95. Dandelions – Azita Ardakani
Maybe it was my desperation, maybe it was mother nature's spirit herself, but I felt their wisdom, as certain and rooted as an elder.
By the time I was sixteen, I had moved over fifteen times. It was such a blur that I just lost count. Some of the moves were dramatic, like from war-torn Iran to Canada. Others were more easeful, just three blocks away. Every time I moved, I had to rearrange my inner furniture to make sense of my new surroundings. I put grief further in the back corner, then eventually moved it up to the attic. I plastered the walls with a thin facade of courage and hope for everyone to see.
But one day, stepping off the bus, I realized it was the wrong stop. I had forgotten where I lived; I didn’t know how to make my way home. Immediately I fell to the hot sidewalk and began to weep. I was placeless, entirely unoriented, wondering if the concrete could hold my weight, or if I’d descend into some abyss.
Right then, my eye caught a dandelion cluster. Impossibly yellow petals contrasting their proclamation of life against the sky’s blue. The promise of transformation right next to it—another dandelion, this one a feathery white orb of seeds. They, too, were barely hanging on. They, too, were a whisper away from a journey into the total unknown.
Maybe it was my desperation, maybe it was mother nature's spirit herself, but I felt their wisdom, as certain and rooted as an elder. Against all odds, they'd found a place to grow. Their stems upright, their seeds designed for easeful dispersal, a kind of trust in the movement of life. As if hearing the question I didn’t even know I was asking, a gust of wind arrived, and with it the tiny radiating discs with their impossibly thin threads parachuted away, swaying, dancing, out of sight. I stood upright, like the stem below, I lifted my head, and I was home.
Years later, I was looking at my handful of childhood photos, I noticed one from when I was a baby and one from when I was about six. In both, I clutched a single dandelion. It turned out they were drifting with me all along.
– Azita Ardakani
Prompt:
Write about a time when you had a pressing question and nature provided the answer.
Flynn
Location: Stuart, Florida
About: Nature calls, nature answers...
Age: 58
😳 UH OH! 😳
*Walking like a penguin*
"CAN I MAKE IT?"
"AM I GOING TO MAKE IT?"
Nature answered the question.
Jan VanStavern
Location: Portland, Oregon
About: In a poem about two messy, unpredictable natural beauties , written in Spring and revised in summer, this response shows how life has been edited by our response to the Pandemic, and how nature, again, has the last word.
Age: 55
The Garden, the Dogs. and the Jasmine:
A Local Pandemic in late May (revised in mid-July)
I woke up calm in spring because some mornings in quarantine were stiller:Now summer, life feels like camping without supplies: New puppy, growing troubles. Still cool air.They are firing on protesters at the Court House, and my father is dead.
Back then, I was in a pleasant prison, stunned, and didn’t know where to look, Wondering about schools, kids, health care, rent, workers, death, masks--why do I think I know the end of the story now?
Every day, now and then: a dog fed, tea brewed, a call to my 90-year-old mother.Now: two dogs, one wiggling and young, and my dear Mother, haunted and trying--quarantine in Ohio, and my garden filled with poop bags, and flowers and Kong.
Spring rain brought a cool summer, and our BLACK LIVES MATTER sign was planted on the lawn.If the news doesn’t shock me, I’m holding it in (no biting!), calm exhausted with signs and a cell phone: a call to my mother’s doctor about her fears. (“I brushed my hair for our teleconference!”)
I’ve worked online now five months. It extends forever, with angry faces debating maskless on TV--My hair long and wild with the news, and the racing puppy, hoping for a stuffed toy to maulis abruptly snoring: I put him in his crate.
Days then felt wide enough for metaphors, now are constantly busy, with messy partialsuccess. I watch the jasmine startle its way up towards the gray Oregon day light—See puppy’s drunken waddle, as he hop-walks outside, and my weary neighbor smiles.
Then, it seemed closer to the end, and I thought it was hard, and it was easy.Some people who are dead now were living. I didn’t know how close it all was.Now, whining puppy/phone call from Mom’s doctor/masks hanging by the front door.
