Lost in the night
Bereft of all light
A deeper darkness, I’ve never known
The twist of a knife
The greatest fear of my life
I face in the darkness alone

The sickness and pain
That make my life seem in vain
Insult on injury’s piled
In a sardonic curse
Contagious pain that is worse
Keeps me away from my child

There are dark cliffs of stones
That seem to bleed from my bones
Ponderous rock blocks all traces of light
But in the depth of the dark
Moves the hope of a spark
Dreaming, shimmering, bright

Then as fast as heat lightening
The dark’s bursting and brightening
There is sudden lush light every place
My heart split’s with wonder
A soft velvet thunder
The mercy of blessed Gaia-grace

The stark darkness is gone
I feel the coming of dawn
Though my troubles, I know, have not flown
We’re still in critical care
Still in perpetual prayer
But now I’m not praying alone

I have been touched by this blessing before
By this circling, rotating door
A ward, a protection, a shield
I’ve been blessed by this giving
This gentle shared living
Been the healer as well as the healed

This sanctuary of selfless giving
Can change the world by the way we’re living
With healing light and Grace-shared fountains
Joined hearts that understand
A flower can change the land
Together we are moving mountains

©Edwina Peterson Cross

This poem was written after reading the incredibly beautiful poem at my dear friend Kat’s Blog. Anyone who knows me well and read the poem there, will understand at once what kind of state I’m in. The poem was entirely heart felt, but I massacred the rhyme scheme on the last stanza so badly that it is eye popping. One might conclude that I am in really bad shape. That would be a correct assumption. I am still in Oregon rather than in California where I want so desperately to be. I have a cracked vertebra that is also out of line about half in inch. I'm waiting on the results of an MRI to see what happens next. More to the point, I have a raging case of shingles which is highly contagious. They wouldn't let me in the hospital, no less in the ICU and my intellect knows that I shouldn't be there. My mother's heart doesn't seem to be connected real well to my intellect right now, however, and not being able to see her, touch her, wash her face, brush the hair back from her eyes hurts much worse than all the physical pain in the world.

The poem was inspired by Kat saying that together we can move mountains. This is something I believe. I thank each and every one of you who have taken the time and care to help me cope at this extremely difficult time and to send prayers and light to my little girl. I wish I had glowing news to give you today, I don’t. The news could certainly be worse - we now know many things that we are NOT facing - cancer, necrosis. For every big, awful thing it could be and isn’t, I am so very grateful. She is still in the ICU, still in critical condition. The healing is excruciatingly slow. I am having an extremely hard time coping and your messages of love and light mean more than you can possibly know.

I want to invite everyone to visit the Blog I made right before my daughter was married. I had to replace some of the pictures. (Where do the pictures go?) I also listened to the videos. They say tears are healing. I'm telling you, if that is true, I'm going to be ready to not only run the Boston Marathon soon, but to win it.


My daughter is a Massage Therapist. She is a gifted healer who after graduating from a prestigious Acting Conservatory, left a promising career as an actor/singer/dancer because of a calling to heal. She is asleep most of the time right now, in a purposeful drug induced comma which is letting her body rest and heal. She is the Sunshine Child, a life long giver of love and light and her favorite color is yellow. I am actively visualizing her now, bathed in her own glittering golden light, healing herself with her own radiant gifts. Please keep praying. Kat says that together we can move mountains. She is right. Move mountains, change time, bring down fire from the sky.





My Little One spent the first six years of her life at the top of the world. We lived at near 11,000 feet, nestled in a forest of lodge poll pine and quaking aspen, just below the snow line. Most of the year you can’t drive between Leadville and Aspen because the road, and everything else, is covered with snow.



 Toward Midsummer, however, by driving just a little way from our house, you come to Independence Pass, cross the Continental Divide and find yourself standing at the top of the world.

By Midsummer there is still a lot of snow on top of Independence Pass, but there are also meadows of open tundra where the snow has gone and, if you arrive at just the right time, you will be gifted with one of the most heart stopping visions of nature . . . acres and acres of fragile, delicate, airy, snow-melt wild flowers. I used to watch my little ladies dancing down the trails through those meadows, reaching and spinning, stretching and leaping, their exquisite, graceful movements mirroring the windswept pastel beauty all around them. They were, in essence, so much like those High Country flowers: sensitive, delicate, profusive, and full of so much joy it almost broke your heart.



