The Ice Went Out With A Sigh

Living along a river, as I do, allows my daily life to include certain experiences that my upland brothers and sisters may never see or hear. On long hot summer nights, the whisper of a cool wind still finds a way down from higher ground along the river way. When we get either north or south winds in winter, the ice heaves or collapses atop the estuary as the great mass of water breathes with the wind. Creatures of the night stalk the banks whether the moon is out or not and during the day, the old winding river lures critters and city folk alike to her quiet. Drawn by the river's familiar but ever changing beauty and a chance to experience a degree of solitude rarely found in the city.

Each year we get to witness one of the sublime events special to a northern river, the day or two we call ice out. On rare occasions the river shatters into a billion shards and as they rush past our house, they sound like a giant wind chime or endlessly breaking glass. The tinkling can be heard for hundreds of feet and others who have had the chance to hear the phenomenon will talk about it for weeks afterward. Yesterday, the ice went out in chunks, things that looked like they ranged in size from nearly the width of the river all the way down to car-sized pieces with a few even smaller ones jostling about into traffic jams that alternately broke through under the bridge downstream and backed up again as a giant ice dam. Occasionally there were large piles about the size of beaver lodges, thrust up by the briefly intense collisions between masses of ice that would normally support a hockey team, but today ran away faster than children released from school.

The night before last we had a major rainstorm and the added push of the rising water left no quarter for the ice to retreat to, instead it was flushed away over the course of hours. Each heave of the ice dams brought more muddy water and as the water rose, even the few chunks that had been pushed up on the shore floated free and easily away. It felt as if Nature herself had become tired of Winter. This year it must have been unfulfilling for her because the week or two that the ice was thick enough to be explored was all that could be mustered to emulate the season of hard water. Instead of weeks below zero, we only got one or two nights. Instead of a dozen or more snowstorms that required shoveling, we got but three. Heck, we got more winter in a week the last two years than we had all winter this time around the cycle of the seasons.

Winter went somewhere else this year, but in Northeast Wisconsin, where people pride ourselves as hearty and able to cope with all that winter can dish out, we felt a bit of Nature's sadness over both the record temperatures and lack of snow and ice. That said, there were many folks commenting on the fact that they "didn't miss" the snow shoveling, but just as many, if not more, went on to say how much they had missed skiing, snowmobiling and even the opportunities for ice fishing.The black earth is calling many to get their seeds ready and their gardens planned. Perhaps it is not yet time to plant, but this coming week the temperatures are supposed to get to sixty and if it were not still March, many would be planting in temperatures like these. It remains to be seen whether the sigh that the ice has heaved was borne on hope for the coming Spring or tired resolution to the fact that winter has gone from the landscape just a little too early.

Hooray, Hooray The First Of May!

I'm always thrilled, borderline ecstatic, when May Day rolls around. Most years find us gathered around a May Pole, dancing and thrilled to be honoring the reunification of the Lord and Lady in an eternal dance that assures our survival and the fertility of the planet. Most years I take full advantage of the season to find fun and enjoy the sun. It's virtually always a great excuse for a roll in the hay, drinking fermented fluids and enjoying the company of old and new friends, family and the larger community whose members have usually sequestered themselves away during the long dark winter. It is a great time to enjoy the longer days and to sit by a fire during the cool night.
This year I have been having some somber thoughts and serious distractions from the change in season. Oddly enough, this year marked the twenty-fifth annual remembrance of the Chernobyl disaster. It is odd how we can so thoroughly forget things that change the world for both the better and the terribly worse, except on their "anniversary." In many ways we would surely melt down ourselves if we were to keep things like Chernobyl in the mind's eye for too long. Realizing the truth of what went on there and what continues to be reality for millions of suffering individuals makes it difficult to laugh, play and celebrate the season. What I knew about Chernobyl when it blew up was virtually nothing. What I have come to know since then has made me more grown up than I ever wanted to be. News and information about that place and the people of that region have continued to come to me over the years, but this year was strikingly different. I heard a first-hand account of what happened to one young girl who lived near there and how the lives of millions changed in one brief moment.
May Day celebrations were not canceled near Chernobyl after the explosion, even though a cloud of radiation covered hundreds of square miles. Men, women and children wore short sleeves and danced in the streets, staying out in the beautiful weather for hours at the annual festivals and their government knew that they would be exposed to radiation but did not want to alarm them. Cancer rates have increased exponentially since then and the cities for miles around have now been cleared of their populations. Weeks after the release of what later became known as the "black cloud", children were evacuated, leaving all the cities around there childless.What most disturbed me at the time was the utter lack of concern many seemed to have for the people. The United Nations estimates that seven million people are still living with sicknesses and diseases caused by the accident at Chernobyl twenty five years ago. Estimates of the dead are many times higher than that, although records were not kept, except for what they referred to as "liquidators", those who went in after the explosion to "clean up."
Their bodies were buried under lead shielding because they became sources of radiation by just being at the site. A few survive to this day, and are given a paltry sum of twenty dollars each month to help them pay for food. Some of the terrible consequences of that fateful day can be found at: http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl
Be prepared for just enough truth to change you for life.
It is time that we all join together to change the direction we are headed. Allowing the nuclear age to continue only assures more accidents and more suffering at the hands of technocrats who seem to want to remain illiterate about the extent and quality of change that radiation poses for our people and our planet. By now, because of the recent events in Japan, we have more than likely heard the term half-life. This is the time period that it takes for the radioactivity in a specific element to be reduced by half. In the case of plutonium, it has a half-life of 24,000 years. If you believe in Christ, that's over ten times as long as it has been since he walked on Earth. That's how long it will take for the radiation to be reduced by half, both from Chernobyl and now, in Japan. There have been other nuclear accidents as well as mistakes that were not treated as accidents, that have resulted in the same sorts of contamination. Just a few sites where problems will outlive our memory of them are at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Of course, Chernobyl, at Rocky Flats, in an area that has been subsumed by Denver, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and at several sites in the Desert Southwest here in our own country. We must not forget the purposeful mayhem of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the hundreds, perhaps thousands of sites where we have released radioactive materials without regard for the local populations or showed the slightest concern for documenting our efforts to contaminate them.
It is hard to celebrate this joyous holiday when you feel so terribly that we must change or perish. It seems almost silly to rejoice in the unending fertility of nature at this wonderful celebration of spring, when you know that humanity has come so far along the path to our ultimate destruction.
Perhaps next year, or twenty five years from now, we will be looking back at this time and wondering how our leaders could have been so stupid. My feeling is that we should have done the serious business of shutting these activities down before they ever got started. Science told us what to expect. The lies that humans told about  the nuclear age were totally at odds with reality. We all need to work together to get the word out about this dangerous technology. Truth stands up to closer inspection and can stand on it's own. Lies need to be constantly propped up. Learn the truth about nuclear energy and you will never see it the same way again, I guarantee, it will help you to see through a multitude of lies that we have been told for the past fifty years.