My mother hears voices. I talk to my dead father while I feed the dogs,eating a breakfast of berries with broken cookies, and grade papers in my pajamas.Sometimes stepping (careful of the puppy) to the garden, looking for peace. Sit by the jasmine (“Poison to dogs!” –now hidden behind a wall of knocked-down lawn chairs) I watch climb the trellis, messy and elegant, with an impossible, dangerous perfume.
Jocelyn Ball-Edson
Location: Kansas City, MO
About: I'm a landscape architect, retired from city government, formerly too busy leading tours and giving lectures about historic monuments and fountains, and with other groups & activities. The Shutdown simplified my life and allowed me the time to focus on my garden as much as I've always wanted to. The journal prompts inspired me to write again, which I used to do as well.
Age: 62
It’s funny, but when I first read this prompt I couldn’t think of any specific time that fit the prompt. Then I realized, it’s now. I mean, it’s always been true – I have always turned to nature for answers and inspira- tion. But now, maybe more than ever, nature has been my answer.
What will I do instead of all the board meetings, lectures, tours, classes, events and other activities that were crowding my ‘retirement’ schedule before the pandemic shut everything down? Garden. I will gar- den.
What will we eat if the farming and food transportation infrastructure collapses, or we can’t go to the store anyway? I will garden. I will grow food for us, as well as flowers for my soul and for the pollinators.
Where and how will I spend my time if I can’t go anywhere? In the garden. There’s never a shortage of things to do in a garden, even if the only thing to do is sit and observe.
How will I contribute anything positive to the world if I can’t go anywhere or work or volunteer? I will gar- den. I will grow extra vegetables and give at least small amounts of food to anyone I can, to create some- thing from nothing and lift someone’s spirits and show my support thru a spare cucumber or a zucchini. And I will send joy via emailed photographs of a flower.
How will I find solace and support for me? How will I find beauty and hope and joy, in the current world of so much sadness and fear? I will garden. I will surround myself with colors and life and growth, insects and animals and birds. I will revel in the bees busy in the flowers, watch the young hawk perching on my fence learning what to hunt for, and I will be awed by the fireflies glittering in the dusk. I will be enchanted by the deer snorting at me and stomping the ground, trying to convince me that it is HER garden, not mine. (She gets the whole forest and all the pears that fall from my tree, but I get the vegetables inside my fence.)
I will marvel at the transparency of a dragonfly’s wings. I will be mesmerized by the family of humming- birds that are obsessed with the sugar water I hang for them. I will embrace the work, the sweat and ex- haustion, and the peace. Especially, I think, I will draw strength from the meditation on ‘what’s next’ and planning for the future, the classic concept that planting a seed is an investment in hope.
It’s always about nature. The answers are always there.
Linda Gerber Schreiner
Location: Minneapolis, MN
About: I am a recently retired clinical social worker, not a “writer”, and would have never envisioned posting a journal entry online for a world of strangers to read! But what an incredible experience this have proven to be. My inspiration for this journal entry is the death of my mother and my journey to find her a resting place in nature.
Age: 64
Four years ago my mom died. About 30 years prior, shortly after my dad died, she called and told me that she needed a change, and in a giant leap of faith, loaded up her car and moved from Washington and everything she knew to Minnesota to be close to me, my husband and her one year old grandson. My husband’s large family quickly adopted her and she and my mother- in-law were forever more “The Grandmas”. When she died and we had a gathering at our home, my nephew, now an adult, was looking at the photo collage and reminisced that it wasn’t until he was at least ten that he discovered he was not actually biologically related to my mom.
Some years before she died, my mom developed symptoms of dementia and gradually I assumed responsibility for her affairs and seeing that her needs were met. If any of you have been in this position, you know it can be a huge stress. My husband was a rock, but essentially everything fell to me. I had zero resentment towards my mother who was pure sweetness and repeatedly told me “I hope you know how much I appreciate everything you do for me”.