One blustery day as the girls were dancing down through the flowers a man with a lot of camera equipment had left the trail and began setting up a tripod ten or fifteen feet away. The Little One, just barely three, stopped still and stared at him. She looked back at me then turned back to him. Suddenly she called - her high, but surprisingly strong voice ringing through the whipping of the wind.
“Suuuh!” she yelled. She had no “R’s” until she was nearly eight.
“Suuuh!” Finally he admitted she was speaking to him and he looked up. It took me exactly one second to see that this was not one of those people who looked at a tiny, golden haired angel and had their heart automatically melt. He was annoyed.
“Is she speaking to me?” he asked me. Ah. Also one of those who don’t quite admit children are people. I didn’t say anything. I knew what she was going to say and I gave her just a tiny nod to tell her to go right ahead.
“Suuh!” she trilled again, her voice piping like a piccolo. “You mustent go off the twail. It will huwt the flowas.”
He looked at me and audibly huffed, expecting me to shush her, I think. I still said nothing.
“I’ve only taken about three steps,” he finally said, still sounding extremely annoyed. “I need to be here to get the light. I’m a photographer.” Yes, indeed, the last line sounded at least like “I’m the King of Bunker Hill,” if not quite, “I’m God.”
“Uh, hu,” she said. “You can put your camwa ova heah. On the twail. There’s lotsa light ova heah. All the signs say not to go offa the twail. My sista, she can wead. She wed them to me.”
Her five-year-old sister had come back from where she had been dancing ahead, sensing something sharp in the air. She stood right behind her little sister, her hands on her shoulders.”
“She’s right. There’s lots of signs. They all say. “Please stay on the trail.”
“I’ll only be a minute - if you will shut up and let me finish.”
The last line was very sharp and both girls were very sensitive. They swayed slightly as if they had been hit by a wind more piercing than that coming off the snow. We didn’t say “shut up” in our house. I think they thought it was a swear word. I had started forward and was one instant from calling them back to me before anything else could happen, when the Little One spoke again, her loud voice gone small, though it could still be heard clearly. “The tundwa is vewy, vewy, fwagill. Evewy thing is part of a web. Do you know? All hooked togetha. Evewy thing matters. Evewy little thing.” There were three heart beats before she added, even softer, “Pwease.”

The man looked up at me again. The tears that had sprung to my eyes had already splashed down my cheeks. He folded up his tripod immediately and walked cautiously back to the trail, carefully stepping in his own footprints. He stood for a moment unsure if he was going to just stride back to the parking lot or not. After a moment he shook his head and opened the tripod up, there on the trail. The girls backed immediately away so they were not in his way. He adjusted the lens for a moment, then he looked back at them.
“Do you want to look through this and see what the picture might be?”
They nodded silently. He lowered the camera all the way down on the tripod and let each of them look into it. He clicked it through a few different settings which made them gasp.
“That’s amaZing!” said the Little One. “You can make a picsure close up of just one flowa, or you can move it back and get the whole bunch of flowas or then it goes click again and you can see way out to the sunset pwace.” She looked up at him. “Thea isn’t any sunset thwa now, but that is wheh it will be when it comes. Wight thwa!” She pointed with both arms flung open. “We do quite a diffowent dance at the sunset,” she informed him, “but we won’t be doing it today. We awe going to Aspen and eat fat fwench fwies.”

He finally smiled at the fat fwench fwies. “Bye!” called both girls suddenly -  piccolo, flute - and they were gone dancing down the trail again. I went to move around him to follow them.
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “I didn’t mean to be so abrupt. I get temperamental, I guess.” He lifted an elegant hand, “I’m an artist.”
“So are they,” I answered.
This brought a sharp indrawn breath. A concept that had never occurred to him, I think. He looked back at them dancing through the flowers. “Yes,” he said, “I can see that.” He stood gazing at them for another long minute. “We have not inherited the earth from our ancestors,” he said softly, “we have only borrowed it from our children.” He shook his head and began to fold up his equipment again. “No one should attempt to photograph the earth who doesn’t remember that.”
“You seem to have remembered it,” I said, “word for word.”
“The words don’t matter,” he said bitterly, “if you’ve forgotten the spirit.”
I shrugged. “So. You’ve just been reminded, that’s all.”
He smiled. It was that kind of smile that starts out barely there and then grows. After a few moments he was positively grinning, looking out toward the “Sunset place.” Like smiles often do, it completely changed his face. “Yes. yes. I’ve been reminded. I’ll try not to forget again. Everything counts. Every little thing. Such wise words out of such a tiny mouth. Maybe that is what has been wrong with my pictures lately. If I could forget something so important, who knows what else I’ve forgotten.”

The girls had turned and come back to us. “Are you going to stay and photograph the sunset?” asked the big sister, with the perfect diction.
“I might,” he answered. “Are you quite sure it’s worth it? I’ll bet it gets pretty cold up here by sunset,”
“Oh, yes!” she said. “You can sit in your car and wait, though. It IS cold by the time the sunset comes, but it is so worth it. Tell him, Mama! Tell him about the most beautiful sunset of all time!”
I smiled. “Yes, indeed,” I said. “The most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen was right here.”
“No!” she said, when she could see I was finished. “Tell the whole story, come on, please! See, Mama and her cousin came here a long, long, long time ago and all the other people got cold and went away, then the sunset came and . . . come on Mama tell the rest!”
“Tell the west Mama!” chimed in the Little One,  “tell the west!”
I looked at him and rolled my eyes slightly. He nodded. “Come on,” he said, “tell the west.”
I shrugged. “Yes. Everyone had left the parking lot. As the sun began to set we cranked up the old eight-track, opened all the doors of the car and did just what they girls have been doing - we danced up and down the trails. We were nineteen, not three and five, however so it was lucky everyone was gone. Adults aren’t really allowed to just start dancing in public - even professional dancers. The sunset was incredible, and it just keep getting more so and more so, until we had both stopped dancing and were just standing with our mouths open. This entire half of the sky looked as though it had been split open and was raining fire.”
“Uh hu! Uh hu! Tell the spoooky part Mama!” sang the Little One jumping up and down.
I smiled. “I don’t know if it’s spooky. We stayed up here until the sun went down and the stars came out. We both grew up in the mountains, but these were stars like we had never seen before. We sat on the hood of the car wrapped up in blankets. It was so light that I could see to write in my notebook. There was no moon, I was writing by starlight. I tried, without much success to describe the sunset. I did use the words “the sky split open and began raining fire.” Then we drove down into Aspen. We went into a bar to get a hamburger. They didn’t have a live band, but they had a dance floor and were playing top-40 type songs on an overhead system. So, we heard a new song that we had never heard before and it gave us a small case of goose-bumps. It was 1972.” I smiled. “A long, long, long time ago.”
“Colorado Rocky Mountain High . . .” he guessed.
“Ummm,” I answered. “ ‘I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky . . . shadows from the starlight are softer than a lullaby . . .”
“Not spookey,” said my eldest, “goose-bumpy.”
“I’d say!” said the photographer. “I think I better wait for the sunset.”

