Luna Arcana - Issue 3

LUNA ARCANA I S S U E

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LUNA ARCANA - Editor’s Note For those of us who live in these rural, dusty wilds, the perception of the desert as a mirror is generally an accepted metaphor. Its vast horizons, dark night skies and infinite celestial bodies draw us in like a deep dive into the shimmer of an August mirage. And once immersed, we are shown pristine truths about ourselves; truths that perhaps we have been running from for a long time, unable or unwilling to look at. But the trickster desert enchants us with its beauty and makes us look, until we are observing what has been hidden away in our own dusty and shadowy reaches. It demands courage, this gritty truth serum. The panoramic vistas that drew us here, the alluring poetry of the light, are just some of the many faces of this mystery. To even begin to know it more fully, we have to let go of our electronic distractions and big-city conveniences, let go of our desire to tame the wilderness to make it more safe and familiar. The undiluted fear of coming face to face with a deadly Green Mojave rattlesnake is one of the purest sensations. There is no masking or distracting to be done.

Nothing to be done but to remain fully aware and alert in the presence of this terrifying face of the wilderness.

The desert can take us on a journey into our own unconscious, where the real treasures lie. And like the desert, this internal underworld is the home of birth, death and rebirth. It’s where wild Nature resides within us, in all her life and death affirming glory. In the light of our awareness, an awareness unburdened with the need to escape the present moment, these subterranean forces are nourished and transmuted into our gifts to be expressed out into the world. The bursting forth of spring in this desert after many long months of gestation in the unseen never fails to elicit gasps of deep wonder, even from the most seasoned desert dwellers.

And so it is with each passing year here that I find myself learning to tread the dimly lit paths within; learning to use my night-vision and look squarely at what I have always rejected and finally claim as a part of me, because that is what this desert demands.

The desert is an alchemist, if only we would let it do its work.

Rohini Walker Editor: Rohini Walker Creative Directors: Martín Mancha & Rohini Walker Art Direction & Graphic Design: Martín Mancha, www.martinmancha.com For all inquiries, please contact us at: lunaarcanajoshuatree@gmail.com Printed locally by the Hi-Desert Publishing Co., Yucca Valley, CA. Cover illustration by Martín Mancha Back cover illustration by Taylor Elyse Compton Stalk us on Facebook by searching for ‘Luna Arcana’ • Instagram: @luna_arcana It is our intention to distribute Luna Arcana for free, spreading these images and stories from the desert with ease and without prejudice. All advertising revenue goes directly towards print costs, allowing us to keep ads to a minimum. If you enjoy what you experience in these pages and would like to support our endeavor, you can subscribe and receive two issues a year, or donate as little or as much as you like, by visiting: www.lunaarcana.com

With thanks to our collaborators & contributors: Adriana Atema Becky Tuulantytär Hastings Benjamin Goulet Bon Nielsen Carly Valentine Dr. Catherine Svehla Chris Clarke Dana Balicki

Greg Gilbert Jessica Dacey Jill Giegerich Joseph Mancha Kara Sajeske Kate McCabe Kim Stringfellow Morgan Jago

©Photo by © Sant Khalsa.

Bristol Dry Lake, Near stated.

Amboy, CA All material 2018 Luna Arcana, unless otherwise 1

Penelope Sitter Peri Lee Pipkin Rachel Burgos Tonelise Rugaas

“Expulsions Of Whispers Of Dia Monzart” by Linda Sibio 2

July 3rd I make out with a bad idea. The house told me so June 30th by bursting a pipe. Or maybe it was the ghost of my The scorpion for the Green Manalishi showed up 3 mom? The burst old irrigation pipe effectively cancels days early. It religiously appears in the kitchen on July inviting people over to eat chili. It’s been awhile since 3rd when I start my chili verde. It’s the secret ingre- I had to shut the water off and cope. It’s happened dient. We have an agreement. I don’t know what to before during emotional moments of my marriage breaking up. Yester-husband would be about to pull think when my sacrifice appears early. away and a pipe would break. He would shrug a little Summer 2017 - Art & words by Kate McCabe

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sadly and leave anyway. It was as if the house cried for me. During the Sawtooth fire, when I finally had the courage to tell him I was done, it was the worst.

I woke to a geyser out back: a pipe shooting water straight into the air. It was said my tears could be seen from the Space Station that July.

It seemed the most auspicious time for such magic.

I can’t decide between High Priestess and Reverend Mother as my minister title.

But why is the President staring at the sun? Is this a ‘fearless’ leader who is not afraid of eye damage? Or a man who is already blind?

July 4th There were fireworks last night in the form of dog diarrhea. I am definitely not sharing the famous chili verde with anyone. Also now ants appeared. If the universe did not want me to make out with bad choice guy, it couldn’t be any clearer. Who does my pipe cry for? It cries for thee.

Pipe gets fixed and the fixer gets the chili verde. I share the rest with KG and make tacos to bring to Rolo’s party. The Green Manalishi was made for sharing despite faulty pipes, sick dogs, tears and ant invasions.

August 26st In San Diego for the Underground Film Festival I experience their fireworks indoors of the cinema.

August 29th Pickles is 12! It’s crazy how much I love this creature.

I’d been bragging in my head that I’m the Queen of Alonetown Kingdom in my alone pants (which is no pants) most independent alone person ever. Then while feeling proud of my independence I look over at the sick dog and burst into tears. She has been by July 26th my side the entire 12.5 years in the desert. Like that Lightning and monsoons finally! A visiting writer damn footsteps poem where Jesus was actually carrybrings new wheels for my roller-skates. He also brings ing you during the hardest days of your life so there’s fancy tequila that we must sip. It tastes like summer in only one pair of footsteps, mine are paw prints bethe shade of a giant agave. His assistant recommended cause Pickles has seen me through the worst. it. I say sincerely “Give that assistant a raise.”

August 30th We climb the roof of my shed to watch lightning over After a sad visit at the vet with Pickles, I have a Landers. We talk of death, our cinema, and of young milkshake for lunch. Three roadrunners cross our kids in love. path.

July 27th September 3rd There’s a giant double rainbow shouting “Good KG adventures with me! We drive to Calico ghost morning!” town in the heat. Afterwards, I Google, “Best margarita in Barstow.” A bartender brings our drinks and August 1st he seems out of place, young and polite. I tell KG we Sunset was so good, a cottontail scampered right be- should take him with us. The chips are so fresh and hind Pickles and she didn’t even notice. amazing but the salsa is terrible, it’s a bizarre conflicting feeling. We laugh until we cry and KG’s makeAugust 11th up just disappears. We make a pact that from now on when we hang, she must wear waterproof, laughShooting stars hotline. proof makeup. I slip the bartender a note on the way August 13th out. “If you want to escape. Blink twice. We will take It’s the peak of my favorite Perseids. Everything is the you with us. We’ll be outside in the blue Celica.” light fantastic. I’ve been seeing glorious shooting stars outside night after night. Everyone who complains As I walk to the car, I hear a shout. He is running after about summer can suck it. The nights are the best in us. He has a nice face. the world.

September 6th August 21st It should be noted that the lightning-to-make out raThere’s a partial eclipse. I want to look at it badly. The tio has been off this summer. last partial, I ran around in sequin shorts like a disco mirror butt and ate steak tacos. That night we wrote a song about staring into the sun.

I run around in sequin shorts and a rabbit mask this time as tradition states and get a paper cut from a sequin. I race inside to get ordained during the eclipse.

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Luna Arcana

Art by Peri Lee Pipkin 5

La Gobernadora

By Peri Lee Pipkin & Rachel Burgos

Creosote (Larrea tridentata) is the governess of the Mojave. It’s named La Gobernadora for its habit of forming a monoculture in many parts of the desert due to its root’s efficiency at absorbing water, thus preventing any other plant from growing close by.

It’s a perennial, scraggly shrub that dominates the landscape of the greater Southwest. It has lanky, grey, brownish, or striped branches with tiny, ovate shaped leaves that grow opposite to each other along the stem. In the spring and after a rain, small five-petaled radial yellow flowers bloom and then mature into fuzzy white seed pods. It typically grows from 3 to 9 feet tall, with waxy resinous leaves that appear greasy yellow-green during the rainy season, and a dull olive during times of drought or extreme cold. You may recall the signature smell of desert rain – this is the smell of creosote.

ing acts as an important filter to help our conscious mind access experiences and information. Creosote deeply penetrates on a transpersonal level to replace energetic imbalances with harmony and awareness. It helps to alleviate mental chaos, drug addiction, nightmares, ancestral patterning and trauma. It is important to dream and it is quite possible to do much energetic work in this realm. To use this plant take 1-3 drops of tincture or flower essence before sleeping or meditating with intention. Sleep with creosote under your pillow.

Creosote was used by the Cahuilla Native Americans in the Southwest as a tea to treat colds, bronchitis, chickenpox, and arthritis. When feeling the first symptoms of cold or flu; folks can drink one cup of tea to offset symptoms. Taken as a tincture, it aids liver metabolism. Creosote has been known to inhibit liver and lung damage due to free radicals when combined with milk thistle, and is helpful for joint pain, allergies, autoimmune disorders, and PMS. It is not a tonic herb; creosote is tacky and resinous and can be hard on the kidneys over time. You can take it as tincture (5-10 drops) or as an infusion (1 tablespoon of dried herb per quart of boiling water, steeped for an hour, and strained); it has a strong unpleasant taste, so often lemon or honey are added. For external preparations, older plants are best, whereas for internal preparations, collect the younger, brighter leaves.

Pregnant women, children under two, the elderly, and individuals with compromised liver, and/or hepatitis should take creosote at lower doses or avoid altogether.