Once, when mom became aware of her declining mental status, she expressed a fear that she would someday not recognize her family. I began to wish “Please allow her enjoy as much quality of life as possible let her die from something sudden and painless and spare her from her worse fear”. I reminded myself that I had made that wish when it did happen just that way.
Mom had wished to be cremated but was never able to express any preference for what she wanted us to do with her ashes and I was at a loss. I thought of spreading them somewhere near us, but that did feel exactly right. My dad’s ashes were in Washington at a cemetery and I was told that we could bury them there but she wouldn’t be next to my dad, so that did not feel right either. My brothers were no help, but that was no surprise.
I told myself that I will wait for the Universe to reveal the plan to me. The Universe rarely lets me down. I wrapped the container of her ashes in one of her blankets, placed them in a special spot in my office, put the cute teddy bear my cousin had sent her and that sat on her sofa on top, and sprinkle her favorite mini candy bars on top.
And I waited.
Almost two years later my husband and I were discussing plans for riding the motorcycles with his siblings and spouses out to Washington. We had previously taken rides that included destinations to Texas, Colorado, Boston, Tennessee, and Montana, but whenever we were back in Washington we would comment on how gorgeous that destination would be.
And then it came to me. My parents had lived a short time on the Washington Peninsula in Port Angeles, a short drive from Hurricane Ridge, one of the most beautiful places I had ever been. I contacted the State Park Department, made some inquiries, and we, along with a contingent of the extended family took the journey to spread her ashes at the top of Hurricane Ridge. Nature provided my answer, the sunshine smiling on all of us as we took turns with our personal remembrances and set her ashes and her spirit back into the Universe from where she had been created.
My brother later told me that he had taken some of the ashes back and sneaked them into the cemetery where was dad was, and sprinkled some there as well. Perfect.
Olivia Thomakos
Location: New Philadelphia, Ohio
About: I am currently in a time of transition, and I have to trust that God is guiding me in the right direction, though I desperately desire control. I love to run, and the answer to this prompt came a bit unexpectedly. It's about letting go.
Age: 23
Wind on my face, running with eyes closed.
I was writing a poem in my head today while I was running.
Do you ever close your eyes while you are running?
The first time I did it,
I thought I would run off the road.
But the wind on my face,
pushing against me, I leaned into her and
I never tread off course.
Her pressure kept me moving straight
on the side of the road.
And I am realizing now that maybe nature was telling me something all along.
That in the release of control, in the closing of eyes, in the trust in the unseen - there is a peace. There is also a way to keep moving forward on the right path, trusting that even with opposition, there is a force that can help us get to where we are trying to go.
Sometimes we have to trust that nature knows more than we do. It will always lead us back home.
-
It feels right that “Rivers and Roads” is playing as I type this.
Patrick McDonnell
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
About: I reimagine a time in my life when nature saved me.
Age: 68
As always I go back to when I was almost mortally injured when I was 6 years old, but survived and left with a blindness in my left eye. For some reason my teacher had given us an assignment to make a butterfly collection. During my post traumatic recovery, my parents thought I should go outside to get exercise, to live as normally as possible. My eye being hugely dilated, meant I had to always wear sun glasses (much to the consternation and amusement of my class mates). It was the new beginning of my new life.
Living outside of San Francisco - in the golden hills - we were perfectly situated for catching butterflies and moths. My mother or father made me a butterfly net, just a wire hanger undone to make a round loop on which Terry cloth was attached the whole thing then connected to a stick, nothing fancy. And off I would go into the long golden grasses which characterize a California summer. In those moments of hunting my prey I also experienced what EO Wilson calls Biophilia; a closeness to nature.
