Thoughts on Storytelling, Rock Climbing and Fortitude

If you've known me for any length of time, you know I love the story.  The why.  The tangle of experience melded with words and image.  The way these things build both the creative process and our visual vocabulary.  The way digging into our individual life stories for the work of our hands, be it overarching themes or the events of a simple afternoon, creates a richness all of their own.

Last weekend BC and I dug into the world of rock climbing for the first time.  Learning where to dig toes into crevices, how to push, pull, center and scale that rock face.  Climbing until my arms felt like a sack of mashed potatoes and I couldn't shake the grin from my lips.  Feeling muscles strain and the sweet sweet taste of hiking your body up over that last craggy face.  And the whole time, singing through my brain on repeat, was the thought, "how miraculous is the human body."  Each time I would stop and rest, shaking my arms out, feeling strong (and as the afternoon wore on, feeling jello), I'd think of the me from two-and-a-half years ago, the one so desperately ill that she couldn't walk up three porch steps without help.  And each time, I felt the deepest, truest gratitude a body can feel.  

When we returned home that evening, I thought about that intense feeling of gratitude.  About the thrill of feeling strong and the joy of perseverance, about the push of determination.  The small rock walls we climbed were no great feat in the larger world, but I felt the gift they offered me was a powerful nugget of fortitude; access to my own vein of golden truth.  And so.  I got to work.

(Fortitude Posts... sterling silver, deeply textured, layered, and adorned with 23k gold) 

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Ancestral Mythology Vol 2: People of the Owl

This is a story of our great grandmothers, of the days when the women still had feathers running down their spines, before we tucked them up below our shoulders blades and slept through the moonlight.

Not many remember this today, but there was a time when the Moon and her twin sister walked among the people.  The Moon showed the women the dark secret of the earth, when to plant, where to gather, how to sing the oysters up from the depths.  She would gather them to her each month, showing them how to dance the wildness into their souls and how blood beget life.  The Moon loved the People dearly, always returning after the day, after the sun, every night without fail.  

But the Moon's sister became jealous.  She was as fair skinned as the Moon, as silvery haired, she knew the ancient dances, she knew the secrets to life.  But she cared little for the People, and so the People stepped cautiously around her with averted eyes.  Her jealousy consumed her.  While the Moon slept and the Sun distracted the People with his dazzling presence, the Moon's sister crafted a plan.  She wrapped her sleeping sister in a black bear skin, tied tight with leather thongs, and threw her into the sky.  When evening fell, the darkness was complete.  The Moon was hidden from the People and they shivered in the blackness.

"Where is our sister?  Where is our mother-Moon? " the People cried in a panic.  They called out to the eagles, to the crows, to the sparrows, "Someone help!  The Moon has been stolen away!"  The eagles, the crows and the sparrows awoke and flapped out of their nests, but the darkness was complete and they stumbled without sight.  The People called to the bison, the bobcats, and the mule deer, "Help us, help us!"  But without even a glimmer of light, they were lost in the forest.  Finally the People called out, "Owl, Owl, help us find the Moon."

Now Owl was known as the seer, for Owl's eyesight was keener than any other living being.  She rolled her head side to side, from earth to sky, and caught the faintest twinkle high above the clouds.  She spread her great wings and flew, up and up, until the air was thin.  She flew until the earth pulled back below her and disappeared in the gloom of night.   She flew until she reached the bear skin hanging in the sky, and with her sharp small beak, she clipped right through the leather thongs.  The cloak fell away from the Moon and the earth was once again illuminated with her glow.  Owl tried to carry the Moon back to the earth, but the Moon knew her time to walk among the People had passed.

She kissed Owl on the forehead, and immediately the brown feathers turned bright white, and the sign of love ringed her face.  "Send my sister to me," commanded the Moon, "for though her heart is dark, she is still my kin and she shall live with me in the sky.  Return to the People, show them your face and they will see me in it.  Tell them to remember the truths I have shown them."

And Owl did everything just as the Moon said.  Now, every month, the Moon dances with her sister across the night sky, swinging each other around through light and darkness that neither outshine the other. 

And that dear children, is how we became a People of the Owl. 

Ancestral Mythology: People of the Owl

(sterling silver, kyanite, larimar, and aquamarine) 

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