This plant is associated with the sun and warming, solar energies. It has small yellow flowers, which are immediately cheerful; an essence of this flower can help us resolve the feeling that something’s missing, and release what we are holding in and leaving unexpressed. Often, it’s this internal dam of emotions and experiences that are at the root of people’s self-imposed isolation. This is interesting, because many folks come to the desert to escape, but in the desert, we’re constantly surrounded by a plant that has the energetic capability of making us face our pent-up issues and feelings. Releasing these feelings allow a sense of calm, connection to your inner self, and emergence from a potentially dark reality or unconscious state into a brighter, more energetic one, a feeling of solar warmth. A flower essence of this plant is useful for those suffering from bitterness, isolative depression, self-imposed separation, or an ancient feeling of being forever alone. Creosote lets the sunlight in.

When applied to the skin as a salve or liniment, it slows the rate of bacterial growth in cuts and scrapes with its anti-microbial properties and can help clear up fungal infections like athletes foot and ringworm, making it a great addition to an herbal first aid kit. A water infusion (never oil) is also useful for staph infections. It makes a good anti-cavity and anti-bacterial mouthwash and sore-throat gargle. A small amount of creosote oil (about 4 tablespoons per quart) can be added to salves, massage oils, and ointments to help shelf stabilize them. Creosote salve is often used as a sunscreen and to heal minor burns and sunburns. In fact, it helps heal a lot of heat related skin eruptions such as acne, boils, and mild infections, and relieves pain and inflammation. Creosote lets the emotional light in, but at the same time physically protects and heals you from too much sun and heat, which is an amazing ally to have in the desert sun.

Creosote is one of the oldest living organisms on the earth. Our local King Clone is estimated to be over 11,000 years old. The ancient energies of this plant help to bring our ancestors closer. Think of this plant for people who have a hard time connecting with family members due to trauma or adoption. When we use creosote for dreaming it facilitates connection and discovery of information from our past. Use this plant for intentional dream journeying; call upon your ancestors to receive their messages and heal generational trauma. Because of it’s psychically cleansing properties it helps to relieve emotional and spiritual toxicity.

During the day-to-day our psyche can absorb more than our conscious minds can assimilate and dream6

Seed for Thought

by Jessica Dacey

Two miles from downtown Joshua Tree are three fridges containing the past and the future. These ordinary- looking white fridges with their extraordinary contents can be found in an office at the headquarters of the Mojave Desert Land Trust. A nearby table is scattered with brass sieves, paintbrushes and a microscope. Welcome to the Mojave Desert Seed Bank.

dore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants, she came to Joshua Tree two years ago to build up the Trust’s nursery from scratch.

Derelict nursery buildings at the Trust’s headquarters on Highway 62 were restored, and Madena, aided by volunteers, started scouting for seeds from native plants on land that the Trust was stewarding and conWhat began with a few fishhook cactus seeds in serving across the surrounding desert.

March 2016 is evolving into a visual DNA database of the Mojave Desert. Today, the fridges are filled with Since only the pure seeds can be preserved, separating 320 collections of seeds representing over 110 species, them from the tough chaff is a time consuming proincluding eight species of concern. They are now safe cess. Volunteers from around the Morongo Basin have for decades to come. spent hundreds of hours over the past year collecting seeds and painstakingly cleaning them by hand. What It’s the brainchild of the Mojave Desert Land Trust’s they are left with are just the tiny, oily, living seeds.

Nursery & Seed Bank Manager, Madena Asbell. They are then stored in glass jars and officially enter Formerly the Director of Horticulture at the Theo- the seed bank fridges.

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These days, the seed bank also receives packages from across the Californian deserts. Everywhere you look in the office there are brown paper bags filled with seed donations collected from people’s private properties, all neatly labeled, describing what plant the seeds come from and where they were found.

the Svalbard Seed Bank in Norway, wasn’t impervious to climate change, flooding in May 2017 after an arctic-permafrost melt.

And like Jack and his beanstalk, once the seed bank has a handful of seeds, it can grow a lot more. Planting 100 seeds in the seed bank’s adjoining nursery Native plants are especially vital. As they are geneti- could potentially create 10,000 new seeds. cally tied to a particular area, they are the ones most likely to survive. The creosote bush in Windy Gap, for Want to help? The Mojave Desert Seed Bank recentinstance. Or the rabbitbrush in Long Canyon Peak. ly launched a membership program. Go to ww.mdlt.

The same plants at a higher or lower elevation are ba- org to find out more. sically different.

Jessica Dacey is the Communications Supervisor at the The threats to the Mojave Desert’s native plants are Mojave Desert Land Trust. many, from fire and invasive species to mining and climate change. Supporting a local seed bank is being positively proactive about the future. Especially at a time when even the world’s most famous seed bank, 8

The Roots of Revolution

by Jill Giegerich, Permaculture Patriot I am writing this article the day after the murderous rampage in Las Vegas. I am supposed to be writing about planting mesquite trees in the desert. The cognitive dissonance that I’m experiencing between these two first sentences is flat out insane. There is only one way to heal this rift and that’s to explain and remember my reasons for becoming a permaculture designer at the late age of 59. I’ll find my way to the mesquites from there.

spair has been made clear to me. I’ve become an activist in the resistance against Trump’s agenda and I consider my work in permaculture to be one of the most important and revolutionary aspects of my resistance. Yes, I call my reps, organize rallies, and fight for social justice but the real heartbeat of my resistance is this: every day when the heartbreak of another brutal assault on our collective psyches occurs, I go out on my land and do something that increases and protects a vibrant ecology. I build a stick warren for rabbits, a It starts with despair. When I moved to the desert 15 nesting habitat for carpenter bees, a bat house, a rock years ago, I had been in deep despair over the unholy pile for lizards, a swale for harvesting water…. and I mess that we Homo sapiens have made of our world. plant MESQUITES. I had decided that I could not endure despair for one second longer. Instead, I resolved to DO SOME- Mesquites are the ultimate anti-despair, desert surviTHING. I had been an artist in Los Angeles for the vor tree. The ground pods were the main sustenance previous 27 years: showing in galleries, having suc- of the local indigenous people before the Indigenous cess, playing the game. I left it all behind and began Holocaust. Mesquite flour is packed with up to 17% to explore Rudolf Steiner’s theories, biodynamic food protein. The tree is a nitrogen fixer. Bacteria in the root production, the natural patterns of desert ecology nodules convert atmospheric nitrogen into ‘fixed’ niand eventually arid land permaculture. I saw that this trogen, usable by plants. It makes that fixed nitrogen could be the game-changer I’d been seeking; an artful available to plants nearby while also increasing the design method that expanded out in all directions in a soil fertility. The wood has an extremely high BTU. It deeply relational way in order to create truly regenera- creates great forage and habitat for desert fauna. Mestive (not just sustainable) human habitation. In 2009, quite taproots can dive down to 160 feet as they seek I started Transition Joshua Tree with three friends. In underground water. Once established, the mesquite 2011, I completed a two-week permaculture inten- can be taken off irrigation and will sustain itself. sive training certification, and soon after began implementing arid lands permaculture techniques on my Our region was once home to abundant mesquite own land as a demonstration site. groves. That changed during the gold rush when prospectors cut down the mesquites to burn in the smeltMy despair decreased as my commitment grew. ing process. Loss of such important apex trees in our The election of Obama was an added boost. Hope local ecosystem has had profoundly negative effects. dawned. And then…. 45. The true meaning of de- One simple way to help regenerate our ecosystem is 9

Diagrams by Geoff Fennel

to plant native Screw Bean or Honey mesquites. Use tree seedlings that are from this area, germinated from locally gathered seeds and grown in deep tubes so the taproots are long and healthy. My friends and local permaculture designers, Damian Lester and Maya Toccata, cultivate mesquites and other desert trees in this way and have seedlings available for sale. You can contact them at opuntiagardenfarm.com.

trenches that hold water, deep watering tubes to encourage tap root growth and heavy mulching to cut water loss from evaporation. The desert tree irrigation rule is water deeply and infrequently. The illustration provided gives an explanation of how to go about this planting method. It takes work but it’s well worth it when you see the results.

So now, I’ve written myself from despair to regeneration. As the great Civil Rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer once said, “You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap”. I’m not a religious person but the lesson still applies. I can despair until I faint but, today, I plant another mesquite.

Our water comes from over-drafted and ancient aquifers that we need to protect and conserve. Planning for the harvesting of rainfall and storm water run off, when planting, helps with this. We plant mesquites in ‘boomerang swales’ that can channel storm water run off into the planting basin. We can also use sponge 10

Luna Arcana

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Issue 3 - FALL/WINTER 2017

• She • My moon is gone down some one-way street.

She’s crouching there, smiling and growling a little.

‘There is no sky’ She says ‘Why is this light still following me?’ She says ‘How am I still full?’ She says.

A lost dog walks by licks her face ‘She everything’ dog says ‘She fire’ dog says ‘She magic’ dog says.

And off She goes, full of moonshine sliding through glass across frozen deserts queen of all in her corner of silver.

She Fire.

She Magic.

Photo & Poem by Bon Nielsen - Selected Poems Vol. I

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THE MOJAVE PROJECT K I M

S T R I N G F E L L O W

When fully mature, desert tortoises weigh 7 to 15 pounds and are 7 to 15 inches in length. Although it is difficult for an untrained eye to tell the gender of a particular tortoise, males are typically larger, their tail slightly longer, and their plastrons are concave in shape compared to that of females.

Coloration ranges from greenish-tan to dark brown, and their high-dome shells are covered with a pattern of seemingly impenetrably nested plates or ‘scutes’ that seem to suggest infinity in their repetitive design. This, along with ancient leathery skin and pointy curved beak, suggests their prehistoric origins—going back some 200 to 220 million years in the Late Triassic period. Wild desert tortoises that reach maturity may live between 25 to 50 years of age and even longer. Some captive individuals have been said to reach 100.

