after enlightenment, the dishes

Living out here is an amazing opportunity to dance in the cycles of Nature — with all that represents.

The beautiful: Watching the trees burst into leaf during a particularly wet week in early May. Watching the river rise with the rain and fall with the heat (it’s been in the upper 80s this week). Standing in the river’s current, feeling the water flow past, and watching the tiny brook trout come up to see what’s going on. Hearing, smelling, feeling, seeing the winds that blow here. Watching the moon rise every night and grow to fullness; watching the sun rise and set across the sky. Learning exactly how little light I need to see through the dark. Identifying the local birds: we have at least one heron, Canada geese (who brought their wee fuzzy goslings across the yard and into the river yesterday), a couple of mallard ducks, some red-tailed hawks (who I’m told also have babies now), barn owls, mourning doves, blue jays, robins, red-winged blackbirds, and a few other songbirds I don’t know. There’s a doe who comes by, too, and she usually has twin fawns this time of year. Night noises are full of crickets and frogs.

The not-so-beautiful: The bat(s), who come hunting in our living room and flap around the cathedral ceilings, making us worry for the cats (who are not up on their rabies shots). The mosquitoes, who provide food for the bats, and moths and spiders and assorted other creepy-crawlies who don’t see any reason to stay outside our four walls. The mice, who see the house as a nice place to burrow, and at least one of whom met its demise in the jaws of a housecat. The raccoons, who see our food garbage and the outdoor cats’ kibble as equally tasty eating, and think they might stroll around the house looking for more.

All of them are doing what they do naturally. Mostly, it’s finding food and shelter where they can. Not the cats’ fault that we had to clean up the crusted, decaying, gnawed-on half of a mouse under the bed. Not the bat’s fault that I screamed and hit the dirt when it flew toward the shelter of the highest point of the ceiling, directly over where I was standing. Not the mosquitoes’ fault that my skin is delicious, or the moths’ and other bugs’ fault that we’re the brightest light for 100 yards in any direction. Not the raccoon’s fault that we more or less set out lunch on a silver platter.

This, too, is part of the cycles of Nature, only I’ve got far more connection to the emergence of Japanese lady beetles in the spring than to lambing season. Seeing this — seeing it and doing our best to work with it, not trying to fight it — is a whole different experience of Nature and of Paganism. (I will totally admit to telling myself “Come on, Pagan, fur and feather and blood and bone” when I gagged on the stench of that mouse and wiped its blood off my floor, even though The Hubs took care of body disposal.)

I must say that it is a dramatically different side of my religion than the one I experienced living in an apartment or a Baltimore rowhouse. Not that you don’t get any piece of Nature there; you do see the sun and moon, changing seasons, bugs and birds and critters. But living in a city, you’ve got the expectation that this is your turf and the critters had best not come in. Here, I’m on the critters’ turf, and I had best learn to live lightly, because there’s no exterminator in the world who could keep the critters away.

I still don’t feel like I’m adequately describing what’s changed. My memory is bringing up my horse show days and how you could tell a lot about a person by what they did if a bug fell into their drink: Shriek and dump the drink? Calmly pick the bug out? Or not worry too much and keep drinking around the bug? In other words, how in tune was this person with the reality of having horses around?

I don’t know that I’m attuning with the cycles of Nature so much as I’m learning some of Nature’s realities.

Well, I’m here. It’s been a little more than two weeks and I’m still figuring out what my new life is like.

We didn’t get the house we’d made an offer on. That went to a bank auction, wires got crossed, communication ended, and I don’t know if anyone ever bought the house. We drove by it once, and the auction signs were still there. Never heard anything more about it.

Instead we’re staying with a friend who has dreams of creating an artists’ retreat, where people can come and play music or dance or whatever they most love to do. His house is beautiful and open, with two sets of sliding doors that lead onto a nice wide deck, maybe 20 feet from the river. (With all the rain in the past week, it’s more like 18 feet now.) We’re here until we get on our feet, or we find our own house, or we decide to move on. I’m savoring it: Sunsets through tree branches. Mist off the river after it rains. Bonfires. Well water. Watching mallard ducks and Canada geese and blue jays and robins and crows and mourning doves and a half-dozen other birds I haven’t learned to identify. And the trees! Oaks and beeches and maples and pines and birches, still sending out their first yellow-green leaves. It’ll go from beautiful to gorgeous when summer comes, and from there to breathtaking in the fall.

My next steps in learning to priestess involve curling my toes into the dirt of this place, waiting, and listening. I checked Witchvox for local groups, noticed a lack of listings for Trad covens, and started asking why that might be. I’m slowly getting answers. Some of it is politics among the existing groups in the southeast, a solid Christian presence on the west side of the state (where I am) that’s not very tolerant of difference, and not enough people in the north to sustain large groups.

I left here in 2006 convinced that I had to, because I’d been seeking for a couple of years and concluded there wasn’t any Trad Wicca to be had in Michigan. In 2009, when I’d been in Blue Star for two years, I discovered I was wrong and there is (and had been) Craft in Michigan. I figured that once I got back, I’d send out a couple of emails, and I’d get connected to the community here. Now that I’m back and looking more closely, I understand why I didn’t see anything in 2006 — and that it’s not as simple as folks not listing themselves on Witchvox.

This is where The Hubs grew up, and he’s told me stories of how he was treated as a non-Christian kid. How people look at you when you say you don’t go to church. In fact, he and I met because one of his classmates publicly ragged on him for not being a Christian! I guess it was easy to consider that an isolated incident because we were in a college town, where people are a little more liberal and accepting, and then we moved away and became bona fide East Coast liberals. It was easy to surround ourselves with like-minded friends.

If I’m really going to priestess here, I need to do more than that, and I really underestimated the work in front of me. It’s going to take some time to figure out where I fit in the community and establish myself, both mundanely and ritually, before I can hang out my shingle.