"Official" Start of Spring

The news has been telling us that "Spring", what they consider to be springlike weather is coming a week early this year. They are basing this opinion on the fact that when consulting the Julian Calendar and applying dualistic logic to that subjective and fictional accounting of time, the seasons have everything to do with the equinoxes and solstices. Anyone who has been exposed to the ritual calendar of the tribal cultures around the globe know that Julius Ceasar is not powerful enough to set the time signature of life, nor is the dynamic sphere that we call the Globe able to be relegated to a mere scientific accounting. The officials are just plain wrong and it is time for all of us to question their other assumptions as well.

Spring actually began, according to the pagan calendar on, or about, the second of February. For those of us who work outdoors a lot, you could feel two things combining their efforts to change the season. The tilt of the Earth, combined with our slow annual revolution around the sun, combined to make the lengthening days most apparent. During these times, the day length jumps up in the largest increments of the year. In addition, the sun angle in our middle latitudes changed from it's lowest angle, that allows most of the sun's energy to reflect off the sphere of the Earth, back into space, to a much higher angle that has the power to melt even the occasional spring snows that fall over the next few moons. A friend called to find out if there was anything that they needed to know about the New Moon that coincided with the start of Spring this year. My view is that the New(no visible)Moon brings a time of new beginnings, of introspection, setting of goals and tuning in, if you will, to what resonnates within our own being. Once you allow yourself free reign over your inner talents and motivations, it becomes a time of reestablishing contact with the core of one self, so that new directions can be explored.

Like the walkabout of the aboriginies, we occasionally need to reset our moral and ethical compass and this reflective time every moon allows for that as well as many other healing processes. Letting go of what has held us back, putting new ideas into practice and renewing one's commitments to the most deeply held goals and aspirations fits right into the New Moon Energy, as well as the start of Spring. like being dealt a pair in Black Jack, doubling up on this energy of renewal can have profound effects on one's future. Many fear the future and what it may hold in store for humanity, those we love, or, in fact, our own lives. This is old way thinking. We are really on the doorstep of a completely different mind set, we just need the courage to let go of what we thought was real in the past. In feudal times, it was good to have a castle to run to when your land was being overrun by jealous forces, intent on raping and pillaging your towns and the fertile countryside. In those days, one's enemies were pretty obvious. Doing exactly as the king wished was a matter of life and death. Today, we are in a different world, one that allows our enemies to rape and pillage under the cover of authority and expediency. We are called to find a new way to protect ourselves and at the same time create new communities that are protected from a different kind of ransacking. Stone walls will not protect us from the type of attacks we are likely to face.
Our air may be contaminated from worldwide use of toxic compounds. Our water might be contaminated by people trying to dispose of hazardous chemicals by pumping them into our aquifer or thrying to "release" the last oil and natural gas from deep layers of the bedrock. the land may be rendered sterile by the use of anhydrous ammonia or bio-cides that were developed by industrialists to quell natural pests that swarmed over sick fields. These are the real and present dangers that we are facing at this moment in time, not fur clad heathens. In fact, if we are not careful, many more of us might have to become fur clad heathens if we are to have a chance at surviving the next major shift in our culture. The key will be in keeping our humanity intact whils letting go of many of the fictional accounts about who we are, how we got to where we are and the ultimate place which we occupy in the Universe.