I forgot my handicap, for I was handicapped, missing binocular vision, so that I often missed my prey, not able to focus like most people who take for granted the judging of distances with their two eyes. I also ran around like a normal child after having been strapped down in a hospital bed for a month. In some metaphorical way I identified with my butterflies who I would place in a jar with their wings strapped open by pieces of paper, to be gassed by a wad of alcohol imbued cotton till they were dead. For my experience in the hospital was similar; they had placed my head between bricks, tying my head down tight so I wouldn't move, then placing eye patches over both my eyes, so I couldn't see. Then tying my arms and legs to the bed as well so that in many ways I mimicked my butterfly friends. Even the smell of alcohol reminded me of the hospital probably because I was swabbed clean with it, and often given injections of pain killers and who knows what in order to survive. But unlike my insect friends, I survived my ordeal. Or did I?
My memories are cloudy about the time in darkness, when I was alone with my thoughts. I don't remember having human contact, though I am sure I was scrubbed clean and my bodily needs were taken care of. All I rememberer was that I had to build up an imaginary world that would keep me sane. I invented friends and scenarios, and so I lived in a virtual world of my own creation. Funny, but the hospital I was in, Letterman, is now home to ILM or some such company, in the old military base of Presidio, where they produce digital virtual worlds. My surroundings were beautiful, but I couldn't see them and for a time neither could I hear nor touch them. I was in complete isolation. Except for grand rounds when some doctors, unseen in my darkness, would come by with their bright lites to pear into my blood filled eye to see how I was doing. It felt like the cop movies where a helicopter hovers above in the night sky and flashes bright lights down on some criminal activity.
Of course I felt guilty of some crime I didn't know I had committed. In my youthful narcissism I felt that I had merited this injury, that I was at fault, to be punished with such pain and then despair. Left alone and unloved. My parents were not allowed to visit, while I was recovering, and even after I could receive them they came to my bed with guilt written on their faces. I don't remember my brother visiting, the one who done this to me... My father carved a space man doll for me who became my friend, and I had other dolls to keep me company (or maybe I am making this up, as my memory is fuzzy about that time having been dosed with morphine). The military nurses were efficient - I was in a military hospital after all - but not kind. I remember once trying to have a conversation with a fellow patient in the ward, and being harshly rebuked, silence! I suppose it was for our own good, at least I remember that we all were suffering together so at least we had that in common.
When studying the life of a butterfly, I was thunderstruck by its transformation from an ugly caterpillar into a thing of beauty. This transformation took place during a time called pupa or chrysalis. In this intermediated phase of its life it is confined to a tight space, where it can't move, and wondrous things happen, producing a completely different being. My stay in the hospital was in many ways my chrysalis period of my life. I went in a young boy with out a care, except for his injury, and I came out an adult at age 6. I no longer saw the world as a safe place, I no longer could be care free and trusting of adults and especially of my brother, and I was no longer normal. Children are cruel to anyone who is not like them. When I went back to school my class mates accepted me but they didn't really. I was treated with special care by my teacher, no doubt causing many to be jealous of me, and they showed it in minor ways. I was kept apart during play periods as well because I was still recovering. In the long run I became a loner, an island unto itself. A freak.
The butterflies saved me, as they were carefree and beautiful. Sometimes I would catch them and then let them go, like in fishing. I learned their names. In fact it was the beginning of my scientific education. I poured over the insect books to learn everything I could about the lives of insects. They were so fragile but they were survivors. Like me.
Ryan Chepita
Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada
About: I am so grateful. Writing in this beautiful community feels like I have unlocked long-dormant treasures within me, or unearthed a treasure chest in the forest. The Isolation Journals have not just helped me to stay afloat in this era; it has helped me to thrive.
Age: 42
A work manager recently introduced moonshots for seemingly impossible pursuits, joining a lexicon of deep dives and new horizons.
All are plagiarized from nature, yet none encapsulates nature's soul.
True nature guides me daily.
When I need a muse to turn complex emotions (pure and warring) into words, nature creates clarity through silence.
When I lacked humility, nature reduced me through a storm, cliff, or mountain.
When I crave the physical presence of a lost or faraway friend, nature reveals our common moon.
God didn't share nature to be pillaged, forgotten, or caricatured with catchphrases.
Nature is the solution.