Just at that moment my husband whistled from the parking lot.
“We’ve got to go,” I said.
“Thank you for letting us see through your camera.” said the big sister.
“Thank you for coming back on the twail.” said the Little One.
“Thank you for . . . very much,” said the photographer.
The girls slithered past us and went running toward their father. He watched them for a moment, then he took a deep breath and whispered, “talk to God and listen to the causal reply . . .”
“Now, that’s my favorite line!” I said. “It’s the ‘causal reply’ that I love.”
He smiled. “Really. Thank you. I’ve had a run of some very . . . well. This is the first time I’ve actually felt good for ages. Your daughters are quite remarkable. When I got here all I could see was that the sky was grey, the light was wrong and it was cold. I’m seeing everything differently. You must be an incredible teacher.”
“Thank you,” I said, thinking I was going to cry again. “They are the teachers.”
“Yes,” he said softly, “I can see that.”
There was another whistle, so I said good-bye and turned and ran myself.



I am Dryad - which is the spirit or sylph of a tree. A less known word that is also mine is Oread. An Oread is a mountain spirit. I love mountains. I am never at ease unless there are mountains near. “I need to feel the mountains bones beneath my feet,” my Daddy used to say. I was born high up in the red hills of Southern Utah and raised in the purple-blue splendor of the Wasacth Range of the Rockies. I live now in a long valley cradled between the Siskiyou’s and the Cascades. The six years I spent at the top of the Colorado Rockies were some of the happiest of my life. I learned all sorts of incredibly important things there. Of course, I had some very good teachers.

At the top of the world, you can’t see the mountains, you can only see the sky. At the top of Independence Pass, all that you can see of the Mighty Rocky Mountains is below your feet.


 Mountains, you know, are made from rocks. Good old fashioned rocks, white and black, tiny and huge. If you watch carefully, you are able to see change. You will see areas of slides that were not there the year before. A big boulder or two that have toppled from a high place and rolled to a lower place, taking a lot of smaller rocks with them. The snowmelt always changes things. One year, at the top of the pass, I came down the trail to find my daughters both flat on their stomachs on the trail. When they saw me they jumped up.
 
“Mama! Mama! Look at this!” I squatted down to see what they had found. It was two blooms of Colorado Columbine, coming off of the same plant. The plant, however, was below a flat rock the size of one of their little hands. The two blooms together had split the rock and come through it. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever seen a rock that had been broken by a flower but for some reason this one gave me a sense of vertigo. I had just been looking at a slide a ways down the slope and thinking about how the snow was actually moving the mountain. Here were two diaphanous, delicate purple and yellow flowers doing exactly the same thing. The most slender, fragile, subtle breath of beauty, splitting stones, changing the face of the land . . . moving a mountain.

I turned around and looked at my daughters their faces covered with dirt and lit with wonder; a startle of wind coming off the snow lifted and mingled their hair; cinnamon, gold. Two slender, fragile, delicate beings, a subtle breath of beauty . . .

“Mama why are you cwing?” asked the Little One.
“‘cause the flowers are beautiful. She cries when things are beautiful ALL the time. It’s nifty the way they split that rock, isn’t it Mama?”
I sat flat down with a thump in the dirt of the trail and pulled them both over into my lap.
“It’s nifty,” I sniffed.
“Make up a stowy ‘bout the flowas, Mama.”
“OK,” I said. “Once there were two delicate, beautiful mountain flowers who were sisters . . .”
They giggled and snuggled back in my arms.

It is said that the Indigo children are here to blaze a path, to open a way for the change that is coming. They say that the Indigo’s have a “warrior” element and some interpret this to mean that they will change things with force or destruction. Perhaps there will be metaphoric avalanches, landslides and a few volcanos as the world is prepared for the crystal coming. There are also fragile, delicate snowmelt flowers dancing in a high mountain wind. They are filled to bursting with the joy of living and with the subtle breath of beauty, togther, they are splitting stones.  Everything is part of a web. Do you know? All hooked together. Everything matters. Every little thing.

Please keep praying.




This is a song I sang to my daughter’s as a lullaby, it described our life at the top of the mountains so well . . . you’ve made my world a warmer place, by the sparkling of your diamond face, on a frayed spot, put a little lace, and you make me feel fine, warm as the mountain sunshine, at the edge of the snow line, in a meadow of columbine. The pictures in the video are of Alaska, but the song was written about Colorado and much of the scenery is similar.


Below are a series of paintings that I have begun for my daughter. They all deal with "Healing Hands" which she certainly has. She has her hands on herself right now, working hard at healing herself so that she can get back to doing the same for others.