Typical individual home ranges cover between 25 to 130 Gopherus Agassizi: A Cultural History of Tortoises acres, although some desert tortoises have been known to (Abridged) travel up to a mile away from their primary living area. Desert tortoises will dig their burrows, formed by the shape of The desert tortoise has been under siege by humans long their body, in a variety of stable, penetrable but undisturbed before the Mojave Desert’s militarized and suburbanized soils located in sandy washes to rocky foothills, using their landscape began to take shape here. It is known that several powerful forelimbs and toenails to excavate. Known for ancestral tribes in the Southwest consumed them, that they thriving within extreme environments—including those used their various parts—the carapace or upper shell, the with recorded ground temperatures from below zero to plastron or lower shell - for bowls, scrapers and other house- 130° Fahrenheit—desert tortoises understandably spend up hold affects. All of the Mojave tribal groups transformed to 98 percent of their lives underground. Their robust burtortoise shells into rattles and drums for ceremonial use. rows may in turn support a communal community of up Other tribes, such as the Chemehuevi, kept them as pets to 30 species, including snakes, lizards, insects, birds, rats, while at the same time venerating tortoises as a mytholog- mice, rabbits and foxes and, of course, other fellow tortoisical symbol of ‘patience, stamina for survival, and courage es—up to 20 or more in some areas. Tortoises additionally in hopeless situations.’ In many world cultures, including rely on a number of temporary shallow holdouts and desseveral indigenous tribes of North America, the universe is ert ground cover such as creosote bushes to escape the heat depicted on the back of a turtle or ‘cosmic’ tortoise. Even of the sun and to hide from numerous predators. Tortoises while sacrificed for sustenance, utilitarian or ritualistic pur- know their home turf intimately, having memorized variposes, none of these indigenous uses come anywhere close ous landmarks, food and water sources and other tortoise to modern anthropogenic attacks on this environmentally burrows, especially those of the opposite sex and often will vulnerable indicator species. attempt to travel back to their home territory—no matter how far away it lies if translocated or moved.

Found slightly above sea level to an elevation of ~4200 feet in several vegetation types of the Mojave, Colorado and Desert tortoises are most active from March through SepSonoran deserts, desert tortoises of the American South- tember, spending spring and early summer months foragwest are now determined to be of two distinct species with ing on an herbaceous diet of native annual grasses, seasonal Gopherus agassizii residing north and west of the Colorado wildflowers, forbs, various succulents and cacti flowers spotRiver, whereas Gopherus morafkai is located east and south ted through their perfect color eyesight. From late fall into of it. As a flagship species, the current status of their popu- winter they retreat and brumate deep within their winter lations tells us a lot about the health of the arid ecosystems. dens. To survive through the hotter summer months with During the 1970s, hundreds of desert tortoises could be no supplemental water other than what is provided from found within a square mile in some Mojave and Colora- vegetation or sporadic summer rains, the desert tortoise do Desert habitats—today one may find only a few dozen has remarkably evolved to concentrate and store urine for individuals in the same areas. Understandably, the desert months on end in a large bladder. Additionally, it copes tortoise has been listed as a federally threatened species since with the oppressive heat by entering into a state of aestivation or dormancy after the moisture-laden springtime 1990.

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Since 1939, it has been illegal to purchase or sell Gopherus agassizii in California. In the years leading up to the law being enacted, scores of desert tortoises were collected throughout the Mojave Desert and shipped live to restaurants for human consumption or to the pet trade. Highway travelers could purchase tortoises as souvenirs from roadside attractions and gas stations. With the awareness that wild desert tortoises were becoming increasingly scarce, the earlier law was expanded in 1961 to protect them from ‘needlessly harming, taking, or shooting any projectile.’

bloom has long dried up. Sensing an impending thunderstorm, a dormant tortoise will awaken and emerge from its den and commence to dig or revisit a shallow rain catchment where it can simultaneously drink up water and eliminate its stockpiled viscous and concentrated urine in an act that strikes me as rather liberating. This necessary procedure allows the tortoise to flush toxins from the blood and eliminate concentrated salts and nitrogenous wastes from the bladder, while gaining up to 40 percent of fresh water through drinking. Because their overall survival is directly tied to their propensity to store urine during the dry summer months, a startled tortoise may void its bladder as a defensive mechanism, succumb to dehydration and die, so it is advised not to pick them up and move them if encountered in the wild.

Indeed, by the 1980s many areas of the Mojave Desert showed a 90 percent decline in overall wild populations.

Hardest hit is the Western Mojave where human development and its associated activities of urbanization, mining, agriculture, livestock grazing, tract home subdivisions, military land use, industrial solar/wind installations and recreational spillover from greater Los Angeles are rampant. Today, Gopherus agassizii is considered to be completely absent from the Victorville, Palmdale and Lancaster areas, other than those that are pets living captive in somebody’s backyard. Notably some of the most prized habitat for desert tortoises lies in military controlled areas of the Mojave Desert, lands within Edwards Air Force Base, the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center and the army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin where extensive ground maneuvers have most likely obliterated much of the shrub cover. One study found that “of sixty-two tortoises on survey transects at Fort Irwin in 1989, forty-four were dead, and half the carcasses were found in tank tracks.”

Today, all of these military installations currently sponsor onsite desert tortoise conservation programs, due to their federally protected listing.

Sexual encounters of desert tortoises begin as early as 12 years of age, although on average females begin laying eggs between 15 and 20 years. Males will mate with females when encountered during spring and autumn. Males compete with other males through a variety of aggressive behaviors, including head bobbing, biting or striking at a competing suitor’s up-curved gular horn, which is an extension of its plastron. Courting males will similarly try to impress or simply bully a female by continually circling her and blocking her path, snapping at and biting her before attempting to mount her. Regardless of his aggressive advances, it has been observed that some female desert tortoises do exhibit choice during selection of a mate and it seems size does matter. Interestingly, the male desert tortoise’s testosterone level during mating season is higher than any vertebrate species, including humans. During coupling, tortoises have been observed vocalizing through extended grunts and ‘moaning,’ and the slapping movements of shell upon shell have The person perhaps most credited with gaining protection been described as sounding like a beating drum. of Gopherus agassizii under the federal Endangered Species Once a female tortoise has mated she may rather conve- Act is Dr. Kristin Berry, a research biologist/ecologist speniently store her donor’s sperm over multiple years, up to 15 cializing in the species, formerly employed by the Bureau in one instance and reproduce up to four years after initially of Land Management (BLM) and currently with the U.S. mating. Females lay up to three clutches of 2 to 14 eggs per Geological Survey (USGS) since 1997. Dr. Berry has been year depending on the physical size and age of the female. studying and championing desert tortoises since the beginNesting occurs in a shallow excavated dirt depression that ning of her career in 1971. Two years later, Berry along with may or may not be guarded by the female. Once hatched, a group of concerned scientists helped designate public land she ceases to defend the nest. Drought and seasonal food in the northwestern Mojave for the Desert Tortoise Natural availability greatly affects egg production and viability. Tem- Area in 1973. perature seems to affect hatchling gender. The hatchlings normally emerge after about 90 to 120 days, two inches in Now in her early 70s, Kristin continues to do a fair amount length with an intact yolk plug that supplies nourishment of field research, but spends the vast majority of her time throughout the coming months. Although they are born analyzing data and writing reports and manuscripts for mobile from the start, these extremely assailable hatchlings publication in the air-conditioned field office of USGS in are susceptible to predation as their shells take about five Riverside or as an honored speaker for various outreach years to harden, making them a fairly easy target and quick events. Over 30 years ago Dr. Berry began a long-term meal—a very low number will be lucky enough to reach study of tortoise populations by establishing over a dozen that age if at all. Those who do reach maturity continue study plots throughout the Mojave and Colorado deserts of to be prey to an array of seemingly ‘natural’ predators like California. About half of the plots had a sufficient number ravens, eagles, coyotes, dogs, kit foxes, badgers, bobcats, gila of tortoises in the 1970s and early 1980s to use for longmonsters, roadrunners and other threats. However, mortali- term monitoring. These study areas have been invaluable in ty due to direct or indirect human-related activities remains determining how tortoise populations, habitats and human uses have changed over time. at the top of the list.

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up to one year in jail if caught. Sadly, this hasn’t deterred a few pathetic individuals from using tortoises for target practice. A study published in 1986 by Dr. Berry reported that between 1976 and 1982, 14 percent of 635 carcasses found at 11 long-term monitoring plots were killed intentionally from gunshot wounds. In fact, it was not unusual for a defiant OHV driver to purposely strike and kill them out of spite while riding. Dr. Berry shared in a 2015 interview how, during those early years, one off-roader relished in telling her that “he liked to hear them pop as he ran over them.” In contrast, another confided that after accidentally riding over one and killing he had decided afterwards to never participate in the activity again.

She is the author and co-author of numerous short and long-term research field studies and reports, including a largely ignored 1994 Recovery Plan which many environmentalists contend would have stopped Gopherus agassizii’s current population decline if its recommendations had been followed and implemented 20 years ago. Many in the conservation community consider Berry to be the authority on Gopherus agassizii. She is arguably its most persistent advocate as her efforts have kept the plight of desert tortoises in the public eye for over 40 years now.

More often than not, tortoises are unintentionally run over or crushed after seeking shade under a parked car when the driver forgets to look under it before driving off. Even if a desert tortoise is not harmed directly, the devastation that off-roading activities reap on tortoise habitat is proven to be overwhelmingly destructive—burrows cave in trapping them inside, native plants food sources are crushed and shrub cover providing shade and protection is destroyed.