Just as the Julian Calendar is not the true time signature of life, and the saying that humans are "brutish", cruel, self-centered and greedy is based on subjective analysis of long dead scholars, many other beliefs are outdated and need to be discarded if we are to have a chance at creating the world anew. Scientists have now proved beyond a reasonable doubt something that all parents knew implicitly. Children are magnanamous, compassionate and giving, until they are impacted by the world around them in negative ways. Abuse a child or neglect them and they begin to transform before your very eyes. That is where the "brutish" side is created. Sure, we were unaware of how it happenned back in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but today, we can see our way clear to a new age, a new future that was obscured as we crouched behind the ramparts of our rulers. now we use the term official to squelch every form of questioning that makes those in charge uncomfortable.

As we approach the Equinox this week, and the fullness of the Moon that coincides with it this year, try to find a quiet place within yourself. or share that quiet space with others who can appreciate the abundant blessings that we all partake of daily. Feel the generosity of the unwounded child within, and attempt to reflect that generosity in everything you do for just one short month. I bet, that you will never go back to unfeeling, uncaring or unwitting participation in the "dog eat dog" world. If you need a guide or a mirror to reflect back to you the images and new found insights of this new way of being, I am available for consultations, classes and tours that focus exclusivly on reestablishing a deeper contact with our natural world. sustainability begins within each of us and can only be reflected by attuning ourselves to the laws of nature and the ever changing world that we live in.

As part of my own transformation to a new world order, I have been committing myself to a not-for-profit organization here in Northeast Wisconsin that plants native trees while providing experiences in nature. Our efforts have led to the planting of over 60,000 trees before we even registered with the State of Wisconsin as a non-profit. In the six years since registering with the state, we have planted another 60,000 trees and are in the process of reforesting over two hundred acres. The sharing that has taken place on these tours has been worht all the effort and time that we have put into it. Our staff is all-volunteer, so not a single cent of our donations is wasted on salary. Every dollar that we receive goes directly to purchasing seedlings, planting them, protecting and caring for them and many of the trees we have planted are already transforming the landscapes in which they were planted in positive ways. Many of the trees we have planted will outlive us and provide benefits long after we are forgotten. Participation in these efforts has changes many lives for the better and helped to stabilize the local environment as well as the climate of the entire region.
You can reach us to find out more about ECO-Tours of Wisconsin at: 1445 Porlier street, Green Bay, Wisconsin 54301. Or if you prefer to donate online, we do have a Paypal account at tnsaladino42@hotmail.com. It takes the combined efforts of many to get important things to happen, but if we each take responsibility for our own actions, understand the full effects of each of our choices and lend a hand in whatever way our spirits compell us to do so, thing will improve exponentially whatever the old way thinkers say. It is time for us to stand for the truth, however we come to know about it. Taking for granted that others, especially "officials" know more or better than the rest us has led to most of our problems. The time has come to take back our own power and lead, so that our leaders can follow.

Getting Ready for Spring Planting

As the end of winter approaches, and the frost begins to come out of the ground, many of us look forward to the coming warmth of Spring, the yielding soils and the smells of thawing compost piles.
ECO-Tours of Wisconsin Inc. is looking forward to tree planting excursions and events that center around sustainability and permaculture. Spring is also a good time to reflect on plans for expansion and how far we have come in our pursuit of Eden. At last count we had over two dozen perennial plants that produce food each year with very little weeding, tilling, or trimming. The most work we do is the harvest.
We see our organization as a pollinator of sorts. Each of us and the groups we belong to are wonderfully complete in isolation, but once cross pollination occurs, new awarenesses and new forms begin to emerge. Through continued planting of seeds, we can reestablish life where none had been, create surplus where there had been lack and create life upon the harshest soils. Our home has been a microcosm of what we do on a larger scale across vast acreages. When we arrived here, there was one rotting Apple Tree and several very old Lilacs. The soil was prone to drying out and cracking. It had become so compacted as to only support invasive species, and very few of them. The grass always turned brown in peak summer and the water pooled around the house and made it's way into the basement.
We began a process of loving the Earth back to life, establishing a compost, mulching and introducing clay busters that would look beautiful and provide food for birds, bugs and butterflies. We planted several trees right away and added a few more each year until now there is protection from much of the harshest sun of summer and less of the biting winds o' winter for our bit of land to deal with. The longer we are here, watching what the climate dishes out, the more we see that can be done to make our part of the planet more hospitable.
Pemaculture has allowed us to find food at virtually every season, right near our back door. It has allowed us to see more wildlife, create a healthy, organic, and sustainable oasis in the heart of the city, and has led us to have such abundant harvests as to share our surplus with others. Our ecotours allow us a forum to spread the word about environmental recovery, sustainable approaches to housing, energy, and food so that more and more people can live better while using less. We invite you to share in one of our events or take a tour of our facilities. To arrange a tour, please either write or call ahead, so that we can be ready to make your stay great.
You can contact us through e-mail at: tnsaladino42@hotmail.com, write using snail mail at: 1445 Porlier street Green Bay, WI 54301-3334 or call using our number (920) 884-2224.