Dear Friends ~

My darling daughter is in the ICU of a hospital in California in critical condition. We have almost lost her several times in the last week. Yesterday they were discussing removing her pancreas. It hasn’t come to that yet, but she is not getting well. There is one of my typical long, rambling narrations at The Power of Light Group, where some wonderful people have been sending light, love and prayers our way. I’ve decided to write something here as well. I know there is so much to be done in the world right now, for those who work with light and prayer. If there is any bit of energy left, please do send it our way. This child is a Healer, an Indigo Child with a destiny. The world needs her. Her name is April. Thank you all.

I am too ill to go to California and I am losing my mind. This is what I did today.  The Goddess of the Dog Star Sirius. She is holding my daughter’s
“Babies” Max and JoJo in her arms. They are both from the Bichon Rescue. Though it is almost impossible to believe, both of them were horribly abused, but they were rescued and have learned to love and trust again in the arms of my golden girl. Aren’t people odd? I keep worrying about the dogs. They are like babies, I know the cannot understand where or why she is gone. They don’t understand and they cry all night.

Meanwhile back at NaNoWriMo . . .That is National Novel Writing Month . . .

I find myself in the lovely position of being only 9,234 words short of my 50,000 goal. Hey, that’s just the size of one email! There was some talk, locally, of everyone meeting on November 30th in the Elizabethan Theater and finishing all together - under the auspices of The Eternal Bard. I think it's a magnificent idea. I don't think I'll wait until November 30th to finish however - not with my luck. I would have three words to go and end up breaking my funny bone on the way to the Write-in.

 I may just take a notebook to the theater and do it by myself today. Stay tuned . . .

40,000+ words and I am still in my right mind!

Sort of . . .  

There IS still the spector of Fancy Pants . . . sort of haunting, don't you think?                                                                                                       

Thirty years ago today, in Blue Hill, Maine, my Miracle Baby was born - just as the tide turned. Those of you who know me, probably know that we were given a 2% chance of ever conceiving and carrying a child to term. We were right on the beginning edge of modern miracles in infertility - there have been so many since then. Thirty years! She is now at the University of Washington in Seattle where she teaches Shakespeare, Renascence Literature and Drama, and is finishing the PhD she began in the UK. She has moved from the stage to the page with the hopes of bringing people back to the stage. We are going up to Seattle next week where she will do Thanksgiving and we get to see her run a marathon.

I have heard people say that they are not celebrating birthdays any more, most as a tongue in cheek way of saying they think they are too old. It still always makes me wonder. Why not celebrate every chance there is to celebrate? Having ridden one more year on this glorious bluegreen space ship seems like the most logical of all reasons to celebrate. The only better reason I can thin of are other people’s birthdays. I revel and rejoice this day, one of the most marvelous human beings I have ever been blessed to know. The fact that I was the gate that brought her to this world will always be an honor, a joy and a glorious celebration to me.

Dear Gaia Friends ~

Following is an outline of the story I will be working on this year during the month of November for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.) I wrote this to post at Diving Deeper where there is a wonderful support group of Gaia Writers, getting ready to do NaNoWriMo together. I decided that I wanted to share this here on my Blog as well, as I did the other two years I participated in NaNoWriMo.  I was brand new to Zaadz in October of 2006 when Samme talked me into doing NaNaWriMo. It was one of the best bits of coercion in my life! Samme, and many others, stuck with me all the way through that first year and helped make it an experience to remember. It really made an incredible difference in my life, by letting me know that I COULD write prose. Good, bad or indifferent, at least I knew that I could do it. Thank you Samme! You will always be my hero. Thank you everyone else who read my ramblings and encouraged me.

I want to send a huge “thank you” to Sandra who has built something so tremendous here at Gaia by bringing her ‘Diving Deeper’ work here. A “Thank You” as well to all my new friends at Diving Deeper - my “Writing Buddies” - who are already giving positive feedback and encouragement.

This story is dedicated to my Gaia daughter Elisa. We will pretend that you are six, sitting on my lap and I am telling you this story. You will like it! There will be Faeries, Dryads, ROMance! Secrets and a Wicked Angel. This story is also for Jena, who - along with Granny - has watched over me every moment with healing love and who knows the way through all the Glistening Gates. For MamaKat, my twinish sister and the original Katja. For Jami, for letting me share Kat and allowing me to witness sister-love in action, and for being a true Lioness.  For Katherine Estelle Eveningstar, my Wonderous-Wyld-Sister, guiding star and favorite author. For Starseed who is so full of spirit and positive energy it can probably be felt on the other side of the universe, I know it can be felt on the other side of the country. Selfless love in action that is a beauty to behold. .For Siona for everything she does to make this dream called Gaia a reality, to keep it ever fresh and new, but still always stable and trustworthy at the hearts core. This can’t be an easy task and she does it with graciousness and grace.. For my fellow water snake Martha for many things, particularly for bringing me through panic and terror into a safe, sweet dream at the heart of green, the feeling of which is the basis for this story. For Joybringer, for constantly doing/being just that. For Sprite for teaching me the importanc of wings. For Amber for sharing smiles. For Leaf - Sarabi - whose spirit of the green has helped me feel what I need to feel to begin this work. The painting I did for her showed me my woods, my Dryads and a Glistening Gate waiting to be crossed. Everyone should read her Elfhood’s Vision .  For Mary, who listened when I desperately needed to talk, and for Mary’s Frog just because he’s great. For my friend Femke who made my Little Owl’s Eyes famous. For my Raven, Megan, who has been with me for years, still loving me - just as I love her -  through thick & thin, up & down and everywhere in between. I also wish to dedicated this story to my wonderful PLAY-POD MOD-SQUAD (We were MOD before MOD was cool!)  Thank you for helping me bring PLAY alive here at Gaia. I find all kinds of Play going on all over the place now and I am so delighted by it. We will get those cob swept out one of these days, do a bit or rewrangling and we’ll be back in business.

