get to know them beyond that, and we can have a civil society based on such things.

Other times, it’s defensive. When we disagree strongly with other people on something we feel very deeply about, it’s a lot easier for us to turn them into the mustache-twirling villain of old silent films. We don’t have to think about them as well-rounded people with thoughts, feelings, families, and with whom we might share many other opinions in agreement. In fact, the very thought of considering our “enemies” as actual people can be threatening to our sense of moral stability. Empathy becomes anathema.

And so conflicts go round and round, from small disagreements among neighbors to international wars, fed by mutual pigeonholing.

I talked with Oak Moss about this, and the intense sadness I feel over the loss of potential communication. First, Oak Moss showed me how its children find it easier to grow on the aforementioned weakened trees. It isn’t because the trees are defenseless, but rather because the trees’ loss of leaves opens up their bark to the much-needed sunlight that plants and lichens both need. So the lichens take the opportunity to soak up some sun while their host tree slowly passes away. This is a normal part of nature; trees become food for other living beings, even before they die, and this process is absolutely crucial to the health of the forest.

Assorted lichens on a branch. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

Assorted lichens on a branch. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

But because we are often biased toward beautiful trees, and because we see the lichens living on the bark of trees that then die, we’ve sometimes demonized the lichens as the cause of the trees’ deaths. In actuality, the lichens were just doing what they could to survive and taking an opportunity in the very competitive race for sunlight. The trees would have died anyway; sometimes they become necessary nurse logs for lichens and mosses and ferns and others even before they’ve completely died and fallen. The decay created by fungi, lichens, and bacteria all releases nutrients back into the cycle of life and death. Nature hates waste.

And that reminded me, too, of my recycling of hides, bones, and other animal remains. I make use of the refuse from those who are hunters, farmers, and the like, as well as occasional roadkill remains. And I turn those remains into resources that not only keep me alive through paying my bills, but I can also donate a portion of the funds to nonprofit groups that benefit wildlife and their habitats. Like the lichens, I’m doing what I can to survive and converting resources that are available into benefits for others. Sometimes people look askance at both me and the lichens. But on we go.

Oak Moss then split into its plant and fungus parts. The fungus was robust, the heavy structure of the lichen that supports it. The algae, on the other hand, was the swift-moving photosynthesizer, the one who added shape to the lichen’s structure. If you split a lichen into its plant and fungus components, the fungus will grow into nothing but shapeless masses of hyphae, and the species of algae it is combined with determines how it’s shaped. Algae also is rather shapeless on its own, but continues its creation of food from sunlight regardless. So in a way we can think of the fungus as the heavy mover and lifter, and the algae as the artistic creator. Both are crucial to the existence and form of the lichen.

We, too, are complex beings with multiple roles in life. We all have times when we’re strong, and we all have times when we’re sensitive, and sometimes both. We wouldn’t be who we are without all these parts. As anyone in any form of relationship knows, it takes time to get to know a person in all their parts and pieces, as well as as a whole. It can take a great deal of patience and bravery, too, on the part of everyone involved. But empathy makes it easier to not hate someone, and to see them as a multi-layered person with whom we have agreements as well as disagreements. Sometimes it’s not safe to engage with someone who’s being actively hostile, and so it’s better to not directly interact with them. But even trying to imagine what it might be like to be that other person is better than that one-dimensional villainy.

And so Oak Moss reminded me to be patient with others–most especially those with whom I disagree. It’s more challenging to see certain people–homophobes, religious fundamentalists, corrupt politicians, as a few examples–as human beings, well-rounded people. But I feel it’s necessary to keep trying, if I’m to not perpetuate the same sort of hatred and lack of communication that is at the heart of so many problems. And it’s necessary to remind myself that I am a fully functioning human being as well, that I have my well-thought-out reasons for what I do and why. These can be difficult concepts to keep in mind, but I feel it’s crucial to do so.

And in this exchange, Oak Moss helped me to remember some of the most important ideals I live by. Some of them stem from childhood, but are just as relevant now. Just because I gave up Catholicism years ago doesn’t mean I didn’t learn important things from it. I do hold to heart two thoughts in particular:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Grant that I may not seek to be understood as to understand.

Tree bark supporting a mini-ecosystem. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

Tree bark supporting a mini-ecosystem. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

The first is, of course, the Golden Rule, which can be found in cultures around the world. I know that I don’t care to be yelled at or insulted; it tends to be a real mood-killer when it comes to intelligent discourse; sometimes it’s better just to keep quiet than to continue arguments, fights, even wars. And so I tend to imagine that it’s the same way for other people, and I try to grant them the sort of patience and understanding I’d appreciate (even if I’m not as good at it as I’d like to be). And even though I sometimes get frustrated with other people, once I calm down I try to see thing from their perspective. Keep in mind that understanding someone’s perspective doesn’t automatically mean agreeing with it, and I think sometimes that’s what keeps people from trying to understand others’ perspectives. But if you hold true to your own opinions you won’t be so easily shaken as that, and if you do change your mind it will be an informed change, not one based on kneejerk reaction. Most importantly, it lets you keep sight of that other person’s personhood, which can go a long way in creating civil discourse.

So I left Oak Moss that day feeling lighter in my heart, and with more purpose and reason for being here. And from here on out, whenever I feel tempted to reduce someone to a single dimension, and especially if I only want to hang onto the worst possible picture of them I could have, I’m going to remember this conversation, and the image of Oak Moss splitting into two parts, very different from each other and yet both necessary to the whole. Life is full of complexities, lichens and humans among them. Better to focus on those complexities than to go to war over one-dimensional caricatures.