Regardless, if one empathizes with the plight of the desert tortoise or not, most can agree that degradation, destruction and fragmentation of habitat resulting from development, agriculture practices, wildfire and off-roading activities directly impact desert tortoises. These, along with the desert tortoise’s slow rate of reproduction have contributed to Gopherus agassizii’s rapid decline over the last 40 years. Indirect threats include well-intended releases of captive pet tortoises into wild areas, which appear to have been responsible for introducing various catastrophic infectious ailments, including an upper respiratory tract disease (URTD), to wild tortoise populations. Livestock, where present, trample and denude habitat while inadvertently introducing invasive plants, thereby overwhelming native vegetation. These non-native species do not provide the nutritional value of the indigenous plants they have replaced.

Raised in the Western Mojave Desert as the daughter of a physicist/mathematics expert employed at the Navy base at China Lake she developed a love for the desert at an early age, especially the reptiles of the region. After completing her master’s degree at UCLA and a Ph. D. from UC Berkeley she began her long career in conservation biology.

Her contributions to the California Desert Plan completed in 1980 helped lay the groundwork for an emergency California state listing of Gopherus agassizii as threatened in 1989 and its consequent federal listing in 1990—a contested move that temporarily shut down a glut of proposed suburban housing projects along the fringes of Las Vegas as well as the infamous 150-mile open desert Barstow-to-Vegas motorcycle race that same year.

Dr. Berry’s career has not been without controversy: David Darlington’s 1996 book The Mojave asserted during her tenure with the BLM she tightly controlled data pertaining to Gopherus agassizii to protect the desert tortoise. Reading through several pages of unflattering comments from unidentified former colleagues I was struck by the fact that many, if not all, of these disgruntled voices were male, and I’m guessing not particularly happy that a highly focused and forceful woman was in charge. Perhaps Berry was simply granted study and monitoring funds that her detractors thought they should receive? Indeed, it was largely unheard of for the BLM to hire female wildlife biologists in this male-dominated agency during the 1970s and Kristin was its first. The BLM’s often conflicted multi-use agenda of satisfying all desert stakeholders at once further complicates many desert conservation issues.

Other threats include those human ‘subsidized’ such as the common raven (Corvus corax)—considered by many to be highly invasive due to their alarming growth rate—up to 1000 percent within the Mojave Desert since the 1970s.

Ravens thrive here because they make use of our water features, landfills, illegal dumps, trash, pet food left outdoors, and even road kill for reliable sources of sustenance.

As we spread further across the desert, so do the raven’s numbers. During the 1980s, Dr. Berry and her colleagues documented how ravens may methodically prey on young tortoises and contribute to high juvenile tortoise mortality rates. In one study alone, one single mated pair was found over a four year period to have fed on ~250 juvenile tortoises whose pecked out shells were discovered at the base of the ravens’ nest and roost—a Joshua tree. Raven perches typically are fence or utility poles common throughout the desert. Current and recent government policy on raven It is unlawful to touch, harm, harass or collect a wild des- predation of tortoises was developed as the result of a legal ert tortoise, and doing so will cost you up to $50,000 and settlement with the Human Society of the U.S. more than 15

20 years ago. Evidence that a particular raven has recently killed more than one juvenile tortoise is necessary before the raven can be removed from the location.

As Las Vegas and other desert cities spread their suburban tentacles out into the undisturbed desert so disappears valued tortoise habitat. Gopherus agassizii’s threatened status has ensured that any entity wishing to legally remove desert tortoises within an area slated for development must, in exchange, finance a costly mitigation effort to offset their displacement and loss of habitat. For example, developers wishing to build in Clark County, Nevada must pay ‘disturbance fee’ of $550 per acre (up to 145,000 acres) for private land and $836 per acre for public land development. The collected fees are used to offset costs of slated and active conservation projects. Other developers opt for translocation under professional supervision to ‘complimentary’ sites purchased by them for this purpose.

from within pristine, undeveloped lands, at least until longterm scientific studies indicate that a substantial portion of translocated tortoises can survive and become established in their new homes. She and other scientists were Independent Science Advisors for California’s Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan in 2010. The Independent Science Advisors recommended that energy site development occur on previously disturbed lands, thereby avoiding new losses of desert lands. Unfortunately, that recommendation has not been followed. Justly, the concerned public backlash against the repeated proposals to site massive “green” solar energy projects in remote, undisturbed areas of the Mojave Desert has gained momentum, especially with the public’s awareness of numerous environmental impacts caused by these types of large-scale projects. It seems that a few of the corporations bankrolling these installations are looking for alternatives.

Ever-expanding military bases, mining operations, and more recent massive renewable solar and wind projects sited in remote desert locations including BrightSource’s Ivanpah Valley facility—considered by biologists to be prized desert tortoise habitat—have opted to relocate large numbers of desert tortoises at a huge cost. Many earlier attempts to translocate wild desert tortoises, including a poorly designed effort at Fort Irwin in 2008, resulted in deaths of hundreds of translocated tortoises. Although techniques for translocating wild tortoises may have improved, those managing to survive live with the possibility that they may be moved again and again if the mitigation site is not properly Ideally, intact habitat solely dedicated to the desert tortoise protected well into the future. and the ecological web it is part of is the best management In another twist of fate, the former 220-acre Desert Tortoise strategy for Gopherus agassizii. An example of one such Conservation Center located in south Las Vegas shuttered sanctuary is the 25,000-acre Desert Tortoise Research Natits doors in 2014 because of dwindling local and federal ural Area (DTNA) located within the western Mojave near funding. In operation for 23 years, this ‘tortoise gulag’ was California City and managed by the BLM—the area estabopened and funded through mitigation developer monies lished between 1973 and 1980 with the help of Dr. Berry with the intention to house displaced wild desert tortoises, and her colleagues. This ‘Area of Critical Environmental but became overcrowded with surrendered pet tortoises ear- Concern’ had one of the highest densities of Gopherus agasly on, which do remarkably well in captivity but are often sizii per square mile with up 200 to 300 individual tortoises carriers of infectious diseases, making them unfit to release in some areas of the DTNA, until URTD spread across the into the wild. Taking in nearly 1,000 animals annually, the western Mojave Desert, taking many adults. Ravens have facility’s operational funding dropped to a trickle after the been responsible for inhibiting recovery by killing juveniles. housing bubble burst in 2008. To complicate matters, many However, although this site suffered catastrophic losses, a of the interned tortoises had developed the chronic and po- recent survey showed that tortoise densities are several-fold tentially fatal URTD, and thousands were consequently higher here than on adjacent federal land, designated as criteuthanized according to protocol. In later years it was deter- ical habitat for the tortoise. The fence around the DTNA mined that tortoises could recover from and still carry the has protected both tortoises and habitat from sheep grazing disease, so the mass killings ended. By the time the facility and off-highway vehicle recreation since 1980. The site is a closed its doors, it was estimated that more than 10,000 2-hour drive from Los Angeles or Bakersfield. When plantortoises had been released into the wild at various federal ning a visit keep in mind that you are more likely to see land holdings, namely Nevada National Security Site and active tortoises early in the day during the spring months. the Large Scale Translocation Site near Jean, Nevada. It is not known how many of the released tortoises have or will The Mojave Project is an experimental transmedia documentary and curatorial project led by artist and educator Kim Stringfelsurvive this recent translocated fate. low. It explores the physical, geological and cultural landscape of Dr. Berry and many other desert tortoise experts are under- the complex and surprising Mojave Desert. Peruse the project at: standably skeptical on whether tortoises should be uprooted mojaveproject.org.

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One night, a kind and gracious Lakota woman shared the rituals and beliefs about being on your moon. It was explained to me that we are more able to give and Words & collage by Carly Valentine receive energy during our cycles, whether intentionIn decolonization training, before arriving at camp, ally or not. It is because of this belief that I was to we were advised that if we were on our moon we were refrain from attending the sacred fire, so that I didn’t to avoid the kitchen and the sacred fire. I was con- absorb the prayers being offered in that space. “You fused, but accepted this information as something to are a sacred being,” she said. Receiving that informaabide by, since I knew I’d be bleeding while at Stand- tion was transformational. I felt something ancient within me rise. I felt the women from whom I had ing Rock. descended breathe deeply and I exhaled for them.

Some days later, after arriving in Oceti Sakowin camp, we were feeling anxious but were mainly focused on So, when the day came, I did what I was told. I stayed being of use, and carrying out our tasks in a help- away from the fire and the kitchen. I focused on takful and respectful way. The first couple of days were ing care of myself so I could continue to do the work spent attending direct action training and learning that was required of me. The loving men in my family about camp etiquette. The most prominent things I of friends watched over me too, bringing me food and remember from training: stay together, look out for making sure I was warm. I found solace in the herbeach other, remain peaceful (no matter what) and alist tent and comfort in the red raspberry tea and ginger they provided to ease the most intense phase of stand your ground. pain. I let myself feel it without judgment… for the With all classes and lectures completed, we went to first time since my first period. find out where we would be most useful. There were plenty of jobs to be done. Sometimes we would do I use to medicate the slightest symptoms, but now various tasks throughout the day and sometimes we I just allow myself to truly move through it all; to would focus on one huge project for a couple of days feel grounded in my body and show reverence for my straight. My time was spent sorting through clothing womanhood; to feel powerful in being female. In this donations, joining actions on the front line (if they ‘modern’ culture of ours, women have to prove their were approved by the elders), assisting in building a power, to prove themselves worthy of equality and restructure, assisting in insulating the tea yurt, salvaging spect, of the freedom to make choices for themselves and repurposing dumpster finds, picking up supplies, and their bodies. We fight to be free of objectificaand once the snow arrived, guiding water protectors tion. We feel that struggle and so we constantly push ourselves. Even when we have our periods, we push to warmer/drier attire in the clothing tent. ourselves to overcome it, and in this way it becomes The snow. It came in quick and stayed. I don’t re- a burden. How wrong that feels now. It is a time in member a whole lot of complaining about the cold our lives when our bodies respond to nature, when though. First thing in the morning, when you have we are aware of our power and we feel our lineage: the to remove yourself from under the blankets and put women who bled and bore us. We should thank our on your frozen boots, sure… but throughout the day, bodies, not curse them for simply doing what comes everyone was too focused on the tasks at hand. There naturally. I am eternally grateful that this perspective was a strong sense of community and everyone did was shared with me. I’m also in awe of how revered their part. We looked out for each other. We took care indigenous women are in their communities and how of each other, and this became abundantly clear when connected they are with the Earth, how willing they are to defend Her. I started my cycle.