And then, for being there, even when I wasn’t, for remembering me when I was here and when I was gone, this story is dedicated to: Alluvja, Mila, Meenakshi, Islefaye, Kimmergy, Laurie, Mimi, Joy, debyemm, Silly Old Bear, Fastdart, Zephyr, Diane, Resurrected1, Ohmsmon, Teenie-Dakini, Nicola, Ayla, Pookietooth, Otter, Nicole, Time to Share, Shanti, Sol, Jeannie-Tink, Victoria, Kes, Jaguar Peaceful Warrior. Soccermom & Fiesty Cherub. It is also dedicated to everyone that I forgot because I am really no good at keeping track of things. I’m a lot better writer than I am a Keeper-Track-of-er, so to anyone I forgot, I dedicate and apologize at the same time. Finally (FINALLY!! Yeah!) This story is dedicated to Archimedes, who supplied me with the finest of Premium Writer’s Fuel (‘Fill ‘her up with Premium’) . . . the best tea on the earth. I’ve saved the last part of my package for months so I would have it for November. It will warm my soul as well as my fingers, my tummy and all my vast Creative Processes which, as everyone knows, are powdered by tea.  

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In my previous NaNoWriMo years, I did my ‘book’ without any kind of outline or previous plot ideas, just writing away and following where it took me. Right now I have three books of a series, with a lot of good stuff in them, but with plots that have never wanted to behave and just keep boinging off into something new. This year I’m trying something different. I have done some character sketches and I’ve loosely outlined the plot. I’m a little worried about trying to write inside of the structure. I tried this once before. When my characters started going off in ways that had nothing to do with the plot I had made for them, it freaked me and I stopped writing. That was a long time ago, however. This plot is looser and I am now very used to characters who want to do just what they want to do. I’m not sure I can make them behave and do what I want, but at least it won’t freak me if they take off on a tangent. [;-) Tangatizing!] It will be interesting to see how I feel about it in December.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have written several short stories and a couple of ballads that are set in the Derbane Dales which circled the mysterious Mountain of Wyrd hundreds of years ago. Some of you may even have read some of these. Raven Megan, if you are out there, one of these is the ballad I wrote for you, “Dancing With the Sidhe.” The protagonist of these stories and ballads is the Lady Annaelizia Rhiannon Danica Derbane ~ Duchesses of the Demesne of Derbane; Lady of Wineriver Manner; Keeper of the Estate of Dryadia; Guardian of the Dryadwood.  Every Spring Annaelizia mysteriously disappears, leaving her Overseers to take care of her vast holdings which include acres of farmland, a massive vineyard as well as the Dryadwood, which is so large that no one really knows it’s extent. The Duchy of Derbane also technically includes inside it’s borders the Mountain of Wyrd. Lady Annaelizia is wise enough to know that no one owns that mountain, so she does not “claim” it. The reason that The Lady Annaelizia disappears each Spring is because she is, in truth, half Dryad. During part of the year her blood runs as red as every other human and she stays home like a good Lady of the Manor. In the Spring, however, the sap rises in the trees and the veins behind her wrists turn green. She is called by a force she can’t fight, out from behind her safe, solid walls into the wide world . . .  into the Dryad Wood. There she travels as simply Elizia, a Poet and a Bard, with nothing but a small pack and a harp at her back. She has some interesting adventures, I suspect she will keep having them.

The story I will be writing in November moves the Mountain of Wyrd into the present. It is still mysterious, arcane and covered with mist. Parts of it routinely disappear, as do parts of what remains of the Dryadwood. The mountain is called Wyrdwood now, except by those who don’t want to admit it is there at all. Modern people are very good at looking right at something and declaring that it doesn’t exist. Here, then, is my rather lengthy outline - I tried to cut it and it got longer. Typical. My heroine this time is a fourteen year old girl named Katja, my hero the Wicked Angel who is NOT her imaginary friend. Before I launch, I bring you Elizia . . .  you see her in the painting above . . .“The Dryad Wood Calls.”  At the beginning of the next entry, you'll see another painting of her - the explanation of which is at the bottom of the next entry. Confusing! I can't make the pictures go where I want them.  They only want to let me have one picture. Do you think it is because I write so much?

Where were we? Ah! The Lore. In the area of this remarkable mountain there is nothing so important as keeping stories. The stories become legends, the legends becomes lore, the lore becomes mythology and mythology becomes religion. If you are lucky, the original stories are still there. To these people, from time eternal, nothing is more important than The Lore. It is preserved meticulously both by writing and by trained Bards. There are great rituals involved in having a story committed to “The Lore” - including having it written in the authors blood before the original is stored in a vault in the capital city of Winterhome. Every year there is a great convention where all the Bards of the land come to The Grove of Living Lore to learn all the new stories that were entered into the vault that year. They work terrifically hard learning and then they party terrifically hard, telling. When the stories are gifted to the people there is an entire week of Festival, Faire, Storytelling and Songs. The people know that story contains everything . . . all truth, all meaning, what is real, what is not . . . inside the remembrance of a culture’s stories is kept that which makes us who we are, that which makes us human . . . even if we are part Dryad. Does any of this remain in the present day where Katja lives? Any of this feeling of reverence and veneration for The Lore?  Maybe we will know by December.