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Spring Cleanup on the Columbia

This past Monday I had a great time out on my adopted beach on Sauvie Island along the Columbia River. I’ve been going out there about once a month to pick up litter and get myself out of the city for a while, but this week’s trip also included my quarterly report. This includes feedback on the flora and fauna I noticed, the quality of the water, human activity, weather, and other such things. I had intended to spend most of my time making notes and taking photos for this report, and then do a little bit of cleanup before I headed home.

It was not meant to be that way. In addition to fishermen (who vary in their ability to clean up after themselves), my beach is frequented by people out to party. Unfortunately, such people have a tendency to get drunk off their asses and then leave gigantic messes for others to clean up. I usually find the remnants of a couple of these any time I come out, and I’m guessing other visitors to the beach take the time to do a little cleanup whenever I’m not around, too.

Broken glass is no fun for anyone. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

Broken glass is no fun for anyone. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

However, when I arrived today, the road down to the parking lot, and the lot itself, were both swathed in a trail of garbage. One group of drunken partiers, not content with just leaving a pile of refuse along the river, decided to take an entire yard waste bag full of trash and “decorate” their way back out to the main road. An almost perfect circle of cans, used diapers, and broken glass adorned the lot, and more scattered its way down the road. This wasn’t just someone accidentally forgetting an open garbage bag in the bed of a truck; it was intentional vandalism. And to add the rotten cherry to this messy cake, someone took a glass wine jug and deliberately smashed it with a rock right in the middle of the road.

I didn’t get pictures of most of it because the beach was fairly busy with people fishing, and I wanted to get things cleaned up as soon as I could. I did get one picture of the broken glass with my phone before I scraped it into the bag, just because it was so unbelievable to me that someone would do something like that. By the time I was done, I had two large SOLV bags full of trash–and I hadn’t even made it down to the beach!

Having completed that onerous task, I decided to reward myself by getting out the camera and snapping some shots for my report. It gave me a chance to slow down, pay more attention to things that weren’t litter, and get to know my neighbors there a bit more. It was a really rewarding day in that respect. The snowy egrets have been returning from down south and were taking up residence in the marshes nearby, and while the snow geese had left for the season, their Canada cousins were still around. Juncos, robins, Steller’s jays, and other smaller birds flitted around the tops of the black cottonwood trees, singing out their assorted territorial and “hey, look at me, I’m fabulous!” songs. Along the beach, clamshells dotted the sand next to deer tracks and the pawprints of visiting dogs.

Juvenile bald eagle. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

Juvenile bald eagle. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

The highlight of my day, though, was getting to take pictures of a juvenile bald eagle high up in a tree! I’d seen an adult earlier in the day, cruising over the wetlands. As I was cleaning along the beach, though, this earthy-colored young raptor settled into the branches of a cottonwood a little ahead of me. Thinking to myself “Oh, please don’t fly away!” I ran back to my car and got the camera, and then hurried back. Thankfully, the eagle was in no hurry to head off, and stuck around long enough for me to get a few photos. It didn’t even head off until I’d headed back to drop the camera off. Lucky me!

I’m not that great a wildlife photographer, since they don’t usually hold so still, but I fare somewhat better with plants and fungi. I had to add bull thistle and white clover to my list of invasives; while the clover is pretty innocuous as far as introduced species go, the thistle is painful in several different ways. This got added to the widespread plague of Himalayan blackberries and Scotch broom as “problematic”. On the other hand, the native plants were in abundance. Down among the cottonwoods, the snowberries were starting to put forth a few small green leaves amid the last of their white berries, and honey bees buzzed in the fresh flowers of Indian plum shrubs. Fuzzy-leafed mullein peeked out from around sword ferns and new growth of poison hemlock. Trees live and dead hosted lichens of all kinds, from reindeer moss to hammered shield and even some powdery-fine gold dust.

When I went back to pick up along the beach, I found that some of the day’s fishermen had left the usual mess of cigarette butts, cans, and fishing line strewn around. This even included the ones that had asked me what I was up to, and I told them I was taking pictures for an environmental report and then picking up litter. I have to wonder if they deliberately left their trash there because I was there, either because they assumed I’d just get it for them, or whether they deliberately wanted to make more work for me. This made me think about my last trip out to the beach, where I jumped right into cleanup and the first any of the people fishing saw of me was a small, skinny woman with a trash bag and a kitty litter scoop, sifting cigarettes and styrofoam out of the sand. That day people not only told me about how they cleaned up after others, too, but even offered to help me out.

Looking upriver. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

Looking upriver. Photo by Lupa, 2013.

It confirmed something I’ve known for a while, and backed up by research in conservation psychology: modeling a behavior works better than telling it. I could have gone to each of those fishing parties, with cans in the sand and food wrappers by their chairs, and lectured them on how important it was for them to make sure they picked everything up before they left. I bet there would have been a lot of junk left behind after that. Yet by modeling the sort of behavior I wanted my fellow humans to emulate, I got better results. Last time, people saw me taking the time to clean up the beach, and followed suit. While a few of them may have been doing it out of a desire to not get in trouble, or some sense of guilt, I saw a number of them expressing genuine appreciation for the fact someone cared enough about that place to attend to it, and being inspired to pitch in themselves. I don’t think anything would have changed the behavior of those who left their detritus behind anyway, but I’m sure that telling them how horrible they were for making more work for me wouldn’t have been at all effective.

By the end of the day I was feeling pretty good. I’d collected an additional bag of trash that was now going to avoid going into the water. I’d taken some good photos and formulated ideas for my report to SOLV. I had shown my fellow human beings that someone did care enough to clean up after those less responsible. And, most importantly, I got to know my beach and its nonhuman denizens a little better than before. Volunteering is often promoted as a rewarding experience in and of itself. I have to say I agree; adopting this place, feeling responsible for it–it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.