On My Moon at Standing Rock

For this and far more than this, the indigenous people of this colonized continent deserve the respect that they’ve never been shown. They deserve better than broken treaties and poisoned water sources. They deserve more honor than the oppressive and myopic sense of privilege, ancestral turmoil and social conditioning that exists in this country. Analysis, awareness and reflection are necessary so that we can stop acting like we know best. Heal your ancestral pain. Recognize the cycle and let it bleed.

Luckily, we were set up near the women’s camp. My family of friends was running the Teahouse Project, which was there to support the women’s camp. It provided healing space, calming refuge, and a warm venue for the indigenous women of camp to host private meetings. When it was open to the public, it was the only place where we could gather at the end of the day. We would take our boots off and decompress, play music, share stories, focus our intentions and send love to our ancestors.

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Photo by Martín Mancha

THE DARK LOVE GETS US HIGH: Exploring Grant Earl LaValley’s From LaValley Below in Six Short Pieces

by Benjamin Goulet

“You’re only dreaming,” he said.

Lavalley: Up until I moved [to the high desert], I was more focused on being a visual artist, but I switched gears. I lived on a mountainside in Covelo, California and wrote the first two songs on the record there.

“I want you to hold me down,” she replied.

He pulls off the road. Columbus, Ohio / Joshua Tree, California. How did he get here?

BG: What inspires you?

The hardwood floor, with its combination of maple and redwood, smells of acrid stain.

LaValley: Musically, George Jones and all the country guys. Anyone who’s living here and working on a craft. The grotesque. The beauty. The scuzz you leave She collapses into the grass. He never loved her more behind. than in this moment.

BG: Could you describe your writing process?

Help me. They’re gone with the dogs. The hellhounds – they follow. This is what I’ve become.

LaValley: I [approach writing] like a collage. I lay a basic track down (usually on an old 1950s hollow Date: September 24, 2017 body acoustic), and then add as much as my imagSubject: Songwriter Grant Earl LaValley ination can allow over it. I have a notebook that I Location: Sky Village Swap Meet Café, Yucca Valley, rant in too. I’ll tape record myself to get out some CA melodies. Fine tuning all that until it’s something I’m happy with.

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BG: How did you end up living in the high desert?

LaValley: I went on a long road trip. I was looking for a home base. The desert was a home I could afford and affords me the ability to be free, to tour, to live my life in a free way. I bought a shack in north Joshua Tree, off the grid. I owe the desert that. It doesn’t hurt that it’s beautiful here.

The lights twinkle below. Here we are, in the west, and I’m your greatest defender.

Review: Grant Earl LaValley. From LaValley Below (Exit Stencil Recordings, 2017) The narrator of Grant Earl LaValley’s dark and brilliant record From LaValley Below is a bit of lost soul, wandering through an atmospheric landscape of acoustic guitars, droning keyboards, harmonicas and spooky harmonies. Recorded in a variety of locations, including Joshua Tree, Los Angeles and LaValley’s hometown of Columbus, Ohio, From LaValley Below hooks you in with a strangeness that weaves through the record.

Its subtleties demand repeated spins. Listening with headphones, one hears a variety of touches easily missed from inattention: the fire crackles, bells ring and howls moan just below the surface. LaValley’s voice, raspy and low with just a trace of a country twang, tells stories that hint of something menacing afoot, but his writing avoids being too obvious, allowing the listener their own interpretation.

Stylistically, From LaValley Below borrows from the freak-folk playbook, but unlike many of that genre’s trappings (weirdness for the sake of being weird, overly precious imagery), the record is unpretentious and honest, creating a sound that could be described as ‘Americana baroque’, a rootsy mix of acoustic guitar fingerpicking, occasional string sections and heavy, complex arrangements. In addition to the eight original songs, LaValley covers a faithful version of Neil Young’s classic tune Don’t Let it Bring You Down.

Let the strobe lights blind us in the garden. Our love is dark, demonic. Candles burn forever – then quickly vanish in the wind. Burn the roses and read out the ring of smoke. Don’t speak the word.

Hear Grant’s music here: www.grantearllavalley.bandcamp.com www.exitstencil.org/store

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R E T E OWN N O I P MOTEL

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Desert Arcana

by Chris Clarke

Photo by Rohini Walker 25

Across the road, a dead cholla limb rolls in a slight wind-pushed turn, relaxes back again. Another turn, another release. There are stories in that dead weftwork branch longer than any tale told by human tongue. Longer than all such tales combined. Same with the piece of granite upon which it rests. Same with the wind and sun. This desert built by an eternity of floods. This desert shaped by barely perceptible rains. These mountains rising up and wearing down.

This gravel, the mountains’ sloughed off skin. Billions of words to describe each grain of sand, each curl of wizened leaf.

Three ways to tell if someone is new to the desert?

One: they carry water bottles that hold less than two pints. Two: they speak three or four times louder than necessary, even when whispering. Three: you ask them what they think of the desert, and they craft a sentence in reply that contains the word ‘magical’.

Of the first error I cannot add much of use to the cautionary volumes already written, other than to observe that, in the main, the error contains the seeds of its own correction. Either the visitor learns from her thirst, or she does not. The second error takes longer to unlearn. The desert instills a thirst for quiet as relentlessly as it dehydrates, but that thirst for quiet takes a while to notice, and an even longer while to understand.

The way the range of the Mohave ground squirrel adjoins the range of the round-tailed ground squirrel?

An epic spanning thousands of generations, against which the tales of Odin and Gilgamesh are flash fiction. That pale stripe in the darker mountain over Error number three is the hardest one to shake. That’s there? A hundred-million-year saga of Paradises Lost, in part because the desert does indeed wear a veneer then regained, then lost again. The broad valley south of magic. Do not be deceived. This is that form of of me is breaking news: the leading edge of a rift in a magic that relies on sleight of hand. The desert will continent tearing itself slowly in two. The unpreposdazzle you with sights sublime and improbable, os- sessing shrub near my backdoor is a millennium old, tentatiously pulling the ace of spades from behind but a newcomer nonetheless: one locust in a vegetayour ear as it lifts your wallet. tive swarm that’s swamped the desert over the last ten thousand years.

Exposure to desert magic has been linked to financial reversal, vehicle repossession, marital discord, loss of hair and teeth.

These desert stories are told all around us all the time.

The desert speaks its tales in deep silence, in the slight murmurings of verdins and quail, of one rock hitting another as a handful of cliff gives way. On occasion, the relentless wind keens, and flash floods utter freight train growls. On occasion, coyotes sing arias for the evening’s hunt. The louder sounds are punctuation to underscore the desert’s mostly quiet voice.

While you’re entranced by the shifting of light and shadow, the valley-wide floral carpets, the menacing plants and passive-aggressive fauna, the desert will sneak up and steal a vital organ and sometimes, like a pack rat dropping a shiny object when a better one hovers into view, the desert will leave you something in exchange for the pieces of you it has decided it needs more than you do. A cholla stem where your heart used to be. A snake’s rattle for that wedding ring. In exchange for hope: the cone of a piñon pine, opened almost all the way, one nut still clinging to its appressed scale where its siblings have long been scattered on stony ground. A speck of desert varnish for your fears.

We cannot grasp these stories’ sheer brutal grandeur.

Most of us resort to verbal defenses. We label the desert with that five-letter word – magic – so that we can stop thinking about what’s really there. And just to be certain, we fill the air around us with needless noise to drown out all but the desert’s loudest voices.

Atop a modest desert mountain not long ago, I watched the desert replace each part of me in turn. The Providence Mountains my ribcage. Crescent Peak to their north: the nub of vertebra between my shoulder blades. Ivanpah Valley my encumbered heart. Cima The desert’s magic is beside the point, is what I’m say- Dome my soul. Each range, each plain as familiar to ing. It’s packaging. It’s the cherry flavored sedative the my eyes as my palate is to my desert-stilled tongue. It desert slips you before it starts your species reassign- was a shocking familiarity. I listened in silence as the ment surgery. The subsequent increase in your blood stories took me, a summer storm filling my canyons creosote levels is not magic. Nor is the slow implanta- to their rims. tion of winter constellations in your optic nerves. Or your newfound sensitivity to the slow tectonic waltz of mountain ranges.

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by Penelope Sitter

Illustration by Kara Sajeske 27

I walked this morning through the Mother’s forms, stirred in petroglyphs carved in erupted rock elements fired to liquid, wore to balanced grace, ground to dry sand. Even the water-roared gully cluttered with falling rock held in fall spoke volumes in quiet space lit with unlookable light. In Her rock stillness spells.

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Photos by Carly Valentine

Dusty Sapphire

by Benjamin Goulet

Annachristie Sapphire is a singer-songwriter based in Joshua Tree. Her soulful songs are both rootsy and ethereal, meticulous in their structure and delivery.

Her first single off her current LP Desert Car will be featured on an upcoming Relix Magazine compilation alongside other artists such as Beck, Art Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, and Lukas Nelson.

Where were you born and raised? What brought you out What inspired you to become a musician? west?