And so . . . as the Dryad in charge of this story, I ask Elizia to step forward and speak a blessing on the Lore. She will reach her hands into the air and draw a rune there. Where her fingers trace, the air will be painted with a glittering light that will hang in the air while she speaks the blessing and then it will fall, running like sparkling gold dust to the ground.

 DRYAD’S NANOWRIMO - NOVEMBER 2009 - Currently w/o Title

Julian is an angel. A wicked angel. Mind you, that doesn’t mean evil. In general ‘wicked’ and ‘evil’ are synonyms, but not in the case of this particular Angel. Julian is definitely an Angel of Light and he is truthfully as virtuous, kind and chivalrous as they come. He doesn’t like to get caught being good, however, and he considers it a major fox-paw if someone tries to point it out. He is very proud of his leather wings, his flowing black cape and his faux-villainy in general. Being an angel is secondary and incidental, of course, to Julian’s calling in life.  He might have been a jaguar, a faerie, a tree, a harp . . . even a peanut. He could have been anything. What Julian is, is not the important thing. It is what he does that is important.

According to the Powers That Be, “if a child continues to insist that her Imaginary Friend is real, after the age of six, it is time to get psychiatric help.” Katja has had her share of psychiatric help, and though she is long past six, this particular edict doesn’t bother her a bit. When she read this choice little bit of information, it took her less than six seconds to see the glorious, gaping loop hole.  The sentence said: “if a child continues to insist that HER Imaginary Friend is real . . . ” It could have been ‘HIS Imaginary Friend” or gender neutral “THEIR Imaginary Friend” it didn’t matter. Julian is not HER Imaginary Friend, no matter how you look at it. He belongs to someone else. As far as Katja is concerned that leaves her front and center in the clear. Besides, Julian is so much more interesting than anyone else and he needs her. He is marooned in the Concrete World and though he can still cross the Glistening Gate back into his own world, he is doing it by stealth and he knows that it isn’t strictly legal and it certainly isn’t right. Even though he can get through the Gate, he can’t stay. After a certain amount of time, and he never knows how much, he automatically finds himself right on his bumpus back on the concrete of the Concrete World.  And, he is running out of time.

Katja, meanwhile, finds that her problematic life just keeps acquiring more problems. Very much like Julian, it seems that she is constantly caught between worlds. For the last year Katja has walked all the way from Woodhall to Owens rather than ride the bus. The Middle School, on the outskirts of Owens, is bad enough, but next fall she will have to ride the hated bus all the way to the High School in Vickersville. She hasn’t managed come up with anyway out of it. 

The people from Owens and Vickersville sometimes drive over to Woodhall, to stare at the ‘bizarre’ inhabitants; the laughing, barefoot children climbing trees and playing out in the sun rather than spending their time at the Country Club pool or playing video games; musicians and artists who sit out under the trees playing or painting, not seeming to care how they look and obviously not interested in the important things in life. They live is strange little houses spread along the winding roads, back in the trees. Houses painted with strange colors or often just made of plain gleaming wood; houses with no cars in front of them, no satellite dishes in the side yards, no tennis courts or swimming pools. There are stories that some of the people walking around the weaving streets of Woodhall are not even human. It is said they come from “elsewhere” through gates in the woods or in the mist of the mountain. Who knows what they are up to, but the people from Owens and Vickersville figure that if there were ‘aliens’ walking around, they would probably blend in perfectly with the weirdos who live in Woodhall.

None of them really believe these stories, of course. They are not the kind of people who believe. They still like to come to Woodhall and gawk. Maybe they will catch a glimpse of the mountain or of the mysterious and arcane Wood Hall, which is said to be full of staircases that go nowhere, and doors that open on to secrets deeper than the Thickwood. The country government, backed up by the state, insists that Wood Hall does not exist and maybe it doesn’t. The people from Owens and Vickersville very seldom see the Hall, that is a certainty. But then, the mists are thick and the roads twist in and out of the Thickwood in a way that makes it very easy to get lost. They come to Woodhall in their big, gas guzzling cars looking for the Wyrd without having any idea what they are looking for or at. They laugh and they point, but they never stop their expensive cars and get out.

On the county maps the ancient, mist covered Wyrdwood Mountain is listed as “Owens Peak” and the winding, bewooded village of Woodhall that circles the mountain’s feet is merely “Owens Rural Route.” As if by taking it’s name away, they can turn Wyrdwood Mountain into something like “Owens Peak.” Call it what they will, the mists still occasionally lift the mountain right off of the ground and parts of it routinely disappear. No matter what they call them, there are woods that sometimes are and sometimes are not. Calling Woodhall “Owens Rural Route” doesn’t change the things that are sometimes in the wood or the miles of twisting roads that sometimes lead no where. It doesn’t lessen the legends, change a single tradition, or make The Lore non existent.