My mother homeschooled us eight children. We did I grew up just outside of Philadelphia. I was in a band a Shakespeare play once a year with other home with my two sisters called Sisters3 for eight years and schooled children and fell in love with performing we recorded two albums together. I first came out to then (I saw the magic of sharing with an audience).

California for a tour in 2005.

In my early teenage years, our father took us to an

open mic where I saw a young woman by the name What brought you out to the high desert? of Sharon Little sing and play guitar and she is one of my heroes (and still is pursuing the path of a musician I live in Joshua Tree when I am not touring. I came to herself ).

Indio working at Coachella Music Festival for a pizza vendor called Spicy Pie (I used to travel the coun- The night I saw her perform, I decided I wanted to try with them). I first came to the Mojave Desert in play guitar and write songs. Poetry was a big part in 2007. On my weekdays off working the festival at the my path to being a songwriter. I wanted to express Polo Field, I came up to camp in Joshua Tree National myself and songs were the perfect vehicle. All of a sudPark and I was hooked for life! den I was cruising.

I visited for seven years before I made the move. I came to realize it was time to move when I was looking at the walls of my tiny bedroom in West Philadelphia and they were almost completely covered in photographs of Joshua Tree.

What is your songwriting process?

My songwriting process changes, it’s continuous and mysterious to me. I like to think that living life is homework for songwriting, soaking in experiences that become the meat of a song. So everywhere I go, every interaction is homework for songwriting.

What are some of your influences?

I love NYC, Ireland, Joshua Tree and West Philadelphia (traveling is a big inspiration for me). Some of my literary influences include Walt Whitman, William Butler Yeats and Shakespeare. Musically, I love Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley, The Shins, Joe Strummer, Townes van Zandt (the list goes on and on). Martin Luther King and anyone standing up against racism, sexism, homophobia and standing up for equality. I am deeply inspired by independent artists who keep fighting to keep their art alive!

I mostly enjoy peace, quiet and solitude for writing, hence the desert being the best spot! But there are so many different ways to approach it, and as I get older I like to challenge myself with different approaches, like co-writing, or finding a topic and staying on track. My favorite work are the songs that seem to just appear out of thin air. Those write themselves.

Annachristie’s new single, Cut the Line from her current LP, Desert Car is now available on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Soundcloud, Amazon, Tidal and YouTube Red.

Do you play any instruments?

I play guitar, a little ukulele and a tiny bit of piano Keep up with all her news, including details on and auto harp. her upcoming fundraiser for her new record on www.annachristiemusic.com 30

A Review of L.I. Henley’s Starshine Road

By Greg Gilbert

If being a poet is a calling, it follows that the appreciation of great poetry can be as well. It is in that spirit that L.I. Henley’s Starshine Road calls us to reflect on what it means to live in our ‘hi-desert.’ Lauren Henley was born and raised in Joshua Tree, attended Copper Mountain College, went on to earn graduate degrees in English and Reading, and now commutes down the hill to teach at Crafton Hills College.

reader must look up from the page and savor the ineffable. Dog & His Man broke my heart: “He chatters he cries he dies slow / I pull out my bones & make a bed frame.” This is a book of truth, an offering to be savored by those who know the desert and are drawn to answer Lauren’s call.

Lauren’s other books are These Friends These Rooms, Desert With a Cabin View, and The Finding. Her work represents the emerging voice of a gifted poet who has received far too many accolades to recount here. Happily for us and our growing community of writers, Lauren and her husband, the poet Jonathan Maule, who also teaches at Crafton Hills, have partnered to create the ‘Visiting Writers Series at the Beatnik Lounge,’ which began last September 15 and has been well received by the community. Lauren’s fourth book of poems, Starshine Road, was launched at Space Cowboy on Sunday, October 8 2017, where it is now on sale.

Where poets often write for other poets, particularly other members of the academy, Lauren’s work transcends any such pretentions. Hers is the voice of an artist who knows the desert, the desert of buried junk and discarded lives that resurface with time, of chained dogs that drown in gully washers, of New Years Eves spent chained to a television, of vagrants begging alms to bury a child, of a grandfather who wondered what held up the sky, and of the stories that inhabit a shoe tree outside of Amboy. At times the poetry is as familiar as a starlit night, but there are instances when the 31

Old Man Coyote

So much good arises from happy accident. This happens over and over again.

by Dr. Catherine Svehla

Old Man Coyote walked in the first twilight and howled at the moon, soul mate in fickleness and fidelity.

Long ago there was only water. Coyote was floating on a log when he saw the ducks. “We are the only creatures in an empty world,” he told them. “One of When his tail tells him to make dirt and lie down, he you should dive down and see if there is a solid bot- does so. Home is where his feet touch the earth. tom under all this water.”

If we are alone it is because we have forgotten him and his way.

The red mallard dove first. He was gone a long time. When he Changing Person, Chief of the came up he said, “There is dirt Human People, the one who down there but I didn’t get any.” makes things right.

The small pin feathered duck dove next but he didn’t get any dirt either. Then the grebe volSome mornings I hear coyote yipunteered. “I will bring you some ping and yapping with glee and dirt my brother” he told Coyote. sorrow as he runs on the rocky The grebe was gone a very long hills that surround our cabin. I go time. When he came back to the outside to catch a glimpse of him, surface he had a small bit of dirt lean and hungry, trotting down between his webbed feet. the sandy wash between creosote bushes and burro weed on Coyote spread the mud around his way to the next valley. I hear and made solid ground. He made his yelping far more often than I rocks and stones and hills and actually see him, note his scat. I trees and grass. He scooped out sense his presence, like a ghostly ponds and streams and filled them desert dervish, and find his tracks with fish. He created East, West, in the dirt of the driveway where North, and South and plenty of he danced in the desert darkness room to wander around in. while I slept.

From this came everything else.

Old Man Coyote reminds me that my time in this Where Coyote came from, only the Creator knows. beautiful world is short and encourages me to enjoy all of it. “Life is serious play,” he says, turning to pull a prickly seed from his fur coat, shaggy and rough Measured, marked, and mapped. Weighed, named, in the colors of dirt and gravel. “If you must have divided and divvied up. Explained, assessed. Rough a goal, aim to be a master of opportunity. Learn to edges smoothed. Contradictions reconciled. Dead make some thing out of something else. Show all of butterflies on pins mounted in a box with a velvet your teeth when you smile.” backdrop. Nothing stirs.

He grins and lifts his tail high in the air. “Today the Then Old Man Coyote comes and kicks the empty ground beneath you is solid,” he says, “so why not skull of that static world—Ayiiieee! Finds the flaw, dance?” makes a crack, An opening in the pseudo-certainty, fixed positions, and Truth. Dust gets in. Scent of cre- Dr. Catherine Svehla is passionate about the power of osote and light. myth to teach and transform. A cultural mythologist, storyteller, artist, and activist, she is based in Joshua Tree.

Coyote’s road is a track in dry sand going everywhere To learn more about Dr. Svehla’s work, visit www.mythand nowhere. icmojo.com or listen to the Myth in the Mojave podcast Ayiiieee—Coyote was going there! at www.mythinthemojave.com. Keep the mystery in your Sanity is discovering the patterns and letting them life alive. dissolve, salt in water.

Coyote kachina illustration by Bon Nielsen

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The Elements, Shamanic Ritual and the Aces in the Tarot

PART 2: The Ace of Swords – The Element of Air

by Tonelise Rugaas

For a singularity to expand, space must exist. A passage in The Kybalion, based on Hermes Trismestigus1 introduces 7 hermetic principles2, the first of which is the Principle of Mentalism: “The All is Mind. The Universe is Mental’3.

SPIRIT

This Principle explains that THE ALL, which we know under the terms of The Universe, Cosmos, Life, Matter, Energy, is Spirit, impossible to define, but thought of as a Universal, infinite mind.

AIR

WATER

The Ace of Swords’ contribution is Space for this Mind. Neither passionate nor loving, it is associated with the element of Air, the neutral world of balance, focus, discipline, justice and administration.

EARTH FIRE For Cosmos to work according to plan, it helps to be MINDful. The realm of the Ace of Swords extends from the neck up, allowing for knowledge and The Ace of Pentacles – The Element of Earth thought.

Until now, measurable matter(s), tangible in a three-dimensional world has been pending. The Ace The Sword is a symbol of justice, associated with the of Pentacles, the element Earth, presents quantifiable arms-bearing aristocracy of medieval times. A sword reality. The Ace of Pentacles is a stepping-stone promwas an object of great value, associated with the per- ising a bounce. The card is a high five from the Cosson who bore the sword; a bespoke item adapted to mos. the height, weight and strength of the owner.

The Ace of Wands brought energetic passion. The Ace At a time with no refrigeration, the body of a knight of Cups lets us experience sacred love/ gnosis, nurwho fell in combat would not be returned to his na- turing these energies. The Ace of Swords administers tive land. It was common to return the sword of the and communicates, providing growth-space. The Ace slain instead. of Pentacles presents the resulting reality created in accordance with the ALL/ Spirit.

Myth and legend are full of stories incorporating the sword as the symbol of individuality, justice and ele- Obstacles are challenges to overcome. The Ace of Penvated position in society. A sword is a symbol of deci- tacles has your back. sive power associated with a particular person.

The pentacles of the Tarot are earthy, dense and well The sword is a weapon. It allows one to prune away deserved, although the process is slow. The cardinal superfluous, outdated patterns that limit growth. virtue associated with the card is Temperance.

This cutting process demands chivalry, will and benign ruthlessness. Afterwards, the wielder/bearer is The way to understand the suit of Pentacles is with crowned in glory. One is illuminated. The sword is reference to all elements, as demonstrated by the symenclosed within a crown. bol of the Pentagram where each element occupies a different point of the figure: When the sword points upwards, justice is on our side. Arguments and compromise are futile. The Ace The Pentacle unifies and integrates all the elements. of Swords is associated with the cardinal virtue of Justice.

The 5th point on this star leads towards the heavens.

This point belongs to the 5th element: Spirit. This element holds everything together and creates order in Cosmos. Its alchemical symbol is a circle: the wheel.

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Its most familiar symbol is the lamp. Rubbing it, Spir- Looking at the Magician card: on the four-legged tait appears and grants your Will. ble lie a wand, a cup, a sword and a pentacle. These are the Magician’s elementary weapons. The figure The pentacle is a pictorial symbol of microcosmos, the uses a double-ended wand and points to the heavens world when all the elements hold equal weight. Real- with wand in the left hand (the subconscious mind). ity needs equal parts of all that is elementary. Other- With the right hand (the conscious mind), He points wise passion can burn too hot. One can float around to the centre of the earth, grounding intentions while aimlessly in emotion or maybe the mind is forever touching the above. drifting or the idea is analyzed to death. If so, earthly achievement or solid reality remains but an illusion.

So the card encapsulates six directions: four elements and above and below. creating a hexagram that symAll the Aces of the Minor Arcana share the number 1, bolizes macrocosmos. The six points corresponds to which signifies a new cycle. In the Tarot, the number a planet in the known cosmos for the ancients. The 1 is attributed to the Magician.

Magician stands in the centre, where the astrological symbol of the Sun resides. Macrocosmos is heliocentric. Man is Spirit, and “Every Man and every Woman is a Star”4.

In the Tarot, the four aces represent the four quarters.

The Magician is the participant of the ritual, the spirit that formulates the hexagram.

Conclusion – The Isogaisa Ritual in Context The Isogaisa Ritual (as described in the previous installment in Issue 2) is generic5, and shamanic cultures will recognize most of the aspects of this rite.

Performing this or similar rituals, is an expression of how Cosmos can be experienced and perceived, and how one can acknowledge our place within Cosmos and define self.

The similarity between rituals demonstrates that archetypical symbolism, occult philosophy and esoteric models of Cosmos are universally relevant in a world where everyone is a potential Magician.

The Magician – The Element of Spirit All the 22 trumps of the Tarot, together, expresses Spirit - the ‘glue’ that holds the elements of fire, water, air and earth together, as conductors for conception, creation, growth, life and death.

1. The Kybalion is a tract on Hermetic philosophy originally published in 1912 by a person or persons under the pseudonym of “the Three Initiates”. The book claims to contain the essence of the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus.

2. The 7 Hermetic principles are stated to be: 1. The Principle of Mentalism, 2. The Principle of Correspondence, 3. The Principle of Vibration, 4. The Principle of Polarity, 5. The Principle of Rhythm, 6. The Principle of Cause and Effect, 7. The Principle of Gender.

Placing oneself correctly within this order, merging with the ALL, is equivalent to a transition from microcosmos to macrocosmos. This can be expressed as a transition from ego to self, and the individual experiences SELF as a divine being, connected to Cosmos though the Principle of Mentalism. This is Gnosis.

3. Ibid., pg 4. Liber AL vel Legis, 1.3 5. Shamanism is practiced by (mostly indigenous) people from various parts of the world. Tradition lives on due to people’s personal experience of ritual and practice combined with storytelling. Rituals tend not to be written down. Nor are they given names. I have been able to describe the ritual I refer to in this article because of direct experience and participation in this particular rite, as well as observation of similar practices by several shamanic cultures. I hope I have been able to convey something of its essence.

The card numbered 1, The Magician, shows this individuation. Understanding that one is and what one is, will not only get you chucked out of the Garden of Eden; you will become a creative force who is self-reliant, responsible for your creation and purpose.

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Shadowlands

by Dana Balicki / Art by Adriana Atema

The shadow is the darkest aspect of ourselves. It’s the part of us that is unknown, unseen, often pushed down and resisted; yet, it touches, moves, and influences every aspect of our lives. Our rawest desires, impulses of greed, envy, self-sabotage, fear of change, love of manipulation, selfishness, and everything we deny ourselves all hang in the shadow -- like a Melrose Place of the soul.

wounds getting triggered and pain rising to the top; however, it lies deep within our psyches and tends to show up mostly in unconscious projections and dissociations. Hey Facebook! Yo, Twitter! {sad wave}

We’re in a weird time. Obviously. Made-in-Americabut-not-really times. Super-networked-yet-so-alone times. Everyone-has-a-fair-shake-not-so-much times.

Me-too times. Perhaps-we-gotta-go-all-the-wayTruth is, we’re usually only conscious of shadow in- down-to-get-through times. directly, through emotional charges symptomatic of 35

We’re used to resisting or over-indulging shadow, but to skillfully work with it is to acknowledge, face, explore, work through, withhold judgment, allow the darkest bits to rise, be here, and then subside. Over time, if we’re willing to really look at our most repellent aspects (and stay in the conversation without succumbing to blame or judgment), we can get free from what ‘should be’ and revel in ‘what is’.

most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go...shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.”

If we invoke Inanna’s journey, we can imagine that we go into the dark and come out the other side more powerful than we can see from here. More fully ourselves. More aligned with the truth of who we really Over 5,000 years ago, the goddess Inanna (an ancient are. Personally and collectively.

Sumerian goddess known as the Queen of Heaven, who predates the Greco-Roman canon of mythology Takin’ a page from Inanna’s shadow playbook: and the life of Jesus H. himself ) consciously decided to descend into the Underworld, the domain of her 1. First, no emotions are bad emotions. Our feelings sister (her reflection/Shadow self ) as it was a mystery are our inner GPS! Instead of judging yourself or to her. We know that she traveled through the Untrying to push the feelings away, look at them. Ask derworld, experienced the death of her own psyche, yourself, ‘What’ am I really feeling right now?’ shed her layers of ego, all her queenly adornments, ‘Why am I feeling this?’ and then wait for responsand even her skin! It is through this shedding and es from your inner guidance. Be patient, the ansurrendering to her pain that she dies and is reborn swers will come in their own time. Stay attentive, transformed into her most powerful self. curious, and non-judgmental. Notice when you’re responding to old programming.

At a certain point in time, Inanna and all other representations of the divine feminine were cleansed by the 2. Find healthy ways to move your emotional energy patriarchy. Bro-washed, if you will. Women with any journal, cry, rage, dance, make art, exercise - whatdesires outside of the norm or any connections to the ever you need to do to shed loving light on your ways of the past were malefic witches to be feared, dedark bits. spised and burned. Collectively, our feminine nature was rejected. Ancient and esoteric arts, and cultivated 3. Notice when your shadow shows up. If you hear, connections to the earth were cut off. Forced under‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I’m not lovable’ or ‘I’m ground. all alone’or ‘My needs/feelings aren’t valid,” wave!

That’s them! Observe the negative thought patterns But, the shadow teaches us that whatever you resist, and get curious rather than resistant. Channel Inpersists. Black Lives Matter. Me Too. Love Wins. anna (hell, build a home altar to her, you both deTrans Rights Are Human Rights. serve it).

So here we are today, with a literal representation of 4. Write! Get out your journal and write down the our collective shadow as President, while this country patterns, notice when they arise, what causes them is in the thick of her own shadow work around white to come up, and what the inner dialogue sounds supremacy and systemic sexual predation. Whatever like. Explore the emotions’ questions from the first goes down, must come up. point. Writing it down makes it real.

So let’s take a page from the Inanna playbook. Re- 5. Self-forgiveness. Through all this exploration be member, she wasn’t on a hero’s journey of conquest tender with yourself. This process needs gentle and she wasn’t your average Joe-hero slayer of beasts. guidance. You’ve been carrying a lot around for She was a messy, complex, slutty, adornment-loving, awhile, forgive yourself for feeling like you had to immortal queen. Her journey was undulating, undeand let the burden lift. fined, and about losing everything - not gaining.

Dana Balicki is a Transformation Coach and Healer We cannot just play to win. That’s the old paradigm. based in the real-life shadowlands of the Mojave high We must play to rise. It’s messier and darker, but it’s desert. She supports ever-evolving souls to find clarity and the long-game of liberation and compassion. confidence in their work, life & love. Prior to coaching she was a full-time, radical organizer & activist.

Author and contemporary radical philosopher, Rebecca Solnit writes, “Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the 36

or completely, unintelligibly, jumbled up into gobbledygook but it would still mean what it meant when it was all neat, tidy and presentable. It just had several different faces that it whimsically, secretly liked to play around with.

I would hazard a guess that many children experience such ostensible flights of fancy when faced with the prospect of the rigid, seemingly linear world into which they must be initiated; a world with a beginning, middle and end, in that order. But are they really flights of fancy, or the whispers of the White Rabbit, asking us to remember this other place before we are forever lost to the imperatives of the ‘rational’ world?

Talking to artist Linda Sibio was an awakening of this remembering. Tucked away in the rural wilds of the Mojave high desert, her home is accessible only with a four-wheel drive, much like the internal landscape she inhabits and documents in her art. As I pull into her drive on a cold, moonlit November night, she greets me, energetically waving in a yeti onesie. A vision that pulls my mind, beleaguered after a day of meetings, schedules and deadlines, down an invisible trapdoor into that other world underneath.

Inside her cabin, Linda shows me the glyphs from her book Reflections in a Broken Mirror, which she’s currently scoping out a publisher for. A curious wave of recognition washes over me, more ancient than my childhood musings. Her glyphs coalesce into an autonomous language made up of numbers, letters and tiny glyph-like drawings: “You’ve got 1,2,3,4 and 5 as different meanings. It could be a story about living in Mississippi. It could be any story, there could be anything there.”