Now that Julian and Katja have finally found each other again, they are sure that they can solve all their problems . . . if they can just stop tangentizing . . . and devising ‘Whatifs’ and then stuffing them through the mirror until they answer themselves. If they would stop waltzing across the Gate into Everall, after spelling themselves to look like two burley bears or a couple of flamingos. Julian still knows all the pass-songs so they can easily get into Childhood and quick-flitch ‘time’ so that it never gets past twilight when they are playing “No Bears Are Out Tonight.” Before any mothers can start calling anyone to come in and take a bath, it just quick-flitch’s back to morning and they get to eat breakfast again. They can go to The Dream Forge where they build the most delicious dreams and then eat them with Sleepspoons until they are so full that they have to roll home. If they would stop running off to sky-slide and then having sticky or sloppy cloud-ball fights, building cloud-men and cloud forts until they are both so covered with cloud that they look like twin cotton balls. If they just didn’t spend so much time climbing the mountain, exploring the woods and looking for Wood Hall . . . they were sure they could solve any problem.

“Really,” said Julian, sighing, “it’s the Word Games where we spend all our time. But words are so deluxe to play with! Really, they are by far the best toys and we are so exceptionally GOOD at inventing phantasmagoric word games.”
“We are both decidedly intelligent,” Katja said firmly. “We OUGHT to be able to solve all the problems and do everything else besides.”
“Yes,” said Julian, “if only our smarts were not so . . . slippery.”
Katja considered for a moment. “It’s true,” she finally announced. “Our intellect is often slick . . . sliding and slithery.”
“Lubricious,” said Julian.
“Oooooooh!” moaned Katja, “I LOVE lubricious. Lubricious. LUBricioussssssss. Lub! Lub! Where are you going with the hose?”
“It was all the slippery, slick, slithery, lubriciousness,” said Julian. “It made me want to SSSLIDE.”
“And where are you planning to ssslide?”
“That loophole in the sentence. You know, that absurd sentence about Psychobrutilizing some poor child for Believing?” He shook his head sadly. “Sometimes, Princess, the world on this side of the Glistening Gate is very ugly.”
Katja just looked at him. He knew that she knew about the ugliness, and about being brutalized for Belief. Her eyes moved and she stood looking out the window at the mountain rising mysterious and green from the soft, white mist.
“Ummm,” she said softly, “ugly? Yes, sometimes. And sometimes this world is inexpressively beautiful. Inexpressive - even for me.”
Julian smiled. He kissed the tips of his fingers and pressed them to the air in front of her third eye. She jumped, blinked hard and then smiled an extremely beautiful smile.
“At any rate,” said Julian. “I think if we get it quite incredibly wet and we run really fast down the first part of the sentence, we can jump into that loophole and go for a super slide. We might even fly right off the paper and out of the book!”
“And land where?” asked Katja looking intrigued.
“I haven’t got a clue!” said Julian happily. “Common! Let’s go!”

©Edwina Peterson Cross


At the top there, you will see the other painting of Elizia which is the flip side of “The Dryad Wood Calls” is the picture of Elizia coming home in the early fall. This one is titled, “Elizia Comes Home to the Immanent Grove.” This is her favorite place on earth - as it is one of mine. The background for the painting is actually the Sycamore Grove in Lithia Park, here in Ashland. I named the Sycamore Grove after a place at the school for Wizards (30 years before Harry Potter) in Ursula Le Guin’s “A Wizard of Earthsea.” Part of the Wizards training takes place in the “Immanent Grove,” a grove of exceptionally beautiful and sentient  trees that has the habit of moving around. It is finally explained to Ged, LeGuin’s protagonist, that the Immanent Grove doesn’t really move. It is the center of the earth, and it is everything else that moves around it. Our Immanent Grove seems to move too, and like LeGuin’s, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turns out that it is really the center of the earth. When I have hugged my final tree, rather than a big slab of Granite in a cemetery, I am going to have a beautiful marble bench in the Immanent Grove of Lithia Park.

I drive an automatic.  It is amazing how often I forget that such things as gears even exist. This usually happens half way up a steep hill when the vehicle gets sluggy and sometimes threatens to stall . . . "Oh!" I'll suddenly think . . ."gears!"  The metaphor actually works quite well. You are undoubtably better off with gears - to be able to make up your own mind when they need shifting, rather than waiting for the "set" shift to happen. When I was young I drove nothing but a standard transmition. I wanted to ability to shift and go when I wanted to shift and go, to get up those hills and, yes, probably to make squeeling noises when I pulled out. I was braver then. I'm not so brave now, and undoubtadly lazier. It's easier to let the vehicle shift. I'm not sure I could even work a clutch anymore.

I will never forget, however, that when my Daddy was teaching me to drive he told me that I would begin to know when the gears needed to be shifted. "You learn. Partly you hear it in the engine, and partly you just feel it from the car." At first it boggled me, but it really wasn't long before not only did I "feel" when it was time to shift, but my body automatically put down the clutch while my hands shifted the gears. I really quite loved the feeling of being one with the machine - that automatic knowledge when it was time to shift. Now that something shifts for me, I take the whole process for granted.

I remember the feeling, when riding a bike, that I wasn't going to make it up the hill, then shifting gears and finding that together, the bike and I were quite equal to that hill.

This is a great question - it has made me think. I don't shift gears in my life often enough either. I very often keep going, with every running sluggish and slow, feeling that I can't get up the hills. I need to remember that in my life, if not my car, I have the ability to shift gears and when things get difficult - shifting gears may be just exactly what I need to do.

Dear Incredible People,

I am full of awe, surprise, amazement, happiness and a flood of tears.  I did not expect to find anything here for my birthday. I came over to send a message to ask someone something and look what I found!! I have been absent more than present during the last year. It is wonderful to know that you have not forgotten me. There is no gathering of souls anywhere, that has the special kind of giving care that is found here at Gaia. I still - always - think of it as my home.

As this (no doubt) will be a little long, I’m going to put it at my Blog as well. I can’t seem to ever find anything worth Bloging about, but this definitely qualifies.

I’ve had a very difficult year in all the aspects of person-hood - physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual and the fluff that keeps getting in my ear. There are so many things at Gaia I would love to participate in - first and foremost would be get the cobwebs out of PLAY POD. It may still happen, who knows. I don’t seem to be getting past just survival many days. I am writing quite a bit and have been doing a little painting. At some point there will be a self-pressed poetry book and a web site of my paintings. In the works . . . someday I hope to have some part of “the works” come to completion.

My personal life is in a state of limbo and I’m not sure what happens there next either. I suspect this is not particularly a strange thing to be happening at my age. One of the things I love about Gaia, is that it has taught me that I am not alone in my feelings. I may be very different than Jane Q. Public, but with a group where my dynamics are very similar - they are many things I can learn from what others have experienced.

My eldest daughter leaves me TOMORROW. After four years working as a Literary Specialist and Dramaturg at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she is going to the University of Washington in Seattle to teach Shakespeare and finish her PhD. She goes from “Stage” to “Page” a bit of a jump, but she is very dedicated to bringing theatre to the next generation and this seems to her like a good way to proceed from here. She already has a cute little apartment in one of Seattle’s “Neighborhoods” and is very excited. I’ve been a little west of devastated - as this was the last of my children and they were all to be “quite gone.” While she was away at college and in England doing the Masters and PhD prep, I still had one at home.  That one is a rising Junior at the University of Oregon. At the last moment he announced that he wasn’t going back to school this year. He is at the point where he must declare a major and get ready to do what he is going to do and he hasn’t got a clue what that may be. So he is taking a year off. He will work and read a lot - possibly travel if he lands a job in which he can make some bank. I am frozen with conflicted emotions. I know a break part way through can be a good thing. I should have done it myself. Yet . . . I also know a lot of folks who went away and didn’t go back. I want him in college, but something inside me is relieved and so happy to know he will be here. They won’t all be gone after all. I know this is just postponing the inevitable, but . . .

I had another major-type surgery earlier this month and ended up getting an infection that won’t go away. It takes everything out of you and I didn’t have that much to take! I AM still hopeful that when I get this cleared up I can begin working toward more mobility. I’m not ready for the Boston Marathon, but I am at a point where I play a mean game of Pooh Sticks!

Thank you, everyone . . . Thank you so much. Especially you, Starseed my dear, who never forgets me and is a blessing to my life. You ALL will never know how much this means to me.

Much Love ~

Dryad 

Following William

Questing far and deep
I come to the poets
To artists and dreamers of thought who
‘Soar on wings above the earth.
Sometimes to dive and touch the mire
But only to graze, never to be caught’ *

I come here listening
Eternally a learner, ceaselessly a seeker
Made largely of wonder
I search for cloud trails where these feathers have flown
I follow their soaring, tumbling flight, reaching with stretched fingers,
Brushing celestial wings
“Was it thus for you? Indeed? And it is THUS for me!
How same, how different, how changing, how fascinating, don’t you think? . . .”
William cannot answer me,
Not Shakespeare, Blake, Carlos Williams,
Wordsworth or Yeats,
They fly before me
Into a radiant sun split infinity
I can only
Follow

I know how little I know
I know that understanding is a process
Knowledge not a destination
 
My universe dances in circles of changing chaos
The more I seek, the more I find
The more I find, the more I seek
The more I sense, the more I search
The more I search, the more I recognize
There is relevance in everything
Relationships everywhere

Sorrow, singing, shadows, self
My sacred wind that smelled of stars
Synchronicity . . .
Syzygy . . .
Soul

Unboxed
Unbroken
Unbound

Neither Wordsworth, nor Yeats, Blake nor Carlos Williams
Not even
Shakespeare
Ever had his finger on the pulse of God
They questioned, queried, wondered
Dreamed . . .
In flurry of free-thinking feathers
They fly before me

I can only
Follow


©Edwina Peterson Cross


* From “A Dream Play” by August Strindgerg. Translated by Jerry Turner

Indra’s Daughter speaks to the Poet:
You, child of man, you dreamer
You, skald, who best know how to live,
Soaring on wings above the earth,
Sometimes to dive and touch the mire
But only to graze, never to be caught.”

~
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
(William Blake)


The Birds

The world begins again!
Not wholly insufflated
the blackbirds in the rain
upon the dead topbranches
of the living tree,
stuck fast to the low clouds,
notate the dawn.
Their shrill cries sound
announcing appetite
and drop among the bending roses
and the dripping grass.

(William Carlos Williams)




To the Cuckoo

O blithe newcomer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice:
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

Though babbling only to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

O blessed birth! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, fairy place,
That is fit home for Thee!

(William Wordsworth)


The White Birds
 
I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea:
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can pass by and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that never may die.
 
A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled, the lily and rose,      
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam—I and you.
 
I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more:      
Soon far from the rose and the lily, the fret of the flames, would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea.

(William Butler Yeats)


Southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
(William Shakespeare,  Hamlet: II, ii )