The glyphs form a language born on Skid Row, where she had been working since 1985, guiding the mentally disabled and homeless through the shadowy, fractured corridors of their psyches using the torch of her interdisciplinary art. This is where The Insanity Principle was conceived. Having been diagnosed with schizophrenia herself at the age of 18, Linda, a formally trained artist prolific in her body of work, had been mining her own fertile and fragmented inner landscapes to give voice to her experience for a long time. In 1997, after suffering a nervous breakdown following a traumatic attack by one of her Skid Row students, she found herself in the stark wilderness of the Mojave high desert.

Linda Sibio & The Insanity Principle

by Rohini Walker

As a child learning my numbers and letters, a strange spell would take me over. From someplace unknown, the numbers, innocently straightforward in their linearity, assumed fully developed personalities. They would form alliances, have feuds and generally go through the human panoply of emotional and relational vicissitudes. They were anything but linear and straightforward, holding meanings far beyond their apparent oneness, twoness, threeness…

“When I started The Insanity Principle series, I had Letters too seemed to have this ‘other’, secret exis- just lost my cabin in Echo Park, Los Angeles, escaped tence. A word would, more often than not, squeeze being in a board and care facility for my schizophreitself into my awareness with its letters back to front, nia, and had moved to the desert. I adopted four dogs 37

ages that I am still exploring.

“All the techniques I use in my work are outlined in my book Reflections in a Broken Mirror, which I started in 2010. This book is a result of 25 years of research teaching the mentally disabled, both on and off medication.

During this periand had a cat to keep people away from me. I was on od, I solidified my method of working 43 antipsychotic medications. which has always “I was switching between realities, shifting from hal- been interdisciplinlucinations to delusions and hysteria, and was rap- ary. idly running the full gamut of symptoms related to schizophrenia. My new cabin had kerosene heat, no “My art has been my best friend. I don’t like the word running water, and an outhouse. I was panicky and therapy but art has given me a vision and a focus. I don’t teach mentally ill people to stop their thinking called the fire department and paramedics often. process. I teach them to understand it. Because I don’t “When I wasn’t lying in the sand having panic attacks, think that there’s anything wrong with it. It’s interestI was inside the cabin creating my art. It was in this ing, it’s creative. But people are always trying to cure state that I found hidden within me millions of im- mentally ill people. I say, just help them understand ages, which came forth. These images were intense, what’s happening to them, in their brains. And that’s including the use of blood, dismemberment, disas- what I’ve been trying to do, is understand why the sociation, interrupters, and fragments. At this point things that I think are different than the things that I discovered that I could control my ‘symptoms’ if I other people think. I am not trying to cure myself. I think I’m ok. could put them within the context of my art.

“When I have nervous breakdowns, I fall apart and enter a very dark space and I’m dysfunctional, I can’t do anything. The effort it takes to get out of that space is the same as if I cut my body open, put all my organs out, lay them there, clean them, get them all in order and put them back together. That’s the effort it takes.

“I started layering images, using opposites, and juxtaposing macro and micro imagery. My use of space changed. It was a broken, non-linear painting space that I was embracing. My work was echoing Medieval art, coupled with non-traditional perspective points as well as other art made before the Italian Renaissance. This raw art had different meanings, thus needing new approaches.

“In The Insanity Principle, I teach schizophrenic thinking. I must fragment in order to become whole. You must fragment yourself and deal with the fragmentation to see the world from a whole viewpoint.”

“Using stream of consciousness, I discovered my ideas.

They came from simple and complicated sketches that communicated with me, from hallucinations, and dreams. I was in an altered state and my brain was op- In collaboration with High Desert Test Sites, Linda Sibio erating differently. In this state, I truly discovered my is teaching a series of workshops based on The Insanity own vision, my own mythology, and visual vocabulary. Principle, ‘exploring the intersection of Insanity and Creativity for all artists’, every 2nd Saturday through Sept.

“The first painting that came to me was Embryonic 2018 at Copper Mountain Mesa Community Center in Madness. I divided the page into little squares sur- Joshua Tree. For questions and to reserve a spot, please rounding a strange image of a fetus. Around the fetus, email info@highdeserttestsites.com people were being tortured both physically and psychically. After finishing this complicated, epic work, the images in my brain came out in melodies of im38

Blown in from the Arctic Desert Words and photo by Becky Tuulantytär Hastings

We both ran away from the same big grey city on a small green island. Having met at school in our midteens, smarting from pasts involving kids that hadn’t yet learned to be kind, we inevitably became the best of friends. But as the story of growing up usually goes, our dreams made us drift apart a couple of times, the latter being the most dramatic. It threw a whopping amount of physical distance between us. Not to mention the Atlantic Ocean. We went for different extremes, in search of the same thing.

Today, I sit here writing this against an epic and hypnotic view of mountain ranges in the Mojave Desert. Against my better financial judgment, I booked a flight out here to reconnect with my fellow wondering wanderer to see what she had woven out of her dreams. I was called by the gut telephone but was also in desperate need of exposure to that big, bright, self-assured yellow fireball that you can’t hide from in the desert. I wanted to be able to see clearly for miles and miles having just emerged from the forest, where lately it had become difficult to differentiate the wood from the trees. My internal solar cells needed charging more desperately than you could imagine. You see, I

live and work in a land where, for part of the year, the sun don’t shine. At all. It sets at the beginning of December and doesn’t come up above the horizon until a month to six weeks later, depending on how far north you happen to be. It sounds like the apocalypse, but it’s only the polar night.

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The polar night is a distinctive feature of Lapland and other lands within the Arctic Circle. At the latitudes where I have been living, 68 degrees north, we’ll get around two hours of twilight and pastel skies, often lifted by a subtle, otherwordly luminosity. And with the fall of darkness comes a myriad of surprising sources of light. The snow reflects whatever the moon and the stars throw at it, making it far brighter in the far north than the snowless south. And then there’s the most mesmerizing phenomenon of all. The Arctic’s bestselling show, which has me enduring temperatures of up to around 30 below freezing because I can get paid to help travelers navigate the swathes of snow in order to get the best view. Like any worldclass performing artist, this one can be elusive, temperamental and unpredictable. Ladies and gentlemen, may the universe proudly present to you....

Aurora Borealis, aka the Northern Lights. The show can be low key, a glowing haze barely detectable amongst the clouds, or a more flamboyant, dancing, luminous green concertina on the horizon. But if you’re lucky, you will be knocked for six by gargantuan rivers of green, red and purple pulsating over your head that feel like they are about to swoop down and swallow you whole.

I suspect its the spirit of survival in both these lands, present in every crack and crevasse, in every plant, animal, human and microbe, that inspires and fires the heart. The ever present reminder that to be alive requires effort and presence. To choose to make such places home, reveals a wish to be prodded awake and marvel at life daily.

So here we are, both creatures with extreme dreams, living in extreme climates and basking in bleak beauty. Stark opposites but somehow the same. She is the desert rat and I am the arctic monkey. But we both look at the same big dark sky with the same lucky stars that we thank for being able to witness in all their incandescent glory.

The arctic north has infiltrated my being and made me reluctant to travel anywhere else for a while. As they say in Finland, I have found my soul landscape.

But coming here, to my friend’s characterful 1950s dwelling out in the middle of the desert has me all bewitched and confused. The wide open, dusty vistas, with their near naked ridges that regularly bake under temperatures you couldn’t pay me to tolerate, have made an impression. Can I love this AND love my distant land of 70% forest cover, 188,000 lakes and a hibernating sun?

Space, silence and the enchantment of existence. I guess we both found it.

For offbeat tours and experiences in Finland and the Far North, check out www.wildhairdirtyfeet.fi 40

Luna Arcana

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The Well

by Serafina Moon

The color flooded back into her face as she realized that she didn’t need to play this imaginary game anymore.

He picked up the empty watering can and handed it to her but when she took hold of it, it sloshed full of clear, sparkling water. They looked at it in wonder and laughed, threw back their heads and laughed.

He sat under it, leaning back against its twisted, supportive trunk and produced a pipe from his trouser pocket. Packing it with a sweet smelling tobacco, he proceeded to smoke it with a calm and measured concentration, as if observing an ancient rite.

She was still pouring water into the well, in a steady, never-ending stream. Her arms were tired but she continued with her task. For hours the water was poured into the well. He had stopped smoking his pipe and fallen into a deep slumber where he dreamed that he was the dead bird. He gave himself willingly to the moss and the stone, who welcomed him as one of their own. He dreamed that he traveled down the well, passed down gently by invisible hands until he was in the water that was being poured into it. He splashed around with delight.

Thank you, she whispered. Together, they walked towards the stone well. It hadn’t been used for a long time but you could still hear echoes of the water it had once held. She sat on its moss-covered edge. A soft gasp escaped her and he looked to where she pointed.

Peacefully resting on the mossy stone lay a dead bird.

She had electric-blue markings on her wings, which gleamed against her jet-black feathers. The girl picked her up examining her closely, observing the life that still pulsed through her lifeless form. Putting the dead bird back on the edge of the well, she imagined the green moss slowly growing around and over the crea- When he awoke, he felt as if he had been asleep for ture until she became the moss and the stone. days. She was standing by the well. The watering can, now empty, dangled from her hand. She turned to He gestured to the watering can as she emerged from him and smiled. Dropping the can, she leaned over her reverie. Slowly, she started pouring the water into the edge of the well, scooped water into her cupped the well, whistling as she did so. He wandered off to hands and drank thirstily. It was sweet and fresh. And the nearby juniper tree. It was an old soul and had when she looked to where the bird had been, she was witnessed much. gone.

Opposite page painting by Morgan Phoenix Jago, ‘Phoenix Reborn’, acrylic on third life wood.

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Luna Arcana

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Issue 3 - FALL/WINTER 2017

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Luna Arcana

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‘Until you make your unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.’

- C.G. Jung